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Their emergence as a major global power
has carried the Chinese people through
changes more drastic and basic in the past
few decades than any other major group of
mankind. Essential to the understanding of
this impact is the story of the three thousand
years in which their ideals and institutions
evolved and sustained a distinctively Chi
nese civilization.

In this Fourth Edition— the first since the
end of World War II— of a book long ac
cepted as the best single introduction to the
Chinese, Professor Latourette has com
pletely rewritten the text to take advantage
of recent scholarship on both earlier and
later periods. In more than twenty-five thou
sand words of new material, the story of the
radical transformations wrought under the
present Communist regime has been added
to this book. Thus the book— actually two
volumes in one— serves both to acquaint the
serious reader with the Chinese people and
to provide the Sinologist with an invaluable
and thoroughly up-to-date summary for
ready reference.

Because of the way geography and natu
ral resources have determined the Chinese
outlook since primitive times, the book be
gins with a detailed description of the physi
cal setting from which this civilization origi
nated.

(Continued on back flap)

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THE CHINESE

Their History
and Culture

THE CHINESE

Their History

and Culture

FOURTH EDITION, THOROUGHLY REVISED
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE

KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE

Sterling Professor of Missions and Oriental History,

and Fellow of Berkeley College, Emeritus, in Yale University

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, NEW YORK
COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED, LONDON

All rights reserved— no part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection
with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

First Printing

The Macmillan Company, New York
Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario

Library of Congress catalog card number: 64-17372
Printed in the United States of America

IN ME MORY OF

SAMUEL WELLS WILLIAMS 1812-1884

AND

FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS 1857-1928

CONTENTS

ONE
TWO

THREE
FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

VOLUME I

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

GEOGRAPHY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE CHINESE

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION (TO 221
B.C.)

THE FORMATION OF THE EMPIRE: THE CH'IN AND
HAN DYNASTIES (221 B.C.-A.D. 220)

REUNION AND RENEWED ADVANCE: THE Sui (A.D.
589-618) AND T'ANG (A.D. 618-907) DYNASTIES

A STRIKING CHANGE: DIVISIONS, FOREIGN INVA
SIONS, AND CULTURAL INNOVATIONS FROM THE
CLOSE OF THE HAN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE Sui
DYNASTY (A.D. 220-589) 110

138

POLITICAL WEAKNESS BUT CULTURAL BRILLIANCE:
THE FIVE DYNASTIES AND THE TEN KINGDOMS
(A.D. 907-960): THE SUNG DYNASTY (A.D. 960-
1279) 175

CHINA UNDER THE RULE OF THE MONGOLS (A.D.
1279-1368) 208

CHINA AGAIN UNDER CHINESE RULE: THE MING
DYNASTY (A.D. 1368-1644) 225

THE CH'ING (MANCHU) DYNASTY: ITS HEYDAY AND
THE BEGINNING OF ITS DECLINE (A.D. 1644-1838) 247

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE IMPACT
OF THE OCCIDENT: I. THE EMPIRE Is SHAKEN BY
WARS WITH WESTERN EUROPEAN POWERS AND THE
RESULTING TREATIES AND BY INTERNAL REBEL
LIONS (A.D. 1839-1860) 273

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE IMPACT
OF THE OCCIDENT: II. PARTIAL RECOVERY FROM

THE SHOCKS OF THE PRECEDING TWO DECADES:

THE RESTORATION OF INTERNAL ORDER BUT THE
SLOW PERMEATION OF THE EMPIRE BY OCCIDENTAL

Vll

vin

CONTENTS

TRADE AND IDEAS AND THE FAILURE TO ACCOMMO
DATE THE OLD TO THE NEW (A.D. 1861-1893) 290

TWELVE THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE IMPACT
OF THE OCCIDENT; III. THE CRUMBLING OF THE
STRUCTURE OF THE OLD CULTURE AND THE FORE-
SHADOWINGS OF THE NEW (A.D. 1894-1945) 305

THIRTEEN THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE IMPACT
OF THE OCCIDENT: IV. THE COMMUNISTS CAPTURE
THE MAINLAND AND UNDERTAKE THE THOROUGH
REMAKING OF CHINA (A.D. 1945-) 388

VOLUME II

FOURTEEN THE CHINESE PEOPLE: RACIAL COMPOSITION 437

— FIFTEEN GOVERNMENT 450

SIXTEEN ECONOMIC LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 483

SEVENTEEN RELIGION 520

EIGHTEEN SOCIAL LlFE AND ORGANIZATION 565

NINETEEN ART 606

TWENTY LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EDUCATION 641

TWENTY-ONE BY WAY OF SUMMARY 673

PROPER NAMES AND CHINESE WORDS USED IN THE
TEXT AND THEIR CORRESPONDING CHARACTERS 683

INDEX 699

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Here is an attempt to tell the story of a great people and a high
civilization. That story is filled with aspiration, achievement, and tragedy.
It involves many millions of people, for centuries the largest fairly
homogeneous portion of mankind. It embraces more than three thousand
years. In the twentieth century the entire world has been involved. In
creasingly the Chinese have made their weight felt in both hemispheres.
Before the present century their influence was confined chiefly to East
and Southeast Asia. Cut off from the rest of mankind by oceans, deserts,
and mountains, although receiving varied contributions from abroad, they
created a distinct civilization. That civilization was potent in shaping their
immediate neighbors, notably the Japanese, the Vietnamese, and the
Koreans. Other portions of mankind were indebted to it, especially for
such commodities as silk and tea, for porcelain, paper, and possibly for
printing, and for some forms of art. But not until the twentieth century did
the Chinese attain major global importance, Then, subjected to the world
wide cultural and political revolution which issued from the Occident, on
the one hand their ideals and institutions underwent more drastic and basic
changes than those of any other major group of mankind, and on the
other hand, they became more active participants in the life of the rest of
the human race than in any previous age.

The Chinese and their achievements can be best appreciated by the way
of history. They themselves have been markedly historical-minded. They,
their civilization, and the sweeping developments to which they have been
subjected and to which they have contributed can be best understood if
the past out of which they came is traced. First comes a description of the
geography and natural resources of China, with an appraisal of the fashion
in which they have helped to shape the development of its people and its
culture. Then follows a summary, comprising more than half of the work,
of the nation's history from the beginning to the present. That in turn is
succeeded by a chapter on the population and chapters on the main phases
of the culture and institutions of the country: political, economic, philo
sophical, religious, social, aesthetic, and intellectual. Under most of these
topics a description is given of what developed before the coming of the
European and is followed by an account of the changes which have resulted
from the impact of the Occident.

To each chapter is appended a brief bibliography (by no means ex
haustive) of what the author deems the more important books and articles
on the subject. The order of each bibliography is (1) translations of
Chinese works, (2) books in European languages on the general subject

X PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

of the chapter, and (3) books and articles on special phases of the subject
arranged in the sequence in which these phases are treated. Immediately
before the index a list of the Chinese names and words in the text will be
found, arranged alphabetically according to their romanization, each with
its corresponding Chinese characters. No one system of romanization meets
with the approval of all Sinologists, but in the main the one most frequently
employed in books in English, that associated with the names of Sir Thomas
Wade and Herbert A. Giles, has been followed.

The book is designed as an introduction for the more serious student who
comes to the subject with little or no previous knowledge of China, and
as an easily accessible volume of reference for those who wish information
and an introductory bibliography to what are generally regarded as the
more important figures, events, and features of the history and culture of
the country. The professional Sinologist will find little if anything which
he does not already know, but it is hoped that to him the book will prove
an accurate and useful summary. The value of such a work is not in fresh
research in specialized fields but in a summary and interpretation of what
is available in detailed but unconnected studies. To those for whom the
volume is their first introduction to China, much of the text may seem
overloaded and confused with strange names. The effort has been made,
however, to reduce such names to the minimum which should be known by
all who seek to become familiar with the main features of the history and
achievements of the Chinese. The expert, indeed, may feel that too many
names, movements, and events have been omitted.

No one can be more conscious than the author of the inevitable defects
of such a work. Brevity, condensation, and the choice of what to include
and what to omit cannot be avoided. For many topics and fields specialized
monographs do not exist and later researchers will modify or invalidate
some sections. Even at its best the book cannot hope to be standard for
many decades. New studies, both by Chinese and by non-Chinese, will
quickly render several portions obsolete. Such advance in our knowledge
is, indeed, not only to be welcomed but also encouraged. China, too, is
moving so rapidly that those pages which seek to portray and interpret
contemporary conditions and movements will soon be out of date. Even
on the basis of our present knowledge some mistakes will have crept in,
However, the following pages may succeed in achieving a fairly well
balanced summary of what is now familiar to experts and may encourage
further investigation in many of the fields covered.

What follows is the fourth edition of a work which was first published
in 1934 and whose latest revision appeared in 1946. So much research has
since been done in the areas covered by the previous editions and so much
has happened in the past seventeen years that a complete rewriting was
imperative. Advantage has been taken of what was in the earlier editions,
and here and there sentences and even paragraphs have been reproduced

Preface to the Fourth Edition

with only slight modifications. But every word has been rescrutinized, and
in many respects the result is a new work.

The author wishes to repeat his gratitude to Doctors A. W. Hummel
and B. Laufer and to Professors M, S. Bates, M. L. Chen, Lewis Hodous,
William Hung, Ellsworth Huntington, Frank W. Price, and L. S. C. Smythe
for their assistance in the first edition and to express again his debt to Mrs.
Charles T. Lincoln, who has turned into faultless typescript all of the
editions and whose suggestions for improvements in style have been in
valuable.

For counsel in the present edition the author is deeply indebted to
Professor Homer H. Dubs, Professor Arthur F. Wright, and Dr. John
M. S. Lindbeck.

The author is deeply and gratefully under obligation to Yale University
for his introduction in his student days to the subject of this book, for
the opportunity which its administration gave him to give the course (long
the only one of its kind at Yale), out of which the book grew, and for the
use of the ample libraries.

No history can be free from the writer's preconceptions. The author
who claims full objectivity is either self-deceived or is seeking to deceive
his readers. The very selection of facts entails judgment as to the relative
importance of the myriad actions and events which constitute the crude
stuff with which the historian must work. The present author has attempted
to achieve an attitude of detachment. He is aware, however, that he has
stressed the political aspects of the story more than some Sinologists would
do. His warm sympathy with the Chinese may have betrayed him into
seeming to be an apologist for them. He regards as a major tragedy the
domination of the mainland by the Communists, but he has striven to be
objective in depicting and appraising their regime, for only with ^that
attitude can the post-1949 China be understood and policies toward it be
wisely conceived and carried out.

The author craves the privilege of dedicating his effort to Samuel Wells
Williams and Frederick Wells Williams. The former, long a missionary and
diplomat in China, spent his last years at Yale as Professor of the Chinese
Language and Literature, the first chair of its kind in the United States. His
A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Shanghai, American Pres
byterian Mission Press, 1874, pp. Ixxxiv, 1252) and The Middle Kingdom,
first published in 1858 and given a final and enlarged revision in his later
years (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2 vols., 1882), are evidence
of the scholarship which made him the most eminent American Sinologist
of his day The latter work was long the standard book in English on
China's history and civilization and still has value for the light which it
sheds on some events of the nineteenth century. His son, Frederick Wells
Williams, assisted in the final revision of The Middle Kingdom and long
taught Oriental history at Yale, specializing on China. It was with the

Xli PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

son that the present author majored as a graduate student, and on his
teacher's retirement the latter's title, Oriental History, was added to his
professorship, that of Missions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The standard bibliography of books and articles on China in European
languages is Henri Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica (second edition, Paris, E.
Guilmoto, 4 vols., 1904-1907, supplement, 1924, pp. 3254-4430). It is ex
tended by Tung-li Yuan in China in Western Literature. A Continuation of
Cordier's Bibliotheca Sinica (New Haven, Far Eastern Publications, Yale
University, 1958, pp. xix, 802). Also extremely useful are H. Franke, Sinologie
(Bern, A. Franke A. G. Verlag, 1953, pp. 216); C. O. Hucker, China, A
Critical Bibliography (The University of Arizona Press, 1962, pp. x, 125),
predominantly of books and periodicals published in English since 1940;
Bibliography of Asian Studies, an annual issue of the Journal of Asian Studies
beginning in 1956, continuing E. H. Pritchard, ed., Bulletin of Far Eastern
Bibliography (1936-1940), incorporated in Far Eastern Quarterly (1941-
1955); Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie (Paris, Mouton & Co., 1955 ff.),
an annual; A. F. Wright, "Sinology in Peiping, 1941-1945," Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 9, pp. 315-372; R. J. Kerner, Northeastern Asia. A
Selected Bibliography (University of California Press, 2 vols., 1939), valuable
for titles in Japanese and Russian as well as in western European languages.

A useful reference work, still not fully replaced, is Samuel Couling, The
Encyclopaedia Sinica (Oxford University Press, 1917, pp. vii, 633). Old,
lacking references to the sources, but as yet not superseded by a similarly
comprehensive work in a Western language, is H. A. Giles, A Chinese Bio
graphical Dictionary (London, Berbard Quaritch, and Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh,
1898, pp. 1022).

Useful is G. A. Kennedy, An Introduction to Sinology (Yale University
Sinological Seminar, 1953, pp. 171).

Of the many general histories 'of China, the most recent one of outstanding
scholarship is in E. O. Reischauer and J. K. Fairbank, A History of East Asian
Civilization (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2 vols., 1960-1964). Suitable for
more advanced students, it suffers from inadequate bibliographies and the
absence of Chinese characters. Much shorter and stressing the cultural aspects
and the contributions from other civilizations is the highly competent L. C.
Goodrich, A Short History of the Chinese People (New York, Harper &
Brothers, 3rd ed, 1959, pp. xv, 295). Old, but still useful, is Marcel Granet,
La Civilisation Chinoise (Paris, La Renaissance du Livre, 1929), translated as
Chinese Civilization by K. E. Innes and M. R. Brailsford (New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1930, pp. xxiii, 444). Rene Grousset, Histoire de I' Extreme-Orient
(Paris, Librairie Orientaliste, Paul Guenther, 2 vols., 1929), bringing the
story to the end of the eighteenth century, is useful as a summary, for its
bibliographies, and for its Chinese characters. Rene Grousset, The Rise and
Splendour of the Chinese Empire, translated by A. Watson-Gandy and T.
Gordon (Berkeley, University Press, 1953), has a character indicated by its
title. A standard work in German is O. Franke, Geschichte des chinesischen
Reiches . . . (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 5 vols., 1930-1952). Coming
only to 1280 and left incomplete by the author's death (1946), it needs to be
supplemented by the findings of more recent scholarship.

THE CHINESE

Their History
and Culture

VOLUME I

CHAP T ER ONE

GEOGRAPHY AND ITS INFLUENCE
ON THE CHINESE

THE NAME

The name China is a foreign appellation, probably derived
from a dynasty which reigned over the Empire in the third century B.C.
The Chinese long held it as an ideal that there should be only one political
administration for civilized mankind and regarded their own as that
government. Hence no pressing need existed to distinguish their country
from another. They might speak of China as Tien Hsia — "Under Heaven."
The most frequent name employed was Chung Kuo — "The Middle King
dom." The Chinese often denominated themselves Han J&n, or the "Men of
Han," after a famous dynasty of that name. Tang JSn, or the "Men of
T'ang," after another famous dynasty, was frequently on the lips of the
Chinese in the South.

THE TWO MAIN DIVISIONS OF CHINA

What now appears on the map as China falls into two main
parts, China proper where the major proportion of the population has
long been Chinese, and what-, intermittently, have been the outlying sec
tions of the Empire, where until recently the Chinese were in the minority.
China proper is often known as the "eighteen provinces," from the admin
istrative divisions which existed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The distinction between the two divisions is not so closely drawn as in
the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is fading and no longer conforms strictly
with administrative and racial realities. Large parts of the dependencies
have been officially organized as provinces, with the same status as those
of China proper. Chinese have migrated extensively into some of them.
In Manchuria Chinese constitute the overwhelming majority of the popu
lation and they are the largest element in Inner Mongolia. Even now, how
ever, the division preserves a degree of rough approximation to the facts
which renders it a useful framework for classification.

VOLUME I

CHINA PROPER

China proper is made up chiefly of the valleys of two great
rivers, the Yellow and the Yangtze, and of one smaller one, the Hsi Kiang
("West River"), which, taking their rise in the vast tablelands and moun
tain fastnesses to the west, flow eastward into an arm of the Pacific. In
fertile plains along the middle and lower course of the Yellow River was
the seat of primitive Chinese culture. In comparatively early times the
Chinese state incorporated the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze
basin. Later, in the centuries just before and just after the Christian Era,
the Chinese occupied the basins of both rivers and of their tributaries
up to the mountains and plateaus of the West and annexed the coastal
regions to the south, where numerous smaller valleys, notably that of the
Hsi Kiang and its confluents, afforded inviting homes. Migration, settle
ment, and more or less complete amalgamation with earlier stocks fol
lowed occupation and annexation, although in some sections very tardily.
The area of China proper is approximately a million and a half square
miles — about half the size of the United States without Alaska, and two-
fifths that of Europe. The total is probably above rather than below this
figure.

A more detailed description of this region will disclose the features
which have made it a natural unit and the seat of a numerous and civilized
people, and which have helped to give the Chinese some of their out
standing characteristics.

Nature has divided China proper into four main sections: the North,
made up chiefly of the valley of the Yellow River (Huang Ho) and its
tributaries; the upper portion of the Yangtze Valley and the adjoining
mountains and tablelands; the lower part of the valley of the Yangtze River;
and the coastal regions south of the Yangtze. Each of these, in turn,
has natural subdivisions.

CHINA PROPER: THE NORTH

The North of China proper comprises most of the provinces
of Shantung, Hopei (formerly Chihli), Honan, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu
and the northern portions of Anhui and Kiangsu. Topographically it shades
off into a tier of new provinces, Jehol, Chahar, Suiyiian, and Ninghsia,
which were carved out partly from some of the older northern provinces and
partly from what is often denominated Inner Mongolia, and which under the
Communists were partly superseded by new administrative units. Its major
stream is the Huang Ho ("Yellow River"), which, rising in the moun
tains and plateaus that fringe Tibet, by a devious route flows into the
Yellow Sea. Its name describes its color, and this in turn is due to the

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 5

vast amount of sediment which the river carries, and which, lodged in
shifting bars, in spite of the size of the stream, makes difficult or impossi
ble navigation by all but the smaller craft.

With this sediment the Yellow River and some smaller adjacent streams
— principally the Pai Ho on the north and the Huai Ho on the south-
have built up a vast alluvial plain on either side of the Shantung promon
tory. This plain, which extends over much of Honan, Hopei, and Shantung,
and over the northern portions of Kiangsu and Anhui, and which on the
south merges with the delta of the Yangtze, was laid down in what was once
sea bottom. It extends for scores of miles without prominent hills or valleys.

In common with other fluvial heavy carriers of sediment, along its lower
reaches the Huang Ho has tended to raise for itself natural dikes and a bed
higher than the adjoining plain. This tendency, reinforced by the embank
ments built by man, leads to devastating floods. As its bed rises higher
and higher between dike-like banks the stream inevitably breaks its bounds,
and spreading its waters over the surrounding country, seeks a new bed
on a lower level. As a result, its mouth has been now south and now
north of the Shantung mountains, by shiftings which have brought untold
distress to the dense population of the adjacent area. Appropriately the
Huang Ho has been known as "China's Sorrow."

The northern plain has been, however, the friend of civilization, because,
except for a few stretches marred by alkali or sand, it is very fertile. To
gether with a smaller plain in the valley of the Wei, a tributary of the
Huang Ho, it was the scene of the development of the culture which
shaped the rest of China. On it rose most of China's ancient capitals, and
on it today stand several of her largest cities — notably Peking (lately also
Peip'ing), Tientsin (near the mouth of the Pai Ho), Tsinan (the capital of
Shantung), Hsian (formerly Ch'angan), and K'aifeng (a former capital).

The sediment that furnishes the material for the plain is derived largely
from the loess, a kind of soil which blankets many of the regions of North
China. Loess occurs from the borders of Mongolia on the north and
the Tarim basin in Sinkiang on the west into Shantung on the east and
in spots into the Yangtze Valley on the south. It is densest in Shensi and
Kansu. Often scores of feet in depth, in some places it forms plateaus and
in others it fills valleys. It is very friable and, while of varying texture, is
usually reducible by rubbing to a fine powder. Extremely fertile and easily
cultivated, it is the source of much of the agricultural wealth of North
China. It has a vertical cleavage and often is worn down into gullies and
canyons with steep walls. It is also easily eroded and accordingly chokes
the rivers that drain it. The loess is of wind-borne origin and the product
of thousands of years of dust storms not greatly dissimilar to those now
familiar to the inhabitants of North China. It is of varying ages, the rate
of deposition seemingly having been much more rapid in some eras than

VOLUME I

in others. In some -areas it can still be seen in process of formation. While
originally laid down by the wind, streams have carved it and have rede-
posited a large portion of it, so that much of it is now in alluvial strata.

The fertility of the northern plain has been partly offset by deficient
and irregular rainfall, especially inland. From the dawn of history, droughts
and floods have repeatedly scourged with famine larger or smaller sec
tions of the plain and the adjoining highlands.

Parts of the eastern boundary of the North China plain are formed
by' the mountains of Shantung. These consist chiefly of ancient rocks of the
same formation as the hills of the Liaotung Peninsula, just to the north,
in Manchuria. Erosion has rounded their contours and broadened their
valleys. The most famous peak is T'ai Shan, slightly over five thousand
feet high, the chief of the sacred mountains of China. To it for centuries
the Chinese have looked with veneration, and to it have come thousands
of pilgrims. Thanks to its rocky formation and to the subsidence of the
coast, the Shantung promontory possesses excellent harbors, notably Kiao-
chow Bay.

To the north of the North China plain, high hills lead up to the
Mongolian tableland. To the west rise first the mountains and plateaus of
Shansi and then the mountains and valleys of Shensi and Kansu. Loess
blankets much of the country, but the cultivated land is largely in the
valleys and on the adjacent terraced hillsides. There are a few plains.
How much of the land was wooded in primitive times we do not know.
It seems fairly certain that over portions of the area trees were sparse or
entirely lacking. However, forests once covered much more of the country
than now. When they were cut, the hillsides were rapidly eroded and the
valleys often gutted with debris.

Most of the valleys are narrow, but there are exceptions. The princi
pal one is where the Wei flows through a broad and fertile plain, just
above its confluence with the Yellow River as the latter breaks out of the
mountains on the southern leg of its great no'rthern bend to turn sharply
to the east. Here was an early seat of Chinese culture. Here, too, have
beefc some of China's capitals, notably Hsian (Ch'angan), and here have
been enacted many of the most famous scenes of China's history.

Shansi is, as has been said, made up largely of mountains and plateaus.
These buttress the Mongolian highland and contain extensive coal meas
ures. The most notable peak, and one of the chief Buddhist sacred moun
tains, is Wu T'ai Shan, near the northeastern border of the province. The
major river, the Fen, drains southwestward into the Huang Ho— above
the junction of the latter with the Wei.

West of Shansi the mountains become higher until in parts of Kansu
they attain to elevations of twenty thousand feet and more. As one pro
ceeds westward, moreover, the vaUeys become narrower and the popula-

Geography and its Influence oa the Chinese 7

tion more sparse. The Yellow River encloses in its northern bend the Ordos,
a plateau which is mostly desert. The river itself is navigable as far as
Lanchow in Kansu, but above its junction with the Wei many rapids
interrupt its course.

To the southeast the North China plain shades off imperceptibly into
the delta of the Yangtze River. However, a series of mountains and hills,
with gradually diminishing heights, reaches eastward from the great ranges
and tablelands of the West and forms an effective watershed between nearly
all the lower length of the Yangtze, to the south, and the Huai and Yellow
rivers to the north. The Huai River, draining much of the territory between
the lower courses of its mightier neighbors, the Huang Ho and the Yangtze,
constitutes one of China's major engineering problems, for it has no
adequate mouth, and any unusually rainy season has sent its waters
over the adjoining thickly settled countryside. The Communist regime
has undertaken extensive engineering projects to remedy the situation, but
with far from entire success.

CHINA PROPER: THE UPPER PART OF THE YANGTZE VALLEY

The Yangtze is one of the greatest of the world's waterways.
Rising in Tibet, the streams that go to make it cut their way in enormous
canyons off the roof of the world to form, still in rugged country, what
in its upper reaches is poetically called the River of the Golden Sand.
To the south of this upper course, and partly drained by it, lies the south-
westernmost province of China proper, Yunnan — literally, "South of
the Clouds." The tableland which forms the most populous portion of
Yunnan is high enough to have a salubrious climate and is well watered
by streams and lakes. Its natural outlet is to the southeast and this was
facilitated in the twentieth century by a railway built by the French. From
Yunnan, also, a pass by way of Bhamo leads into the valley of the Irra-
waddy and so into Burma — a route traversed through the centuries by mer
chants and armies. To Yunnan led, in the second world war of the twen
tieth century, the "Burma Road" and the "Ledo Road" which gave
"unoccupied" China land access to the outside world.

Next on the course of the Yangtze is the great province of Szechwan
(the "Four Streams"), the largest of the eighteen, and an empire in
itself. The heart of Szechwan is a hilly, arable region known as the Red
Basin — from the underlying sandstone. Toward the western edge of the
Red Basin is a fertile plain, which is watered by an ancient irrigation system
and is the seat of the chief city of the province, Chengtu. The Red Basin
has an abundant rainfall and a subtropical climate and hence supports
a dense population. It is also rich in minerals. It is cut by several rapid
rivers, notably the Min, which waters the Chengtu plain.

8 VOLUME I

To the southeast, Szechwan is bounded by the mountainous province
of Kweichow, to the west stretches Tibet with its great ranges and high
plateaus, to the southwest lies Yunnan, to the north Shensi and Kansu are
reached only through passes over a fairly formidable chain of mountains,
and to the east rise more curtaining hills. Szechwan is, therefore, a geo
graphical entity. The Yangtze provides it with its most important gateway
to the outer world. That river, on leaving the most thickly populated
parts of the province, for scores of miles cuts its way through the opposing
hills in a series of huge gorges. The accompanying rapids make navigation
hazardous, but for centuries boatmen have traversed them, and in the
present century, especially constructed steamers have regularly made the
run. Air travel also connects Szechwan with other parts of China. Properly
dammed the Yangtze gorges could be a major source of hydroelectric
power.

CHINA PROPER: THE LOWER PART OF THE YANGTZE VALLEY

From the gorges eastward the valley of the Yangtze begins to
widen, only occasionally to be constricted by hills. More tributaries enter.
On the south are two lakes, the T'ung-t'ing and the P'o-yang. These
are practically continuous with the Yangtze and serve as reservoirs of flood
waters of the great river. Into each empty streams from the hinterland. The
basin of the T'ung-t'ing Lake and of its affluents is roughly conterminous
with the province of Hunan ("South of the Lake") . Hunan is largely moun
tainous and wooded, but numerous streams provide it with many fertile
valleys. The P'o-yang Lake and the valleys of the streams which flow
into it are nearly identical with the province of Kiangsi ("West of the
River"). Kiangsi, like Hunan, is hilly, and also possesses valleys which
support an extensive population. From the upper reaches of the Hsiang,
the chief stream of Hunan, and of the Kan, the main river of Kiangsi,
important passes across the hills give access to the south coast.

From the north, the chief tributary of the Yangtze is the Han, and at
its junction with the main river lie the three cities, Hankow, Wuchang, and
Hanyang, or, as they are known collectively, Wuhan. The province of
which these three constitute the metropolis is Hupeh ("North of the [T'ung-
t'ing] Lake"). Wuhan forms a natural commercial center, and so huge
is the Yangtze that at high water ocean-going steamers have made it a
port of call, nearly six hundred miles from the coast. East of Hupeh and
Kiangsi lie the two provinces of Anhui and Kiangsu, both of them span
ning the river.

From the point where it leaves the gorges, the Yangtze is flanked by
fertile alluvial plains of varying width and of its own building. At Chin-
kiang, about a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth, these broaden into

Geography and its Influence an the Chinese 9

a delta and are being steadily extended by the silt-laden waters. Kiangsu
possesses, as might be expected, several large cities — among them Nanking,
on several occasions the capital of China, Soochow, Wusih, Ch'ang-chow,
Yangchow, and the modern commercial metropolis of China, Shanghai.
Shanghai, the result of the ocean-borne trade with the Occident, sprawls
along the Huang-p'u, a small river which empties into the mouth of the
Yangtze. In the Kiangsu delta are several lakes, among them the T'ai Hu.
From the gorges eastward the Yangtze and its main tributaries lend them
selves to navigation. For this purpose they are supplemented, especially
on the delta, by an elaborate network of canals. The Grand Canal, connect
ing the South and the North, begins at Hangchow and runs northward,
originally to the outskirts of Peking (Peip'ing). Through traffic is no longer
able to traverse its entire length, sections of it are still in use, in some
places very extensively so, and the Communists have sought to improve it.

CHINA PROPER: THE SOUTH COAST

South of the mouth of the Yangtze, the coast of China
becomes rugged and deeply indented, and the main mountain ranges run
parallel to the coast. The cultivated land lies in the valleys or on artificially
terraced hillsides. The ancient rocks which compose most of the region have
been much eroded. Subsidence of the coast has given rise to islands and
estuaries. The coastal region, divided politically into the four provinces
Chekiang, Fukien, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi, is separated from the basin of
the Yangtze by barriers of hills, most of them averaging from three to six
thousand feet in height. Many of the hills are covered with small timber and
bamboo. The region is traversed by numerous streams, most of them com
paratively short and punctuated by rapids, and, accordingly, is divided into
many little valleys. These valleys favor the development of clans and of local
dialects, so that it is not strange (although geography is not the sole cause)
that the greatest variations in language occur here. The most considerable
valley is that of the Hsi Kiang ("West River"). Its broad delta is fertile and
densely populated. On its estuary (near where it is joined by other streams
from the North) stands the city of Canton. The Hsi Kiang is navigable to
the borders of Yunnan. Next in importance ranks the Min, which empties
into the sea just below the city of Foochow. The scenery along its banks is
famous for its picturesque beauty.

The northern portion of Chekiang encloses a section of the Yangtze
delta. The major part of the province is mountainous. The chief cities are
Hangchow and Ningpo. Hangchow, near the mouth of the main river of the
province, the Ch'ien-t'ang, and flanked on one side by the beautiful West
Lake, has been renowned for many centuries. Ningpo, on a plain near the
mouth of a stream farther east, is a populous and well-known port. The

10 VOLUME I

Chusan archipelago, to the north of Ningpo, owes its fame chiefly to the
island of P'u-t'o, one of the secred centers of Buddhism. Fukien is
almost entirely mountainous, and its largest city, Foochow, has already
been noted. A second port, Amoy, to the south, has supplanted as a com
mercial center the nearby medieval mart of Ch'iianchow. Since its founda
tion over a century ago as a British colony, Hong Kong, rocky islands and
adjacent mainland (from December, 1941, to the summer of 1945 in
Japanese hands) has been an important commercial rival of Canton. On
the populous delta of the West River are still other cities, and on a plain
near the mouth of another stream, the Han, close to the Kwangtung-
Fukien border, is Swatow, the entrepot to a larger metropolis, Ch'aochow.
Kwangtung, save for the delta on which Canton is situated, is chiefly
mountainous. To the south of Kwangtung, separated by a narrow strait,
lies the rugged island of Hainan. The mountainous province of Kwangsi is
really a westward extension of Kwangtung, being made up principally
of the upper part of the valleys of the West River and its tributaries. Better
supplied with harbors than most of the north coast and nearer to the East
Indies, the Malay Peninsula, Thailand, India, and Europe, the south coast
has had most of the ports for ocean-borne commerce.

CHINA PROPER: CLIMATE

As to climate, China proper lies almost entirely in the tem
perate zone. Only portions of the three southernmost provinces, Yunnan,
Kwangsi, and Kwangtung, are within the tropics. Seasonal differences
are marked. In the spring and summer, the arid land masses to the north
and northwest of China proper heat more quickly than do the seas to the
east and south, and the warm air, rising, creates areas of low pressure.
As a result, moisture-laden winds sweep northward from the ocean, bring
ing rain. In the autumn and winter the process is reversed. The air over
the great northern and western land barriers cools more rapidly than that
over the tropical and subtropical seas to the south, and moving south
ward, brings clear skies and lower temperatures. Consequently, China
proper has most of its rain in the spring and summer.

To the south, nearer the sources of the cloud-carrying winds, and
where the coast is backed by mountains which precipitate the moisture as
it comes in from the ocean, the rainfall is heavy. At Hong Kong it amounts
to more than eighty inches a year; along the south coast it averages about
forty inches a year, and in the Yangtze delta, forty-five. In both South
and Central China the summer humidity is high. In the North, farther from
the sources of moisture, the rainfall declines, usually being between twenty
and thirty inches on the coast and much less inland.

Torrential rains are known in the summer, in both the North and the

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 11

South. In Southwest Hopei twenty-three inches fell in thirty-three hours in
the summer of 1924, and more than once Hong Kong has had over twenty
inches in twenty-four hours. The heavy summer rains account in part
for the rapid rise of the rivers in that season and for frequent floods.

Throughout China, because of the monsoonal climate, the autumns
are usually bracing and the winters cool or cold. Ice occasionally forms
as far south as Canton — about the latitude of Havana and Calcutta. No
other large seacoast tropical city in the world has so cool a winter. Light
falls of snow are common in Central China — about the latitude of Cairo
and New Orleans and with only a slightly higher elevation. In North China
the winters are cold. Peking, at approximately the same latitude as Athens,
Washington, and San Francisco, and not far inland, has much lower
temperatures in January and February than any of them.

So marked a difference between North and South in rainfall and tem
perature helps to make North China quite distinct from the Yangtze
Valley and the south coast in appearance and crops. In the South the
plains and hills are green, the growing season is six to nine months in
length, two or three crops a year are raised, and the prevailing grain is
rice. In the North the hills and plains are brown and dust-blown during
the winter, the growing season is shorter (four to six months), no more
than two crops a year are obtained, wheat, kaoliang, and millet form the
staple grains, and beans are raised extensively. The North suffers peri
odically from drought and the subsequent famines. North China, too, shades
off gradually into regions where true desert conditions prevail. In the
North, moreover, the heat and the rain of the summer encourage a lux
uriant growth, but the cold and dry winters kill off all but the hardier
plants. Trees, accordingly, do not easily start, and the characteristic forest
is of broad-leaved, deciduous varieties. At least as early as the second
millennium before Christ, in the North the climate was warmer and wetter
than now and forests abounded, but later the climate became colder and
drier and men cut off most of the surviving trees. On the other hand, the
longer growing season and the heavier rains of the South favor trees.
Vegetation is much more luxuriant and forests grow more quickly.

The difference in climate between the North on the one hand and the
Yangtze Valley and the South on the other accounts in part for other
contrasts between the two sections. In the North the slight rainfall with
its frequent failure means numerous famines. The cold winters militate
against health. The cold and the dust storms tend to keep people indoors,
in an unsanitary atmosphere. Since fuel is dear, houses remain poorly
heated. Heavy clothing is customary, and winter laundry and bathing diffi
cult. Under such circumstances disease flourishes. Moreover, the short
growing season has made for intense activity during part of the year
and enforced idleness during much of the remainder. Home industries have

12 VOLUME I

only partially occupied the time of the slack seasons. In the Yangtze
Valley and the South, on the other hand, the winter temperatures are
milder, dust storms do not occur, and outdoor life and frequent bathing
are possible. The longer growing season shortens or eliminates the winter
idleness of the farmer. Famines are less frequent. The undoubted fact
that of late centuries the Chinese of the Yangtze and the South average
much higher in initiative and leadership can, therefore, probably be
attributed in part to the climatic contrasts between the great sections of the
land.

Even in the Yangtze Valley and the South the climate is not altogether
favorable. The enervating humid heat of the summers partly counter
balances the benefits of the cool winters.

To the climate, too, may be ascribed in part (but not entirely) the
paucity of such domestic animals as the cow, the sheep, and the horse,
which depend largely upon pasture and hay for food. The rank growth in
the humid, damp summers makes for coarse grasses which prove diffi
cult to eat and digest. The dependence for animal food on such scavengers
as the pig and the chicken may have a climatic factor back of it. The
Yangtze Valley and the South, with their hot, wet summers, show the
effects of this absence of pasture grasses more than does the North.

To the monsoonal nature of the climate must be assigned, too, some
of the floods which often afflict China. The concentration of the rain
in a few months frequently means torrential downpours and the consequent
overcongestion of the drainage system.

It is possible that Chinese architecture has been to a certain extent
determined by the climate. The heavy summer rains make necessary
sound, sturdy roofs if the house is to be protected, and one of the most
prominent features of the Chinese building is the heavy tiled or thatched
roof.

CHINA PROPER: MINERAL RESOURCES

China proper is well stocked with useful minerals, Gold,
silver, and copper are found in several of the provinces, but not in the
rich deposits characteristic of some other countries. The relative dearth
of the precious metals, especially of gold, may account in part for the
failure to use gold as currency and for the frequent recourse to paper
money. China's supply of sulphur, lead, and zinc is probably inadequate
to supply the needs of an extensive industrial development. China possesses
large deposits of tin and some manganese and molybdenum. She has im
portant stores of tungsten and chromium, and in antimony she recently
dominated the world's markets. She possesses more mercury than any other
country. Coal is found in every one of the eighteen provinces of China

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 13

proper, and in some of the other sections, notably Manchuria. Experts'
figures for the extent of these deposits vary greatly, but it is clear that
China contains by far the largest coal reserves in East Asia. Estimates
as to the amounts to be found in the various provinces differ widely.
Shensi and Shansi are said to have seventy per cent of the whole. Other
well-stocked provinces are Hopei, Hunan, Szechwan, Kweichow, Yunnan,
Honan, and Shantung, Until recently no very great stores of petroleum had
been discovered. Now it seems clear that much more exists, chiefly in oil
shale, than had previously been suspected. Iron ores are extensive and are
widely distributed. Bauxite, important for aluminum, is reported to be
plentiful.

CHINA PROPER: FLORA AND FAUNA

China has an abundant stock of plants. One expert botanist
has declared that she has the richest temperate flora in the world. Com
petent authorities believe that there are fifteen thousand species, fully half
of them peculiar to the country. Many of these plants and trees are useful
to man, and the number has been enlarged by the introduction through
the centuries of scores of others. The great variety in the flora makes
for an almost equally rich fauna. The waters of China teem with fish, a
large proportion of them edible. A few of the many kinds of domesticated
animals may have been indigenous to China and made subject to man
there. More of them seem to have been introduced from abroad, some
in prehistoric or early historic times.

CHINA PROPER: ARABLE LAND

In arable land on which to raise food, China proper has
reached its limit. It has wide areas of rich soil, but these constitute only
a fraction of the whole. Deserts, mountains, and eroded land account
for most of the surface.

THE OUTLYING SECTIONS

The second main division of China, what we have called the
outlying sections, is made up chiefly of what are usually known politically
as Tibet, the New Dominion (Sinkiang), Mongolia, and Manchuria.

The political organization and boundaries of these districts have varied
greatly from time to time, even during the past two hundred years. The
classification here given is only a rough one and to it exceptions can be
taken. Moreover, as we have suggested, for a generation Sinkiang has been
classed as a province, and parts of what the older maps show as Tibet

14 VOLUME I

and Mongolia have been organized into provinces and then given a diff
erent structure by the Communists. The Chinese bitterly resent, too, any
implication that Manchuria is politically in any way distinct from the
China which lies south of the Great Wall.

THE OUTLYING SECTIONS*. TIBET

Tibet is a vast plateau, probably between seven hundred thou
sand and a million square miles in extent, a large proportion of it —
possibly half — over fifteen thousand feet in height. It is thus the most
extensive region of such an elevation on the planet. Tibet is a land of
rounded hills and great plains, presumably the result of long erosion in an
earlier geological era. It contains many lakes. Numbers of them are salt,
and most of them show marked signs of shrinkage. The rainfall apparently
was once much greater than now — although this is disputed. On the north
ern borders of Tibet rise the K'un Lun and the connecting Altyn Tagh and
Nan Shan ranges, some of whose peaks soar to heights of twenty thou
sand feet or more and are crowned by snow fields and glaciers. They
form the natural boundary between Tibet and Kansu and Sinkiang. To
the south of Tibet rise the Himalayas, the loftiest mountain range on the
earth, and, geologically speaking, comparatively young. In deep canyons
to the north of the Himalayas and in the eastern portions of Tibet flow
the upper waters of the chief rivers of northern India, Burma, Siam, Indo-
China, and China. High mountains border the Tibetan plateau on the
east, separating that region from China proper, notably from Szechwan.

THE OUTLYING SECTIONS: THE NEW DOMINION (SINKIANG)

The New Dominion (Sinkiang), so called because it was the
last of the major outlying districts to be brought into the Manchu Empire,
but also known as Chinese or Eastern Turkestan, in average elevation is
decidedly lower than Tibet. In contrast with the high plateau to the south,
much of it seems to the traveler a great depression in the earth's crust.
One oasis, indeed, Turfan, is slightly below the level of the sea. Sinkiang
is made up of two main divisions separated by a range of mountains,
the T'ien Shan. That south of the T'ien Shan is geographically an extension
of the Gobi Desert. Most of it constitutes a huge basin drained by the
Tarim River eastward into a marshy lake, the Lob Nor. In many places,
once extensive oases supporting prosperous populations have become
desert in historic times, but whether this indicates progressive desiccation
is still debated by travelers and experts on climate. To the north of the
Tien Shan stretch more desert and semidesert plains and valleys (not as
forbidding as the Tarim basin) known politically as Hi or Kuldja and

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 15

Zungaria. To the west and northwest, mountains form a natural boundary
between Sinkiang and Central Asia.

Across Sinkiang have run for untold centuries overland trade routes
between China and the outside world. One main route follows the north
ern side of the Tarim basin to such cities as Kashgar and Yarkand, at the
eastern foot of the Pamirs — the barrier between China and India and the
trans-Caspian regions. Another leads north of the T'ien Shan to Kuldja,
near the head of the Hi River, and thence down the valley of the Hi to the
steppes east of the Aral Sea.

THE OUTLYING SECTIONS: MONGOLIA

To the north of China proper and to the north and east
of Sinkiang lies Mongolia. Much of Mongolia is a tableland of from three to
five thousand feet elevation. The area immediately north of the Eighteen
Provinces — the so-called "Inner Mongolia," for a time divided politically
into new provinces (formerly special administrative districts), Jehol,
Chahar, Suiyiian, and Ninghsia — is much of it only semiarid, a transitional
region between the lands to the south and the Gobi. The Communists
changed the administrative structure. They abolished Chahar, Suiyiian, and
Ninghsia, added Ninghsia to Kansu, and incorporated most of the remainder
into the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. The Gobi and the adjacent
Ordos are for the most part rocky, gravelly, and sandy wastes traversed
by low mountains and hills. To the north and west, steppes, mountains,
and valleys occupy much of what is called Outer Mongolia. A good deal
of the North and West possesses grazing land and parts of it are fairly
well watered by rivers. The higher mountains in the Northwest are forested.

THE OUTLYING SECTIONS: MANCHURIA

Manchuria, the most easterly of the outlying portions of
China, is also the best endowed for human habitation. Divided into three
provinces of Liaoning (also called Fengtien and Shengking), Kkin, and
Heilungchiang, it was often known as the "Three Eastern Provinces." The
Communists revived the structure, with modifications.

To the west Manchuria is bounded by Mongolia, from which it
is separated by the escarpment which ascends to the Mongolian plateau
and which is crowned by the Hsinganling (Khingan) mountains — a range
which averages about four thousand feet in height. To the north rise
more mountains, and just north of them the Amur River (or the Heilung
chiang) forms a convenient boundary. On the east mountains separate
Manchuria from the valley of the Ussuri and the Japan Sea. To the south
the gulf of Chihli (or P'o Hai) and the Yellow Sea afford access to the

16 VOLUME I

Pacific. The only easy land route into China proper lies along the coast
where spurs reaching out from the hills recede only far enough to allow
a narrow pass. Manchuria, therefore, has usually been distinct politically
from the rest of China — not so much so, however, but that it has repeatedly
been a part of the Empire.

Extensive plains, valleys, and low hills largely make up the central
portion of Manchuria. Several rivers furnish the drainage, chief among
them the Liao, running southward, and the Sungari, with its leading tribu
tary, the Nonni, running northeastward into the Amur. The area of level,
arable land in central Manchuria probably totals somewhat less than in
the North China plain. East of the mouth of the Liao juts the Liaotung
Peninsula, geologically a continuation of the mountains of Shantung.
To the east of the Liaotung Peninsula, in turn, flows the Yalu River, the
natural boundary between Manchuria and the Korean peninsula. Korea,
as we shall see, has in whole or in part been at various times politically
a dependency of China.

The valleys and plains of Manchuria are fertile and fairly well watered.
Forests cover many of the mountains, and deposits of minerals, notably
coal and some gold, tempt the miner. Rigorous winters and hot summers
make the climate one of extremes. Agriculture prospers. Until late in the last
century the land was sparsely settled, but in the twentieth century Chinese
poured in at the rate of hundreds of thousands a year. Koreans, seeking
escape from the economic pressure in their native land, crossed the borders
by the tens of thousands. While some regions in Manchuria now display
familiar and distressing signs of overcrowding, large portions of it remain
relatively undeveloped and constitute a land of opportunity.

LANDS TO THE SOUTH

To the south of China proper lie other lands, today not
held by the Chinese but formerly from time to time politically subordinate
to the Empire.

The valleys of the Irrawaddy and the Salween, streams which rise in
the mountains and highlands in the southeastern portion of the Tibetan
massif and flow southward into the Bay of Bengal, are politically known
as Burma. Roads from Yunnan penetrate them, and until the latter part
of the nineteenth century, for many decades Burma made periodical gifts
to ^ Peking which the Chinese regarded as tribute. Thailand, included
principally in the valley of the Menam, is so separated from China by
mountains that only infrequently and vaguely was it politically an appen
dage of the Middle Kingdom.

What we now call Vietnam comprises several former states, of which
the northern ones have long oscillated between political independence

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 17

of and subjection to China. The chief districts are Tongking (the heart of
which is the delta and valley of the Red River, a stream which flows
southeastward from the Yunnan tableland), Annam (the seacoast and
mountains south of Tongking), and Cochin China (on the fertile delta and
lower portion of the Mekong River, a stream which, like the Yangtze,
the Salween, and the Irrawaddy, rises in the great mountains and plateaus
to the west of China proper). The boundaries and political relations
of Tongking, Annam, and Cochin China have been subject to many
changes. As might be expected, the region shows the effect of Chinese
and Indian cultural influences, the Chinese strain being strongest toward
the north.

EFFECTS ON THE CHINESE OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT: CHINA PROPER

From the foregoing description of the face and climate of
China, the effects of geographic environment upon the Chinese must
be at least partially apparent.

In the first place, China proper is fitted by nature to be the home of
a great, fairly unified culture. It possesses extensive, fertile valleys. It
displays a marked diversity and a rich supply of plants, many of them
useful for food, clothing, and shelter. Its fauna shows variety and a large
degree of serviceability to man. Its mineral resources suffice for all the
more pressing needs of civilization before the recent development of in
dustrialism. Except for the Northwest, Szechwan, and the Southwest, the
internal barriers of hills do not seriously discourage the spread of peoples
and extensive intercommunication. Along the south coast the hills
offer something of an obstacle, enough to account for the differences
in language between that region and the North, but not enough to prevent
political and cultural unity with the rest of the country. Navigable streams,
particularly those of the Yangtze system, penetrate most of the land
and facilitate internal commerce. China proper is one of the regions
of the globe fitted to be the seat of a great empire.

Possessing a home richly endowed with the physical bases of civiliza
tion, as a rule the Chinese have been economically all but self-sufficient.
The country is so large that they have had their energies chiefly engrossed
in occupying, developing, and defending it. With some marked exceptions,
only recently have they begun to look outside for an outlet for their surplus
population. Not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did the
Chinese go in numbers to Formosa (T'aiwan), and not until the twentieth
did they begin to flood Manchuria.

Certain qualifications, due partly to the natural features of the coun
try, must be noted. Natural obstacles to an integrated country are fully as
great as in western Europe, where they have helped to give rise to sepa-

18 VOLUME I

rate nations. India, too, with no more formidable internal barriers, pre
sents an almost infinite diversity, and never until the British forced it on
them did all its inhabitants submit to one imperial rule. But for their
political genius and the remarkable system of government which they
devised, a similar fate might have overtaken the Chinese. Cultural and
political unity, while not forbidden by the natural environment, must be
ascribed chiefly to the Chinese themselves.

Even with their extraordinarily successful machinery of empire, the
Chinese have frequently suffered from divisions which have arisen in
part from topography. At best their unity, while marked, is by no means
complete. Barriers of hills and of mountains outside the great alluvial
plains form obstacles to intercommunication, favor variations in culture,
and make difficult the achievement of political empire. In North China
commerce and movements of troops must be mostly overland rather than
by streams, for the lower course of the Yellow River is obstructed by
sediment, and the upper course — above the juncture of the Wei — is
hampered by rapids. Much of the Yangtze, that natural artery of com
munication, is precarious for traffic, as we have seen, because of the rapids
through the hills which separate its lower reaches from the province of
Szechwan, and above the gorges the rate of fall renders navigation hazard
ous. The hills and mountains along the south coast and in the South
west have made these regions somewhat hard to hold and have favored
rebellions. Even yet the Chinese have not fully occupied the hills in the
Southwest, and for the most part have pushed their non-Chinese neigh
bors only out of the valleys.

The very size of the country militates against unity. Nowhere else
has any group of mankind succeeded for so long a time as have the Chinese
in holding together under a single rule so large a section of the earth.
The Roman and Spanish empires did not endure for as many centuries
as did the Chinese Empire. The extensive domains ruled by the Persians,
Alexander, the Arabs, the Mongols, and the Turks broke apart, at most
after a few hundred years. China, in spite of periodic internal disruption
and occasional conquests by foreigners, has continued. Of the modern
empires, with the railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph to tie them
together, only five— the British, the Russian, the French, the American,
and the Brazilian — have surpassed it in area, and only one, the British,
has been more populous. The British and French empires have been
ephemeral. Europe west of Russia, an area not far from the size of China
proper, has never been politically unified and is split into many tongues
and states. It is not surprising, therefore, that provincial feeling has
run high, that much more power was wielded by local and sectional and
provincial governments, and the clan and the guild than in some highly
centralized modern states, and that from time to time the country has

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 19

been politically divided. The Communists have appeared to overcome
those obstacles, but to date their rule has been brief.

Moreover, variations in climate and in physical surroundings favor
a certain diversity in culture and in national characteristics. The Chinese
of the North are more stolid and conservative than those of the South.
This is probably due in part to a difference in blood, but it may also be
ascribed to the famines which, because of drought and flood, have peri
odically devasted the North. The phlegmatic seem better adapted to
surviving times of prolonged dearth, and the highly strung and energetic
who do not perish apparently are inclined to migrate to regions of less
forbidding climate. Through the centuries, therefore, this selective proc
ess may well have produced a variation in type. Differences in the
staple grains are accompanied by divergences in tillage. Domestic animals
vary, donkeys and mules being characteristic of the North, and the water
buffalo of the Yangtze Valley and the South. Probably allied to this is the
fact that in the North freight has been moved partly by carts, and else
where by river, canal, and wheelbarrow, and that in the North roads and
streets have been broad and adapted to the wagon, the cart, and horses,
and that in the South even the highways have been narrow tracks between
rice fields or over the hills, suited only to the wheelbarrow, the sedan
chair, the burden-carrying coolie, or occasionally the donkey. Then, too,
the Yangtze Valley and the South, with mist-crowned hills and mountains
and with abundant verdure, in contrast to the semiarid and brown North,
may well have stimulated differences in the expression of the aesthetic
feelings, both in the painter and the poet.

Still again, China's natural resources, while heretofore ample for almost
all her needs, have ceased, or are about to cease, to be so. Her population
has caught up with and congested her arable lands, fertile and extensive
though these are. Improvement in agricultural methods and scientific
seed selection may enable the Chinese to utilize types of land, very
extensive, which now produce little, and to increase the yield from land
now cultivated. In Manchuria and possibly in Inner Mongolia some virgin
soil remains. Much of this, however, must be classed as marginal — tillable
in seasons of more than average rainfall, but failing to yield a paying crop
when the precipitation does not rise above its normal median. A stable and
efficient government and improved methods of transportation could afford
some relief from the pressure of population. These possible solutions,
however, at best offer merely a reprieve. At the rate of increase main
tained under the comparative peace and prosperity of the latter part of the
seventeenth and of the eighteenth century, the leeway afforded by them
would soon be taken up. Increasing famines, therefore, and a further accen
tuation of the present grinding poverty can be avoided only by one or more
of three expedients: emigration on a scale such as the world has never

20 VOLUME I

seen, an extensive industrialization of the country and the exchange
of the products of factories for foodstuffs, or a drastic reduction of the
birth rate. Other nations have already restricted Chinese immigration to
most of the more salubrious, relatively unoccupied areas of the globe,
such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, and are likely to con
tinue to do so — if they can. China probably does not possess sufficient
resources of coal and iron to sustain an industrial development as extensive
as that in the United States and in western Europe — although in some sec
tions water power may partially overcome this handicap. Industry, more
over, will not permanently solve the population problem. The structure
of Chinese social life has so far encouraged rather than discouraged a
high birth rate. It seems obvious, therefore, that the limit of China's natural
resources is in sight, and that only the widespread teaching and practice
of birth control can ward off disaster.

EFFECTS ON THE CHINESE OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT: THE OUTLYING
SECTIONS

When the effect of China proper upon the Chinese people
has been appraised, only part of the story has been told. It still remains
to recount the influence upon them of the outlying territories.

First of all, these regions have, as we have seen, a marked effect upon
the climate of China proper. The heating of the great arid land masses
to the north in the summer and the cooling of them in the winter help
to determine the direction of China's winds and with them the regularity
or irregularity of the rainfall. Upon rainfall China's food supply largely
depends.

Then, too, these territories, especially Tibet (including the provinces
carved from it), are the sources of China's main rivers.

In the next place, the outlying territories have been the origin of
repeated invasions. What are now Mongolia and Sinkiang are, as we
have seen, arid or semiarid, and except for occasional oases their popu
lations have, perforce, been chiefly limited for their livelihood to the herds
which pasture on the grasses nourished by the scanty and uncertain rain
fall. These peoples, accordingly, have been nomadic or seminomadic, with
the hardiness and capacity for quick movements and great sudden physical
exertion which such a manner of life begets. They have also been warlike.
Moreover, they have looked with envy upon the fertile and prosperous
valleys toward the east and south and repeatedly have attempted to force
their way into them.

Invasions from Mongolia and Sinkiang have been encouraged by the
ease of access to China proper from these regions. From the Mongolian
plateau several passes lead down into the plains and valleys of China.

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 21

Sinkiang is comparatively low and is provided, in the Tarim basin and
oases to the eastward and in the valleys to the north of the T'ien Shan,
with natural highways, relatively unimpeded by mountains, into the valley
of the Yellow River. It has, accordingly, been both an avenue and a source
of invasions.

Manchuria, too, has been a menace. While its valleys are fertile and
its climate much more favorable to civilization than that of Mongolia,
it was much slower to develop a civilization than was the Yellow River
Valley. Its peoples, therefore, have been lured by the lands to the south,
and the narrow route along the seashore has resounded again and again
with the tramp of marching armies — from early historic times down into
recent years.

There have been times, moreover, although less frequently, when the
Tibetans have invaded China. For centuries border struggles between
Chinese and Tibetans were a fairly constant feature of Chinese history.

The Chinese, therefore, have had almost constantly to be on their
guard against their neighbors to the north and west. Until the nineteenth
century the security of their northern frontiers loomed as their chief
foreign problem. This problem they handled in a variety of ways:
partly by attempting to play off one "barbarian" tribe against another
(a policy which they later tried with Occidental peoples, with some
success), partly by garrisons reinforced by extensive fortifications (includ
ing notably the Great Wall), often by treaties with potential invaders,
and occasionally by carrying the war into the enemies' territories and
holding them in subjection. This last policy was particularly effective
under the Manchus.

Fortunately for the Chinese, the peoples to the north were not always
able to form coalitions. By their nomadic manner of life they were
condemned to warring tribal divisions. Repeatedly, however, a line
of rulers welded into a fighting force a sufficient number of them to seize
part or all of the coveted prize to the south. At varying intervals, therefore
— either because of internal weakness in the Empire or because of the
generalship of the invaders — all defensive measures broke down, and
China proper, particularly the North, was overrun. Again and again
peoples from the north set up dynasties which ruled part or all of China.
We shall encounter the more prominent of them in succeeding chapters
— several of them in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries of the
Christian Era, the Liao, the Chin, and the Hsia in the eleventh, twelfth,
and thirteenth centuries, then the Mongols, and finally the Manchus.
In some respects the Russians fall in this same succession, for they
too are from the north and have attempted to absorb part of China.

Of the main outlying territories, only the lands to the south — in the
present Burma and Vietnam — have never been a major threat. The dis-

22 VOLUME I

tances from them to the chief centers of Chinese civilization have been
too great or the natural barriers too formidable to permit of conquest.
These lands, indeed, possibly because of their tropical climate, have been
mastered by the Chinese rather than the Chinese from them.

The land boundaries of China have not only influenced climate, given
rise to the main rivers of the country, and been the source of repeated
invasions, but they have also proved an obstacle (although by no means
an insuperable one) to intimate contacts with other civilized portions of
the globe. The other leading centers of early cultures — the valleys of
northern India, the highlands of Persia, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the
Nile Valley, and the basin of the Mediterranean — were separated from the
valleys of the Huang Ho and the Yangtze by vast distances and barriers
of mountains, deserts, and seas. There was some intercourse. Archaeology,
indeed, more and more leads us to believe that we formerly under
estimated both its quantity and its influence. The further our research
proceeds, the more we are impressed with the contributions of the Chinese
to the peoples to the west of them, especially in Central Asia, and of these
peoples to the Chinese. Trade was maintained overland, most of it by
the natural routes across Sinkiang. In the Tarim basin lived peoples who
acted as intermediaries between China and the West. Commerce was
carried on with lands to the south and west by way of the sea through
the ports of South China, but distances proved so great, and until the
last century the means of navigation remained so crude, that water-borne
foreign trade was not extensive. Through all the centuries, however,
while ideas filtered in from the outside world, and occasionally political
conditions made possible a somewhat extensive intercourse, the Chinese,
compared with most other civilized peoples, have been isolated.

Isolation probably contributed toward the formation of a number of
the familiar characteristics of the Chinese. To it may partly be ascribed
their intense national pride. All other civilizations with which the Chinese
had close contacts were derived from themselves and, they thought,
were inferior to theirs. They were the source of the culture of most of
their neighbors, but although they repeatedly profited by contributions
from abroad, with the exception of Buddhism they thought of themselves
as having received but little. Theirs was the Middle Kingdom and all
other peoples were barbarous. Even when conquered they gave their
culture to their rulers and eventually either absorbed them or drove them
out. Their land was large, and during most of their recorded history
was under one administration. So far as they knew, except for reports,
often vague, of other lands to the west, theirs was the mightiest realm
on earth. Their experience with peoples on their borders and especially
with other invaders helps to account for the fact that when Western
nations forced their way into the country the Chinese long regarded them

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 23

as simply a new group of barbarians, and while willing to learn a few
details from them, for many years did not dream that the entire structure
of Chinese culture would need to be recast. Lack of intimate relations with
other great civilized states, too, helped to breed in the Chinese a reluctance
to regard themselves as one of a family of nations or to treat with Occi
dental powers on the basis of equality. This hereditary attitude of superi
ority was outraged by the encroachments of foreigners in the nine
teenth and twentieth centuries and may account in part for the intense
impatience with which treaties derogatory to Chinese sovereignty were
viewed and for the intransigence of the Communist rulers.

So far we have had little to say of the effect of the ocean. However,
this has been quite as important as that of the land boundaries. The sea,
as we have seen, is the source of the moisture-laden winds that bring
China's rains. Until the last century, moreover, the ocean was even more
effective in isolating China than were the great land masses to the north
and west. To the east the only civilized peoples with whom commerce
was possible were the Koreans and Japanese. Culturally both of these
borrowed from rather than contributed to the Middle Kingdom. The Pacific
coast of North America was too far distant to admit of much intercourse
by the small ships of the earlier centuries and until the nineteenth century
was sparsely peopled, mostly by savages. In Southeastern Asia were
civilized lands, but the nearest had derived much of their culture from
China and so had little to give her. India, the closest great cultural center
markedly different from China, was almost as far and as difficult of
access by sea as by land. No invasions were to be feared from the ocean,
except by pirates, who, while often annoying, never seriously threatened a
conquest of the country.

The Chinese were not greatly tempted to become a seafaring people.
Until the nineteenth century their own vast land engrossed, as we have said,
almost all their energies. North of the Yangtze, where were long the chief
centers of civilization, the proportion of coast line to area is small, the
connections (by way of the silt-laden Yellow River) between the interior
and the sea were poor, and until recently there was scanty reward in
commerce with neighboring islands and coasts. The South, supplied with
much better harbors, was not fully incorporated into the Empire until
the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian Era and even then
remained on the periphery of national consciousness. From the South,
to be sure, merchants ventured abroad, sometimes to fairly distant parts.
At one time extensive voyages were made under official direction, and
later, partly because of limited arable land, overseas emigration from
that region began. Not until the nineteenth century, however, did these
have a marked effect upon the nation as a whole. China faced north and
west, and not south and east.

24 VOLUME I

With the nineteenth century began a great change. The sea, instead
of being a barrier and a defense, became a highway and a source of danger.
The Occident, developing larger and faster ships than had ever been
known, arrived in force and insisted upon being admitted. Danger still
lurked on the north, for an aggressive Russia now threatened. But the
Westerner had penetrated the natural barriers of China, and from a totally
unexpected direction. Japan, reorganized on Occidental models, became
a major menace. The result was disorganization and revolution. China —
accustomed to think of herself as an empire which, although occasionally
overrun by barbarians or divided, was as yet without a peer — was now
compelled to deal with other nations as equals. Always heretofore the
dispenser and seldom the conscious receiver of culture, she now found the
structure of her civilization antiquated, and she was faced with the
unpleasant necessity of discarding part of it and thoroughly renovating
the rest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best books devoted to the geography of China are George B. Cressey,
China's Geographic Foundations (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1934, pp. xvii,
436) and his later Land of the 500 Million (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1955,
pp. xv, 387). The latter does not completely supersede the former. Both are
based upon extensive travel and research, are well provided with pictures,
charts, and maps, and contain excellent bibliographies. A brief comprehensive
summary is in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge
University Press, Vol. I, 1954), pp. 55-72. Albert Herrmann, Historical and
Commercial Atlas of China (Harvard University Press, 1935, pp. 112) is made
up chiefly of excellent maps and has a selected bibliography. Also useful are
L. H. D. Buxton, China, the Land, and the People (Oxford, The Clarendon
Press, 1929, pp. xiii, 333); Jules Sion, Asie des Moussons (Paris, 1928, 1929,
Vol. 9 of Geographie Universelle)\ W. H. Mallory, China: Land of Famine
(New York, American Geographic Society, 1926, pp. xvi, 199); and Theodore
Shabad, China's Changing Map; a Political and Economic Geography of the
Chinese People's Republic (New York, F. A. Praeger, 1956, pp. 295).

On the mineral resources the best popular treatise is H. Foster Bain, Ores
and Industry in the Far East (New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1933,
pp. xvii, 288). No convenient summary exists in English of the extensive find
ings of the Communists.

On geology see the publications of the Geological Survey of China; Geologi
cal Society of China, Bulletin (Peking, 1919—); Carnegie Institution of
Washington, Research in China (3 vols., Washington, 1907-1913) ; T. I. Young,
Bibliography of Chinese Geology up to 1934 (Peiping, The National Academy
of Peiping, 1935, pp. 241); J. S. Lee, The Geology of China (London, Thomas
Murby, 1939).

On rainfall see Yao Shan-yu, "The Chronological and Seasonal Distribution
of Floods and Droughts in Chinese History, 206 B.C.-A.D. 1911," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 273-312, and Yao Shan-yu, "The Geo-

Geography and its Influence on the Chinese 25

graphical Distribution of Floods and Droughts in Chinese History," The Far
Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 2, pp. 357-378.

On the flora of China there are useful summaries in S. Couling, Encyclo
paedia Sinica (Oxford University Press, 1917, pp. viii, 633), pp. 55-58 and
Ernest H. Wilson, China, Mother of Gardens (Boston, The Stratford Press,
1929, pp. 408).

On the outlying dependencies consult Fernard Grenard, La Haute Asie
(Paris, 1929, Vol. 8 of Geographie Universelle); Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian
Frontiers of China (Irvington-on-Hudson, Capitol Publishing Co. and American
Geographical Society, 2nd ed., 1951, pp. Ixi, 585); Owen Lattimore, Pivot of
Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian Frontiers of China and Russia (Boston,
Little, Brown, 1950, pp. xii, 288); M. R. Norine, Gateway to Asia: Sinkiang
(New York, John Day Co., pp. 200); Sven Hedin, Across the Gobi Desert
(London, George Routledge & Sons, 1931, pp. xvi, 401); R. C. Andrews, The
New Conquest of Central Asia (New York, American Museum of Natural
History, 1932, pp. 678), an account of expeditions to China and Mongolia,
1921-1930; Sir Charles A. Bell, Tibet, Past and Present (Oxford, The Claren
don Press, 1924, pp. xiv, 326); and Owen Lattimore, Manchuria, Cradle of
Conflict (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1932, pp. xvi, 311); Owen Lattimore,
Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers, 1928-1958 (Oxford University
Press, 1963).

CHAPTER TWO

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
(TO 221 B.C.)

ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE

The beginnings of the Chinese, like those of other ancient
peoples, are shrouded in obscurity. Chinese literature, although volumi
nous during most of the past twenty-three or twenty-four centuries, gives
us little incontestable information concerning the origins of the people and
their culture. The earliest written documents that have come down to
us — contained chiefly in the collection known as the Shih Ching, or Classic
of Poetry, in portions of the Shu Ching, or Classic of History, and the oracle
bones unearthed in the present century — show a culture which was far
from primitive and was presumably the result of centuries of development.
Within the last few years, archaeology has unearthed important informa
tion. The Chinese myths akin to those by which other peoples have sought
to account for the existence of the universe and of mankind, and for the
origin of themselves and of their culture, complicate rather than simplify
the confusion.

CHINESE MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY

While the oldest authentic records do not attempt to trace
to their beginnings either the Chinese race or mankind as a whole, from
time to time popular fancy has essayed to do so, with the result that we
possess many tales bristling with mythical heroes. Although quite unde-
pendable as history, these stories are of importance — partly because they
appear again and again in literature, mythology, and religion, and partly
because, by some Chinese and Westerners, the more prominent figures
have been seriously taken as actual personages. It is just possible that
some of the stories will eventually be found to have a basis in actual fact.
They must therefore, be mentioned.

As is natural with myths, particularly when, like these, they have
had varying origins, differing accounts and attempts at chronology exist.
Only the chief personages that appear in one or more Chinese histories
deserve mention. P'an Ku is frequently described as separating the heavens
and the earth, and as forming the sun, the moon, and plants and animals.
There are, however, several versions of his myth. Following him some

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 27

accounts say that there appeared twelve or thirteen Celestial Sovereigns
(Tien Huang), all brothers, each of whom reigned 18,000 years; eleven
Terrestrial Sovereigns (Ti Huang), again brothers, each of whom also
ruled 18,000 years; and then nine Human Sovereigns (Jen Huang), once
more brothers, who reigned a total of 45,600 years. We hear also of
Yu Ch'ao, who is reputed to have taught men to build houses; of Sui Jen,
who is said to have discovered a way of producing fire by boring one piece
of wood with another; of Fu Hsi, who is reported to have taught his people
to fish with nets and rear domestic animals, to have made musical instru
ments, to have devised writing by knots in strings, and to have invented the
eight trigrams — pa kua — used in divination. To Nix Kua — often associated
closely with Fu Hsi — is attributed the regulation of marriage. Shen Nung,
the "Divine Husbandman," is reported to have taught the people agri
culture and to have been the father of medicine. Huang Ti (The Yellow
Emperor) is credited with fighting successfully against the barbarians,
with instituting the system of official historiographers, with introducing
bricks for building purposes, with erecting an observatory, with correcting
the calendar by adding an intercalary month, and with introducing the
chronological system of reckoning by cycles of sixty years. He is also
reported to have built a temple to Heaven, to have regulated the division
of the land according to the "well-field" (ching t'ien) system (to be
described a few pages below), to have invented carts drawn by oxen, to
have devised several musical instruments, and in many other ways to
have advanced civilization. His principal spouse is credited with having
taught the people sericulture, so important to the later life of China.

After a number of other rulers there is said to have come Yao, a model
Emperor, who, in naming his successor, passed over his own son as incom
petent and appointed Shun, whom he had selected for his skill and integrity
and whom he had tested in various ways. Shun is reported to have per
formed sacrifices of several kinds, to have introduced uniformity into
measures of length, capacity, and weight, to have traveled widely, to have
subdued some of the barbarian tribes, to have divided the Empire into
twelve provinces, and to have regulated some of the watercourses. Shun,
so it is said, like Yao, went outside his family and chose as his successor
Yii, who drained the waters of a great flood which had afflicted the
country in the days of Yao. Shun and Yii each is reported to have
reigned for a time conjointly with his predecessor and then, the latter
abdicating, alone.

Yii is said to have made the crown hereditary in his family and to have
founded the first dynasty, that of Hsia. This dynasty, the names of whose
rulers tradition essays to give, is reported to have come to an end through
the excesses of its last ruler, Chieh, who, falling under the spell of a beauti
ful but depraved woman, engaged in debauchery and cruelty. An outraged
country was at last, so the story goes, led in rebellion against him by T'ang,

28 VOLUME I

who, defeating and exiling the tyrant founded the second dynasty, that of
Shang or Yin.

It is very uncertain which, if any, of these figures have actual history
back of them. Some are probably entirely mythical, the creation of folk
lore and of uncritical writers in the attempt to account for the origin
of the world and the beginnings of civilization. Some may be heroes
or gods taken over from other peoples when they were conquered and
assimilated by the Chinese, We are made suspicious by the effort to asso
ciate five of the pre-Hsia rulers — the Five Sovereigns ( Wu Ti) — with the
five elements of traditional Chinese physics — earth, wood, metal, fire,
and water. The fact that these early figures are called rulers seems to
indicate that the stories as we now have them date from a time when men,
dwelling in an organized monarchy, read back that form of society into
primitive times. Some of the monarchs, such as the rulers of the Hsia, may
have arisen out of the efforts of noble families of later time to provide
themselves with ancestors. Some, like Yao, Shun, and Yii, lauded as ideals
by the Confucianists, may be in part the creation of this school in an
endeavor to give to its teachings the sanction of antiquity. Of the three
only Yii is mentioned in what is probably the earliest literary record, the
Shih Ching (Classic of Poetry), and the first certainly authentic documents
in which the names of Yao and Shun occur are of the sixth or the fifth
century B.C. Yii was either later deified or was originally a deity, and seems
to have been identified with a god who was lord of the harvest. P'an Ku is
also very late (probably not earlier in our records than the third century
B.C.). Huang Ti may be to a large extent a pleasant fiction of the early
Taoists, devised to give to their contentions the authority of the past.
He may have owed his popularity to his association with thunder and
lightning, as a god of these phenomena. In the debates on philosophy
which were one of the outstanding features of the centuries shortly pre
ceding the Christian Era, several of the rivals sought to reinforce their
case by ascribing their tenets to heroic figures of the past, and to assert
that in an ancient golden age the practice of their teachings had been
attended by prosperity. We are not entirely sure that there ever was such
a ruling line as the Hsia. The strong tradition about it, and the fact that
some families of historic times claimed descent from it, may indicate
that it corresponds with a stage in Chinese history. The dates which
some historians attempt to fix are, of course, untrustworthy. Those often
given for the Hsia, 2205-1766 B.C., are obviously quite inaccurate,

THE STORY AS PARTIALLY DISCLOSED BY ARCHAEOLOGY

In the twentieth century much light has been shed by archae
ology on the beginnings of the Chinese and their civilization. Archae-

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 29

ology had made important discoveries before the Communist conquest of
the mainland. In their years of dominance the Communists contributed
significant additions.

Archaeology has shown that Homo and Homo sapiens appeared in
China many thousands of years ago, but that what we regard as civiliza
tion was later in developing than in Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the
Indus Valley, and perhaps elsewhere.

The earliest traces of Homo thus far discovered in China are in what
geologists call the Pleistocene epoch of the Cenozoic era, which is said to
have begun about a million years ago. In the Pliocene, the epoch which
immediately preceded the Pleistocene, the main physical features of the
later China were established. The chief river basins existed much as we
know them today. That of the Huang Ho had a climate distinct from that
of the Yangtze. The Ch'in Ling range of mountains, a spur from the K'un
Lun which forms the northern frontier of Tibet, separated the North from
the South, as it does today. Although the North was warmer than in
recent centuries, the South was more tropical than in the past two thou
sand years. In the North, conditions began to show that hospitality to the
development of civilization which prevailed in historic times. In Sinkiang
and Mongolia the deposits of soil by the wind had begun, which on a larger
scale and in a wider area formed the loess that has played a prominent
part in the life of the North. In the Pleistocene, rainfall varied from
semiarid and cool, attended by the drying up of the lakes of Pliocene
and earlier times, to warm and moist, with the formation of the red soil
which appears in much of China proper. In later Pleistocene came the
northwest winds which blanketed much of the North with loess. Glaciers,
typical of much of northern Europe and North America during the later
Pleistocene, developed in the mountains west of China proper, but did
not reach the latter.

Partial remains have been found in the South and Southwest of what
was a gigantic hominid. But the most exciting discovery was that of the
Peking Man (Sinanthropos Pekinensis) near Chou-k'ou--tien, southwest of
Peking. There, beginning in the 1920's, extensive excavations brought to
light remains of a number of individuals who dwelt in caves, who had
crude stone tools, who may have had articulate speech, and who are said
to have possessed mongoloid features which have been inherited by
the modern Chinese. Beginning in 1954, somewhat similar finds were made
in several localities in Shansi. Later, while the loess was deepening, but
before it attained its eventual dimensions, what was undoubtedly Homo
sapiens existed. Some of his representatives were cave dwellers, like
the Peking Man. Others lived in oases in the Ordos. The cave dwellers
hunted and fished, decorated themselves with necklaces, imported luxuries,
buried their dead, and probably had clothes. In the 1950's, remains of what

30 VOLUME I

was Homo sapiens were found in the South and in Szechwan; these may
have dated from about the same period. Bones and implements of early
Homo sapiens have also been discovered in Manchuria and Mongolia.
Paleolithic man left behind him remains in caves in Kwangsi.

In the late Neolithic period the valley of the Huang Ho was teeming
with human life. During the present century hundreds of sites have
been investigated by archaeologists. Their occupants were farmers with
domestic animals, mainly dogs and pigs. They flourished on the fertile
loess soil. They produced pottery of various kinds. Some of it was red.
Some was gray. Some was polished and black. Some was painted. Because
of the place where the initial finds were made, the name Yang-shao is
given to the one phase of the culture. Other varieties existed. Houses of
various shapes and sizes were constructed. Many of the dwellings were
partly below the level of the surrounding plain. Several villages could be
described as small cities with walls. Care was shown in the burial of the
dead. Some of the interments were in the village and others were in
cemeteries. Efforts have been made to classify the several varieties and
stages of the neolithic culture. Attempts have been directed toward estab
lishing cultural connections with central and western Asia, but not with
unquestionable success. Much of the neolithic culture persisted into historic
and metal-using times. Some of the forms of pottery established a tradi
tion for utensils which continued into the twentieth century.

Remains of neolithic cultures have been discovered not only in the
basin of the Huang Ho but also in the valley of the Yangtze, in both
its lower and upper reaches, and in South China, Some settlements were on
mounds, presumably in part to escape floods. Here, as in the North,
marked variety was seen.

During neolithic times the North had a more humid and warmer
climate than in recent centuries. Much of the land was heavily wooded.
Deer, inhabitants of the forests, abounded. Elephants and rhinoceroses
were known.

THE SHANG OR YIN PERIOD

Out of the neolithic culture in the valley of the Huang Ho
and the North China alluvial plain a culture developed which was metal-
using, chiefly in bronze, and which was associated with a state dominated
by a ruling house. Its domains embraced the fertile alluvial plain that
stretched from the foot of the Shansi highlands into the mountains of Shan
tung and the valley of the Huai. Its territory was roughly identical with
the modern provinces of Hopei, Honan, Shantung and the northern part
of Anhui. It had repercussions in some other parts of what we now regard
as China. Archaeology, chiefly of the present century, amply supports

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 31

the existence of what the Chinese have regarded as the second dynasty, It
had the name of Shang and was later known also as Yin. The traditional
dates are 1766-1122 B.C. but are not entirely dependable. The date of the
inception of the dynasty is especially uncertain. The Shang had several
capitals of which the best known is Anyang, near the northern border of
Honan. Numbers of other Shang sites have been discovered. Anyang
seems to have been the capital from about 1384 B.C. to the overthrow of
the Shang. It contained substantial temples, palaces, and houses. The
Shang had a system of writing with characters, of which many were the
ancestors of the later characters. They were not a foreign importation but
grew out of earlier indigenous forms. Most of the writing that has survived
was on tortoise shells or ox scapulae. These "oracle bones" were used
for sacrificial ceremonies or were employed to inquire about weather, crops,
war, the prospects of military expeditions, hunting trips, travel, sickness,
and future well-being. The questions asked were written on the bones,
the latter were then heated and allowed to cool, the ensuing cracks were
interpreted, and the answers were written on the bones. Many of the latter
were preserved as royal archives. Thousands have been brought to light,
their inscriptions have been studied, and dictionaries of the characters
have been compiled. Usually the bones were inscribed by a brush of
animal hair and then incised with a knife. Some official records were on
silk and on bamboo and wooden tablets. Bones were used for written
records as well as divination. Many bronzes had inscriptions.

Metals and stones were widely utilized. Bronzes were among the great
achievements of the Shang. At the height of the period they displayed
a skill in technique not surpassed and seldom equalled elsewhere. Like
the Shang writing, they seem to have been an indigenous development and
not an imported art although this is questioned. Their surviving examples
have been highly prized by the Chinese and by foreign collectors. Other
metals were worked. Jade, long esteemed by the Chinese as a semiprecious
stone, was utilized before and during the Shang. The Shang carved marble,
some of it for sacrificial vessels, some for ornaments in the form of birds
and animals, and some as foundations for wooden pillars. Pottery was
extensively developed, a continuation of that of neolithic times.

The Shang economic life, like that of the Neolithic age, was based on
agriculture. Millet was raised and some wheat and barley. Whether rice
was grown is not clear, but is entirely possible. Commerce was known
and, as in paleolithic times, cowrie shells were employed as a medium of
exchange and may have been imported from tropical climes. Specialized
industries arose for luxuries as well as necessities. Silkworms were reared
and hemp was cultivated, doth was woven, and clothing was of both
textiles and furs. Interestingly, chopsticks were utilized in eating — a
custom which persisted. The domestic animals included pigs, dogs, sheep,

32 VOLUME I

and oxen. Horses were used for war and hunting, and elephants aided
transport and war.

Shang society was aristocratic. At the head were the king and the
nobility. They hunted for pleasure and as a preparation for war. They
engaged in war and for that purpose employed the chariot. Whether the
chariot, with its use of the wheel, was an indigenous invention, or came
from contact with cultures in western Asia, is not known. Certainly both
chariot and wheel were earlier in western Asia and Egypt. By later stand
ards the Shang were cruel. In the elaborate tombs of the powerful, horses
and servants were buried — the latter executed, presumably for the purpose
of serving the deceased masters in the after life. Human and animal sacri
fices accompanied the consecration of buildings. An elaborate organiza
tion of government was developed. Underneath the king and appointed
by him and owing allegiance to him were rulers of territorial units. These
rulers were required to follow the king in his wars, to defend the frontiers
of his domains, to provide him with manpower for war and labor, and
to pay him tribute. A sharp distinction seems to have existed between the
upper classes and the majority who constituted the lower classes.

In between the nobility and the commoners were literate official func
tionaries who kept the records of the governing class. Some of them
were responsible for the oracle bones. Presumably it was they who created
and developed the written language. Serving the state as they did, their
outlook was that of government. They were an early expression of what
became a continuing feature of Chinese history — the prominence of an
intellectual class, the custodians of Chinese civilization, shaping its ideals,
their approach that of men concerned for the well-being of the collective
life of the state.

Religion consisted of the worship of ancestors and of heavenly and
earthly gods. Above all the gods in heaven was Ti or Shang-ti, the Ruler
Above, who presided over heaven much as the king governed his realm.
The earthly deities included the god of earth (SM or Tu), and the gods
of hills, rivers, and the four directions. To the Shang people the universe
was in three levels: the heavenly world above, the earthly world below,
and the world of men between. Worship included music, dancing, and
sacrifices. It was usually conducted by priests and might be accompanied by
offerings of jade and of human and animal life.

The calculation of the calendar was important for an agricultural people
and was a function of the monarch through experts dependent on him.
Lunar and solar eclipse and sun spots were observed. A nova, a stellar
explosion, was noted. Both the solar year and the lunar month were under
stood and the former was reckoned with a fair approximation to accuracy.

By the end of the Shang several features of Chinese civilization had
been developed which, with modifications, were to persist, some of them

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 33

even into the sweeping revolution brought by the impact of the Occident in
the twentieth century. The tradition was established that all China should
be under one government. Even though the area covered by that govern
ment was later to be greatly enlarged, and its structure and the ideals and
;heories which dominated it were to be drastically altered, the Chinese
never surrendered the dream and the purpose of being all under one regime.
The Shang also sought to extend their regime over the peoples on their
borders. In the present century the Communists held to- the dream and
also strove to extend their boundaries. From the Shang came the written
form of the language which, with modifications, was to prove one of the
agencies of achieving and preserving unity and which even the Commu
nists did not discard. The beginnings were seen of the scholarly elite who
had so prominent a role in shaping Chinese thought and ideals. Some of
the art forms developed by the Shang and the culture out of which they
rose persisted. That was true of the bronzes which were one of the striking
creations of the Shang, and of some forms of pottery. The Shang economy
was based firmly on agriculture. That likewise continued. Millet remained
standard. Silk has been a characteristic product. Pigs never failed to
be a major source of food. Dogs were an invariable feature of town and
rural life.

THE CHOU ERA

The Shang were followed by the Chou. Chinese historians
have called them both dynasties. Some Western scholars, however, declare
that the Empire as such began with the Ch'in, the immediate successor of
the Chou. Yet the Chou, like the Shang, held together in a degree of
cultural unity the region that could be called China. This was in spite of
the fact that the area embraced by that culture markedly expanded, and
that in the later centuries of the Chou the authority of the central adminis
tration all but vanished and China became a congeries of states of vary
ing number, size, and strength. But the dream of unity, instead of disappear
ing, was strengthened. What was denominated the Chou dynasty lasted
longer than any other period in China's history. The traditional dates are
1122-256 B.C., or a little less than nine centuries. Although these can be
questioned, in the near millennium which they embraced a creative ferment
gave to China the schools of thought and attitudes toward life, the universe,
and social and political organization which, with important modifications
and the contributions of Buddhism, were to be basic until the irruption of,
the Occident swept them into the dust bin. Even then some attitudes
which they had nourished remained characteristic of the Chinese.

The conventional story told of the downfall of the Shang and the estab
lishment of the Chou dynasty resembles that by which tradition accounts

„ A VOLUME I

for the ruin of the Hsia. An infamous ruler, Chou Hsin, a man of ability,
aided and incited by a favorite concubine, turned tyrant and profligate.
Many cruelties and excesses are ascribed to the ill-omened pair. Chou
Hsin came into conflict with Wen Wang, the ruler of Chou. Wang was a
designation used by the Chou for their monarchs.

Chou, a principality in the valley of the Wei, on the western frontier
of the then China, represented the growth of a new, vigorous state, its
prowess strengthened by prolonged warfare with the "barbarians." The
Chou people seem to have been related to the Chinese already on the
North China plain, but racially and culturally to have been somewhat
different from them. Wen Wang was, significantly, called the "Chief of

the West."

Later historians glorified Wen Wang, representing his character and
administration as ideal. Chou Hsin was at first successful against Wen
Wang. The latter was imprisoned and was released only on the payment
of a heavy fine. His son, known to later generations under the title of Wu
Wang, finally led a revolt which overthrew the tyrant. The traditional
account of the overthrow of the Shang bears the earmarks of partisanship,
and very possibly arose from the narrative preserved by the victorious
Chou in the ceremonies of their ancestral temple.

We have little, if any, certain information about details of events dur
ing the initial centuries of the Chou. The ceremonies in honor of the
ancestors of the family have transmitted to us names of rulers, but not
much else that is dependable. Wu Wang, like Wen Wang, was regarded
by posterity as a model. He is reported to have established his capital not
far from the later Ch'angan, on the broad lower portion of the valley of
the Wei, the westernmost of the large fertile plains of the North and in
the region where was the original seat of the Chou power. Wu Wang is
represented as having redistributed the principalities which made up the
realm, entrusting to the descendants of the Shang portions of their former
domains, and to two of his brothers other sections.

Wu Wang was succeeded by a son, then a mere boy, known to posterity
as Ch'eng Wang. During Ch'eng Wang's minority the regent was Wu
Wang's brother, Chou Kung ("the Duke of Chou"), who had been of
great assistance to the state during Wu Wang's lifetime. Chou Kung,
esteemed a paragon by later generations, is said to have consolidated the
power of the dynasty, and so successfully to have trained the young
monarch that the latter was able to reign acceptably after the regent's
death. To him, too, is attributed the administrative organization of the
realm on a pattern which for generations remained the model. To Chou
Kung is ascribed the Chou Li, The Ritual of the Chou, a compilation
possibly dating actually from the fourth and third centuries B.C., or even
later, and much or all of it the attempt of the authors to give the sanction
of antiquity to an imaginary Utopia of their own creation.

'he Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 35

Some of the early monarchs of the Chou apparently extended the
loundaries both of their domains and of Chinese culture. Chao Wang, the
raditional dates of whose rule — according to one chronology — are 1052-
001 B.C., and his successor, Mu Wang, with reign dates — by the same
hronology — of 1001-946 B.C., are said to have triumphed over the bar-
larians, and among other regions, to have carried the arms of the Chinese
tito the valley of the Han, across the Ch'in-ling mountains, which form
tie southern boundary of the valley of the Wei. Mu Wang especially is
xedited with having been an energetic and restless traveler, to have pursued
us conquests beyond the Yangtze on the south, and to have penetrated to
he far northwest, visiting a mysterious Hsi Wang Mu, literally "West
Cing Mother."

With the ninth and eighth centuries B.C., our knowledge of events,
ilthough still meager, increases somewhat, thanks chiefly to some of the
>oems in the Shih Ching, which probably were composed to announce
o the ancestors the achievements of the monarchs. The power of the
^hou Wang had begun to decline. The kingdom had long been divided
nto principalities. Some were ruled by collateral branches of the royal
louse, others by descendants of ministers and generals who had been
•ewarded for service to the state by hereditary holdings, and still others
?y families who claimed to trace their lineage from the rulers of the
^receding dynasties. Probably several of the princes were extending their
Doundaries at the expense of the adjoining non-Chinese peoples and so
#ere enlarging the borders of China. Weak monarchs found difficulty in
asserting their authority over powerful vassals, and privileges once con
ceded proved obstacles to the resumption of the power of the central
government by the occasional vigorous Wang. Hsiian Wang, the tradi
tional dates of whose reign are 827-781 B.C., was apparently abler than
some of his immediate predecessors. Certainly he was strong enough to
fight successfully against the "barbarians" in the modern Shansi and
northern Shensi, carrying the war into the highlands from which these
enemies menaced the prosperous plains. He also invaded the valley of the
Han. t .

Hsiian Wang, however, only postponed the decay of his line. His
successor, Yu Wang, is declared by tradition to have been hopelessly
weak and to have sacrified the state in the attempt to satisfy the whim
of a court beauty. He put her in place of his queen and disinherited the
latter's son, the heir presumptive. To make her smile, so the story runs, he
had the beacon fires kindled which were the signal for his vassals to rally
against a raid of barbarians. When the fires were lit in earnest, the lords,
fearing another practical joke, f ailed to respond against a joint attack of the
invaders and the outraged father of the deposed queen. Yu Wang was
killed and his unpopular mistress taken captive. At the beginning of the
next reign, traditional dates of which are 771-720 B.C., the capital was

36 VOLUME I

moved from the valley of the Wei, where it was subject to the forays
of the "barbarians," eastward to Loyang, near the present Honanfu, more
remote from the dangerous frontier. The change marked the hopeless decline
of the Chou, and while the dynasty endured for over five centuries longer,
the principalities and not the royal line now become the center of interest.
The activities of the feeble rois faineants were more and more restricted
to their religious and ceremonial, as contrasted with their political, func
tions. The dynasty prior to the removal of the capital is known as the
Western Chou and after that event as the Eastern Chou. The shift was
more than geographic. The Eastern Chou became a distinct era and was
marked by striking cultural developments which did much to shape the
later China.

From the eighth century B.C. until the middle of the third, China
roughly resembled the Europe of the Middle Ages. Like medieval Europe,
China was a collection of states with unstable boundaries. What has loosely
been called "feudalism" existed, the local princes in theory owing homage,
tribute, counsel, and military service to the Chou monarchs, and minor
lords having similar obligations to more powerful ones. However, the
details of organization, and even the main structure, were quite different
from those of Europe. As the power of the Chou declined, some semblance
of security was sought, as in Europe, in alliances and leagues, and
several individual .states successively won a kind of hegemony. Purely
Chinese states were supposed not to make war on each other — a principle
often honored more in the breach than in the observance. That devastating
activity was theoretically employed only against the "barbarians," the
peoples of non-Chinese culture.

As in the Europe of the Middle Ages, the boundaries of civilization
were steadily extended to embrace new peoples. In Europe the spread was
northward — into Germany, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Russia — while
in China it was eastward (through Shantung), westward (into Szechwaa),
and especially southward (into the Yangtze Valley). As in Europe, too,
a community of culture existed, but in China, although marked variations
were found, especially in the frontier states which were beginning to enter
the pale of Chinese culture, there seems to have been a closer approach
to uniformity. As in medieval Europe, so in the China of the Eastern
Chou, intellectual activity was marked. Unlike the process in Europe,
division was succeeeded suddenly by political union, and this was accom
panied and followed by increasing uniformity in culture.

THE HEGEMONY OF VARIOUS STATES

The China of the Eastern Chou, then, was divided into a large
number of states. By the seventh century B.C., five of these had begun

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization

to emerge as somewhat more powerful than the others. In the Northeast
was Ch'i, in parts of what are now Shantung and Hopei; in the North,
in the modern Shansi, was Chin; in the West, in the modern Shensi, was
Ch'in; on the plain, not far from the old centers of culture, Sung; and in
the South, centering in the present province of Hupeh, Ch'u. Four of these
five, it will be noted, were on the frontier. They could grow by expansion

CHIEF STATES

OF THE

EASTERN CHOU D™ASTY

outward — away from the older centers of culture — and their populations
probably included strong infusions of "barbarian" blood. Ch'u, indeed,
appears to have been almost entirely non-Chinese in race, originally non-
Chinese in speech, and partly so in culture. Some members of its ruling
aristocracy possibly came from the North. These frontier states strove to

38 VOLUME I

control the older China, largely the present Honan. Here was the traditional
center of culture and of political authority. Here, too, the many small
principalities constituted a tempting prey to their larger neighbors. Only one,
Sung, was able to make an effective bid for power against the frontier states,
and its importance was transitory.

The first of the five strong states to achieve the hegemony was Ch'i.
Tradition declares it to have been under an unusually able ruler, Huan,
advised by a distinguished minister, Kuan Chung, and that, in the first
half of the seventh century B.C., it acquired wealth and prestige. By
vigorous administrative, military, and fiscal reorganization, undertaken
through the leadership of these two men, the state was transformed. The
wealth of the prince was increased by monopolies of staple industries,
including especially salt and iron. Commerce was encouraged. When some
of the minor states into whch the older centers of Chinese culture were
divided had become enfeebled, Ch'u reached out from the South and
menaced them with possible absorption. At this juncture the threatened
states, in self-defense, for the moment ignoring their enmities, by treaty
formed a league against the invader (681 B.C.) and placed themselves
under the protection of the prince of Ch'i.

The league thus formed endured for more than two centuries. The
authority of its head was confirmed by investiture from the Chou Wang.
Assemblies of the league were not held at stated intervals, but whenever
need arose the heads of the allies were convoked by the president. Some
convened for the purpose of undertaking a joint war and were attended
by the rulers with all their armed contingents. Others, with peaceful
purposes, did not bring together so large a body of men.

Late in the reign of Huan, after Kuan Chung had died (643 B.C.),
Ch'i fell into internal confusion and the presidency passed out of his
hands. For some, years thereafter the very existence of the league was
threatened. The head of Sung, one of the other member states, attempted
as its president to give it adequate leadership, but in vain. At least one
of the members sought safety in an alliance with that very Ch'u whose
aggressions had brought the organization into existence.

The league, thus jeopardized, was salvaged and given renewed
strength by the presidency of Wen, prince of Chin. Chin, located in the
mountains and plateaus of the present Shansi, was not so easily unified
as Ch'i, on the adjoining plain, for internal barriers favored the inde
pendence of the local clans. Wen, whose personal name was Ch'ung £rh,
was the son of a "barbarian" mother. Before his accession he had learned
hardihood and resourcefulness by years of wandering and adventurous
exile. In 636 B.C. he succeeded in establishing himself in Chin, and during
a brief reign of eight years (he died 628 B.C.) he exercised the rule so
ably that for a century and a half thereafter his descendants were usually

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 39

the acknowledged heads of the league. By skillful administrative reorgan
ization he welded his principality into an effective fighting unit. Then,
allying himself with other states, he attacked and overwhelmingly defeated
Ch'u, and was appointed by the Chou ruler as the head of the other
princes.

Chin, placed at the forefront of the Chinese states by the prowess
of Wen, did not hold its place without many struggles and reverses.
Indeed, under weak princes and internal dissensions in spite of tempo
rary revivals it gradually declined. Ch'in, in the territory once held by the
early rulers of the Chou and long a rising power, was now the guardian
of the western marches. Partly "barbarian" in blood, apparently it acquired
prowess by constant fighting, and in the second half of the seventh century,
under its great prince Mu, a contemporary of Wen, it made a temporarily
successful bid for the hegemony. Ch'u in the South was always to be
reckoned with, and at the beginning of the sixth century defeated Chin and
seemed to be on the point of replacing it.

With one of the sudden reversals of fortune which make these
centuries so confusing, Ch'u on the point of victory, suddenly declined (in
the latter half of the sixth century B.C.). Chin, although not particularly
strong, found an ally in Wu, a state which first emerged into prominence
near the opening of the sixth century B.C. Wu, in the lower part of the
Yangtze Valley and commanding the mouth of that river and the fertile
plains along its lower courses, occupied most of the territory covered by
the present province of Kiangsu and portions of the present Anhui,
Chekiang, and Kiangsi. Its people were possibly allied racially to the
Chinese, but were late in acquiring Chinese civilization and were regarded
as barbarians by their northern neighbors. During the sixth century B.C.,
thanks in part to the ability of its rulers, Wu became one of the most
powerful states of China and continued so into the fifth century. In 482
B.C., indeed, the prince of Wu seems to have succeeded the now almost
impotent princes of Chin as the real head of the league — although the
titular presidency may still have remained with Chin.

Within a decade of this triumph, however, Wu collapsed (473 B.C.).
The most southerly of the states of China of the later years of the Chou
dynasty, Yiieh, in the modern Chekiang, destroyed it. For a time Yueh
became the oustanding state of East China. However, although it
removed its capital to a point on or near the south coast of the present
Shantung (379 B.C.), it did not occupy the dominant position over inland
China that some other states had had or were later to possess. It remained
chiefly a coastal power. Both Wu and Yiieh seem to have depended in
part upon boats for their victories, navigating these craft on the sea and
on the rivers and lakes in which their possessions abounded. Wu, indeed,
appears to have begun the Grand Canal. It is not strange that, relying

VOLUME I

so much on their watercraft, neither Wu nor Yiieh succeeded in making
its authority effective over the interior.

Chin did not long survive Wu. Most of its territory being in the moun
tains, plains, and valleys of what is now Shansi, its internal barriers always
threatened it with division into warring clans. This tendency was accentu
ated by the distribution of "fiefs" by the princes of Chin among their
favorites and relatives. It is not surprising, therefore, that the authority
of the princes declined and that toward the close of the fifth century Chin
broke into three fragments (Han, Wei, and Chao). Neither of these was
strong enough to occupy the dominant role in national politics formerly
held by the united Chin.

THE PERIOD OF THE CONTENDING STATES AND THE TRIUMPH OF CH'lN

By the middle of the fifth century the old China was begin
ning to disappear and great changes were in progress. The institutions
of the past were disintegrating and new ideas appeared in administration,
legislation, philosophy, and religion. As we shall see in a moment, the
period was one of creative thought. Warfare among the many states which
made up China had long been part of the course of events. Such an out
line as we have given probably seems intricate enough to those for the
first time introduced to the story, but compared with the complexities of the
detailed narratives it is simplicity itself. The scene now becomes even more
confused and belligerent. To Chinese historians the era is known as that
of the Chan Kuo} or Contending States. The Chou rulers became increas
ingly feeble and the states in the older China dropped more than ever
into the background — the prey of the partially Chinese principalities on
the border. With the breakup of Chin ended any semblance of that league
and that principle of hegemony by which a measure of respect had been
paid to the rights of the individual states and some protection given them.
Heretofore war between the states had been carried on in large part accord
ing to recognized rules. Now the strong ruthlessly overran and absorbed
the weak. Some of the members of the old aristocratic houses sank to
the level of the common people and many new families rose to power.

The principal combatants were the great principalities on the frontier,
Ch'in, Ch'u, Yen (with its capital on the site of the present Peking), the
three fragments of Chin, and a revived Ch'i. These were known as the
Chi Hsiung, or Seven Martial (States). Ch'i had not been a major figure
in Chinese politics for about two centuries, but it had continued to exist,
and under the leadership of a usurping ruling house it rose once more to
prominence. However, Ch'in and Ch'u were the chief rivals. Both were
expanding at the expense of their neighbors. In the fourth century B.C.,
Ch'in conquered the state of Shu, in the present province of Szechwan. In

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 41

that same century Ch'u overthrew Yiieh and absorbed the northern portions
of its dominions — those formerly belonging to Wu. As between Ch'u and
Ch'in, the tide of fortune ebbed and flowed. Alliances centering around
each were made and dissolved, the lesser states seeking safety or aggrandize
ment by throwing in their fortunes now with one and now with another
of the more formidable combatants.

Ch'in owed much of its strength to Kung-sun Yang, also called Wei
Yang of Shang Yang, who, belonging to the ruling family of Wei, in the
middle of the fourth century, under Duke Hsiao — who appears to have
combined ability with an ambition to control all China — became a min
ister of Ch'in. Under Shang Yang's direction the laws and administration
of his adopted state were reorganized and the foundations laid for the
eventual victory of Ch'in over its rivals. Moreover, Ch'in was in a favorable
geographic position in the valley of the Wei, protected by mountains and
on the periphery of the then China, where, through warfare against the
neighboring "barbarians," it had acquired military discipline and organ
ization.

The other six of the seven leading states were, in 333 B.C., brought to
gether in a league to resist the prosperous Ch'in. This period is often known
as that of the Six Kingdoms. The alliance was not permanent, partly because
its members were too jealous of one another to hold together for long.
With this league is associated a famous historical romance, which attributes
the enterprise to Su Ch'in, one of the wandering scholar-diplomats of the
time, and which assigns the undoing of the alliance to a former fellow-
student of Su Ch'in, Chang I, in the service of Ch'in.

Many were the wars &nd the exploits of these troubled years, and
many a story has been handed down of loyalty, of trickery and intrigue,
of prowess, and of generals and statesmen successful today and disgraced
and banished or executed tomorrow. One of the festivals of a later China,
that of the Dragon Boat, is said (probably erroneously) to take its rise
from the search for the body of Ch'u Yuan, a statesman of Ch'u, who is
declared to have drowned himself (295 B.C.) in despair over the failure
of his prince to take his advice against the schemes of the astute Chang I.

For a time it seemed that China might never be unified, but would be
divided permanently among Ch'i, Ch'u, and Ch'in. Gradually, however,^ and
with occasional reverses, Ch'in forged its way to the front. Its military
organization seems to have given it an advantage. Instead of depending
on chariots, the familiar war vehicle of the older China still relied on by
its rivals, it formed an army in which horse and foot soldiers predominated.
It may have adopted these from the "barbarians" with whom it fought on
its western and northern frontiers. Early in the third century, Ch'i was
practically eliminated as a major power. Its prince, in attacking his neigh
bor (possibly with the purpose of mastering China), brought down on

42 VOLUME I

his head a number of the other states and was disastrously defeated. The
ruin of Ch'i strengthened Ch'in. In the first half of the third century Ch'in
repeatedly defeated Ch'u and annexed much of its territory.

In the struggle between the great rivals, the prestige and the power
of the Chou sank ever lower and lower. The rulers of the more prominent
of the states had for some time assumed the title of Wang, heretofore
the exclusive designation of the Chou monarchs— thereby probably in effect
declaring their equality with the house of Chou and possibly indicating
their ambition to master all China. In the middle of the third century B.C.,
Ch'in wrested from Nan Wang, the last of the Chou to wear that title, the
western portion of his small remaining territory, and carried off the nine
tripods which, alleged to have been handed down from the Emperor Yii,
were esteemed as symbols of supreme power. On the death of Nan Wang,
in 256 B.C., a relative, under the designation of Eastern Chou Prince (Tung
Chou Chun), maintained for a short time something of a semblance of
authority until, in 249 B.C., he in his turn was defeated by Ch'in and for
feited his territory to the victor.

The extinction of the Chou was, however, by no means the last of
the steps necessary to assure Ch'in the Empire. Other and more powerful
rivals had to be overcome. The final victory was under the direction of one
of the most important and interesting figures in all Chinese history, he
who is known to posterity as Shih Huang Ti. To the birth and tutelage of
this unifier of China a peculiar story is attached. In the third century B.C.
a prince of Ch'in, a not particularly clever fellow, was in exile, and while
he was there an unusually able man, Lii Pu-wei, a merchant, who saw in
him an opportunity for advancement, attached himself to him. Lii Pu-wei,
by skillful management, obtained for his princely patron the appointment to
the succession to the throne of Ch'in. Lii Pu-wei had a beautiful and
charming concubine, and when the prince became infatuated with her,
surrendered her to him. A son of this beauty was Cheng or Ying
Cheng (born 259 B.C.), later Shih Huang Ti. Malicious and perhaps ill-
founded gossip has it that his father was not the prince, but the clever
Lii Pu-wei. When, thanks to his friend, the prince succeeded to the rule
in Ch'in, Lii Pu-wei continued as his chief adviser and remained powerful
in the earlier years of the reign of Cheng — who, as a minor, followed
his reputed father as head of Ch'in (247 B.C.). Lii Pu-wei is said to have
been accused of complicity in amorous intrigues of and with his former
concubine, now the queen-dowager. Certainly Cheng, not unwilling to be
rid of so powerful a mentor, banished him (238 B.C.). Again accused of
treasonable designs, Lii was banished a second time, probably to the
present Honan. His life seems to have been ended by poison.

Before Lii's fall, Ch'in was well on its way to its final triumph over
its rivals. In the second half of the third century it annexed state after

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 43

state. Ch'u was erased from the map, and in 221 B.C. the conquest of what
was left of Ch'i completed the territorial unification of China under the all-
powerful Ch'in. One stage of China's development had come to an end
and a new era, that of imperialism, had dawned.

CULTURAL GROWTH UNDER THE CHOU

These centuries of almost incessant warfare had been accom
panied by remarkable developments in civilization and by the wide exten
sion of Chinese culture in regions within and outside its native habitat.

The original China, it will be recalled, was on the plain formed by
the Yellow River and its tributaries, At the outset of the Chou much of
it was still uncultivated. It contained large fertile areas but also swamps
and regions of shifting sands. At the beginning of the dynasty, and for
many centuries thereafter, people whom the Chinese regarded as bar
barians lived not only on the edges of the plain, but also in the plain
itself, and some of them on the seashore.

When they conquered the Shang, the Chou, although probably from
the same neolithic stock from which the former were sprung, were far less
civilized. Indeed, they appropriated much from the Shang, including the
system of writing, art forms, and kinds of pottery and other utensils. Some
intermarriages occurred, at least among the upper classes.

As it expanded, Chinese civilization took to itself many elements of
the peoples with whom it came in contact. By the close of the Chou, and
probably earlier, the culture of the Chinese, like that of many other peoples,
was becoming a synthesis of contributions from several regions north,
south, and west of the primitive seat of civilization. For instance, in the
later centuries of the Chou and down into the Ch'in dynasty there are
evidences of so-called "Scythian" influence on weapons, implements, and
art objects, including bronzes. From the eighth to the third century B.C.
the Scyths were in control in part of what is now Russia, and the effect of
their" art on that of China argues either direct or indirect contacts of the
Chinese with the peoples of the vast plain which stretches across much
of Europe and Asia.

ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION

In the early years of the Chou, Chinese culture was already
advanced. As before, the basic industry was agriculture. Millet, rice, wheat,
and barley were the chief cereals. Some of these were quite possibly of
foreign origin. The ox-drawn plow appeared, perhaps of alien provenance.
Advances in fertilizers and irrigation were achieved. Fermented liquor
was made from both rice and millet. Vegetables were raised and fruits

44 VOLUME I

were cultivated. The mulberry was particularly useful because its leaves
nourished the silkworms and so were essential in the production of the most
characteristic of Chinese textiles. Several kinds of plants were employed
in the production of cloth. The pig and the chicken were, with the dog,
the omnipresent live stock, and there were other domestic animals. Irriga
tion on a large scale was developed in the latter part of the period. Iron
came into use sometime during the dynasty. The creation of metallic
money must have wrought changes in the economy of the land.

As in the Shang, a sharp distinction seems to have existed between the
lower, or peasant, and the upper, or aristocratic, classes. The lower were
occupied with cultivating the soil. The upper classes did the governing. The
distinction appears to have been accentuated by, or at least to have had
some association with, the growth of towns. During the Chou, urban
civilization was spreading, centering in capitals of the feudal princes and
of the Wang. Between city dwellers and the rural population a gulf tended
to exist. The town, dominated by the aristocracy, seems to have had a
market place, an altar to the earth — a raised mound of beaten soil —
and the ancestral temple of the ruling lord. It was surrounded by a wall and
a moat.

Tradition asserts that land was divided according to the ching t'ien or
"well-field" system. While some scholars regard this as an imaginary
creation of later Utopian philosophers, probably it had an actual basis in
fact. On the other hand, presumably it was never systematically carried
out on any such large scale as some writers have supposed. By this device
the arable land was assigned in sections to eight peasant families each.
Every section was plotted in a form resembling the Chinese character for
well, ching, j$, each of the eight outer plots being cultivated by one of the
eight families, and the central plot being cultivated in common to raise the
produce which went to the lord. The title was vested in the lord. Perma
nent individual peasant ownership appears not to have been thought of.
New land was cleared as the old was exhausted, and periodical reassign
ment was the rule. The size of the ching varied with the quality of the soil,
As irrigation and methods of cultivation improved, residence and bound
aries between fields were of longer duration. The poorer soil was allowed
periodically to lie fallow. While the peasant did not own the soil, apparently
he was permanently attached to certain districts, and so, like the European
serf, enjoyed a better status than that of slavery. Probably not until toward
the close of the Chou dynasty did peasant proprietorship prevail. Wei
Yang is credited — possibly incorrectly — with having made it the rule in
Ch'in. The ching t'ien system gradually disintegrated, and by the third
century B.C. (probably even as early as the sixth century) it was passing
away.

Much of the work of bringing waste lands into cultivation, of draining

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 45

swamps and constructing canals for irrigation, seems to have been, per
formed by the state. While possibly accelerated under some of the great
princes in the closing years of the Chou, it had been in progress for cen
turies and must have entailed great labor for many generations of peasants
and officials.

As towns grew and as the Chinese extended their domains and became
more numerous, commerce and industry expanded. The rise to power
in Ch'in of a merchant, Lii Pu-wei, may have been symptomatic of the
increased importance of his class. The introduction of coined money,
about the beginning of the first millennium B.C., probably had a profound
effect upon the social and economic organization of the time.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

It was only during the season when the land was cultivated
that the peasants lived on it. During the winter they were gathered into
villages, where each family had its separate home. Some homes were caves
dug in the loess where it rose in sharp cliffs. Others were built of mud.
The villages, as we have seen, were usually walled and clustered about
the residence of an official, often the overlord's home and ancestral hall.
Frequently, too, they were on heights overlooking the fields, out of the
way of floods and more easily defended than on the plain. In these villages
the life of the community centered around market places and public
grounds.

It was in the spring, before the workers went to the fields, that the
mating of young couples seems to have taken place. There were com
munity festivals in the spring and in the autumn, when the entire village
gave itself over to dancing and ceremonials.

Agriculture and the life of the peasantry were carefully regulated and
directed by officials, so that China early possessed a kind of bureaucracy.
Irrigation and the attendant construction and maintenance of canals con
tributed to the centralization of authority.

The aristocracy was chiefly distinguished from the peasants by an
elaborate family and hierarchal organization. Each patrician clan professed
to trace its descent through the male line to a common ancestor: a god,
a hero, or a monarch. Sometimes the original progenitor was supposed to
be a bird or an animal. These latter were often purely mythical creatures,
such as the unicorn and the dragon. The men were careful not to take
wives, or even concubines, of their own clan name. However, two houses
often intermarried for many generations, and sons customarily obtained
wives from their mother's family. Then, too, children of a brother and
sister might marry — being of different clan names. The clan was not a
territorial division and did not necessarily hold land as a unit. The effective

46 VOLUME I

tie was not economic but religious — the cult in honor of the ancestors
and especially of the putative founder of the clan.

The aristocratic clan in turn was divided into families, each with its
male head who officially represented and had authority over its members.
Marriage, being the means of perpetuating the family and the clan, was of
great importance and by elaborate rites. At the time of the marriage the
bride was formally introduced to her husband's parents and ancestors.
Secondary wives might be taken. A birth was regarded as lucky or unlucky
according to the day on which it occurred. An infant that arrived on an
unpropitious day might be abandoned. On reaching man's estate, the youth
was inducted into that rank with formal ceremonies, receiving the cap which
indicated that he was now recognized as an adult.

The social life and even the recreations of the aristocracy, such as
archery and music, were controlled by custom.

From the upper classes came the lords and the great landed proprietors.
By no means all those of patrician birth possessed large estates. Many
were petty landowners, a kind of sturdy squirearchy from which came
numbers of the thinkers and military adventurers of the later centuries
of the Chou. Others were employees of the state, scribes, schoolteachers,
diviners, or experts on ritual. Still others were merchants, for in time a
fairly extensive domestic and interstate commerce arose in such com
modities as salt, grain, silk, horses, and cattle.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Political organization had probably developed in complex
ity since the Shang if for no other reasons than that the extent of territory
governed had increased. The head of the state was the Wang, or monarch.
In theory the Wang ruled because of the decree of Heaven (Tien Ming)
and the te (originally meaning magical power, but later, by Confucian
scholars, given the moral connotation of "virtue") of himself and his
ancestors, obtained through obedience to the commands of Heaven. In
practice the authority of the Wang depended very largely upon his own
ability and force of character. Time-distances were great, and the leading
territorial magnates were disposed to act very much like independent
sovereigns — at least in all except religious matters. After the first few
monarchs of the Chou it was a rare Wang who was able to become more
than a kind of high priest and a source of titles. In the earlier days of the
dynasty, the monarchs had much real power. Later they became mere
figureheads, retaining some degree of importance chiefly because of the
prestige of their line and their religious functions.

The Wang was assisted by a chief minister and by six subordinate min
isters in charge of different phases of administration — agriculture, the

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 47

army, public works, religious rites, the monarch's personal affairs, and
punishments. Below these appears to have been an extensive and fairly
complicated officialdom of varying ranks. Some of the positions were
hereditary. During the many centuries which the dynasty endured, modifi
cations in the system inevitably occurred. As the effective power of the
Wang declined, this officialdom ceased to have the administrative sig
nificance that apparently it once possessed. Accordingly, it became more
and more stereotyped and regularized. Together with the Wang, however,
it was considered to have practical religious importance, for its continued
functioning was held essential to that co-operation of Heaven, Earth, and
man upon which depended the prosperity and welfare of the realm.
Religious ceremonies performed by the proper functionaries were sup
posed to be quite as requisite to the well-being of society as was the observ
ance of ethical obligations between man and man.

The realm was divided into two main parts, the royal domains, ruled
directly by the Wang through his officials, and the states of the many
princes. During part of the Chou dynasty, the realm appears to have
been divided into nine provinces, each with a kind of governor, appointed
by the Wang from among the local lords. These provinces, however,
probably possessed little more than a ceremonial significance, and later
writers overstressed their actual importance. The subordinate owed his
overlord homage, military service, and tribute. In return he received land.
Investiture was marked by solemn ceremonies. Homage was supposed to
be performed at periodical intervals, varying with the distance of the
principality from the court. Tribute was chiefly in kind — in products of the
soil and the loom — for metallic money seems not to have made its appear
ance until the latter part of the fifth century B.C. Every lord was also
bound to perform the proper sacrifices to the spirits of the land and to his
ancestors and to maintain justice among his subjects. Each prince had his
own officials, graded in a kind of hierarchy.

The structure was held together in part by the observance of an elab
orate ritual by which inferiors honored superiors. Theoretically, too, the
lords were subordinate to the Wang and could be promoted or demoted
by him. Before the breakup of the old order toward the latter part of the
Chou, there seems for centuries to have been a kind of stability — uneasy
and not too secure, to be sure — and a recognized structure. It was over
turned by the rise of the great warring states out of which Ch'in emerged
triumphant.

The laws were largely penal, covering classes of crimes and certain
acts which we in the Occident would call civil. Judged by modern stand
ards, punishments were severe, although no more so than those of many
other nations of antiquity. The chief recognized ones were death, castra
tion, amputation of the feet, cutting off the nose, and tatooing the face.

VOLUME I

Frequently they could be compounded by the payment of a fine. Contracts
were regularly made and legally recognized.

As to war and defense, the Chinese employed chariots and ensconced
themselves in walled towns and villages. War was cruel, as it always is. It
seems possible that a victory over the "barbarians" was sometimes cele
brated by a cannibal feast off the bodies of the vanquished, although wars
between Chinese were not so terminated.

The bronzes which have survived from the Chou show a level of culture
far from primitive. The sacrificial vessels especially command the admira
tion of experts everywhere. At the outset they displayed no sharp break
with the Shang bronzes. Not far from 900 B.C., new forms, of inferior
workmanship, supplanted their predecessors. About three centuries later
appeared a revival of old forms, but with more ornamentation than the
latter and with inlays. Many samples of jade, too, show artistic taste and
skill. Lacquer began to be employed.

In the early Chou centuries, as under the Shang, burials of the more
powerful were often accompanied by the decapitation of menials to serve
their masters in the spirit world. Later the custom was discontinued.

LITERARY DEVELOPMENT

Writing by the prototypes of the present characters had been
devised, as we have seen, at least as early as the Shang dynasty. The Chou
took over the system of writing developed by the Shang, as they did of so
much else of that past. The Chou era witnessed an extensive and rich
literary development, More characters were formed. Books were inscribed
on tablets of wood or bamboo, presumably with ink. The language dis
played dialectical differences, but these were not sufficiently marked, at
least among the educated, to prevent a community of culture.

The earliest forms of literature appear to have been religious in charac
ter: hymns sung at sacrifices, songs to accompany the dances and feasts
in honor of the ancestors, and bits of prose to parallel the pantomimes
performed in the ancestral temples. Poems were composed for the great
ceremonial occasions at court: banquets, archery contests, receptions, and
the like. To these were added folk songs: satires, laments of widows, com
plaints of soldiers whose officers had conducted them to defeat, dances
of the young in the spring, love songs, and songs at the birth of a child
and for weddings. Many are included in that anthology of ancient verse,
the Shih Ching, or Classic of Poetry, brought together in Chou times. Still
others are to be found in compilations of the period which contain both
poetry and prose. While the original text of the Shih Ching has suffered
in transmission, a large proportion as we have it today is probably authentic.
Prose owned much to the official scribes charged with the preparation

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 49

and preservation of official documents and with the arrangements for
religious ceremonies and feasts. Ritual purposes required short accounts
of the legends concerning the ancestors, which the dancers portrayed in
pantomime. The descriptions were necessarily terse, minute, and rather dry.
To accompany some of these outlines, speeches were composed and
attributed to the chief actors. Here the imagination of the scribes had
greater liberty. Records in highly technical language were kept of official
transactions. Descriptions began to be written of administrative machinery
and of geography — the latter from the viewpoint of the administrator
and tax collector. Philosophy — particularly, as was natural, political phi
losophy — began to emerge.

Many of the ancient prose documents have been preserved in a collec
tion known as the Shu Ching, or Classic of History. Fairly early tradi
tion, possibly reliable, declares that Confucius edited it. Much of the text
of the Shu Ching as we have it today is either corrupt or spurious. It
has been demonstrated, for example, that the portions of it which are only
in the so-called "ancient text" are a forgery of post-Chou times. Much
of that contained in the "modern text," however, is usually regarded by
scholars as an authentic record of ancient traditions.

The scribes, too, charged with preserving the archives, began the custom
of keeping terse annals of events, especially of official acts, with exact
references to dates and persons. One of these, of the state of Lu, was the
basis of history which has been preserved, thanks possibly to its associa
tion with the great name of Confucius, under the title of the Ch'un CKiu,
or Spring and Autumn (Annals). It has been traditionally represented
as written by Confucius, but the accuracy of this view has been boldly
challenged and hotly debated. Some others of the annals of local states —
of Chin and Wei — were in the Chu Shu Chi Nien (discovered in a tomb
in the third century A.D.), freely translated as the Bamboo Annals and so
denominated because the copy then found was written on tablets of that
material. It must be added, however, that the existing work which now
bears that title is by no means of indubitable authenticity. Many scholars
insist that it is a forgery, a compilation of quotations from other books, and
that only fragments of the original survive. The Tso Chuan, traditionally
a commentary on the Ch'un Ch'iu, is really of independent origin or
origins, being made up of one or more histories, which through the ages
have suffered from interpolations, but which seem at least in part to be
as old as the second century B.C. and perhaps older.

Still another form of prose originated with the professional diviners,
those whose task it was to give counsel, through their auspices, on impor
tant actions. The sort of divination which had been practiced under the
Shang— by the application of fire to bones and the shell of the tortoise
and the interpretation of the resulting cracks— fell into abeyance under

50 VOLUME I

the Chou, and the very manner of performing it was forgotten. Under the
Chou, divination was by a variety of mediums,, including the milfoil and the
sixty-four hexagrams. The hexagrams, developed out of the lines which
composed the simpler eight trigrams, had, like the latter, been devised
early. The hexagrams, of six lines each, were made up of combinations of
whole and broken lines, as, for example, in the following:

Brief interpretations of these, in technical and, to us, obscure lan
guage were made, presumably as guides to the diviners. In commentaries
on or appendices to the foregoing, and of later origin, something of a phi
losophy was elaborated, including principles of government. In them the
terms Yin and Yang, long to loom prominently in speculative thought,
make what is possibly their earliest extant appearance. The Yin and the
Yang seem to have been unknown under the Shang and so possibly did
not enter Chinese life until sometime in the Chou. The entire collection,
comprising documents of various dates, has been transmitted to us as the
/ Ching, or Classic of Change. Tradition attributes the authorship of the
older portions to Wen Wang and Chou Kung, and declares that they
were composed while the former of these two worthies was a political
prisoner and the latter in voluntary exile. It also assigns the appendices to
the pen of Confucius. All of this is more than open to question, although
at least some of the appendices were written by members of the Confucian
school and it is barely possible that the sage himself wrote parts of them.

The Shih Ching, Shu Ching, Ch'un Ch'iu, and / Ching by no means
exhaust the list of the literature of the Chou period. In the later centuries
of the dynasty, indeed, books increased in number and in the variety of the
subjects treated. The rich and varied development in philosophical thought
which will be mentioned in a moment is recorded in works which have
been among the most treasured of China's possessions. There were com
pilations on ritual, the most honored of which are the Li Chi, or the
Book (more literally, the Record) of Rites, the / Li, and the Chou Li.
The Li Chi was not collected into its present form until a later dynasty,
and much of its material is of post-Chou composition. The / Li is probably
the fragment of a larger work, of unknown origin, which presumably
appeared in the second century before the Christian Era, or, according to
some critics, at a still earlier time. The Chou Li, or Rites of Chou, called in
early times Chou Kuan, or Officials of Chou, was possibly the work of an
anonymous writer of the fourth or third century B.C. and may date from
at late as the first century A.D., but, as we have seen, it is traditionally —
and almost certainly falsely — ascribed to Chou Kung. It is a Utopian
plan for the organization of government — an idealized picture of the Chou
administrative system — which repeatedly had great influence upon political
and social reformers. There were histories, among them a general one of

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 51

China from 722 to 450 B.C., which was transmitted as a component part of
the Tso Chuan, seeking to read the moral lessons of the past, probably
composed in the fourth and third centuries B.C.; the Chan Kuo Ts&, or
Documents of the Fighting States (a collection of texts bearing on the last
troubled years of the Chou period); and the Kuo Yu (perhaps older than
the Tso Chuan, composed of material related to the latter, and possibly
brought together about the fourth or third century B.C. in an endeavor to
draw moral lessons from the record). Historical romances were also written,
usually clustering around famous individuals and combining both fact and
fiction.

Toward the end of the Chou new forms of poetry appeared. The most
famous example is traditionally by Ch'ii Yuan (whom we have already
mentioned as a statesman of the partially Chinese principality of Chou
and as traditionally associated with the Dragon Boat Festival). His poem,
the Li Sao, in which he pours out his soul in lament and so discloses
himself and his ideals to posterity, is one of the most famous in Chinese
literature. Some doubt has been cast on the authorship and even on the
existence of Ch'ii Yuan, but the composition appears to belong to this
period. It certainly registers a high-water mark of literary achievement.

In the last centuries of the Chou, China was coming to have more
numerous contacts with the peoples to the west. The empire of the Persians
and the succeeding one of Alexander brought the cultures of Iran and the
Occident somewhat nearer to her, and her own expanding frontiers were
reaching toward Central Asia. It is not surprising, therefore, that the fringes
of the two foreign civilizations should somewhere nearly touch hers in
what is now Sinkiang, and that along the land routes commercial inter
course should have arisen. This intercourse seems to have enlarged some
what the Chinese knowledge of geography. It appears also to have brought
in more advanced astronomical and mathematical ideas and the elements
of the related pseudo science, astrology. The modifications in the calendar
and the method of reckoning time that were made more than once under
the Chou may have been indebted to what entered from abroad.

DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY

The outstanding intellectual achievement of the Chou was in
the realm of philosophy. Philosophy seems to have arisen in the sixth
century B.C. Certainly its great development was in that and the follow
ing centuries. Why it came to birth when it did must be in part a matter of
conjecture. The period roughly corresponds with the rise of Greek phi
losophy, with some of the most creative years of the Hebrew spirit, with
the beginning of Buddhism and Jainism, and possibly with the inception
and at least with the spread of Zoroastrianism. Whether we have here

52 VOLUME I

more than a coincidence cannot, at least as yet, be determined. It seems
clear that the political and economic organizations had much to do with
the intellectual activity of the times. The division of the realm into many
principalities encouraged variety and individuality. Professional scholars
wandered from state to state, seeking learning or employment. At the
capitals of the different princes thinkers gathered and debated. Some
of the rulers encouraged this practice, and at least one established a center
in which he assembled distinguished representatives of several different
schools. It was an age of intellectual ferment and daring.

This flowering of the Chinese philosophical genius was profoundly
influenced by early Chinese religion. In a sense it was an outgrowth of it.

What the earliest Chinese religion was we cannot certainly tell. Evi
dence is as yet too fragmentary to permit of final answers. When we first
obtain clear pictures of Chinese religion, during the Shang and early in
the Chou, the culture of the nation was already far removed from its primi
tive stages. The Chinese peopled the world with divine influences, with
spirits, and with gods and goddesses of various kinds. In each agricultural
village was normally a sacred mound, early the center of life of these
communities. There were house gods, for instance, of the hearth, and of
the corner where the seed grain was stored. Spirits or gods of the rivers, of
the mountains, of the stars, of other natural objects, and of the five elements
were honored or propitiated. Some of the divine influences were scarcely
personal. On the other hand, there were intensely personal spirits of the
great heroes of the past. The ancestors, too, were believed to live on,
sometimes for generations; one soul of each of the dead remained with
the body and another ascended on high. However, it was held that in the
course of time the souls of the deceased disintegrated and were absorbed
into the impersonal forces of nature.

By at least the close of the Chou and probably many centuries earlier,
religious beliefs and practices differed from state to state. These variations
were especially marked in the frontier principalities, such as Ch'in and
Ch'u, whose populations and cultures had strong elements not to be found
in the older states of the North China plain.

The Chou had beliefs which were partly inherited from the Shang but
modified or amplified. Spirits and gods were superior to men in power, but
were not almighty. They were of varying degrees of importance and of
extent of jurisdiction. For example, there were many earth gods, each
with only a local sphere of power, and there was the Sovereign Earth,
with a much wider domain. The tendency continued to divide superhuman
beings and influences into two groups, terrestial and celestial — those of
the earth and those of the air or sky. Supreme over both groups was one
great being, variously called Tien (usually translated Heaven) and Shang
Ti (best translated the Ruler Above). Originally Tien and Shang Ti were
probably distinct, Tien perhaps meaning the heavenly abode, or city of

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 53

the dead, and Shang Ti having a nearer approach to a personal theistic
significance. If we may trust the oracle bones, Shang Ti was the term
most used under the Shang for the Supreme Being. Under the Chou, Tien
tended to supplant it, possibly because Tien was originally the god of
the ruling house. The Chou Wang was regarded as the son of Tien and
as reigning by the mandate of Tien. Eventually Tien and Shang Ti prac
tically coalesced. Tien or Shang Ti was sovereign over gods and men.

Hou Tu, the Soil or Earth, may at times have been identical with Ti
(Earth), a female deity, and She (Ruler of the Soil), a male god.

The co-operation of the spiritual beings was essential to the welfare of
men, including that of individuals, groups, and society as a whole. It was
to be secured by the proper performance of ritual and sacrifices in honor of
these beings, and — at least in the later centuries of the Chou — by right
ethical conduct. The ceremonies were often elaborate, with offerings of
food, both grain and flesh, and occasionally of human life. In its earlier
stages, religion may have had much of dread and of grim shedding of man's
blood. Under the Chou, the more repulsive features gradually disappeared.
Earlier, too, some phallicism probably existed. Possibly it was prominent.
However, it slipped into desuetude, and its conventionalized symbols lost
their original significance. Ceremonies to the ancestors were in temples
constructed for them, or in special rooms or alcoves reserved for them in
the dwellings of their descendants, for the dead were treated as having the
needs of the living. Ancestors were represented by tablets. Others of the
spirits and gods were worshipped in the open air, and near the capital par
ticularly were altars to the most important of them. Some ceremonies appear
to have been held in sacred groves. Much of the communal life of the
peasants centered around the sacred place, and this seems largely to have
coalesced later with the power and rites of the territorial lord.

Since the proper maintenance of religious ceremonies was essential to
the co-operation of spiritual beings with men and to the welfare of society,
it was a matter of public concern and one of the chief functions of the
state. Each of the territorial magnates had ceremonies at which he must
officiate, and some of the most important could be performed only by the
Wang. No class existed which could strictly be called priestly, for the con
duct of religious rites was one of the responsibilities of officials charged
with administration. However, experts in ritual, who directed the officials
in this phase of their duties, formed a recognized profession and were
recruited from the upper classes.

A special class (Wu) existed, held in much less respect than the others,
whose members claimed to act as spokesmen — or spokeswomen, for they
were from both sexes — of the unseen, and who, to this end, on occasion
could become possessed by the spirit with which they claimed communica
tion.

The schools of philosophy which arose during the later centuries of the

VOLUME I

Chou were all more or less strongly tinged with these religious beliefs,
some partly endorsing and partly modifying them, and some rationalizing
or repudiating them in whole or in part.

The common interest which ran through most of the schools of thought
was social: the creation of an ideal human society. This emphasis was
natural among a people accustomed to regard religion as a matter of
community utility, and particularly so since the majority of the philosophers
were from the governing classes and were themselves officeholders. They
were the continuation of the scholar class which we noted as functionaries
under the Shang. It cannot be too greatly emphasized that the chief prob
lem to which most of the thinkers of the Chou addressed themselves was:
how can society be saved or at least improved? Cosmogony, cosmology,
the nature of the gods— if any— and of man were subordinate and ancillary
to this question.

From the standpoint of subsequent influence, the chief of the schools
was that known to Westerners as Confucianism. The greatest figure in it
was Confucius. The traditional dates of the sage, 551-479 B.C., may be in
error by several years. The usual story of his life has it that he was born
in one of the smaller of the states, Lu, in the present province of Shantung,
of aristocratic stock, of an aged father and a young mother. His father died,
so the story continues, during his son's infancy, and the sage was reared
in poverty by his mother. He early showed a predilection for ceremonies
and the learning of the past and achieved such proficiency in them that he
attracted students. For years, the traditional accounts say (but these may
not be reliable), he held office in his native state, eventually rising to the
highest position open to a subject, but in middle age he retired to private
life. The reason usually assigned for this step was that he resigned in protest
against the unworthy conduct of his prince. During the next several years
he traveled from state to state with a group of his disciples, hoping vainly
that some ruler would adopt his principles of government and employ him
to carry them out. In his old age he returned to Lu and there died after
some years of quiet spent in study and teaching. Dignified, courteous, con
scientious, high-minded, studious; modest but self-confident; a lover of
antiquity, of books, of ceremonial, and of music; thoughtful, affable, but
frank in rebuking what he deemed wrong in men in high and low position;
calm, serenely trustful in an overruling Providence — all these are terms
which immediately come to mind as descriptive of the man pictured in the
discourses transmitted by his faithful disciples.

The interests of Confucius were chiefly those of the statesman and the
teacher of ethics. The sage concerned himself with the welfare of the
common man and the masses. He had at heart the achievement of good
government and held that this was to be by a return to the methods of the
great sage-rulers of antiquity. Apparently he thought of himself as a trans-

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 55

mitter and not a creator, as simply a student and a teacher of the best of
China's past. The way of attaining to good government, as he believed
it to have been achieved in the past, was the maintenance of the proper
ceremonies, including those of a religious nature, and the exhibition by the
ruling classes of a good moral example. Society was kept prosperous and
at peace, so he held, not primarily by force, but by the influence of high
character on the part of the monarchs and the members of the upper
classes, and by adherence to customary ritual. He set himself and his
followers, then, to the study and observance of the ancient ritual and to
the cultivation of uprightness. As a means to saving and improving society,
he sought the cultivation of the chun tzu, or perfect man.

The fullest, although not the only, record of the teachings of Confucius,
is in the Lun Yu, or Analects, which is made up chiefly of what are said to
be the sayings of the great master. Some of these are of doubtful authen
ticity, but the larger part appear to be authentic, although not necessarily
the ipsissima verba of the sage, recorded by loyal followers.

Before the end of the Chou several schools of thought developed within
the stream of what may be called the Confucian tradition. The immediate
successors of Confucius seem not to have been men of outstanding ability,
and it was not until Mencius that what may be called Confucianism again
included a man of first-rate caliber. The traditional dates of Mencius,
371-289 B.C., like those of Confucius, have been questioned. Mencius
seems to have owed to a wise mother even more than did Confucius. Like
the latter, he was a high-minded scholar who attracted students. Like him,
too, he was chiefly interested in government and spent much of his life
as a wanderer, seeking to induce princes to adopt his standards. He also
followed Confucius in teaching that government should be not by brute
force but by the good example of the rulers. This he emphasized even more
than did Confucius. He maintained — probably as a necessary corollary to
his contention that a state would respond to worthy influence — that man
is by nature good. Man's nature must, of course, be educated, but this was
to be by an environment made favorable by good will, by music, by art,
and by kindly care of rulers. As a further corollary, Mencius would justify
rebellion against hopelessly corrupt rulers, declaring that Heaven, hearing
and seeing as the people hear and see, would remove its mandate from those
against whom the people persistently complained. Even more than Con
fucius, Mencius was a caustic critic of the princes. He was emphatic in
believing that the state must encourage the material welfare of men — by
promoting the provision of food and clothing. He made much of jen, which
may be translated as "kindness," "goodness," or "human-heartedness." His
views are preserved to us in a book, Meng Tzu Shu, or The Book of
Mencius, which seems to be a fairly authentic record of his teachings.

Another great figure of the Chou period who built upon the basis of

56 VOLUME I

Confucius and is said to have done much to shape Confucianism was
Hsiin K'uang, or Hsiin Tzu. He was probably a little more than forty years
younger than Mencius, and his working life fell mostly in the third century
B.C. Hsiin Tzu, also concerned for good government, but living in an age
when violence was even more marked than in the times of Confucius and
Mencius, contended that man is by nature bad. This evil nature, however, he
held to' be indefinitely improvable. The change is to be wrought largely
by educating men through self-effort, through practice, through acquired
habit, through the regular and proper observance of ritual, through music,
through the social customs come down from the past, through the example
of worthy princes, and through laws. He deplored war and would have
a prince win the allegiance of his enemy's people by his noble character
rather than by arms. He glorified the state, which he would have enforce
the right kind of education. The state, too, he wished to see achieve a
balance between men's material wants — for food and clothing — which
lead to strife, and the supply of these necessities. Like Mencius, he held
that the economic basis of society is important. He believed that he found
both the principles of ethics and the correct rites in the words and acts
of the sage-rulers of the past, as recorded in the classical books. He denied,
however, the existence of the spiritual beings whom the ceremonies were
supposed to honor. He derided fortune-telling by physiognomy-reading,
and while he allowed the traditional forms of divination by the state, he
regarded them as undependable. He held that Heaven is not personal, but
is unvarying law which automatically and infallibly rewards the good and
punishes the evil. In the face of the confusion in existing society, he was an
optimist, insisting that the universe is on the side of righteousness and that
man's evil nature can be modified for good. He did much to encourage
the strain of agnosticism which permeated much of later Chinese thought.

Of the philosophical schools of the Chou period, the next to Confucian
ism in lasting influence was Taoism. The traditional founder was Lao Tzu,
reputedly an older contemporary of Confucius and the keeper of the
archives of the court of the Chou. He is a very shadowy figure and may
never have existed. The little book attributed to him, usually called the
Tao Te Ching but also having the title the Lao Tzu, the most honored
treatise of the school, is very possibly of the third century B.C. and is of very
uncertain authorship. The most prominent Taoist teacher, Chuang Tzu,
flourished in the second half of the fourth century B.C. He was master of
a vivid literary style, which later exerted a marked influence. In addition to
the writings ascribed to him and his early disciples, several fragments of
other treatises of the school have come down to us, among them some bear
ing the name Lieh Tzu, and possibly from the Han or Chin dynasty, several
centuries later.

Taoism is so named from the Tao, an ancient Chinese term which the

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 57

school used to represent the great reality back of and infilling the universe.
In general the Taoists seem to have meant by it something akin to what
Western philosophers call the Absolute. Knowledge of the Tao, they in
sisted, is not to be attained by reason and study, but by the mystic's way
of contemplation and inward illumination. Yet the Tao Te Ching insisted
that those who know do not speak and that those who speak do not know.
The real world, accordingly, is not that perceived by the physical senses.
Taoists sought to merge themselves in Nature. Man's conduct, they
argued, should conform to the Tao, and this was held to be wu wei, often
roughly translated as "inaction," but better defined as a way of "doing
everything by doing nothing."

The Taoists were in opposition to the elaborate ritual, the carefully
reasoned codes of ethics, the earnest — and at times pedantic and painful —
cultivation of character, and the intellectual approach of Confucianism.
They were not exclusively concerned with the salvation of society, but
when they did talk about it they maintained that it was to be achieved
by abandoning the elaborate ceremonies and organization of current civili
zation and returning to primitive manners and conforming to the quiet
simplicity of the ceaselessly operating Tao. People must not be taught nor
their desires awakened by learning. The ideal society, so the Tao Te Ching
held, was one in which men heard the cocks crowing and the dogs barking
in the neighboring states but never visited in those states. The early
Taoists may well have represented the protest of rural districts, of thought
ful commoners, and of aristocrats at odds with their own class, against the
elaborate civilization of the towns whose growth seems to have been a
feature of the middle and later centuries of the Chou, and in opposition
to the domination of that official aristocracy of which the Confucian school
was a bulwark.

Still another school was that associated with the name and teachings
of Mo Ti, or Mo Tzu. While his dates are uncertain, Mo Ti seems to have
done most of his work in the second and third quarters of the fifth century
B.C. He came, therefore, between Confucius and Mencius. His interest,
like that of these two, was in the improvement of society. He differed
from them in seeking this, not through the observance of ceremonies, but
by reason aided by logic. In contrast with a tendency, already observable,
to identify Heaven with unvarying, unfeeling law, he believed strongly in
its personality, and employed the term Shang Ti more frequently than the
less personal term Tien. He believed that man finds his highest good in
conforming to the will of this Supreme Being, and since Heaven loves men,
favoring righteousness and hating iniquity, men ought to love one another
and be righteous in life. Men should, indeed, love all their fellows as
they would their own blood brothers. By love Mo Ti meant in part en
lightened self-interest. Applying the tests of love and of logic to human

58 VOLUME I

institutions, he condemned war as unbrotherly and murderous. It must be
noted, however, that it was chiefly offensive war which he felt to be wrong.
He stressed defensive measures against aggression. He did not advocate,
as some Christians have advocated, opposing aggression by active good
will or by passive, unarmed resistance. With his utilitarian outlook, he
condemned many of the rites so dear to the Confucianists. While emphati
cally believing in the existence of spirits, he set himself against extravagant
funerals, elaborate ceremonies, and even music, as detracting from and not
aiding the welfare of the living. He would have a regulated consumption and
would confine production to the necessities. He vigorously denounced
determinism and held that men could perfect themselves by their own
efforts. His views were, not unnaturally, roundly condemned by the Con
fucianists, particularly by Mencius. Among other arguments, they contended
that Mo Ti's principle of universal love, by denying the duty of special
affection for one's kin, would dissolve the family and so destroy society.

Mo Ti's followers remained influential for several centuries after his
death and included many brilliant minds. Before long they seem to have
divided into at least two sects. One, considered more orthodox, emphasized
the religious features of their master's teachings, and the other stressed
his dialectics. The former was held together by strict discipline under
successive heads who were regarded as sages. Its members were somewhat
ascetic, wearing simple clothing and eating plain food, working hard, and
condemning music and elaborate burial and mourning ceremonies. The
other branch was related to the Ming Chia (or School of Names, or the
Logicians).

The Ming Chia had as its two chief exponents Hui Tzu, of the fourth
and third century B.C., and Kung-sun Lung, of the third century B.C. The
Ming Chia had kinship with both the Taoists and the Mohists. With their
penchant for argument and their emphasis on terms, its members have not
inaptly been called the sophists or dialecticians of China.

The sects arising out of the work of Mo Ti seem to have suffered
severely in the disorders that accompanied the end of the Chou. Their
principles of universal love and nonaggression were scarcely in keeping
with the violence of the age. Adherents of Mo Ti, however, were to be
found as late as the first century B.C., and his writings were studied into
modern times.

A thinker who seems to have left behind him no cult, and whose teach
ings are known chiefly through his adversaries, was Yang Chu. Yang Chu,
who lived in the fourth century B.C., acknowledged allegiance to none of
the schools of the time, but was an individualist and espoused both pessi
mism and fatalism. He viewed life as full of woe. Any exertion to better
human society, such as that made by the Confucianists and Mohists, so he
said, is futile, for fate determines all. Such heroes of China's antiquity as

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 59

Shim, Yii, and Chou Kung, who spent themselves in the service of the
state, he insisted, knew never a day of ease, and those whom the Confucian-
ists branded as villians, like Chieh and Chou Hsin, who were reported
to have ended their respective dynasties by their vices, enjoyed lives of
pleasure. Dead, both good and bad are equal. Yang Chu advised, accord
ingly, that each should take life as it comes, enduring and making the most
of it for himself, and not bothering about others or the state. He has been
regarded as contributing to the development of Taoism. At least some say
ings ascribed to him were quoted approvingly by early Taoists.

Another school, only fragments of whose teachings have been pre
served, is sometimes known as that of the philosophy of nature or of yin
and yang. On the basis of the yin and the yang it sought to frame a cos
mogony and a cosmology. It held that the eternal Tao expresses itself
through the yin and the yang, represented by the whole and the broken
lines of the ancient trigrams. The Naturalists made much of the "five
elements" or "five powers": wood, metal, fire, water, and earth. Many
of the ideas of this school were not their exclusive creation or property but
were widely diffused. They were to be very influential and reappeared
repeatedly in the history of Chinese thought.

Still another trend was represented by the Fa Chia, or Legalists. Along
with Confucianism and Taoism, it had a major continuing influence in the
life of China. Living in the fourth century, when disorder was increasing, its
exponents despaired of saving society and improving human nature by the
moral example of the rulers, as the Confucianists would do. One cannot
be sure of having a ruler of high character to set such an example, they
contended, and even if there were such, men are not sufficiently good by
nature to respond. A fixed body of law, impartially and firmly administered,
will not fluctuate as does the character of princes. Men, too, with their
imperfect natures, can best be restrained and guided by force expressed in
law. Laws should be adapted to changing circumstances and should be
framed partly on the basis of the study and rectification of terms — of which
the school made much. Aristocracy and the state were exalted. One group
of the Legalists stressed agriculture and the economic self-sufficiency of
each principality. Another sought to encourage commerce as a source of
prosperity. It wished to socialize capital and have the state undertake
trade and thus prevent private manipulation of prices and inequality of
wealth.

Confucianism, Taoism, and Mohism all had their influence on Fa Chia.
Various Legalists showed evidence of being molded in part by one or the
other of them. For example, Han Fei Tzu (of the third century B.C.), an
outstanding Legalist of whose writings a large proportion have come down
to us, was in many respects a Taoist. He is said also to have been a pupil
of Hsiin Tzu, and so to have been subject to some Confucian ideas.

60 VOLUME I

Hstin Tzu's conception of human nature as bad but improvable, and of
education as something to be enforced by society, seems to have developed
logically into Legalist ideas. Han Fei Tzu, it may be added, was a re
doubtable skeptic who questioned the alleged facts of antiquity concern
ing Yao and Shun to which so many scholars appealed for authority. He
came to his end by suicide (233 B.C.) induced by the animosity of Li Ssu,
who, as we are to see, had a major share in the organization of the Empire
under the Ch'in.

To another notable representative of the Fa Chia, Wei Yang (also
called Kung-sun Yang or Shang Yang), is, as we have noted, attributed
the reorganization of Ch'in, under Duke Hsiao, in the middle of the fourth
century B.C., which prepared the way for the ultimate triumph of that state.
But the work ascribed to him, The Book of Lord Shang, did not have him
as its author. Wei Yang is said to have destroyed the decentralization
which before his time prevailed in Ch'in as elsewhere in China, substituting
for it an absolute ruler governing through a bureaucracy; to have abolished
the ching t'ien system of landholding, replacing it with individual peasant
proprietorship; to have instituted severe laws with exact rewards and
punishments; and arranging families in groups, to have made each jointly
responsible for the good behavior of its members. He is reported to have
decried much of the culture of the old China and to have stressed agri
culture and military organization. By discouraging interstate commerce and
hoarding the produce of the soil, he is said to have attempted — in a fashion
resembling that of the mercantilists of later European times — to make
Ch'in self-dependent. Some of this — the encouragement of agriculture and
the frowning on commerce — had a distinctly Taoist tinge. By centralization
under an absolute ruler governing through a bureaucracy, by severe dis
cipline, and by military and economic organization, he sought to weld Ch'in
into an effective fighting unit.

Whether or not Wei Yang was responsible for all these changes, they
were distinctly Legalist in their conception and were carried out in Ch'in.
Largely because of them, Ch'in attained to the efficiency which enabled
her to master her neighbors. It is not strange that, victorious, Ch'in sought
to apply them to the entire Empire. While Ch'in's dominance was short
lived, the system then introduced, although not preserved in toto, made
an indelible impression.

Akin to Legalism, but stressing the organization and operation of
bureaucratic government rather than penal law, was a stream of thought
which influenced the Ch'in and later imperial administration. Some of
its exponents might be called anti-Legalistic.

Finally, according to one early Chinese classification, we have a school
of eclectics which in the fourth century B.C. sought to combine the best
from all the others, a school of agricultural writers (somewhat anarchistic),

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 61

another of diplomacy (whose chief works are lost) , and still another whose
name may be translated as that of the novelists (dealing in fanciful ac
counts of history and geography). None, however, compared in importance
with the major schools.

These, then, were the main trends of thought which made the later
years of the Chou dynasty the great creative period of the Chinese mind.
Not until the first half of the twentieth century were the Chinese to exhibit
again such freedom in speculation and never again have they displayed so
much originality. Of the schools of thoughts which arose during the Chou,
three — Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism — were to have major shares in
shaping the China of the ensuing centuries.

SUMMARY

Throughout much of this chapter the note of uncertainty has
been sounded. Many of the features and movements of the centuries covered
in it, particularly of the earlier ones, are still only vaguely discerned.
Others, once accepted by orthodox Chinese historians, are vigorously
challenged. Many conclusions must be tentative. It seems clear, however,
that during these millenniums later Chinese civilization was largely deter
mined. For the major proportion of their social and ethical ideals and for
many of their institutions and customs succeeding generations looked for
sanction to the China of the years before the Ch'in.

This culture, so rich and vigorous, had its original seat in the North
China plain and in the valley of the Wei. However, it was not confined
to those regions but spread to the outlying districts, only partly Chinese in
blood, where were those great states in whose hands lay the political
destinies of the land. The agents of the spread seem chiefly to have been
scholars, statesmen, and aristocratic adventurers from the older China,
who, seeking employment at the hands of the powerful but semibarbarous
chieftains on the frontier, tutored these rulers in the civilization which they
respected and copied while they domineered over its possessors. It was a
process which, in its essence, Chinese history was often to see reproduced —
the conquerors yielding to the culture of the conquered.

China was expanding, by the migration of both the Chinese and their
culture. The way was being prepared for new and startling developments.
Divided politically but vigorous intellectually, China was to be united
under one strong rule. In doing so, it was to display fresh cultural growth.
The formation of the new Empire was to be accompanied not only by
marked political changes, but also by extensive alterations in the economic,
social, and intellectual life of the people.

Future developments, revolutionary in many ways though they were,
did not efface the cultural contributions of the Chou and its predecessors.

62 VOLUME 1

The emphases on ceremonial, the forms of ritual, the family system, and
the growing regard for certain ethical standards were to persist, some of
them studiously unaltered, into the opening decades of the twentieth cen
tury. In many respects, before the final downfall of the Chou, Chinese
culture had taken on its definitive ideals. Only in the twentieth century
and under the impact of the Occident and Russia were sweeping changes
seen. Even then, as we are to see, some basic attitudes persisted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Most of the chief Chinese sources for the period have been mentioned. The
standard translation into English of the Shu Ching and the Ch'un Ch'iu (in
cluding the Tso Chuan) are by James Legge in The Chinese Classics (5 vols.,
Hong Kong, 1861-1872, 2nd ed., revised 5 vols., Oxford, London, 1893, 1895).
Translations of the Li Chi, Shu Ching, I Ching, and parts of the Shih Ching by
Legge (Oxford, 1879, 1882, 1885) form vols. 3, 16, 27, and 28 of The Sacred
Books of the East . . . edited by F. Max Muller. S. Couvreur has made trans
lations into French and Latin of the Li Chi (2nd ed., Hochienfu, 1913), the
Shu Ching (Hochienfu, 1897), the Shih Ching (Hochienfu, 1896), the Four
Books (2nd ed., Hochienfu, 1910), and also into French, of the Ch'un Ch'iu
(Hochienfu, 1914). An English translation of the Chu Shu Chi Nien (Bamboo
Annals) is in Legge's prolegomena to the Shu Ching. The Chou Li has been
translated into French by E. Biot (Le Tcheou-H ou Rites des Tcheou, 3 vols.,
Paris, 1851). The 1 Li has been translated by John Steele in The 1 Li or Book
of Etiquette and Ceremonial (London, 1917). See Sir Everard Fraser and
J. H. S. Lockhart, Index to the Tso Chuan (Oxford University Press, 1930).
See also The I Ching or Book of Changes, the Richard Wilhelm translation
rendered into English by Gary F. Baynes (New York, Pantheon Books, 2 vols.,
1950); Hellmut Wilhelm, "I-Ching Oracles in the Tso-Chuan and the Kuo-Yxi,"
Journal, of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 79, pp. 275-280; T'ang Yung-
t'ing, "Wang Pi's Interpretation of the I Ching and Lun Yu," translation and
notes by W. Liebenthal, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 10, pp. 124-
161; and Hellmut Wilhelm* Change, Eight Lectures on the I Ching, translated
by C. F. Baynes (New York, Pantheon Books, 1960, pp. x, 111). See also
Bernhard Karlgren, The Book of Odes (Stockholm, Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities, 1950, pp. 270), Chinese text, translation, and notes.

The discussion of the authenticity of the so-called "ancient" text of the
Shn Ching, with a list of what are regarded as spurious portions, is in Edouard
Chavannes, Les Memoires Historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, Vol. I (Paris, 1895),
pp. cxiii-cxxxvi, and in Paul Pelliot, Le Chou king et le Chang chou che wen;
Memoires concernant L'Asie Orientate, II (Paris, 1916). Beginning with the
so-called Han Learning school of the Ch'ing dynasty, some Chinese scholars
have been giving much attention to the authenticity and dates of these early
literary remains. An excellent short summary is in Arthur W. Hummel, "What
Chinese Historians are Doing to Their Own History," American Historical
Review, Vol. 34 (July, 1929), pp. 715-724.

On tests to determine the authenticity of the ancient texts see B. Karlgren,
"The Authenticity of Ancient Chinese Texts," The Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities, Stockholm, Bulletin No. 1, 1929, pp. 165-184; B. Karlgren, On the

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 63

Authenticity and Nature of the Tso Chuan (Goteborg, 1926); B. Karlgren,
"The Early History of the Chou Li and Tso Chuan Texts," The Museum of Far
Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Bulletin No. 3, pp. 1-59; and H. Maspero,
"La Composition et la Date du Tso tchuan," Melanges Chinois et Bouddhiques,
Vol. I, pp. 137-216.

The Li Sao has been translated several times. It is included in David
Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u; The Songs of the South; An Ancient Chinese Anthology
(Oxford, 1959, pp, viii, 229). On the poetry of Ch'u see Ed. Erkes, "The
Ta-chao," Hirth Anniversary Volume (London, 1923, pp. 67-86).

English translations of the Lun Yu are in Legge, The Chinese Classics',
W. E. Soothill, The Analects of Confucius (Yokohama, 1910, pp. 1028),
especially useful for its Chinese text and extensive notes, and Arthur Waley,
The Analects of Confucius (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1939, pp. 268).
On Confucius see also H. G. Creel, Confucius, the Man and the Myth (New
York, The John Day Company, 1949, pp. 363); and H. H. Dubs, "The Date
of Confucius' Birth," Asia Minor, Vol. I. Part 2, pp. 139-146.

A standard English translation of Mencius is in Legge, The Chinese Classics.
On Mencius see also Leonard A. Lyall, Mencius (London, 1932), and I. A.
Richards, Mencius on the Mind (London, 1932).

Long the standard works in English on Hsiin Tzu are Homer H. Dubs,
Hsuntze, the Moulder of Ancient Confucianism (London, Arthur Probstain,
1927, pp. xxxi, 308), and Homer H. Dubs, The Works of Hsuntze, translated
from the Chinese (London, Arthur Probstain, 1928, pp. 336).

Translations of the Tao Te Ching are in James Legge, The Texts of Taoism
(Oxford, 2 vols., 1891, vols. 39 and 40 of The Sacred Books of the East,
reprinted by the Julian Press, New York, 1959, pp. 790); Arthur Waley, The
Way and Its Power. A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese
Thought (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1934, pp. 262) ; J. J. L. Duyvendak,
Tao Te Ching. The Book of the Way and Its Virtue (London, John Murray,
1954, pp. vi, 172); and J. J. L. Duyvendak, Tao To King. Le Livre de la
Voie et de la Vertu (Paris, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1953, pp. xiii, 187). On the
highly debatable date and historicity of Lao Tzu see, among many other dis
cussions, H. H. Dubs in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 61,
pp. 215-221, Vol. 62, pp. 300-304, D. Bodde in Journal of the American
Oriental Society, Vol. 42, pp. 8-12, Vol. 44, pp. 24-27, and Hu Shin in
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 373-397. For a comprehensive
and learned account of Taoism, ascribing to it importance in the development
of Chinese science, but not entirely convincing, see Joseph Needham, Science
and Civilization in China (Cambridge University Press, 1956, pp. xxii, 696),
passim, especially pp. 33-165.

English translations of Chuang Tzu are in Legge, The Texts of Taoism and
H. A. Giles, Chuang Tzii Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (2nd ed.,
Shanghai, 1926).

On Lieh Tzu see Lionel Giles, Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh Tzu
(London, 1912), and The Book of Lieh-tzu, translated by A. C. Graham
(London, John Murray, 1960, pp. xi, 183).

For translations of Mo Ti see Alfred Forke, Me Ti, des Socialethikers und
Schuler philosophische Werke (Berlin, 1922), and Y. P. Mei, The Ethical and
Political Works of Motse (London, 1929).

On Yang Chu see A. Forke, Yang Chu's Garden of Pleasure (London,
1912).

VOLUME I

For the Legalists, see a translation of the work attributed to Wei Yang
(Shang Yang), by L J. L. Duyvendak, in The Book of Lord Shang. A Classic
of the Chinese School of Law (London, Arthur Probstain, 1928, pp. xiv, 346) ;
W. K. Liao, The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, a Classic of Chinese
Legalism (London, Arthur Probstain, Vol. I, 1939, pp. xxxiii, 310); and H. G.
Creel, 'The Fa-chia: 'Legalists' or 'Administrators,' " The Bulletin of the In
stitute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Extra Volume No. 4 (1961),
pp. 607-636.

Useful works covering the thought of the Chou era are Wm. Theodore de
Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, compilers, Sources of Chinese
Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 1960, pp. xxiv, 976), pp.
3-158, valuable for its translations of extensive excerpts from the sources and
for its excellent introductions to the excerpts; Fung Yu-lan, edited by Derk
Bodde, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York, The Macmillan
Co., 1948, pp. xx, 368), of which pp. 1-190 are on the Chou era; Fung Yu-lan,
translated by Derk Bodde, A History of Chinese Philosophy (Vol. I, Peiping,
Henri Vetch, 1937, Vol. II, Princeton University Press, 1953), of which Vol.
I, pp. 7-336 are on the Chou era; Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in
Ancient China (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1939), pp. 375; H. G. Creel,
Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung (The University of Chicago
Press, 1953, pp. ix, 293), of which pp. 25-158 are on the Chou era; A. Forke,
Geschichte der alien chinesischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 1927).

On the pre-Shang periods see L. C. Goodrich, "Archeology in China: the
First Decades," The Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 5-16; Cheng
Te-kun, Archeology in China. Vol. I, Prehistoric China (Cambridge, W. Heffer
& Sons, 1959, pp. xix, 250); Li Chi, The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization
(Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1957, pp. 123); Kwang-chih Chang,
"New Light on Early Man in China," in Asian Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.
41-61 (Hong Kong University Press, 1960); and Kwang-chih Chang, "Chinese
Prehistory in Pacific Perspective: Some Hypotheses and Problems," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 22, pp. 100-149. Pioneer studies, all useful,
are J. G. Andersson, "An Early Chinese Culture" in Bulletin of the Geological
Survey of China, No. 5, Part 1 (Oct., 1923), pp. 1-68; J. G. Andersson, "The
Cave-Deposit at Sha Kuo T'un in Fengtien," Palaeontologia Sinica, Series D.,
Vol. 1, Fascicule 1, Peking (1923); T. J. Arne, "Painted Stone Age Pottery
from the Province of Honan, China," Palaeontologia Sinica, Series D, Vol. 1,
Fascicule 2 (1925); and Franz Weidenreich, "The Skull of Sinanthropus
Pekinensis," Palaeontologia Sinica, New Series D, No. 10, Whole Series, No.
127 (1943); K. C. Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China (Yale Univer
sity Press, 1963).

On the archaeology of the Shang the best summary using the results of
excavations in the 1950's as well as those of earlier years is Cheng Te-kun,
Archaeology in China, Vol. II, Shang China (Cambridge, W. Heffer & Sons,
1960, pp. xxvii, 368).

For studies covering all or part of the Shang and Chou periods see Henri
Maspero, La Chine Antique (Paris, E. de Boccard, 1927, pp, 624, revised
edition, but with only slight changes and partially out of date, Paris, 1955);
H. G. Creel, The Birth of China: A Survey of the Formative Period of Chinese
Civilization (London, Jonathan Cape, 1937, pp. 396), semipopular in style
and based on competent scholarship; H. G. Creel, Studies in Early Chinese
Culture (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trtibner & Co., pp. xxii, 266), more

The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization 65

technical than the preceding and also dealing with the pre-Shang centuries;
Henri Maspero, Melanges Posthumes sur les Religions et d'Histoire de la Chine
(Paris, Musee Guimet, 3 vols.), of which the third volume is especially im
portant for this period; and Richard L. Walker, The Multi-State System of
Ancient China (New Haven, The Shoe String Press, 1953, pp. 135). The
Shih Chi of Ssu-ma Ch'ien, a famous general history of China giving the story
from the beginning and written at the close of the second and the beginning
of the first century B.C., has been in part translated into French with extremely
full and valuable prolegomena, appendices, and notes, by Edouard Chavannes,
in Les Memoires Historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien (5 vols., Paris, 1895-1905). A
stimulating book, majoring on the pre-Han period, is Marcel Granet, Chinese
Civilization, translated by K. E. Innes and M. R. Brailsford (New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1930, pp. xxiii, 444). Suggestive on the influence of Central Asia is
Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Oxford University Press,
1940, pp. xxiii, 585), pp. 3-425.

Among special monographs on phases and features of the Shang and the
Chou are Henri Maspero, "L'Astronomie Chinoise avant les Han," Toung Pao,
Vol. 26 (1929), pp. 267-356; B. Karlgren, "Some Fecundity Symbols in
Ancient China," The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin No. 2
(1930), pp. 1-66; Marcel Granet, Danses et Legendes de la Chine Ancienne
(Paris, 2 vols,, 1926); E. Erkes, "Die Sprache des Alten Ch'u," Toung Pao,
Vol. 27, pp. 1-11; Bernhard Karlgren, "Notes on the Grammar of Early
Chinese Bronze Decor," The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin No.
23, pp. 1-80; T. T. Read, "Chinese Iron— A Puzzle," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 398-407; P. A. Boodberg, "Some Proleptical Re
marks on the Evolution of Archaic Chinese," Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 329-372; William Charles White, Bone Culture of Ancient
China (The University of Toronto Press, 1945, pp. 233); H, H. Dubs, "The
Date of the Shang Period," Toung Pao, Vol. 40 (1951), pp. 324, 325, 331,
Vol. 42 (1954), pp. 101-105; Max Loehr, Chinese Bronze Age Weapons (The
University of Michigan Press,sl956, pp. xiii, 233); K. C. Chang, The Archae
ology of Ancient China (Yale University Press, 1963); T. K. Cheng, Archae
ology in China, Vol. Ill, Chou China (University of Toronto Press, 1963, pp.
xxxii, 430).

CHAPTER THREE

THE FORMATION OF THE EMPIRE: THE CH'IN
AND HAN DYNASTIES (221 B.C.-A.D. 220)

By the third century B.C. many of the foundations of the
future of China had been laid. From paleolithic and neolithic times had
come contributions to the later racial stock, some grains and domestic
animals, the beginnings of silk culture, several shapes of pottery, and a
number of religious conceptions which were to persist into the twentieth
century. The Shang period saw the development and possibly the invention
of writing by the characters which were the ancestors of those in use
through all succeeding centuries. It witnessed the development of bronzes
and the utilization of jade, which were prized by later generations. Some
of its religious terminology was transmitted — although with altered inter
pretations — to the years when the Communists sought to lead the Chinese
away from the belief in the supernatural. The Shang saw the inception of
the literate elite who were associated with the government and who did
much to shape the thought and the ideals of the later Chinese. During
the approximately nine centuries spanned by the period which bears the
name of Chou, further additions were made which determined most of
the main features of Chinese civilization until the cataclysmic irruption
of the Occident. They appeared largely in the second half of the period.
Among them were what, except for Buddhism, were the schools of thought
which, with modifications, formed the future Chinese mind and institutions:
the conviction that the culture of China was the highest created by man
and that all outside it were "barbarians" and for their own well-being
should conform to it; and the assumption that normally all China should be
under one government. The Chou centuries saw the continuation and
further development of that scholar class which had been a feature of
the Shang. Indeed, some attitudes which had appeared before the close
of the Chou were to persist into the years inaugurated by the Communists.
Among them were the beliefs that philosophy must have as its controlling
purpose the promotion of the this-worldly good of mankind; that all the
Chinese must be ruled by one regime which would be under the tutelage of
an elite minority committed to and disciplined by that philosophy; and that
this philosophy (under the Communists, Marxism as interpreted by that elite
minority) was the one by which all mankind should be governed and which
the Chinese must propagate and maintain.

The Formation of the Empire 67

The Chou period was followed by slightly more than four centuries
in which the philosophies created under it were given concrete expression
in institutions that, with important modifications and additions, were to
prevail until they were swept aside in the effort to preserve the independence
and the leadership of China in the world that was being shaped by forces
emerging from Western Europe. This was through the Chinese Empire
created by what were known as the Ch'in and Han dynasties. The Ch'in
dynasty, committed to Legalist ideals, was short-lived. It was succeeded
by the Han dynasty, which, with a brief break, continued for approximately
four hundred years. In its ideals the Han was governed chiefly by con
ceptions which were Legalist and Confucian in origin. A mixture of the
two in varying proportions was to be influential in the major regimes of
indigenous stock which ruled China until the twentieth century, and was
adopted in varying degrees by the "barbarians" who from time to time
governed part or all of China.

THE CH'IN DYNASTY: SHIH HUANG TI

The triumph of Ch'in was not the work of one man. Many
had had a part— Duke Mu, Duke Hsiao, Shang Yang (Wei Yang), and
others whom we have not named. A system rather than an individual was
victor. It is not strange, therefore, that the conqueror sought to recognize
and rule the newly won Empire by the methods which had been effective in
his own state. In doing so, he proved unable to perpetuate the power of his
house, but he began a new day for eastern Asia. He outlined an organiza
tion which, with many alterations, was that by which the Middle Kingdom
was governed until A.D. 1912 and which, with occasional failures of
longer or shorter duration, held together with remarkable success the
vast region which is China. Moreover, in welding all China into one politi
cal unit, the conqueror, possibly quite unconsciously, brought in part to
fruition the hopes of many dreamers.

The leader immediately responsible for this revolutionary develop
ment was Cheng — better known to history as Shih Huang Ti. His great
assistant, chief minister, and a main architect of the new empire was Li
Ssu. Li Ssu, one of those migrant scholar-statesmen for whom the later
years of the Chou had been famous, was a native of the state of Ch'u,
and had, together with Han Fei Tzu, the distinguished Legalist, been a
pupil of Hslin Tzu. Especially did Hsiin Tzu's theory of the absolute power
of the prince accord with their ideals. In practice Li Ssu was a thorough
going Legalist and so fitted in with the purposes of Cheng. Li Ssu was
older than Cheng and became so prominent that he intermarried his chil
dren with his master's. Cold, calculating Li Ssu was a striking contrast with
the impetuous, superstitious and masterful Cheng.

When all China had been subdued, the energies of Cheng and Li Ssu

68 VOLUME I

were directed toward consolidating the conquests into an administrative
and cultural whole, toward extending the boundaries into non-Chinese
territory, and toward safeguarding the frontiers.

Cheng's organization of the Empire bears all the marks of genius —
whether his or Li Ssu's or a heritage from the earlier rulers and ministers
of Ch'in is difficult to say. It was probably due to all three. Indeed,
the extinction of the old nobility was already a policy of Ch'in. The princi
palities which had given the period of the Chou both its variety and its
disorder were abolished. This step was presumably made easier by the deci
mation of the aristocracy in the prolonged wars which preceded the triumph
of Ch'in. On the advice of Li Ssu, a suggestion that the realm be redivided
into satrapies governed by members of the conqueror's family was rejected.
Instead of rule through the old aristocracy or through Cheng's kin, an
elaborate bureaucracy was created, with diversified functions and carefully
graded honorific titles. At the capital was a numerous administrative
staff divided into several departments, The Empire was organized into
thirty-six chun, or provinces (later augmented to forty or forty-one), and
each of these in turn into hsien, or prefectures of varying sizes. Over every
chun and hsien was placed a member of the bureaucracy. The plan, it must
be added, was not entirely new. In name and concept, both chun and hsien
had come down from the Chou, although under the Chou the latter had
been larger than the former. Wei Yang, moreover, had created a hierarchy
with many titles. Very wisely, Cheng and Li Ssu did not depart entirely
from the past.

At the head of the whole organization was an autocrat with a new
title. To signalize the fact that he was beginning an era, Cheng assumed
the designation of Shih Huang Ti (Shih meaning first, and Huang and Ti
being titles customarily ascribed to mythical or semimythical rulers of
antiquity — the Three Huang and the Five Ti) and thus endeavored to give
himself a divine or semidivine significance. Henceforth Huang Ti was a title
which we translate as Emperor. Cheng was determined to give fresh
prestige to his reign and to distinguish his office from that of the inept
Chou. Had he been content with Wang, the designation of the Chou mon-
archs, he might properly have been expected to reproduce their form
of government, with its disastrous decentralization. Moreover, Wang had
been adopted as a title by some rulers of the states of the late Chou. He
was not content to be identified with them. He was creating something
new.

To insure the pacification of his realm, Shih Huang Ti had the arms
of those who were not in his own forces collected and melted into bells
and huge statues. Probably further to establish his authority, he ordered
the powerful and wealthy of the realm to move to the capital, Hsienyang,
not far from an earlier Chou capital and the later Ch'angan. Here, pre-

The Formation of the Empire 69

sumably, they could be more easily kept under surveillance and would
lend dignity to the capital and so to the sovereign's power. It may be sig
nificant, moreover, that the capital was retained in the ancient territory
of Ch'in, nearer to the dangerous northwest frontier than had been the
later capital of the Chou. To the south of the River Wei across from
Hsienyang, Shih Huang Ti constructed a vast palace by the labor of
thousands of men made eunuchs by the state.

Probably with the double purpose of insuring unity and prosperity, Shih
Huang Ti attempted to make uniform the weights and measures of his
domains. Implements and the gauges of wagons were also standardized.

Under Shih Huang Ti the private ownership of land by the peasants,
which since the fourth century had prevailed in Ch'in, was extended to the
entire country. True to his Legalist training, the Emperor was trying to
encourage agriculture.

Great public works were undertaken. It is said that under the Ch'in
the irrigation system that makes fruitful the plain about Chengtu, in
Szechwan, was constructed. It is reported that it was Li Ping, a Ch'in offi
cial, who distributed the waters of the Min River through a network of
canals. Shih Huang Ti attempted to further unity by building an extensive
system of roads centering in the capital. He also did much to improve the
canals, possibly with a similar motive. Apparently with the same objective,
he destroyed some of the walls and other fortifications erected by the local
princes.

The Emperor was an indefatigable traveler. Possibly from the innate
restlessness and desire to see the country, and perhaps with the purpose
of personally supervising his officials and so of insuring order, he spent
much of his time traversing his domains. A prodigious worker, he gave
many days to reading official reports and other documents.

One of Shih Huang Ti's most famous — or infamous — devices for insur
ing peace and unity was his attempt to suppress the criticisms of his rule
by the adherents of others of the philosophical schools than the one he was
following. As we have seen, the state of Ch'in had been organized by
Shang Yang according to the principles of the Legalists: by severe laws,
absolute autocracy, the encouragement of agriculture, and concomitant
measures. To this system Ch'in rulers attributed much of their success,
and Shih Huang Ti sought to extend it to the entire Empire. The last
centuries of the Chou, however, had been marked by freedom of thought
and discussion and, as a corollary, by the vigorous denunciation of one
school by another. The schools, moreover, concerned themselves largely
with government and political theory. It is not strange, therefore, that
Shih Huang Ti looked askance at the prospect of the continuation of these
disputations. By them his own theories of administration would be pointedly
questioned and the continuation of his rule threatened. Criticism had

70 VOLUME I

apparently already begun — if indeed it had ever ceased — when, in response
to a memorial of the influential Li Ssu, the opposing schools and the docu
ments on which they based their authority were ordered suppressed. The
memorial rehearsed what was almost certainly the fact — that the scholars
were condemning the laws of Ch'in and were praising the institutions of
the past. The Confucianists, with their emphasis upon the moral influence
of an upright ruler rather than upon strict law, and the followers of Mo Ti,
with their belief in applying universally the principle of love, were especially
opposed to the type of government which Shih Huang Ti was establishing.
Moreover, the Confucianists regretted the passing of the old nobility. When,
as they were accused of doing, the scholars voiced their views publicly, they
probably found ready listeners among those who were groaning under
the heavy hand of the Emperor, with his suppression of the old decen
tralized society, his stringent regulations, and his heavy exactions in taxes
and labor. It must be added that some Legalists were averse to any wide
use of literature. There are suggestions that Shang Yang had considered
a holocaust of books when he was in charge of Ch'in, and that Shih Huang
Ti found the idea in the writings of the great Legalist, Han Fei Tzu. More
over, Mencius reports that princes had the custom of burning books which
were obnoxious to them.

Shih Huang Ti, at the suggestion of Li Ssu and with Legalist severity,
decreed that all the literature to which the non-Legalist scholars looked
for authority be taken by the local officials and burned, including the
official chronicles of the several states, the Classic of Poetry (Shih Ching),
the Classic of History (Shu Ching), and the discourses of the teachers
of the philosophical schools. The task was not so difficult as might be
supposed, for most of the books seem to have been on slips of bamboo,
which were bulky and not easy of concealment, and the copies were
probably not numerous. The only books excepted from the proscription
were those on divination, on medicine, on agriculture and arboriculture,
and the oflicial chronicles of the state of Ch'in. These either fitted in with
the Legalist theories, which stressed agriculture, with the predilections of
the Emperor, who was very credulous of superstitions, or with the desire
to glorify Ch'in and its power. Copies of the prohibited books were to be
preserved in the imperial library, but they could not be consulted without
the consent of the proper officials. The death penalty was prescribed for
those who discussed the Shih Ching and the Shu Ching — a favorite method
of teaching by the members of the various schools — and for those who
denounced the present and praised antiquity. Punishments only slightly
less drastic were decreed for those who failed to burn their books and
for officials who did not enforce the edict. The conduct of the people, so
it was ordered, must be regulated entirely by the officials by means of the
law, and not by any books in which "the sayings of the ancient kings"
were held up as an example.

The Formation of the Empire 71

Just how thoroughly the decree was enforced we do not know. It
may be that the literary losses commonly ascribed to it were due more to
the wars which immediately preceded the triumph of Ch'in. Many of the
cities were burned in these struggles, and the collections of books con
tained in them must have suffered heavily. From the catalogue of the
imperial library of the succeeding dynasty, moreover, it is clear that the
sweep was by no means thorough. Some destruction there undoubtedly
was — enough to bring down upon the memory of Shih Huang Ti the
opprobrium of generations of writers of the school which under later
dynasties was made orthodox — that of Confucius. Scholars who violated
the command were executed, and even the heir apparent was exiled to
the frontier for criticizing the Emperor.

The reign was by no means one of complete suppression of literary
advance — or at least not of the tools of scholarship. Li Ssu is the reported
inventor of a new style of script, the "Lesser Seal." The "Lesser Seal"
characters, it must be noted, were already in use in the latter part of
the Chou. Li Ssu constructed an improved list and made it compulsory
tftrpughout the realm, thus further promoting the unity of the Empire and
its culture. It embodied the forms, which, with modifications, became
standard in later centuries. To the commander-in-chief of the Emperor's
armies, Meng T'ien, is ascribed — incorrectly, for the brush pen had been
in use for centuries — the invention of the writing brush of hair. But he
may have created the pointed brush. Probably about the same time silk,
already employed for such purposes, was further substituted for bamboo
s}ips as a vehicle for the written characters.

As we have suggested, Shih Huang Ti, not content with unifying China,
proceeded to extend his boundaries into non-Chinese territory. Much of
tfte coast from the present Chekiang south into what is now Vietnam was
occupied by peoples called the Yiieh. They were partially civilized, tattoo
ing their bodies, using metals, and displaying skill as navigators. They
possessed fertile and well-cultivated lands. In 221 B.C. Shih Huang Ti sent
five large armies to annex the region. The more northerly territories — those
in the present Chekiang, Fukien, and Kwangtung beyond Canton— were
quickly overrun. It was not until about 214 B.C., however, that the more
sputherly regions were conquered. By the end of that year the Ch'in
boundaries seem to have been extended into the delta of the Red River

along the coastal plain beyond the site of the present Hue.

Shih Huang Ti is credited with colonizing the present Kwangtung with
the idle and the vagabonds — among them probably those who were kept
out of peaceful pursuits by the long wars and now, with the restoration
of order, were left restless and without regular employment, and hence
became actual or incipient bandits constituting a menace to the community.
Some of the colonists are said to have been criminals — those who had
fallen afoul of the severe laws of Ch'in. Others very probably were those

72 VOLUME I

thrown out of their usual occupations by the abolition of the old political
order.

Some of the main features of the Ch'in administrative organization
were extended transiently and perhaps nominally to the later Kwangtung,
Kwangsi, and Tongking. The Chinese, however, seem to have disturbed
but little, if at all, the local political forms, the social institutions, and the
culture of the southern portions of their new conquests. The process of as
similating the region was to be deferred until the next dynasty.

In the Center and the central West, Shih Huang Ti's domains extended
into the present Hunan, Kweichow, and Szechwan. Szechwan was colonized
by enforced emigration from the older China.

In the Northwest, Shih Huang Ti's forces defeated the Hsiung-nu, a
pastoral, horse-using people, probably akin to the Tatars and Turks and
possibly the same as or related to the Huns of European history. For sev
eral centuries we hear much of them in Chinese annals. About the time
of Shih Huang Ti, but more immediately after his time than during it, the
Hsiung-nu were being welded into an effective confederation. The Emperor
only temporarily curbed their power, and when the Ch'in collapsed they
again proved a serious menace. Shih Huang Ti's conquests against the
Hsiung-nu are said to have reached as far as the present Lanchow in
Kansu. Into the Northwest, too, the Emperor extended his administrative
organization and settled part of the region with convicts from his older
domains.

In what is now Korea a prince recognized the overlordship of the Ch'in.
There are hints, too, that Shih Huang Ti sketched out a maritime policy.

On the northern marches, as a protection against the forays of the
Hsiung-nu and other truculent, seminomadic tribes, Shih Huang Ti con
structed, by forced labor, fortresses and barriers, extensive portions of
that Great Wall which, added to and repaired during the centuries, is one
of the monumental achievements of men's hands. Long before the time of
Shih Huang Ti, the princes of the northern states are said to have built
walls along their northern frontiers as a defense against forays and in
vasions. Shih Huang Ti's wall, which very probably incorporated these,
is reported to have extended from somewhere in the present Kansu to
Shanhaikuan on the sea. The present wall follows only in part the course
of that of Shih Huang Ti.

Much of the work of conquest and of the construction of fortifications
was under the supervision of Meng T'ien, who had assisted in the final
subjugation of the Empire.

Such extensive public works required not only forced labor but also
heavy taxation. New imposts were devised, among them a poll tax. They
did not serve to make the Emperor popular with his subjects.

Shih Huang Ti, conqueror and able organizer and administrator though
he seems to have been, shared the religious beliefs and superstitions of his

The Formation of the Empire 73

age. He sacrificed extensively to various divinities, carrying out a well-
established custom that the state should thus insure the co-operation of
the unseen powers for the welfare of man. Among others, the Ch'in
worshiped four gods which had been revered in earlier times. The Emperor
was fearful of death and did not like to hear of it or of funerals. He spent
much energy in searching for a drug that would confer immortality. As
a purchase price for it, at the suggestion of one of his advisers in this
quest, he is reported to have sent into the eastern sea a company of youths
and maidens of good families. Tljese were never heard from again, and it is
asserted, although on no dependable grounds, that the expedition reached
and colonized Japan.

The search for the much-desired drug proved vain. Death overtook the
Emperor while he was on one of his journeys, away from his capital
(210 B.C.). Li Ssu, who was with him at the time, feared rebellion if the
demise were immediately known. He managed, therefore, to keep the fact
a secret until the imperial entourage, bearing with it the body, returned to
Hsienyang.

The delay gave time for some of the more powerful of the company
to arrange the succession to suit themselves. One of Shih Huang Ti's last
acts had been to order a message sent to his eldest son, the heir apparent —
still in exile on the northern frontier — to return to the capital with the
funeral cortege and conduct the interment. Li Ssu, Chao Kao (a powerful
eunuch), and Hu Hai, the second son of Shih Huang Ti, substituted for it
a letter commanding the eldest son to commit suicide. They also fabricated
a decree of the late Emperor appointing Hu Hai to the succession. This
cold-blooded plot was entirely successful. The eldest son accepted the
spurious missive as genuine and complied with its command. Arrived at the
capital, the conspirators met with no important opposition. Hu Hai mounted
the throne as Erh Shih Huang Ti, "The Second Emperor," and had his
father's remains placed in a huge tomb that had been long in building.

Ssu-ma Ch'ien, writing over a hundred years later, tells marvelous
stories of this sepulcher — saying that it was mountainous in size, that in it
were the reproduction of the heavens and a map of the Empire, that it
was stored with riches, that it was guarded by machines so ingeniously
devised that they would discharge arrows on any intruder, and that the
workmen who had perfected the final arrangements were sealed alive in
the tomb to prevent them from divulging its secrets. How much the story
grew with the telling we do not know, but a lofty tumulus is still pointed
out as the remains of the grave.

THE DOWNFALL OF THE CH'lN DYNASTY

The Ch'in dynasty did not long survive the death of its first
monarch. The changes introduced by the conqueror had been so drastic,

74 VOLUME I

his laws so severe, and the burden of his public works so heavy, that once
his strong hand was removed an upheaval was almost inevitable. The
former rivals of Ch'in had not been so thoroughly crushed and welded into
the new Empire but that adherents were found who sought to revive at least
the strongest of them. Certainly only an extraordinarily able successor
could have prevented or even postponed extensive rebellion. The second
Emperor (6hr Shih Huang Ti — "Second Generation Emperor") was far
from equal to the task. The eunuch Chao Kao soon completely dominated
him. The Second Generation Emperor added to the stringent laws of his
father, continued the heavy taxation and the expensive construction of the
great palace of his sire, and so severely punished those who criticized him
that no official felt safe. The experienced advisers of the last reign were
put out of the way, probably through the machinations of Chao Kao. Meng
T'ien, the commander-in-chief of the armies that guarded the frontier, was
ordered to commit suicide. Li Ssu, after advising moderation and more
attention to the marches, was thrown into prison and executed. Revolts
soon broke out. Chao Kao had the Second Emperor killed (207 B.C.)
after a brief reign of three years and buried him like a commoner. In his
place the eunuch put Tzu-ying (or Ying Tzu-ying), a son of the eldest son
of Shih Huang Ti, but simply with the title of the Wang of Ch'in. Before
long Tzu-ying found a means of having the powerful king-maker killed.
After a reign of less than two months he in turn was eliminated by the head
of a league of rebels, the capital was plundered, the great palace — built
at the cost of so much treasure and human suffering — was given to the
flames, and the dynasty of Ch'in was at an end. Incidentally the disaster
probably entailed even a greater loss of the records of the past than did the
burning of the books by Shih Huang Ti, for copies of the works which he
had proscribed had been preserved in his archives.

The debacle of the family of Shih Huang Ti was overwhelming, but
the work of that monarch was by no means wholly undone. The decentrali
zation of the Chou had been effectively erased, and when, a few years
later, a successful general once more united the Empire, he and his house
preserved in modified form much of the administrative machinery of the
Ch'in. The old states had been so thoroughly disposed of that the attempts
to revive them proved few and unsuccessful The elder China, with its
picturesque variety, had disappeared forever. A unified Empire had been
formed. Much of the old passed over into- the new and left on it an indelible
imprint, but the China which Shih Huang Ti helped to bring into existence
differed henceforth, both in political organization and in other phases of
its civilization, from that of pre-Ch'in times. A new era had dawned.

There is an interesting appropriateness in the origin of the name China.
At its inception it appears to have been a designation given the country by
peoples in Central Asia and to have been derived from Ch'in, with which,

The Formation of the Empire 75

as the dominant state in the Northwest, the non-Chinese to the west would
first come in contact.

THE FOUNDING OF THE EARLIER OR WESTERN HAN DYNASTY

The rebellions which made a sudden and violent end to the
Ch'in dynasty brought an almost entirely new set of families to the fore.
Members of one of the princely houses of the later centuries of the Chou
appear prominently as actors, but either the vigor of the other lines had
run out or most of their able members had been exterminated by Shih
Huang Ti and in the wars that preceded his victories. It was largely off
spring of relatively undistinguished progenitors who emerged as leaders
from the free competition of the fresh period of disorder.

The most prominent of the new men were Hsiang Yli (or Hsiang Chi
Yii) and Liu Chi (Liu Pang). Hsiang Yli possessed great height, marked
impetuosity and generosity, and superb physical prowess. His father had
been a general of Ch'u, whose stronghold, it will be recalled, was in the
Yangtze Valley, and had perished when that state was being conquered
by the Ch'in. When insurrection broke out against the incompetent suc
cessor of Shih Huang Ti, Hsiang Yii took service under his uncle, Hsiang
Liang, who was seeking to restore Ch'u. A member of the former ruling
house of Ch'u, found living in obscurity as a shepherd, was elevated to the
headship of that principality. When, in the vicissitudes of war, Hsiang Liang
was defeated and lost his life, Hsiang Yii quickly rose to the supreme
command of the armies of Ch'u, and, his prince being very much of a
puppet, bade fair to be not only the chief man of Ch'u but also of the
Empire. It was he who led the forces which sacked the Ch'in capital and
put to death the feeble grandson of Shih Huang Ti, and when this had
been done, it was he who proclaimed his titular master Emperor, under
the title of I Huang Ti. He parceled out the realm among the leading
generals of the victorious rebels and among some of the Ch'in generals
who had submitted, giving them the title of Wang. This, it will be noted,
was a revival of decentralization. The headquarters of the new regime
were established not on the plain of the Wei but in the present Kiangsu,
from which Hsiang Yii's support seems largely to have been derived.
Hsiang Yii soon fell out with the new Emperor and had him exiled and
killed. This act precipitated the inevitable struggle between the rival gen
erals.

In the ensuing trial of strength the chief opponent of Hsiang Yii was
Liu Chi (Liu Pang). Under the Ch'in, Liu Chi had been a minor official
in his native district. He was of humble birth, not of the old aristocracy.
He is said to have been of an open and generous disposition, fond of his
cups, and with an eye for a pretty face. He could also, as it proved, be

76 VOLUME I

persistent, prudent, shrewd, and cruel. Charged with conducting a group
of forced laborers to build the tomb of Shih Huang Ti, he set his prisoners
at liberty, and putting himself at the head of a few of the boldest of them,
became an outlaw in the mountains and marshes of Central China. In the
disorder which succeeded the death of Shih Huang Ti, he was chosen to
head his native district and attached himself to Hsiang Liang in the effort
to revive the state of Ch'u. He quickly became a leading commander of
the forces of that principality and was soon Hsiang Yii's major rival.

In the fighting between these two doughty generals the victory seemed
to perch upon the banner first of one and then of the other. At one time
Hsiang Yii offered to settle the issue in single combat with Liu Chi, but
the latter, more cautious, declined. At the outset Hsiang Yii seemed to be
in the lead, for he routed Liu Chi's army and captured the father and wife
of his antagonist. Later the rivals made a treaty, dividing the Empire
between them. This compact Liu Chi almost immediately broke (202 B.C.)
and brought about the downfall of his enemy.

Liu Chi's subordinates — possibly not without prompting — offered the
title of Emperor to their commander, now clearly the master of the country.
After the ostensible reluctance and triple refusal which etiquette pre
scribed, Liu Chi accepted (202 B.C.), thus perpetuating the form of
unity which Shih Huang Ti had begun. The date from which the new
dynasty was reckoned was not 202 B.C., but 206 B.C., when Liu Chi had
become Wang of Han.

The Han made permanent the work of the Ch'in, and endured, with
two marked interruptions, for over four hundred years — centuries which
were among the most glorious of China's long history. The Ch'in and the
Han together set the pattern of government that continued, with important
modifications, to the fore part of the twentieth century.

Liu Chi, whom we had better now call by his dynastic title, Kao Tsu,
proved a wise administrator of his conquests. He declared a general amnesty
and repealed many of the severe laws of Ch'in. He favored the minimum
of state regulation and of formal etiquette. He was a man of the people,
with crude language and manners, and owed his position in part to his
good judgment of men and his appeal to the commoners. Kao Tsu took
steps that later led to the adoption of Confucianism by his house. He
recognized in practice the Confucian theory that government must be
for the benefit of the governed and as much by example as by force. He
had some Confucian scholars around him, notably one of his ministers,
Lu Chia. One of Kao Tsu's brothers had Confucian training. It is said
that when Kao Tsu contemptuously remarked that he had won the Empire
from the back of a horse and had no need for the Shih Ching and Shu Ching
of the scholars, Lu Chia boldly told him that the Empire could not be
administered from the back of a horse and that if the Ch'in had sought to

The Formation of the Empire 77

rule by the Confucian virtues it would not so quickly have come to an end.
Kao Tsu employed Confucian scholars in drawing up a simple form of
etiquette for the court, to eliminate the boorishness that characterized the
actions of his entourage in the earlier years of his reign. The adoption of
Confucianism was probably further foreshadowed by an order (196 B.C.)
that the princes send men of ability to court for the public service, for it
was a Confucian principle that government should be by able and upright
officials. It must be noted, however, that filling offices with the most fit
might also be a corollary of the Legalist program and so may have been
in part a heritage from Ch'in.

Religiously, Kao Tsu was tolerant of tribal and local cults. They were
represented at his capital by their shrines, priests, and ceremonies. This
was, of course, a wise administrative measure.

Kao Tsu fixed his capital in the former domains of Ch'in, on the
broad plain of the Wei River, at Ch'angan, a few miles northwest of
the capital that Shih Huang Ti had built. He retained, too, much of
the governmental machinery of Ch'in. In at least two very important
respects, however, he departed from the organization of Shih Huang Ti.
In the first place, he divided the realm into principalities, placing over them
members of his family and military commanders who had done him marked
service. The chief of these had the time-honored title of Wang. Direct
rule by the Emperor was confined to about a third of the realm, mostly not
far from the capital. The domains of the Wang did not supplant the admin
istrative divisions of the Ch'in, but the latter were continued and were
governed by the hierarchy .devised by Shih Huang Ti, modified somewhat,
but still appointed by the Emperor. In spite of safeguards, the creation of
the Wang brought its problems, for it repeatedly threatened the renewed
disintegration of the Empire. In the second place, Kao Tsu consulted those
about him before taking some of his important measures. He thus adopted
a policy, followed by later rulers through the centuries, of acting in response
to memorials from his subjects.

With all of Kao Tsu's skill and power, his authority was by no means
undisputed and much of his reign was troubled by revolts. These he
suppressed, and so successfully did he do his work — steering a middle
course between thb anarchy of the later years of the Chou and the extreme
centralization of the Ch'in — that when he died (195 B.C.) the throne
passed on to his family without such a major upheaval as had followed
the demise of Shih Huang Ti.

The unity of the Empire and the continuation on the throne of the line
of Kao Tsu were both helped and endangered by his widow, the Empress
nee Lii, who survived him fifteen years. She had been Kao Tsu's wife from
the days of his obscurity, and being a woman of masculine mind and in
domitable will developed by the hardships which the pair had early under-

78 VOLUME I

gone, she is said to have been in large part responsible for the eventual
triumph of her spouse. During the later years of Kao Tsu the two saw less
and less of each other, but when the change of reign came she succeeded in
having her own son, a mere lad, placed on the throne. Another son, born of
Kao Tsu's favorite concubine, she had poisoned, and possibly moved by the
hatred and jealousy of a slighted wife, she had his mother horribly mutilated
and killed. The Empress Lli's own son, the Emperor Hui (or Hsiao-hui
"the Emperor Hui, the filial") proved dissipated and she was practically
monarch during his reign. She married him to a granddaughter of hers,
and although the union is believed to have been childless, on his death she
declared Emperor successively boys whom she said were its fruits. These
children were mere puppets and she was the real ruler. The first of them
was a son of the Emperor Hui by a concubine. When he showed too much
independence she had him imprisoned. She appointed her own relatives
to high office and apparently sought permanently to supplant the Liu
family. On her death, however, the house of Liu asserted itself, extermi
nated her kin, and placed on the throne a son of Kao Tsu, known in
history as the Emperor Wen, or Wen Ti.

Of the Emperor Wen and of the succeeding Emperor Ching, or Ching
Ti, his son, but little need here be said. The Emperor Wen was an excep
tionally able ruler. He favored Confucianism. The surviving prohibitions
of Ch'in were still further lightened, that against criticism of the govern
ment being entirely abolished. The Ch'in edict proscribing all but certain
authorized books, it should be noted, had been rescinded while the Empress
nee Lii was in power. Capital punishment was comparatively infrequent.
Taxes were reduced. The Empire was recuperating from the extreme
exhaustion which characterized the earlier years of the Han. Members of
the Liu family were again appointed to rule over the great divisions
of the Empire, but their power was more and more curtailed. One of the
steps taken against them — the annexation to the central government of
portions of their estates, a step taken in part at the suggestion of Legalists
— led to a concerted revolt of several of these dignitaries. Upon its sup
pression a further diminution of the importance of the Wang was effected.
They retained only ceremonial power, and their domains were governed
by officials appointed by the Emperor.

APEX OF THE EARLIER HAN DYNASTY: THE REIGN OF WU TI

The Han dynasty reached its height under the Emperor who
is best known to posterity by the title of Wu Ti, the "military Emperor,"
usually called Han Wu Ti to distinguish him from Wu Ti's of other dynas
ties. Coining to the throne in 140 B.C. at the age of sixteen, he ruled
the Empire until 87 B.C., or for over fifty years. His was by far the longest

The Formation of the Empire 79

reign of the dynasty, and one of the most famous in the history of China.
He inherited a realm which had recovered from the exhaustion that pre
ceded and followed the Ch'in and which was now prosperous and ready for
expansion and fresh activity. The half-century is noted both for extensive
foreign conquests and for marked internal developments in organization and
culture.

The territorial expansion during the reign of Wu Ti was to the north
west, the northeast, and the south, and extended the boundaries and the
influence of China farther than at any previous time.

In the Northwest the chief enemies of the Chinese were the Hsiung-Nu.
As we have seen, this seminomadic people had been held at bay by Shih
Huang Ti. They had taken advantage of the internal turmoil in China at
the close of the Ch'in to become aggressive once more. Welded into a
confederation by an able leader, they had become a formidable foe. Dur
ing the earlier years of the Han they had been a fairly constant menace
and had repeatedly raided Chinese territory. Wu Ti made their subjugation
one of his major objectives. In doing so, he established contacts with
Central Asia which brought the Chinese into touch with the great civiliza
tions to the West — with important consequences.

Wu Ti sought to conquer the Hsiung-Nu partly by direct military
campaigns, partly by establishing military colonies in their territory, and
partly by diplomacy. Wu Ti's generals carried on the warfare for years and
with much success, The Chinese frontier was pushed out to include most of
what is now Kansu, probably beyond where it had been in Shih Huang
Ti's time, and colonies, garrisons, and a westward extension of the Great
Wall — first to the Jade Gate (Yii Men) and later farther westward —
helped to give the victories permanence. Wu Ti did not entirely break
the power of the Hsiung-Nu, but he reduced it greatly.

In the days of their might, the Hsiung-Nu had defeated some neigh
bors pf theirs, the Yiieh-chih, or Tochari, who were then living in what
is now, roughly, western Kansu. The Yiieh-chih were probably an
Indo-European people, speaking an Iranian dialect, and unrelated racially
to the Hsiung-nu. Migrating westward into what is now Ili and later
farther westward still and then southward, for some centuries they ruled
the territory north of the Oxus, and in Bactria (in the trans-Caspian region,
north and east of Persia) overthrew the kingdoms established by Greek
adventurers in the wake of the armies of Alexander the Great. Later some
of them invaded Northwest India, and in the early part of the Christian
Era, under the Kushan dynasty, experienced important cultural develop
ments. It was a mark of statesmanship on the part of Wu Ti that he
attempted to form an alliance with them against their common enemy,
the Hsiung-nu. The envoy whom he chose to effect this purpose was Chang
Ch'ien, who seems, indeed, to have suggested the plan.

80 VOLUME I

Around the name of Chang Ch'ien many legends and fabrications have
gathered. Even the standard accounts have been declared by some scholars
either to be interpolations or to contain many later additions. Back of
them must lie, however, at least a basis of fact. The record as we have it
can be summarized as follows. In 138 B.C. Chang Ch'ien left China on his
westward journey. The Hsiung-nu captured him and for ten years held him
prisoner. Escaping, he reached the Yueh-chih in Bactria and spent a year
among them. The Yiieh-chih declined the proffered alliance, but Chang
Ch'ien had brought the Chinese in touch with the West and had reached
the outposts of the cultural influences of the Mediterranean world. The
intrepid traveler succeeded in making his way back to China (126 B.C.).

While in Bactria, Chang Ch'ien found bamboo and cloth which he
believed, possibly incorrectly, to have originated in what are now Szech-
wan and Yunnan. He learned that these were said to come through India
and that they had reached that country by way of what is now the Yun
nan-Burmese border. This led him to dream of opening communication
between China and the West by that route instead of by the one which
the Hsiung-nu had made difficult. However, he found this impracticable.

A few years later Chang Ch'ien went on another embassy to the West.
This time he himself did not go as far as on his first journey, but sent
subordinates on the more distant missions. Chang Ch'ien, it must also
be noted, is said to have introduced into China from the West alfalfa
and the cultivated grape. Later tradition was to credit him, falsely, with
having brought numbers of other plants from Central Asia.

Wu Ti effectively followed up the expeditions of Chang Ch'ien and
succeeded in making Chinese power felt in what is now Sinkiang. Some
peoples in the Tarim basin and in Hi were reduced to submission. Horses
were even asked from a state in the later Ferghana, in the valley of the
Jaxartes, west of the boundaries of the present Sinkiang, and when these
were refused and the Chinese envoy killed, the general Li Kuang-li was
dispatched to wreak the Emperor's vengeance. At first he was unsuccess
ful and was beaten back, but Wu Ti kept him and his decimated forces,
in disgrace, on the Western frontier. Then, returning over the long desert
road to the attack, Li Kuang-li was victorious and placed a Chinese nomi
nee on the throne. More than ten embassies went from the country to
China during the reign of Wu Ti. Li's was a noteworthy military feat,
worthy of ranking with those which the Romans had been performing, only
a few decades before, in the Mediterranean world to the west.

It was not only in the Northwest that Wu Ti was extending his power.
In the Northeast he was also gaining victories. In what is now the southern
part of Manchuria and the northern part of Korea, a state had arisen
during the early years of the Han with its capital at what is now Pyong
yang (P'ingyang). Its name, Ch'aohsien, is today, under its Japanese

Hie Formation of the Empire 81

pronunciation, Chosen, used for all Korea. Ch'aohsien acknowledged some
what vaguely the suzerainty of China, and when it rebelled, Wu Ti deter
mined to bring it more fully under his sway. The ensuing war led, in the
last decade of the second century B.C., to the annexation of Ch'aohsien to
the Han domains. The conquest was, naturally, followed by the infiltration
of Chinese culture into the peninsula. Into the Northeast, too, in what is
now the northeastern part of Hopei and South Manchuria, and even in
the present Korea, Chinese settlers were moved to help hold the territory
for the Empire. Near the later Pyongyang (P'ingyang), for example, a
wealthy Chinese colony was established in 108 B.C. For four centuries
or more, until A.D. 313, it flourished and remained an outpost of Chinese
imperial power, with governors appointed from China. In the tombs of the
colony rich remains of civilization have been found. The effect of this
settlement on the life of the adjacent Koreans must have been marked.
Something of Chinese culture filtered into Japan by way of Korea. Indeed,
the Chinese claim that under part of the Han Japan was a vassal of
China.

Wu Ti also extended his territories to the south. The peoples in the
present coast provinces to the south of the Yangtze and in Annam, which,
under Shih Huang Ti, had been brought within the administrative system
of the Ch'in and had been partially colonized by Chinese, had taken advan
tage of the weakness of the Empire between Shih Huang Ti and Wu Ti to ,
become independent again. Divided under several local rulers, they fell
a comparatively easy prey to the vigorous, growing colossus of the North.
A kingdom in what is now the southern part of Chekiang was the first to
be annexed — in the earlier years of Wu Ti's reign — and thousands of its
people were moved into the valley of the Huai. A state in what is now
Fukien was the next to submit, and much of its population is said to have
been deported to the north of the Yangtze.

The largest of the southern kingdoms, called Nan-yiieh, had been
established by a Chinese, a former officer of Shih Huang Ti. For a time
this ruler acknowledged the suzerainty of the Han, but after a few years
he deemed himself strong enough to assert his independence. Nan-yiieh
had its capital at what is now Canton and seems to have comprised much
of the present Kwangsi and Kwangtung and of the northeastern portions
of what is now Vietnam. The Han cast especially covetous eyes upon its
territories when a Chinese envoy made the discovery that the products
of what is now Szechwan — a Han possession — were carried to Canton by
way of the West River and its tributaries. Under Wu Ti's direction Nan-
yiieh was conquered (108 B.C.), its territories were added to the Han
domains, and a canal was built to help connect the basin of the West River
with that of the Yangtze. As under the Ch'in, however, Nan-yiieh was
governed according to its old customs and through its native chiefs. No

82 VOLUME I

new taxes were placed on it, at least for the time. Colonization of the
South — especially of the Canton region — by Chinese proceeded apace,
and it and Han control were favored by placing the passes across the hills
between the Yangtze and the south coast under administrative districts of
the great valley. Petty states in what are now Kweichow and Yunnan also
made their submission to Wu Ti.

Before the death of Wu Ti, then, the Han administrative organization
had been extended on the south to include much of what is now Chekiang,
Fukien, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Hainan, the northeastern section of Viet
nam, Kweichow, and Yunnan. The Han Empire was now not far from
the size of that which the Roman Republic had recently been building in
the Mediterranean world. Much of the success on the field of battle was
due to modifications in military methods. As under the Ch'in, the old
cumbersome war chariot had been discarded except for display, and a
more mobile cavalry, supported by infantry, was coming into use.

The long reign, the vigor, and the vast conquests of Wu Ti brought
marked internal developments in China. Wu Ti continued the policies of his
immediate predecessors and further reduced the power of the local princes
and increased that of the bureaucracy which headed up in the Emperor.
As had Kao Tsu, he appointed counselors to each Wang to watch and
report to him the action of these magnates. He continued systematically
to divide the great principalities. He called into his service men of ability
wherever he found them, disregarding birth and often raising to high
power those of base extraction. He was more of an autocrat than the
previous Han rulers had been. The former distinction between the aristoc
racy and the commoners was passing. The manners of the nobility tended
more and more to be adopted by the lower classes. New divisions between
the rich and the poor were appearing.

Like Shih Huang Ti, Wu Ti strove to exalt the authority of the throne.
To this end he developed a system whose rudiments existed before his
time, for discovering and choosing men of promise. He commanded local
officials to recommend those in their jurisdictions who were the most vir
tuous, and surrounded himself with men renowned for their wisdom.
An early development of competitive examinations for the choice of the
worthy for office seems to date from his reign, although Wu Ti and his
successors did not utilize them as extensively as did some later dynasties.
Nor can he be said to have made them into a system. Wu Ti instituted
a higher school at the capital for the training of future officials, and schools
were encouraged in the local provinces and districts. This was not an inno
vation, for schools were to be found in the Chou era and possibly earlier.
Here was an expansion of a time-honored system. As a result, the trend
was reinforced toward having officialdom recruited from men committed
to Confucianism. •

The Formation of the Empire 83

This device, extended and elaborated by later rulers and dynasties, was
a further stage in the development of that bureaucracy and official hier
archy which was to be one of the outstanding features of the Chinese state
— the structure by which China was held together and administered. It
cannot be attributed solely to Wu Ti. The Ch'in, and especially Shih Huang
Ti, did more to create it than he; the earlier monarchs of the Han employed
the principle, and the roots of it go back into Chou and Shang times.
For example, some of its basic concepts are to be found in the writings
of more than one of the Chou schools and probably were not original
with any one man. Wu Ti, however, was astute enough to see the impor
tance of the principle and to add to its practical application.

The court presented a mixture of several of the philosophical schools.
In the reaction against the autocracy of the Ch'in, some thinkers advocated
the "inaction" (Wu Wei), or laissez faire of the Tao Te Ching. Several of
the administrative devices of the Emperor smacked strongly of Legalism.
However, Legalism had been discredited by Ch'in despotism and had
been proscribed. Wu Ti showed favor to the adherents of Confucianism.
His principle of appointing to office the ablest, although employed by
the Legalistic Ch'in, could be justified by pointing to Confucian precepts.
He encouraged the study of the Classics to which the Confucianists looked
for authority. He chose at least some of his functionaries from those
most skilled in the Classics. He furthered that adoption of Confucianism
by the state which was to be one of the outstanding features of later
Chinese governments.

This emphasis on Confucianism had the effect of carrying over to the
new age the ethics and formal courtesy of the Chou aristocracy. The new
ruling classes were thereby encouraged to a certain refinement of life and
to the maintenance of a partial continuity with the culture of the past.

Although Legalism had been proscribed, administrative measures sup
ported by it continued, and even after Wu Ti's death there was staged
at court a debate between an official who supported certain government
monopolies inherited from Wu Ti and the Confucian opponents of that
policy.

Much of the revival of Confucianism is attributed to two convinced
adherents of that school, Kung-sun Hung and Tung Chung-shu. Kung-sun
Hung, formerly a swineherd, took a high stand among the scholars examined
by Wu Ti, and during years in public office, lived simply and gave freely
of his substance to the poor. Tung Chung-shu, an older contemporary of
Wu Ti, was a leader of a philosophy which insisted that ideally the Emperor
ruled by the decree of Heaven (Tien Ming) — a teaching framed in the
Chou period. Heaven, earth, and man, so it was said, constitute a triad,
and the Emperor must keep them in harmony. He must do this by setting
a good moral example. This philosophy taught that when the Emperor

84 VOLUME I

committed evil and injustice, Heaven would show its displeasure by fam
ines, earthquakes, fires, and floods, and if these were not heeded, would
seek to bring him to repentance by such portents as eclipses and comets. If
the Emperor were still recalcitrant, final ruin would come. This theory
professed to be Confucianist and was very influential under the Han and,
indeed, throughout most of later Chinese history. Tung Chung-shu
attempted to effect a compromise between the teaching of Mencius that
man by nature is good and the contention of Hsiin Tzu that it is bad.

In some respects the Confucianism of Wu Ti's reign differed decidedly
from that of the Chou. It was more positively theistic than was either
Confucius or Mencius, stressing the beneficent rule of Heaven in the affairs
of men. It made more of a belief in spirits than did either of these two
sages, thus finding room for the superstitions of the time. How much, if at
all, these modifications were due to the influence of Mo Ti's school it is
impossible to say, but one distinguished modern scholar has declared the
Confucianism of the Han to be "Mohism" thinly veiled under a Confucian
disguise. From this estimate vigorous dissent has been expressed. But in
one way and another Mo Ti and his school continued for centuries to have
an effect on Confucianism. Tung Chung-shu also wove into his philosophy
the yin and the yang which had been prominent in one of the schools of
the Chou. It was at his suggestion that a higher school for studies was
set up in the capital. He was the chief shaper of Han Confucianism and
continued to be studied for more than a thousand years.

From the economic standpoint, the record of Wu Ti's reign was varied.
Commerce appears to have flourished. Domestic peace, the reduction of
the power of the local princes, and the increased administrative unity
of the Empire probably promoted the growth of internal trade. This seems
to have been augmented by the extensive annexations of territory, par
ticularly those in the South. Trade with foreign countries also increased,
but, although spectacular and with important cultural consequences, in
proportion to that within China's boundaries, presumably it was very small.
Wu Ti attempted to regulate commerce and had an official whose func
tion it was to mitigate extreme fluctuations in it — and to make a profit
for the state — by buying the great staples when they were cheap and
placing them on the market when prices rose. Canals were dug — among
them one between the valley of the Wei, on the north, and that of the Han
on the south — probably at least in part for the purpose of facilitating com
munication and promoting economic prosperity as well as political union,
and a great road was constructed to the south and the southwest. During
a devastating famine in the North, scores of thousands of the sufferers
were moved into other territory. Great irrigation works were constructed
in arid regions, a dangerous flood of the Yellow River was curbed, and
large territories were reclaimed for cultivation.

The Formation of the Empire 85

Wu Ti's many wars and his extensive public works brought with them
serious financial problems and, at times, distress. Taxes were increased,
new imposts were levied, and fresh sources of revenue were sought. The
government monopoly of salt and iron, which appears to have been first
attempted under Shih Huang Ti, was now extended and was placed in
the hands of those merchants who had operated these industries when
they were private enterprises. This seems to have been at least in part
because the manufacture of salt and iron was prominent as a source of
private wealth. Fortunes had been amassed through it, and the state
may therefore have looked with covetous eyes upon a possible large addi
tion to its revenue. A special military nobility was created and the titles in
it were sold. A regular plan of reducing the severity of punishments by
the payment of a fine came into use. Levies were made on the princes
for the ostensible purpose of supporting official sacrifices and then were
devoted to military purposes. Either now or soon thereafter an excise was
placed on liquor. The currency was debased; surviving coins of the earlier
part of the reign are the merest fraction in weight of those of similar
denomination of a few years before. Wu Ti made coinage an imperial
monopoly — previously it had been minted by various dignitaries — and
endeavored to restore it to its avowed value. In the former action —
in part a political measure to increase the power of the throne at the
expense of the local princes — he seems to have been successful, but in
the latter he was only partially so, for the new coins, although far heavier
than those they supplanted, as extant specimens show, were still below
their nominal worth. There was an unsuccessful attempt, too, at a kind of
currency made up of the skins of deer. While farmers were granted special
tax exemptions, additional levies were placed on merchants. Freedom from
taxes was promised to those who gave slaves for labor on the public
works, and additional quantities of slaves were obtained through the
prolonged foreign wars.

The trend of these actions was to augment the power of the throne
and to further centralization. The new exactions and the heavy cost of war
led to much popular discontent. Population seems to have declined by a
half. In protest Confucian scholars would have abolished many of the
new financial measures of the state and advocated winning the barbarians
by benevolent rule rather than by costly armed force.

In literature the reign was chiefly noteworthy for the Shih-chi (His
torical Records), the great history of Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Bora ca. 145 B.C.,
the son of Ssu-ma Tan, a court historian (also said, misleadingly, to have
been the court astrologer), Ssu-ma Ch'ien had exceptional preparation for
his magnum opus. At an early age he memorized the texts of antiquity
which provided him with much of his source material. He traveled ex
tensively through the Empire and for a time was a government inspector in

86 VOLUME I

newly conquered lands in Szechwan and Yunnan. Upon the death of his
father, he succeeded to the latter's office. For daring to advocate the cause
of a general whom he had recommended and against whom the wrath of
the Emperor was directed, he was emasculated, a common punishment
of those days. His history was written both before and after this event.
How much of it was from the pen of his father there is no sure way of
telling. Ssu-ma Ch'ien seems to have been at least the chief author. Based
largely upon earlier works and documents which it often incorporates
with but slight changes, it covers the history of China from the beginning
to Ssu-ma Ch'ien's own day and includes not only the narrative of political
events but biographies of prominent men, accounts of some of the chief
principalities of the Chou and of some of the foreign peoples touched by
the Han, chronological tables, and treatises on such phases of culture as
rites, music, divination, the calendar, the economics. After Ssu-ma Ch'ien's
death (ca. 90 B.C.) additions were made to the Shih-chi, and it was revised
and possibly rearranged — alterations which provide the scholar with a
major textual problem. It was deservedly regarded by later generations
as a model and became a prototype of a whole series of Dynastic Histories,
which, taken together with the Shih-chi, give a voluminous record of China's
past — much more extensive and reliable than that possessed by any other
people over so long a period.

Wu Ti seems to have attempted to modify religion in a way that would
make it ancillary to that unity and emphasis upon imperial power for which
he was striving. He celebrated with great pomp two sacrifices — feng, by
which prayer was made by the Emperor to Heaven (Tien) from the sacred
mountain, T'ai Shan, with the spirit of that peak as the messenger, and
shan, by which prayer was made to the Sovereign Earth (Ti). Both pur
ported to be revivals of earlier ceremonies and are said to have been per
formed by Shih Huang Ti. Probably both were ostensibly for the purpose
of asking the blessing of these divinities upon the Emperor and requesting
long life for him. By emphasizing the place of Heaven, however, feng would
help to create the idea of a celestial unity and monarchy of which the
imperial state could be held to be a counterpart. Shan also lent its strength
to this by stressing the supremacy of Earth (Ti) over the many local gods
of the soil and of natural objects. By performing the sacrifice of feng and
shan, Wu Ti stressed his greatness. Possibly with a similar purpose, Wu Ti
recognized the existing hierarchy of the gods of heaven who presided over
the four cardinal points and the center and superimposed on it a supreme
god called T'ai /, or the Great One. The general conception of the spiritual
organization of the universe as a counterpart of the political organization
appears not to have been new. Indeed, it may have come down from Shang
times. But by stressing the idea that both halves of the spirit world are
monarchial in form and by emphasizing the position of the Emperor as the

The Formation of the Empire 87

head of the cult, the dignity of the visible ruling house was enhanced.
In spite of his statecraft, Wu Ti was much fascinated by the beliefs of
the popular religion of the age. Attempts at the transmutation of metals,
the search for an elixir of life, efforts to make contact with the immortals
who were said to have achieved that state, and the supposed experts in
these fields exercised great influence over him.

THE DECLINE OF THE EARLIER HAN DYNASTY

Of the immediate successors of Wu Ti not much need here
be said. For nearly a hundred years the Empire continued without any
major event that should detain us in detail. Two or three of the seven
monarchs whom this paragraph covers were able and essentially greater
than Wu Ti, whose despotism and wars almost ruined his realm. At least
one was a patron of literature and encouraged the editing of the ancient
classics. The inevitable court intrigues that have been fairly constant
factors in Chinese, as in much other, history help to give bulk to the annals
of the time. Rebellions there were, too, sometimes within the older sections
of the Empire and sometimes in the newly conquered domains. Part of the
South that had been annexed under Wu Ti, especially the island of Hainan,
was abandoned, on the ground that it cost more to hold than it was worth.
To the west the Chinese continued to extend their power. Their influence
seems to have been potent even on the northwestern border of India. The
Hsiung-nu were defeated again and again, and their chiefs finally acknowl
edged Chinese suzerainty. Hsiung-nu, too, entered the military service of
China. The hereditary principle of succession, however, brought with it
weak and dissipated princes, and early in the first century A.D. a crisis
arose by which the dynasty was, for a time, displaced.

WANG MANG

The new threat to the Han was through a family named
Wang. One of the Wang daughters became a concubine of the heir apparent
who ascended the throne in 48 B.C. Having the good fortune both to win
the favor of her lord and to present him with a son, she was made Empress,
and her son heir apparent. Upon the death of her spouse, her son became
Emperor and she Empress Dowager. Her brothers and others of her kin
were given high office and she and her family dominated the state.

Of the male relatives of the Empress Dowager, the most discreet was
a nephew, Wang Mang. In contrast with the other influential members of
his family, he was said to have been distinguished for his scholarship, his
patronage of learning, his filial piety, and his temperate living. While the
others were dissipated and extravagant, he is reported to have lived with

88 VOLUME I

marked frugality and to have distributed nearly all his great income among
his poor friends and followers. While still in his thirties he became the most
powerful figure in the Empire.

The Empress Dowager's son was on the throne for about a quarter of
a century, long enough for the Wang family to establish itself firmly. He,
however, left no heir, and the nephew who succeeded him (6 B.C.) brought
with him his own mother's relatives, and the Wang family was temporarily
eclipsed. The new Emperor proved a debauchee, and when, after a brief
reign, he was gathered to his fathers (A.D. 1), the Wang family reasserted
itself and Wang Mang was made regent of the new Emperor, a boy of eight
years.

Wang Mang now became more popular and powerful than ever. He
maintained his simple manner of life, gave the government vast sums for
distribution among the poor, founded a national university, and gathered
scholars from all over the land. The boy Emperor died A.D. 5, poisoned,
so rumor declared, by the Wang family for showing too much independence.
An infant was placed on the throne, and Wang Mang was made Acting
Emperor. Shortly, A.D. 8, Wang Mang, with great show of reluctance,
deposed the puppet and declared himself in name what he had been in fact.
He took the title of Huang Ti, "Emperor," and called the dynasty which
he believed he was establishing by the name of Hsin.

For more than a century an occasional voice had been raised in high
places in protest against some of the obvious injustices of the times. Much
of the land was held in great estates, and high rentals were charged the
luckless cultivators. These estates tended to be tax-exempt, and that
privilege reduced the revenues of the central government. Slaves, too, were
cruelly treated. Masters had the power of life or death over them and not
infrequently exercised it. Over these and other inequalities some of the
educated evinced marked concern. Thus they were true to what had been,
at least since the middle of the Chou dynasty, one of the characteristics
of much of Chinese scholarship at its best, devotion to the welfare of the
populace. Wang Mang, who had long been surrounding himself with
scholars among whom were doubtless many social idealists, endeavored
to put into operation some of the suggested reforms, and in so doing
became one of the most interesting figures in China's history.

In the very first year of his reign, Wang Mang attempted a sweeping
agrarian reorganization of the Empire. He reduced in size the huge estates
and endeavored to annul their tax exemption which was depriving the
central government of needed revenue. He abolished slavery. The purchase
and the sale of land and retainers were forbidden. The confiscated land
was to be divided and given to the cultivators. By taxing them, he could
relieve the financial situation of his regime. To this wholesale and startling
revolution he added others. He re-enacted the imperial monopolies of salt,

The Formation of the Empire 89

iron, and coinage — although he had wished to abolish the first two and pre
served them only because he needed the revenue — and added to them
wine and mines. He reorganized the currency, introducing, in place of a
coin of only one value, tokens of several denominations. At least some of
these were given archaic forms. By this device he debased the currency.
He also attempted to have the state fix prices at equitable figures, thus
protecting the farmers against the merchants. By continuing the policy,
which appeared before under the Han, of having the state enter the market,
buying up surplus stocks of goods in times of plenty and selling them in
times of dearth, he further attempted to equalize prices. He provided for
state loans, on which no interest was to be charged, to those needing them
for funeral and sacrificial purposes, and for the advance of funds, at a
moderate rate of interest, to those requiring them for productive enterprises.
He sought to revive some of the political institutions and offices of the
Chou period.

An interesting accompaniment of the reforms was an emphasis on the
study of ancient literature. A distinguished scholar, Liu Hsin (who died
A.D. 22), is particularly noted for having sought out and edited ancient
texts. Because of his zeal in his chosen task and a famous catalogue of
ancient works prepared by him, he is sometimes denominated China's first
bibliographer. All later Chinese scholarship owes him an incalculable debt.

Wang Mang's literary entourage has been accused by some Chinese
scholars of deliberately forging, in support of his contentions, important
books and parts of books commonly ascribed to the Chou dynasty. The
Chou Li, the Tso Chuan, portions of the Shu Ching, and one of the com
mentaries of the Shih Ching are among the works said thus to have been
falsified. The theory is not proved to the satisfaction of all experts, but it
has won many supporters, and some parts of it are usually accepted as
substantiated.

Wang Mang stimulated the study of the Confucian canon, even though
he may have modified it. He built dormitories for students in the imperial
university and encouraged education. He paid marked honors to Con
fucius — repairing his temple, granting him a posthumous title, and ennobl
ing one of his descendants. All this he may have done to obtain the
support of the powerful Confucian scholar class.

So complete a reorganization as that effected by Wang Mang inevitably
met serious opposition. The wealthy and the powerful were almost all
against it. The law against the purchase and sale of land and slaves had
to be repealed at the end of three years, although a later decree penalized
slave owners with heavy taxes. Insurrections broke out. The unrest was
augmented by disastrous floods caused by a change in the course of the
Huang Ho. Many impoverished by the floods turned bandit. Members
of the Liu family, taking advantage of the general unrest, raised their

90 VOLUME I

standard against the usurper. Other malcontents gathered into bands of
brigands. Some of them, called the Red Eyebrows, became very formidable.
Subject peoples on the frontier took the opportunity offered by the weak
ness of the Empire to throw off the Chinese yoke. Although, in the earlier
years of his rule, Wang Mang had vigorously maintained Chinese prestige
in the far Northwest, the Hsiung-nu, rebelling against his effort to reduce
their ruler from the status of Emperor to that of a subject noble, overran
some of the Northern provinces, and Chinese outposts in the Tarim basin
had to be abandoned. In the South, what was later Tongking refused to
acknowledge his rule and many adherents of the Han took refuge there.
Wang Mang was killed in his capital, Ch'angan (A.D. 23), and his dynasty
and his innovations crumbled.

THE LATER OR EASTERN HAN DYNASTY

One of the most vigorous of those bearing the Liu name
placed himself on the vacant throne. The name of Han was continued.
However, the capital was moved eastward, to Loyang, in the present
province of Honan, and from this point the dynasty is denominated by
historians the Eastern or Later Han (in Chinese Tung Han or Hou Han).
The first of the Later Han, known as Kuang Wu Ti, spent much of his
reign in restoring internal order to the Empire and in reasserting the au
thority of the Chinese over the outlying tributary states. The bandits,
especially the Red Eyebrows, who had sprung up during the later years of
Wang Mang, gave him trouble. However, he proved himself equal to the
task. In his reign of more than thirty years he brought back to the Middle
Kingdom a measure of domestic peace. Partly because the civil wars had
reduced the tax-free estates, he was able to improve the financial situation
of the central government. He made the Chinese name once more feared
abroad. The former possessions of the Ch'in and the Han in the delta
of the Red River and along the coast of what was later Annam were
reconquered by the general Ma Yuan. This region, which previously had
been permitted to retain its old customs, was now Sinicized. The native
mores were gradually but surely eradicated, schools of the Chinese type
were founded, and Chinese letters and social and political rites and institu
tions became dominant. The cultural transformation and administrative
unity under the Later Han prepared the way for the future Annamite state
and civilization. Under the Later Han, a large proportion of the southeast
portions of China proper was assimilated to Chinese culture. In the North
west and in what is now Sinkiang, Kuang Wu Ti began the process of
reestablishing Chinese suzerainty. He retained the administrative organiza
tion of the Western Han, and, indeed, this persisted until the later years
of the dynasty. Like several others of his line, moreover, Kuang Wu Ti

The Formation of the Empire 91

was not only a warrior, but also a patron of Confucian culture. A man of
education, he enjoyed surrounding himself with scholars and founded a
higher school at his capital. It was a revivified Empire which he passed on
to his successor, Ming Ti.

The political history of the next century and a half need detain us but
very briefly. A succession of Emperors, none of them especially note
worthy, perpetuated the Han line. Several of them at their accession were
infants and most of the others came to the throne in their teens. The
immaturity of the rulers encouraged court intrigues, and the power of the
women of the palace and the influence of the eunuchs increased. With such
feeble leadership, the house of Liu was obviously nearing its end. Confucian
scholars persistently protested against the eunuchs and the abuses in gov
ernment. At times their efforts were effective, but they could not long
retard the decay. Toward the close of the second century the eunuchs were
strong enough to take heavy toll from among their adversaries. Great
landed estates again mounted and paid only a fraction of the cost of the
central government. The burden of taxation on peasants not in these
estates proved intolerable. The capital was flooded with refugees living on
relief. Insurrections broke out. Bands called the Yellow Turbans made
themselves particularly obnoxious. The Yellow Turbans were a Taoist sect,
and in a certain sense the downfall of the Han was due to a Taoist revolt
against the Confucianism dominant in the bureaucracy.

The army asserted itself at court to control the eunuchs. Toward the
close of the second century, a general, Tung Cho, made himself master
of the Emperors, supplanting one boy puppet by another. Tung Cho
burned the capital, Loyang (A.D. 190), and established himself and the
futile monarch at Ch'angan. For two years he ruled with a high hand,
ruthlessly crushing all opposition and giving a show of legality to his acts
by declaring that they were performed in the name of the Emperor. The
country did not accept him quietly. Jealous rivals formed a coalition
against him, and he was assassinated (A.D. 192) by one of his own
lieutenants, an adopted son.

The struggle for power continued until Ts'ao Ts'ao, the son of the
adopted son of a former chief eunuch, and an extraordinarily able but
utterly unscrupulous and extremely crafty man, made himself supreme at
court. The boy whom Tung Cho had placed on the throne was shorn of
more and more of his prerogatives, but was allowed to retain the title of
Emperor, until, A.D. 220, on Ts'ao Ts'ao's death, he was persuaded to
cede the throne to Ts'ao Ts'ao's son, Ts'ao P'ei. Ts'ao P'ei founded a new
dynasty, the Wei. A member of the Liu family professed to carry on the
Han dynasty in what is now Szechwan. The main line of the Han, however,
had come to an end. The actors in the drama were probably quite un
aware of it, but a great period in the development of the Chinese nation had

92 VOLUME I

closed and the Middle Kingdom was entering another era of marked
transition.

One phase of the activity of the Later Han must, because of its cultural
consequences, be gone into with more detail than the brief summary in
the last four paragraphs has permitted. The generals of the Later Han
maintained and even strengthened Chinese might on the far western
frontiers in what is now Sinkiang, and so kept open the overland routes
to the West. The Hsiung-nu, to the immediate north and west, continued
to be a menace and could never long be ignored. But they were not united
and so were less formidable than earlier. Connections with the Yiieh-chih
were kept up, although with at least one rift in the friendship, and the
petty states in the later Sinkiang, centering around such oases as the present
Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, and Turfan, became tributary to China as a
protection against the common enemy, the Hsiung-nu. The fact that at least
the ruling classes in most — and possibly all — of these states were Iranian,
and the Hsiung-nu of a very different race, may have been an added
incentive to seek Chinese assistance.

Under Ming Ti the Hsiung-nu who had invaded what is now Kansu
were crushed and the Chinese took possession of the present Kami, west of
Kansu. This helped to revive Chinese prestige in the distant West, and
some of the states in that region renewed their tributary connection with
the Han. Chinese officials were soon appointed to supervise the subordinate
principalities.

The most famous of the Chinese agents in the far West was Pan Ch'ao
(A.D, 32-102). Although the scion of a family noted for its literary accom
plishments, brother of Pan Ku, the great historian, and of Pan Chao,
China's most distinguished woman of letters, he was more a man of action
than a scholar. Weary of literary employment and petty official appoint
ment at the capital, which barely kept the wolf from the door, he deter
mined to seek adventure and renown on the frontier. There he displayed
such daring and ability that before many years he was the leading Chinese
official on the Central Asiatic edges of the Empire. He extended the Chinese
power in what is now the western portion of Sinkiang. The little states
here often proved recalcitrant and Pan Ch'ao's life was one of fairly constant
fighting. He made Chinese power feared even farther west, across the
mountains, in territories which are now Russian, and one of his diplomatic
agents reached the shores of the Persian Gulf. In his late sixties, worn out,
Pan Ch'ao sought and obtained the Emperor's permission to retire, but
died not long after his arrival at court.

The distant posts held by Pan Ch'ao were not easily retained. A son
succeeded him in his command and seems to have had fair success. How
ever, we read of repeated revolts of the subject states, of attacks of Tibetans
on Chinese outposts, and of complaints at court at the cost of the military

The Formation of the Empire 93

undertakings involved. Before many years the Han began retrenchment.
Retreat was not steady or uninterrupted. At least once again, led by Pan
Yung, another son of Pan Ch'ao, the soldiers of the Han were seen in the
oases at the foot of the mountains that separate the present Sinkiang from
India and Central Asia, and Chinese influence appears to have been
strong there until at least the second half of the second century. For years
Chinese garrisons held points in what is now western Kansu. Modem
archaeology has shown that the frontier wall built west of Tunhuang toward
the close of the second century B.C. was held by Chinese garrisons until
the middle of the second century A.D. It was only when the increasing impo
tence of the Han monarchs made it difficult to maintain order even at home
that these were withdrawn.

One object of all this costly military activity seems to have been to
keep open the trade routes to the West. The present names of the cities
and oases for which the Han strove — Hami, Aksu, Kashgar, Turfan,
Khotan — indicate to any one at all familiar with the caravan routes that
the Chinese were attempting to control and make safe the long roads by
which their commerce passed to and from the cultural centers in the other
parts of Asia. /^

FOREIGN TRADE UNDER THE HAN

Under the Han the natural barriers which tend to separate
China from the rest of the world were being overcome by both Chinese and
foreigners. The era was one which favored commerce. Not only had the
Han brought prosperity and territorial expansion to China, but elsewhere
powerful states were an assistance to trade. In what is now Northwest
India and Afghanistan some of the Yiieh-chih had established a kingdom
under the Kushan dynasty. The Parthian Empire occupied most of what is
now Iran and the region immediately north of it, and in its cities Greek
merchants were to be found, deposits of that eastern wave of Hellenic
culture which had come with the conquests of Alexander and was only
slowly subsiding. Since the last century or so of the Chou, states with Greek
rulers and with strikingly Greek features had borne witness to those con
quests on their Indian and Central Asian frontiers. Still farther west the
Romans were unifying the Mediterranean world. In what is now the south
ern part of European Russia were various divisions of the Sarmatians, and
here, too, on the shores of the Black Sea, were Greek cities, centers of
trade. Throughout much of Asia commerce was more extensive than it
had ever been. Merchants passed across Central Asia into China by routes
which skirted the northern and the southern slopes of the Tarim River
basin. They also came to the Han Empire by way of the South — by the
sea route to the south coast. For a time the main port in the South was in

94 VOLUME I

the future Tongking, then under the control of the Han. It was not until
later centuries that it was supplanted by Canton.

China's commercial contacts with the peoples on her far western
frontiers were, when the distance is considered, fairly extensive. The Han
knew the Yiieh-chih and the Parthians, not only by trade but also by
political embassies. It seems probable that merchants from India and
Ceylon found their way to China by the south. The Chinese, moreover,
were aware of at least the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, calling it
Ta Ch'in. With the Mediterranean world they had little, if any, direct con
tact. Traders from the West were regularly reaching India. When, about
the first century B.C. or the first century A.D., they learned to take advan
tage of the monsoon to make the voyage across the Indian Ocean from
the Red Sea, the commerce became extensive and important and was
to continue so for several centuries. Few travelers from the Mediter
ranean world seem to have gone beyond India and Ceylon, although the
Romans and Greeks heard vaguely of China. In A.D. 120 jugglers, sent with
an embassy of one of the states on China's southern border, arrived at
Loyang and professed to come from west of the sea, a region which they
declared to be the same as Ta Ch'in. In A.D. 166, merchants from Ta Ch'in
reached Loyang and claimed to be an embassy from their king, who is
supposed to have been the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Aside
from these somewhat dubious instances, we do not hear specifically of any
representatives of the Mediterranean world penetrating China, although
some may have done so. Moreover, we are not sure that Chinese journeyed
as far west as the Roman Empire, even though the Chinese historical rec
ords of the time give a description of Ta Ch'in which may have been derived
from eyewitnesses. The envoy whom Pan Ch'ao sent — possibly with the
hope of opening communication with Ta Ch'in without the intermediation
of the Parthians, who, as enemies of the Romans, would not be especially
eager to promote direct trade relations between China and Rome — suc
ceeded only, as we have seen, in reaching the Persian Gulf.

The commodities exchanged through this commerce were, naturally,
those which combined small bulk and weight with high value. The chief
Chinese export appears to have been silk — in its raw form, as thread, and
as cloth. We hear repeatedly of it, and specimens of it in the form in which
it was shipped have been found, preserved through centuries by the dry
desert air, near the western end of the wall which the Han built to protect
the overland routes. Skins, furs, rhubarb, and cinnamon are also said
to have been among the merchandise which the Chinese sent westward and
which eventually reached the Mediterranean world. The Middle Kingdom
received in return glass, jade (although most of that used under the Han
was of domestic origin), horses, precious stones (including the diamond),
ivory, tortoise shell, pearls, asbestos (either now or a little later), and some
fine cloths of wool and linen.

The Formation of the Empire 95

CROSS-FERTILIZATION OF CULTURES THROUGH THE COMMERCE

OF THE HAN

Commerce inevitably resulted in reciprocal cultural influences.
There was an interchange in art and commerce over a vast area reaching
from north of the Black Sea into China. Its full extent we shall probably
never know. At best our information is fragmentary. One small example of
what must have been taking place over much of this wide region has come
to light in excavated tombs in Outer Mongolia. These sepulchers, supposed
to date from about the beginning of the Christian Era, contained pottery,
several kinds of cloths, and a variety of objects in stone and metal. The
artistic designs were derived from Greek, Chinese, Sarmatian, Scytho-
Siberian (Yiieh-chih), Persian, Babylonian, and Assyrian sources. If this
was true here, quite off the main trade routes, an admixture must have
occurred along the chief arteries of commerce. Discoveries in the Tarim
basin have revealed the presence of various cultural influences in Han
times. Excavations in southern Korea in tombs possibly of a post-Han date
have disclosed fragments of Roman glass goblets.

China, we know, had some effect upon the cultures of other peoples.
Many Chinese joined themselves to the Hsiung-nu — a migration stimulated
by the grim practice of the Chinese Emperors of executing generals and
envoys who were unsuccessful against the enemy. These, as well as mer
chants, must have spread Chinese ideas and manners among the "bar
barians." Silk, we have seen, went from China to the countries of central
and western Asia and to Rome, and the peach and the apricot, of Chinese
origin, reached Rome by the first century A.D. China, too, began to exert
a marked influence on Tongking and Korea, and the Japanese had contacts
with her.

Very notable was the effect of foreign intercourse upon China. Many
of its ramifications are obscure or perhaps entirely hidden, but we are aware
of it in the fields of art and religion. Chinese bronzes now add to the
rather stiff, symbolic, and predominantly geometrical designs of the Chou,
forms radically new to China. The production of bronze objects declined
from the high standards set in the Shang and Chou eras, but bronze mir
rors were common. Stone sculptures, preserved in tombs, display the
tendencies. Figures of men, heretofore rare, appear, scenes of daily life
are portrayed, attempts are made to picture the spirit world, and the
whole is full of action. The stone sculptures themselves were an innova
tion. We might believe these novelties a creation of the Chinese genius,
stimulated by the vigor of the Han culture — as, indeed, they probably
in large part were — but for the appearance of motives which we know
to be foreign: some of them Greek, some Sarmatian, and some probably
Iranian and Babylonian. Beautiful lacquer objects were produced under

96 VOLUME I

state inspection, as we learn from archaeological finds in a Chinese colony
in Korea. Indeed, lacquer appears to have been very popular, for widely
scattered examples of it have been found. Whether it was indebted to
foreign influences we do not know. It is possible that the Chinese derived
some musical ideas from the Greeks and some notions of alchemy —
although in the latter case the transfer may (not very probably) have been
in the other direction. Other plants than those we have mentioned may
have been brought in. It has been conjectured that some ideas of Greek
medicine and mathematics entered and that the calendar was affected.
Certainly Chinese ideas of geography and of the extent of the world were
enlarged.

THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM

In religion there was the introduction of what later became
one of the major factors in Chinese life, Buddhism. Buddhism had begun
that expansion which eventually made it one of the most widespread and
potent of faiths. It had originated as an offshoot — a heresy — of older
Indian religion, probably in the sixth century B.C. Its founder, of an
aristocratic family, had become oppressed by the suffering of life, and
abandoning his position and his family, as so many others in India have
done through the ages, had sought a solution of the problem of evil. Seeing
the pain which appears to be an inevitable concomitant of consciousness,
and believing, as his contemporaries did, in the transmigration of souls
— that physical death is not an escape from suffering, but simply ushers
in a new stage of existence which also is marked by anguish — the salva
tion which he sought was a way of getting rid of pain, a means of break
ing the endless round of rebirths. He tried earnestly the several roads
recommended by the philosophers and religious experts of the India of
his time, but to no avail. Finally, when all these had failed him, and in
despair he was sitting in meditation under a tree, the answer flashed into
his mind and he became the Buddha, the "Enlightened." It was one of
those revolutionary experiences which change the course of history. Having
found for himself the secret of release, of inward peace, and of freedom
from pain, the Buddha spent the rest of a long life in teaching it to others.
There is no space here to go into the Buddha's precepts in any detail.
He summarized them under the "four truths" — that life and suffering are
inseparable, that suffering is due to desire or thirst, that to get rid of
suffering one must be emancipated from desire, and that the way to free
dom from desire is the "eightfold path." The eightfold path included right
views (seeing life as it really is, always changing and with no abiding entity
which can be called soul), right aspirations, right meditation, and right
actions. He inculcated self-forgetfulness and kindly service, although with

The Formation of the Empire 97

no passionate attachment to any one or any thing. The goal, of course, is
the extinction of desire and so the end of pain — nirvana.

The Buddha's teaching was alien to Chinese thought; the mental and
spiritual world in which he lived differed from that of the Middle Kingdom.
His system had as its object escape from existence, which he regarded
as evil. Here and there were Chinese pessimists, but the majority of China's
thinkers regarded life as worth living. They were optimistic about human
nature. They deemed it either good to begin with, or if innately bad,
improvable. Some of them sought the indefinite prolongation of life. If
they troubled themselves at all about the state of the dead, it was to seek
to make the ancestors happy and to obtain their blessing upon their
descendants. Most philosophers were absorbed in the problem of better
ing existing human society. To be sure, Buddhism had some things in
common with such ancient Chinese thinkers as Hsiin Tzu. The belief in
the reign of law in the universe and retribution according to strict justice
were akin to the Indian conception of karma which Buddhism inherited.
The more thoughtful among the Taoists, too, with their sympathy with
meditation and their suspicion that the physical world, including the ego,
might prove an illusion, were somewhat in accord with Buddhist aspira
tions. Even here the similarity was by no means complete. Yet, as we shall
see, Buddhism was to have some of its greatest triumphs in China and
was to persist there after it had all but disappeared from the land of its
birth.

After the Buddha's death, his teachings continued to spread, although
at first rather slowly. In the second century B.C., under Menander, a Greek
who hewed out a principality for himself in the wake of the armies of
Alexander the Great, and whose domains were in Bactria, northwest of
India, and in India itself, Buddhism prospered. In the second century A.D.,
Kanishka, the powerful (Kushan) monarch of the branch of the Yiieh-
chih who ruled in what is now Northwest India and Afghanistan, became
a devoted patron of the faith. Thus Buddhism was prominent in some of
those countries with which the Chinese were establishing contacts through
the westward expansion and commerce of the Han. It is not strange that
Buddhism, an enthusiastically missionary faith, now made its appearance in
the Middle Kingdom.

In the course of its spread, Buddhism, like all great faiths, devel
oped schools of thought. The chief divisions are known as Mahayana and
Hinayana, the "Greater Vehicle" and the "Lesser Vehicle." Mahayana,
sometimes called Northern Buddhism, exalts the bodhisattva, one who,
with nirvana within his grasp, postpones entrance into it and is born and
reborn until he can make possible the salvation of all living beings. Prayer
and worship were absent from the Buddha's teachings, for he believed that
each must work out his own salvation unaided by divine beings, who, like

98 VOLUME I

men, are still subject to rebirth and so are unsaved. They crept back into
Mahayana, however. Hinayana, sometimes denominated Southern Budd
hism, insists that the ideal of the Mahayanist is unattainable and is untrue
to the teachings of the Buddha, and emphasizes the arhat, the one who
has found enlightenment for himself. Both Mahayana and Hinayana were in
Northwest India in these centuries, and it was only gradually that the
former prevailed in the North and the latter in the South.

Just when and by what route Buddhism first made its way to China
remains uncertain. The story often told, that its introduction was associated
with a dream of Ming Ti, the second Emperor of the Eastern Han, is an
invention of later years. The foreign religion was already in China at the
time that Ming Ti is said to have had his dream. The first Buddhists in
China seem to have been foreigners who journeyed by the trade routes
across the later Sinkiang. Some may have come to the South by the sea.
We know that as early as the first century A.D. Buddhist monks and lay
men were living in China under the protection of a brother of the Emperor.
We hear of the erection of a Buddhist temple in a city in the present
Kiangsu, in A.D. 191. We know, too, that from the first half of the second
century to the beginning of the third century of the Christian Era Buddhist
communities were to be found in Loyang. One of the missionaries was
a Parthian prince, known in Chinese as An-shih-kao, who had renounced
the succession to become a monk. With a compatriot and a Chinese, he
formed a group which translated Buddhist literature into Chinese. By the
end of the Later Han, centers of Buddhist activity existed in several places
in the North and in the lower valley of the Yangtze.

Early Buddhist missionaries were welcomed by some of the Taoists,
and were for a time popularly regarded as Taoists. As such, their faith
did not seem so very alien to the Chinese. Han Buddhism was a combina
tion of that faith and Taoism. But not until after the downfall of the Han
was Buddhism to experience its phenomenal growth.

OTHER CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE HAN

The Han dynasty was notable not only for importations from
alien civilizations but also for marked developments in the native culture,
seemingly independent of stimulus from the outside.

The most noteworthy were in the realm of thought and literature. The
dynasty was distinguished for the achievements of its scholars. It was not
an age of creative or original philosophic thought. To be sure, the schools
of the Chou were remembered and many of their writings were preserved
and carefully studied. The followers of Mo Ti were active and retained
their separate existence at least as late as the first century B.C. Two of the
schools, Taoism and Confucianism, continued to be especially strong
throughout the Han.

The Formation of the Empire 99

Taoism was often popular at court. Indeed, one of its greatest exponents
was a grandson of Kao Tsu — Liu An, commonly known as Huai-nan
Tzu — who, like so many of the time, sought for endless life and a means
to the transmutation of metals. Perhaps he should not be classed with the
Taoists, for he sought to construct a syncretic philosophy made up of
elements from all the main schools of thought. Implicated in a political
plot, he committed suicide, but popular tradition declared that he dis
covered the elixir of life, drank of it, and rising to heaven, became an
Immortal. In A.D. 163 an Emperor made official offerings at the supposed
birthplace of Lao Tzii and the following year built a temple to him in the
capital and used there in his honor the ritual employed in the imperial
sacrifices to Heaven. It was in the Later Han that Chang Tao-ling, or
Chang Ling, traditionally the first head of the Taoist organization, is said
to have lived, Chang Tao-ling led the sect called "Five-Bushel-Rice
Taoists" (from the fact that each convert was taxed that amount) . Toward
the close of the second century A.D. the Chang family, supported by this
sect, rebelled and for some years created an independent state in the present
Szechwan and Shensi, governing through a Taoist priesthood. Out of the
sect arose much of the later popular Taoism. The so-called Taoist Papacy
which persisted into the twentieth century was kept in the Chang family.

Confucianism, in a modified form, was more and more espoused by the
state. We have seen that the earliest rulers of the dynasty were somewhat
lukewarm toward it but were forced by the exigencies of their position
to show it some favor. It will also be remembered that as time passed, the
attitude of succeeding monarchs became more encouraging. Confucian
writings were made the chief subjects of study in the schools and formed
the basis of the examinations through which men of ability were recruited
for the civil service. The prominence of Confucianism increased under
Wang Mang and the Later Han. Under the Earlier Han the cult of Con
fucius seems to have been maintained only as were those of other ancestors,
by his lineal descendants, although occasional Emperors honored his
memory. Under the Later Han (A.D. 59) sacrifices in honor of Confucius
and Chou Kung were decreed in all the schools in large cities. In the first
century A.D. official texts of the Classics were ordered established. By
imperial command (A.D. 175) these were engraved on stone and placed
outside the state academy in the capital. By this time the Confucian scholars
were very powerful in the state. They attracted many disciples, and their
leaders formed a kind of ruling group, which they sought to perpetuate
by marriage alliances among their children. Between A.D. 175 and A.D. 179
a violent reaction against them, led by the palace eunuchs, killed many of
their number. Although during the brief remaining course of the dynasty
they did not regain their former influence, the Confucian tradition was by
that time too firmly established to disappear, and whatever the bias of
individual rulers — often Taoist or Buddhist — the state was henceforth

100 VOLUME I

built on what were largely (but by no means entirely) Confucian principles.
This official Han Confucianism, it will be recalled, was in many respects
quite different from that of the Sage and his immediate disciples and was
influenced by Taoism, Mo Ti and his followers, and the Legalist School.

Why Confucianism should have been selected from among its rivals
for imperial favor must be in part a matter of conjecture. Although his
religious views seem to have made a deep impress upon both Confucianism
and Taoism, Mo Ti's statecraft was probably held to be impracticable.
The Taoist political theories may have been too incompatible with the
complex civilization which was developing. The severe reaction against the
thoroughgoing application of Legalist principles by Shih Huang Ti discredited
that school Legalist ideas continued to be potent. But in theory it was
Confucianism that prevailed. The ritualism advocated by the Confucian
school provided the forms for the type of civilized life to which the
Chinese were traditionally accustomed. Moreover, they enhanced the
prestige of the Emperor, a result that commended itself to the Han
monarchs.

At the risk of being wearisome, it must be repeated that the Chinese
state system of the Han and succeeding dynasties owed a debt not only to
Confucianism but to others of the schools of the Chou. In it were elements
traceable to the Legalists, the Taoists, and the Mohists. The Confucianism
of the Later Han was in many respects a syncretic product to which all
of the major schools of the Chou contributed.

In establishing this composite Confucianism as the leading philosophy
of the state, and in making its texts the subject of study in the schools of
the Empire and the basis of civil service examinations, the Han monarchs
were promoting the cultural unity of their domains. The very syncretism
which so characterized the Han — as contrasted with the distinct philosophic
divisions of Chou times — both reflected and contributed to the political and
cultural imperial structure now achieved. The Han not only welded China
into a political Empire. They founded its solidarity upon a more lasting
basis, that of one civilization and theory of life. It was this basis of union
which China was never completely to lose and which was to hold her
together in spirit even in the long periods when administratively she was
divided. Even the Communists, while rejecting Confucianism, stoutly held
to the principle of union founded on an officially inculcated ideology.

Independent speculation tended to die out. One of the thinkers who
stood out prominently in the memory of later generations^ was Wang
Ch'ung, of the first century A.D. An eclectic and a skeptic, influenced by
both Taoism and Confucianism and yet not blindly enamored of either,
he reacted against much of the current Confucianism. He held that man
is not as important as Han Confucianists declared him to be, that natural
phenomena and catastrophes are not the result of man's acts, and that such

The Formation of the Empire 101

events as a human birth are accidental and not the purposive deeds of the
universe. He criticized Confucius and Mencius, expressed doubts about
the reliability of much of the ancient literature, argued against immortality
and the existence of any spirit, and made much of the yin and the yang.
He was, moreover, a determinist, contending that man's lot is fixed by
blind fate. Even Wang Ch'ung was not as original as were many of the
Chou era, and most of his cardinal ideas had been held before him. Yang
Hsiung, a contemporary and minister of Wang Mang, held that the nature
of man, one of the moot points of Chinese philosophy, is a mixture of good
and bad, and that each becomes what instruction and practice make him.
He, too, however, was clearly not striking out on particularly new lines
and was a devoted Confucianist.

Some reasons for the decline of originality seem fairly clear. One was
the stern repressive measures of Shih Huang Ti. Another was probably the
encouragement given under the Han by the state, now a unified empire,
to Confucianism and Taoism. As time passed, official preferment and social
distinction were more and more gained through adherence to one of these
other two schools. After the establishment of Confucianism as the official
orthodoxy, the study of the members of the educated class was confined
chiefly to the works esteemed by that school. The range of reading, and with
it of thought, narrowed. Gone were the days of the Chou, when in the
variety of principalities, diversities of culture were possible and even en
couraged. The Emperors, to insure the political unity for which they strove,
were promoting cultural uniformity. The time had passed when wandering
and original scholars knew that if they and their theories were rejected at
one court they would stand k chance of being accepted at another.
Philosophic orthodoxy was the price which China paid for political in
tegrity.

A good many religious developments occurred under the Han. In
addition to the introduction of Buddhism and the changes in Confucianism
and Taoism, other innovations were made. For instance, the worship of
great men of the past was introduced and became part of the state cult.
It appears to have begun with Hui Ti, who commanded that a temple be
erected to his father, Kao Tsu, in each district and that sacrifices be offered
at stated intervals. This was a manifest aid to unifying the Empire and
perpetuating the Han rule. By the Later Han it became customary to offer
sacrifices to the memory not only of Confucius but also of other dis
tinguished men. Zoroastrianism came in and prospered for a time.

The energy of China's intellectuals, instead of seeking an outlet in
formulating novel ideas, went largely into historical and literary studies.
The surviving books of the Chou dynasty were carefully collected and
edited. Among those having a large part in this work were two scions of
the imperial family, Liu Hsiang and Liu Hsin, father and son, of the first

102 VOLUME I

century B.C. and the first century A.D. Liu Hsiang was a writer of note, with
a finely polished prose style, who was markedly influenced by Taoism. Liu
Hsin has already been noted. In the course of the Han, thirteen of the
ancient works were set up as canonical — the / Ching, the Shu Ching, the
Shih Ching, three versions of the Ctiun Ch'iu with three different com
mentaries on it, the Li Chi, the Chou Li, the / Li, the Hsiao Ching, the
Lun Yu, the £rh Ya, and the Meng Tzu Shu. The Erh Ya, it may be noted,
is often called the oldest Chinese dictionary, although considerable parts
of it are at least as recent as the third century B.C.

Editorial work was especially needed, for inventions in writing materials
and the new forms of the characters encouraged by them were fast making
the older script intelligible only to the expert. Wooden and bamboo tablets
gave place to silk fabrics, and in the Later Han, to paper. The traditional
date for the first manufacture of paper, A.D. 102 or 105, is only approxi
mate, and the new material must have grown out of many tentative experi
ments. However, examples of true paper dating from the Han and fabricated
from the bark of the mulberry tree, from hemp, and from rags, have been
discovered and show what was taking place. With the new material, new
forms of the characters came into common use and displaced the old.
Li Ssu, the great minister of Shih Huang Ti, is credited with having
developed, as we have seen, probably out of the form current in the state
of Ch'in, a script which he and his master tried to make universal. The
new styles then developed, it may be noted, were to persist; documents
dating from the Han have forms of the characters which differ little from
those in use today. In the second century A.D. the classics were engraved
on stone slabs. From these slabs they could be reproduced by rubbings on
paper, a technique which was in use by this time. It must be added that
the invention of so perishable a writing material as paper some centuries
before printing, made possible the rapid and cheap multiplication of books.
But it was not without its disadvantages, for practically no manuscripts
of early date have come down to us.

The preservation of the early literature was complicated by the disasters
which civil strife brought upon the libraries of the time. When the capital
was sacked at the end of the Ch'in, when more destruction overtook the
palaces at the overthrow of Wang Mang, and again in the turmoil that
accompanied the end of the Later Han, quantities of books were destroyed
— probably, all told, a very much more extensive loss than the "burning of
the books" by Shih Huang Ti. The result is that works which now purport
to have been handed down through and from the Han undoubtedly contain
many mistakes and have suffered alterations.

As we have seen, histories were being written. Pan Piao, the father of
Pan Ch'ao, began a continuation of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's great work. This was
completed by his son, Pan Ku — who was also something of a philosopher —

The Formation of the Empire 103

and by his gifted daughter, Pan Chao, and is known as the Ch'ien Han Shu,
or Book of the Former Han. Pan Chao, it may be noted, was not only a
historian, but a poetess, an essayist, and a novelist. Her advice to young
women was to remain a model almost to our own day. The Ch'ien Han Shu
was based, in part indirectly, upon the official documents of the Earlier
Han. However, since many of these had been destroyed in the domestic
strife at the end of that period and before the establishment of the Later
Han, the authors had to depend chiefly on a later source.

Among dictionaries the Shuo Wen was compiled (under the Later
Han) and is still a source of information (although now largely superseded
by archaeological finds) for early Chinese forms. Many commentaries on
the Chou literature were written embodying the views of the Han scholars,
some of them at variance with the teachings of the original texts.

A new prose style was developed. It was simple, and while not
identical with the vernacular, in grammar and construction largely con
formed to it. It is still admired for its vigor and clarity.

Poetry also flourished, although none of its authors attained the dis
tinction of the greatest of their successors of later dynasties. Much of the
verse of the Han was influenced by the literary traditions of the state of
Ch'u. These differed decidedly from the restrained classicism of the North
and had a pronounced romanticism, an exuberant vocabulary, and rather
wild fancifulness. Incidentally, the painting of the Han seems also to have
been molded in part by Ch'u ideals. Chang Heng, the first Chinese painter
of whom we know much, a contemporary of Wang Ch'ung, was as well an
astronomer, a mathematician, and a poet.

Han art and architecture had marked developments. Surviving examples
of art are seen in vivid scenes of contemporary life incised on the walls of
tombs and in pottery figures buried with the dead. Since buildings made
large use of kwood, complete examples have not come down to us, but
from what is described in poetry and prose and is depicted in tombs and
in small clay models prepared to accompany the dead to the spirit world,
we learn something of the architecture of the age. The portrayal of men
and animals was often with a pulsing vigor, which seems to have character
ized much of the age. In ceramics a protoporcelain was seen.

Advances were registered in mechanics and science. Water clocks,
gnomons, and sundials were devised. Sun spots were observed and regu
larly recorded. Instruments were created to observe the ecliptic and to
measure its obliquity. The moon's orbit was noted as being elliptical. The
solar year was determined with a near approach to accuracy. A seismograph
was invented. A calendar was devised which in its main features persisted
into the twentieth century.

Mathematics included arithmetic, algebra, mensuration, and such
features of geometry as the properties of the right-angled triangle.

104 VOLUME I

Maps were made of the Empire and of various sections of the realm.

Most of the preceding pages have concerned themselves with the
achievements of the upper classes — the men and women of power and of
education. One would like to know what the masses were doing and think
ing. Here and there we catch glimpses of them— as in the agrarian reforms
which altered their means of livelihood, in sculptures which hint at sports
and games (although these may have been chiefly for the aristocracy) and
at popular religious cults, and in the pages of Wang Ch'ung, where popular
beliefs are described in the process of holding them up to ridicule. On the
whole, however, our knowledge is most fragmentary.

SUMMARY

It was a rich age, that of the Ch'in and the Han. China was,
with Rome, the most powerful state on the planet. Its population was not
far from that of the Roman Empire at its peak. A census under the
Earlier Han reported 59,594,978, presumably of taxable adults, and an
other, A.D. 105, put the total of the taxable population at 53,256,229. In
a land in which there was a local particularism that might later have
developed into the type of divisive nationalism so characteristic of Europe,
unity had been accomplished and the separatist tendency had been de
cisively weakened. This, one of the outstanding political achievements in
the history of the race, was the work of both the Ch'in and the Han. The
former began it and the latter carried it further. The means employed were
partly administrative and partly cultural. The cultural theories by which
the Ch'in tried to reinforce their organization — those of the Legalists —
proved too drastic. It was owing to the genius of the men of Han that the
principles chiefly associated with a different school, that of Confucius,
were adopted and made to work. A successful combination of administra
tive machinery with a unifying, practical philosophy of human society
proves the greatest of the Han rulers and their advisers to have possessed
extraordinary political capacity. Moreover, the territory of the China thus
united and made strong was being greatly extended. The Chinese showed
that power of assimilating and molding other peoples which has been one
of their outstanding characteristics. Chinese culture was penetrating the
Yangtze Valley and the south coast. Civilization, too, was developing and
feeing modified — in part by foreign influences. Cities were burgeoning.
Wealth was growing. The rich and powerful were erecting huge palaces.
Like all human inventions, the Ch'in-Han system was not without
defects. There was a tendency to crush originality: political unity was
achieved through enforced cultural uniformity and this latter would be
brought about only by stifling the brilliant individualism so characteristic
of the disunited Chou. Freedom and progress were sacrificed to the ideal

The Formation of the Empire 105

of domestic peace. Then, too, the system was dependent on a hereditary
imperial house. The keystone of the arch was the Emperor. If he was
strong, stability was sure. When, however, as is inevitable in the course
of any family, weaklings came to the fore, the entire structure suffered.
The downfall of the Han did not entirely undo the work of that dynasty
and its predecessor. To the ideas, the literature, and the institutions of the
period later generations recurred again and again. Even in recent times the
Chinese have proudly called themselves Han Jen, "the men of Han."
No radically different political system was seriously tried until the twentieth
century. The China of the next two millennia had been born. The Chinese
Empire had made its appearance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The chief Chinese source for the Ch'in is Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi. The
Shih Chi continues into the reign of Wu Ti of the Former Han. This and the
Ch'ien Han Shu, the famous work by the Pan family, noted above, are standard
for the Former Han. For the Former Han there is also the Han Chi, or Han
Annals, by Hsiin Yueh (A.D. 148-209), arranged by years, on the plan of the
Tso Chuan. For the Later Han, the Hou Han Shu, compiled by Fan Yeh, of the
fifth century, is the major authority (although inferior to the Ch'ien Han Shu).
Much of the portions of the Shih Chi which deal with the Ch'in and the Han
has been translated by E. Chavannes, in Les Memoires Historiques de Se-ma
Ts'ien (5 vols., Paris, 1895-1905). Chavannes' great work is not only a trans
lation but also contains extensive prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Among
these are extremely valuable essays on the lives of Ssii-ma Ch'ien and of his
father, on the sources of the Shih Chi, the history of the reign of Wu Ti, the
administrative organization of the Ch'in and the Han, and possible connections
between Greek and Chinese music. An important translation of portions of the
Ch'ien Han Shu, with valuable introductions, notes, and appendices, is H. H.
Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, by Pan Ku (Vols. 1, 2,
Baltimore, The Waverly Press, 1938, 1944; Vol. 3, London, Kegan Paul,
Trench, 1955). On the Ch'ien Han Shu see also C. B. Sargent, "Subsidized
History: Pan Ku and the Historical Records of the Former Han Dynasty,"
The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 3, pp, 119-143. On Ssu-ma Ch'ien see Burton
Watson, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Grand Historian of China (New York, Columbia
University Press, 1958, pp. xi, 276). Burton Watson, Records of the Grand
Historian of China. Translated from the Shih Chi of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (New York,
Columbia University Press, 2 vols., 1961) is a readable nontechnical transla
tion, partly rearranged to give continuity, of portions of the Shih Chi which
cover the early years of the Han and the age of Wu Ti. Erich Haenisch in
"Der Aufstand von Ch'en She im Jahre 209 v. Chr.," Asia Major, Vol. 2, pp.
72-84, has translated a section of the Shih-chi which deals with an uprising
against the Ch'in. On the Ch'ien Han Shu see Rhea C. Blue's "The Argumenta
tion of the Shih-huo chih chapters of the Han, Wei, and Sui Dynastic Histories,"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 11 (1948), pp. 1-118. See also J. R.
Hightower, "The Han-shih Wai-chuan and the San Chia Shih," Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 11, pp. 241-310.

106 VOLUME I

Useful summaries of the entire period are in O. Franke, Geschichte des
chineschischen Reiches (Vol. 1, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1930), pp.
223-431; Marcel Granet, Chinese Civilization (New York, Alfred A. Knopf,
1930), pp. 377-425; C. P. Fitzgerald, China, A Short Cultural History (New
York, D. Appleton-Century Co., 1938), pp. 133-241.

On the Ch'in see Derk Bodde, China's First Unifier, A Study of the Ch'in
Dynasty as Seen in the Life of Li Ssu (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1938, pp. viii, 270);
Derk Bodde, Statesman, Patriot, and General in Ancient China. Three Shih Chi
Biographies of the Ch'in (New Haven, American Oriental Society, 1940, pp.
xi, 75).

On the origin of the name China see B. Laufer in T'oung Pao, 1912, pp.
719-726, and P. Pelliot in ibid., 1912, pp. 727-742, 1913, pp. 427, 428. The
views of the two men differ. See summaries of various theories in Henry Yule,
Cathay and the Way Thither, edited by Henri Cordier, Vol. I (London,
Hakluyt Society, 1915), pp. 10-34.

On Wang Mang, in addition to H. H. Dubs, The History of the Former
Han Dynasty, by Pan Ku, Vol. 3, where the translator takes a very critical
view of that ruler (see a lengthy review by C. S. Goodrich in Journal of the
American Oriental Society, Vol. 79, pp. 104-123), see Hu Shih, "Wang Mang,
the Socialist Emperor of Nineteen Centuries Ago," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 59, pp. 218-230; H. 0. H. Stange,
Die Monographic iiber Wang Mang (Ts'ien Han Shu Kap. 49) (Leipzig, 1939);
and Clyde Bailey Sargent, Wang Mang (Shanghai, The Graphic Art Book Co.,
no date (1947?), pp. 12, 206. The theory that the Tso Chuan and Chou Li
as we now have them are forgeries of Wang Mang's entourage is combatted
by B. Karlgren in "The Early History of the Chou Li and Tso Chuan Texts,"
The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, Bulletin No. 3 (1931),
pp. 1-60. On the downfall of Wang Mang, see Hans Bielenstein, The Restora
tion of the Han Dynasty, with Prolegomena on the Historiography of the Hou
Han Shu (Vol. 1, Goteborg, Flanders Boktrycherei, 1953, pp. 209), Vol. 2,
Stockholm, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1959, pp. 387.

On foreign wars and conquests, see Owen Lattimore, Inner Frontiers of
China (Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 429-510; E. H. Parker, A Thou
sand Years of The Tartars (London, 1924); E. Chavannes, "Trois Generaux
Chinois de la Dynastie des Han Orientaux," T'oung Pao, Ser. 2, Vol. 8, No. 2;
Henri Maspero, "L'Expedition de Ma Yuan," Bulletin de f&ole Francaise
d'Extreme Orient (1916), No. 1, pp. 49, 55; Leonard Aurousseau, "La
Premiere Conquete Chinoise des Pays Annamites (Hie siecle avant notre ere),"
ibid., 1923, pp. 137-264; Yoshito Harada and Kazuchika Komai, "Mu-yang-
ch'eng: Han and Pre-Han Sites at the Foot of Mount Lao-t'ieh in South
Manchuria," Archaeologia Orientalis, Vol. 2, Tokyo (1931); Harold J. Wiens,
China's March toward the Tropics (Hamden, Conn., The Shoe String Press,
1954), pp. 130-140; H. Bielenstein, Emperor Kuang-wu (A.D. 25-57) and the
Northern Barbarians (a Record of His Struggle with the Hsiung-nu) (Canberra,
The Australia National University, 1956, pp. 23); W. M. McGovern, The
Early Empires of Central Asia (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina
Press, 1938), pp. 109-308.

On the closely related subject, foreign intercourse and cultural exchanges,
see E. Chavannes, "Les Pays d'Occident d'apres le Heou Han Chou," T'oung
Pao, 1907, pp. 149-234; Albert Hermann, "Die alten Seidenstrassen zwischen
China und Syrien," Quellen und Forschungen zur alten Geschichte und

The Formation of the Empire 107

Geographie, Berlin (1910); an interesting map in A. Hermann, Die Verkehr-
swege zwischen China, Indien und Rom um 100 nach Chr. (Leipzig, 1922);
A. Hermann, Lou-Ian, China, Indien und Rom im Lichte der Ausgraben am
Lobnor (Leipzig, 1931); M. P. Charlesworth, Trade-Routes and Commerce
of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1924); W. H. Schorl, "Navigation to the
Far East under the Roman Empire," Journal of the American Oriental Society,
Vol. 37, pp. 240-249; M. Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay (2 vols.,
London, 1912); M. Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia (4 vols., Oxford, 1928); M.
Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan (2 vols., Oxford, 1907); M. Aurel Stein, Serindia
(5 vols., Oxford, 1906 et seq.)', J. J. M. de Groot, Chinesische Vrkunden zur
Geschichte Asiens (2 vols., Berlin and Leipzig, 1921-1926); F. Hirth, "The
Story of Chang K'ien, China's Pioneer in Western Asia,1' Journal of the
American Oriental Society, Vol. 37 (1919), pp. 89-152; B. Laufer, Sino-
Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran
(Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1919, pp. iv, 185-630); B.
Laufer, "Asbestos and Salamander," Toung Pao, 1915, pp. 209-273; A. von
Le Coq, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan (London, 1928); F. J. Teggert,
Rome and China (University of California Press, 1939) ; G. F. Hudson, Europe
and China: A Survey of their Relations from the Earliest Times to 2800
(London, 1931); H. H. Dubs, A Roman City in Ancient China (London, The
China Society, 1957, pp. 4-48); Rene Grousset, L' Empire des Steppes (Paris,
Payot, 1948), pp. 30-124; K. Enoki, "Sogdiana and the Hsiung-nu," Central
Asiatic Journal Vol. 1, pp. 43-62; O. R. T. Janse, Archaeological Research in
Indo-China (Harvard University Press, 2 vols,, 1947, 1951, projected as 3
vols.).

On the thought of the Han period see Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese
Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 1-167; Fung
Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York, The Macmillan
Co., 1948), pp. 178-230; John K. Shryock, The Origin and Development oj
the State Cult of Confucianism (New York, The Century Co., 1932), pp.
21-111; Hisayuki Miyakawa, "The Confucianism of South China," in Arthur
F. Wright, The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, I960), pp.
21-46; Wm. Theodore de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York,
Columbia University Press, I960), pp. 161-276; Esson M. Gale, Discourses
on Salt and Iron. A Debate on State Control of Commerce in Ancient China
(Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1931, pp. Ivi, 165); Hu Shih, "The Establishment of
Confucianism as a State Religion during the Han Dynasty," Journal of the
North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1929, pp. 20-41; H. H.
Dubs, "The Victory of Han Confucianism," Journal of the American Oriental
Society , Vol. 58, pp. 435 ff; A. Forke, "Lun Heng," Mittheilungen des Seminars
fur orientalische Sprachen} Berlin, 1906, 1907, 1908; and Beibande zu den
Mittheilungen des Seminars fur orientalische Sprachen, Berlin, 1911 (on Wang
Ch'ung); E. H. Parker, "Hwai-nan Tsz," New China Review, VoL 1, pp. 505-
521, Vol. 2, pp. 551-562. .

On the sacrifices F&ng and Shan see E. Chavannes, Le T'ai Shan (Pans,
1910).

On various aspects of Han government, see S. Kato, "A Study of the
Suan-Fu, the Poll Tax of the Han Dynasty," Memoirs of the Research Depart
ment of the Toyo Bunko, No. 1 (1926), pp. 51-68; T. H. Koo, "Constitutional
Development of the Eastern Han Dynasty," Journal of the American Oriental
Society Vol. 40, pp. 170-193; Von Wilhelm Seufert, "Urkunden zur staathchen

108 VOLUME I

Neuordnung unter der Han-dynastie," Mitteilungen des Seminars fur Ori-
entalische Sprachen, Berlin (1922), pp. 1-50; A. F. P. Hulsewe, Remnants
of the Han Law. Volume I: Introductory Studies and an Annotated Translation
of Chapters 22 and 23 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty (Leiden,
E. J. Brill, 1955, pp. 455); Wang Yii-chiian, "An Outline of the Central Gov
ernment of the Former Han Dynasty," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
Vol. 12 (1949), pp. 134-187.

On various economic and social aspects of the period, see Nancy Lee
Swan, Food & Money in Ancient China. The Earliest Economic History of
China to A.D. 25. Han Shu 24 with Related Texts, Han Shu 91 and Shih-chi
129 (Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. xiii, 482); E. Stuart Kirby, Intro
duction to the Economic History of China (London, George Allen & Unwin,
1954), pp. 66-86; C. Martin Wilbur, Slavery in China under The Former
Han Dynasty (Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1943, pp. 490);
J. R. Hightower, trans., Han Shih Wa, Chuan: Han Ying's Illustrations of the
Didactic Application of the "Classics of Songs" (Harvard University Press,
1952, pp. vii, 368), illustrates the fashion in which quotations from the
Classic of Poetry were used in the later century of the Earlier Han; E. R.
Hughes, Two Chinese Poets: Vignettes of Han Life and Thought (Princeton
University Press, 1960, pp. xv, 266).

On Taoism see Henri Maspero, Melanges Posthumes sur les Religions et
d'Histoire de la Chine (Paris, Civilisations du Sud, 1950, Vol. 2, pp. 71-200,
218-222); A, C. Graham, translator, The Book of Lieh-tzu (London, John
Murray, 1960, pp. xi, 183); H. S. Levy, "Yellow Turban Religion and Re
bellion at the End of the Han," Journal of American Oriental Society, Vol. 76,
pp. 214-227.

On the introduction of Buddhism to China, see E. Zurcher, The Buddhist
Conquest of China (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2 vols., 1959), Vol. 1, pp. 18-42;
Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford University Press,
1959), pp. 3-41; Paul Demieville, "La Penetration du Bouddhisme dans la
Tradition philosophique Chinoise," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, Vol. 3 (1956),
pp. 19-38; H. Maspero, "Le Songe et 1'Ambassade de 1'Empereur Ming,"
Bulletin de Vtcole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient (1910), pp. 95-130; H.
Maspero, "Communautes et Moines Bouddhistes Chinois au He et III Siecles,"
ibid. (1910), pp. 222-232.

On literature see Tjan Tjoe Som, Po Hu Tung. The Comprehensive Dis
cussions in the White Tiger Hall (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2 vols., 1949, 1952);
Nancy Lee Swan, Pan Chao: The Foremost Woman of China (New York,
1932); Lo Tchen-ying, Une Famille d' Historiens et son (Euvre (Lyon, 1931);
Georges Margouilies, Le "Fou" dans le Wensiuan (Paris, 1926); Georges
Margouilies, Le Kou Wan Chinois (Paris, 1926). H. Wilhelm, "The Scholar's
Frustrations: Notes on a Type of Fu," J. K. Fairbank, editor, Chinese Thought
and Institutions (University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 310-319; David
Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South; An Ancient Chinese Anthology
(Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1959, pp. x, 229).

On language see Paul L-M. Serruys, The Chinese Dialects of Han Time
According to Fang Yen (University of California Press, 1959, pp. xix, 350).

On the invention of paper and new forms of writing, see T. F. Carter, The
Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward, revised by L. C.
Goodrich (New York, The Ronald Press Co., 1955, pp. xxiv, 293), pp. 3-11;
Bernhard Karlgren, Philology and Ancient China (Oslo, 1926).

The Formation of the Empire 109

On the art and architecture of the period, see B. Laufer, The Beginnings o]
Porcelain in China (Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1917, pp. 79-
183); E. Chavannes, Mission Archeologique dans la Chine Septentrionale, Vol.
1, Part 1, La Sculpture a I'fipoque des Han (Paris, 1912); B. Laufer, Chinese
Grave Sculptures of the Han Period (London, 1911); Otto Fischer, Die
chinesische Ualerei de Han-Dynastie (Berlin, 1931), in which Han art is said
to be a purely indigenous development; M. Rostovtzeff, Inlaid Bronzes of the
Han Dynasty in the Collection of C. T. Loo (Paris, 1927), in which the foreign
influences in Han art are stressed; W. C. White, Tomb Tile Pictures of Ancient
China. An Archeological Study of Pottery Tiles from Tombs of Western
Honan, Dating about the Third Century, B.C. (The University of Toronto
Press, 1939, pp. 69, plates cxxvii); Richard C. Rudolph and Wen Yu, Han
Tomb Art of West China (University of California Press, 1951, pp. 160, 9
figures, 100 collotypes); Rene Grousset, The Civilization of the East. China,
translated by C. A. Phillips (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1934), pp. 49-109;'
Cheng Te-kun, "Yin-yang Wu-hsing and Han Art," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 20, pp. 162-186; L. Sickman and A. Soper, The Art and
Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 20-40, 211-226.

On science Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 3
(Cambridge University Press, 1959), passim', W. Eberhard, "The Political
Function of Astronomy and Astronomers in Han China" (J, K. Fairbank,
editor, Chinese Thought and Institutions, pp. 35-70); W. Eberhard, "Con
tributions to the Astronomy of the Han, Period III," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 194-241.

On the rebellions near the end of the Han, see Howard S. Levy, "Yellow
Turban Religion at the end of the Han," Journal of the American Oriental
Society, Vol. 76, pp. 214-227; G. Haloun, "The Liang-chou Rebellion, 184-
221 A.D.," Asia Major, New Series, Vol. 1, Part 1, 1949, pp. 119-132; Paul
Michaud, "The Yellow Turbans," Monumenta Serica, Vol. 17 (1958), pp.
47-127.

For intellectual and social currents in the decline of the Han see fitienne
Balazs, "La Crise Sociale et la Philosophic Politique a la Fin des Han," T'oung
Pao, Vol. 39, pp. 83-131, and fitienne Balazs, "Entre Revolte Nihiliste et
Evasion Mystique: les Courants Intellectuals en Chine au He Siecle de Notre
fire," Etudes Asiatiques—Asiatische Studien, Bern, No. 1/2 (1948), pp. 27-55.

CHAPTER FOUR

A STRIKING CHANGE :

DIVISIONS, FOREIGN INVASIONS, AND CULTURAL
INNOVATIONS FROM THE CLOSE OF THE HAN
TO THE BEGINNING OF THE Sui DYNASTY
(A.D. 220-589)

INTRODUCTORY

With the end of the Han began a period of civil strife, internal
division, and cultural change which lasted for almost four centuries. Non-
Chinese peoples on the northern and western frontiers took advantage of
the dissensions among the possessors of the fertile and wealthy valleys to
the east and south and invaded the land, sometimes setting up regimes
which lasted for long periods. The administrative structure erected by
the Ch'in and the Han could not be operated for the entire country, and
where preserved, was often much weakened. The cultural unity achieved
by them was also threatened. Foreign influences, especially Buddhism,
wrought striking modifications in the life of the country. Other domestic
developments were important. When, at the close of the sixth and the
beginning of the seventh century, the Empire once more was brought
under one ruling house, Chinese civilization had been strikingly altered
from what it had been under the Han.

In many ways the experience of these years resembles that through
which the Occident, and especially the Mediterranean world, was then
passing. In both regions were political disunion and foreign invasions.
In each, important cultural developments were in progress. Between the
two great movements an actual connecting link existed in the vast migra
tions of peoples which characterized them both; it was from Central Asia
that some (although by no means all) of the waves which overwhelmed
large portions of the Chinese and Roman Empires seem to have originated.
The suggestion has been made that common climatic changes lay back

110

A Striking Change m

of them — a prolonged period of scanty rainfall in the great steppes and
semideserts of Central Asia, which set the nomadic peoples in motion
in search of food.

In China, however, the anarchy was not so marked nor were the
changes so revolutionary as in the West, and recovery was more rapid.
In both regions a new faith was making rapid strides — Christianity in the
West and Buddhism in the Middle Kingdom; but Buddhism was not so
thoroughly to transform the civilization of China as was Christianity to
mold that of the Occident. As, in the Mediterranean area, the Byzantine
Empire in the East perpetuated much of the Graeco-Roman world, even
more in China purely Chinese states continued in the South the traditions
and institutions of the past, and in no great region of the Middle Kingdom
does the retrogression toward barbarism appear to have been so marked
or so prolonged as in Western Europe during the Dark Ages. In the
Occident, the shock was so profound that the unity which was Rome's
greatest achievement was never again fully realized over all the area which
had once been included in that empire, while in China complete union
was again consummated and the territory governed was fully as extensive
as under the Han. When, in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Sui and
the T'ang brought the Chinese once more together, the culture which was
then theirs, while markedly different from that of the Han, was not as
much so as was that of the European Middle Ages or the Renaissance from
that of the Roman Empire. The China of the Ch'in and the Han more
nearly succeeded in surviving the years of disintegration and in impress
ing itself upon foreign invaders than did the Graeco-Roman world. In its
flood tide the T'ang displayed a much richer and more varied civilization
than the Western Europe of the same period. From Italy westward, recu
peration from the invasions had begun but was not to be accomplished
until several centuries after the T'ang.

THE THREE KINGDOMS (A.D. 211-265)

Following the collapse of the Later Han, for several decades
the Empire Was divided into three major fragments, and the period, con
sequently, is known in Chinese records as that of the Three Kingdoms (San
Kuo). In the Northeast, as we have seen, Ts'ao P'ei, the son of the dis
tinguished and able but unscrupulous Ts'ao Ts'ao, persuaded the last of the
Later Han to abdicate in his favor. Taking the designation of the power
which his father had exercised in fact, he called himself Emperor. His
dynasty he denominated Wei, assuming the name of .a late Chou state. He
had possession of the Han capital and what had been the center and the
most prosperous parts of China, but only a minority of the Han domains
recognized him. In the South, Sun Ch'iian, son of an official and general

112 VOLUME I

of the declining years of the Later Han, declared himself Emperor and
gave to his dynasty the name of Wu, after a Chou state in that area. He
and his successors controlled most of the former possessions of the Han in
the Yangtze Valley east of the gorges and on the south coast into what
is now Annam. Wu established its capital first at what is now Wuchang and
later at the present Nanking. In Szechwan a member of the Liu family, Liu
Pei by name, a descendant of one of the Han Emperors, assumed the
imperial title, and his dynasty is called the Minor or Shu Han, Shu being
a former designation of the area over which he ruled.

The half-century or so during which these three states existed is one
of the most romantic in the history of China. Around it stories of valor
and adventure have collected, which have been the source of many plays
and popular narratives and of a widely read historical novel, the San Kuo
Chih Yen /, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The most famous heroes
of the period are the trio, Liu Pei, Chang Fei, and Kuan Yii, and the
premier of the Shu Han, Chu-ko Liang. The first three are said to have
become sworn brothers by the "Peach Garden Oath" and are reputed to
have performed prodigious deeds of valor. Kuan Yii and Chang Fei per
ished in 219 and 220 respectively, before the abdication of the last of the
Later Han, the one by assassination and the other executed by Sun
Ch'iian. Liu Pei died in 223. Centuries afterward, Kuan Yii was canonized
as God of War and as such was widely worshipped as the patron of sol
diers. Chu-ko Liang, who survived the other three, was noted for his
stratagems and his inventions of military machines.

In spite of the personal bravery of the three heroes and the skill of
Chu-ko Liang, Shu Han was the first of the three states to disappear.
During the lifetime of Chu-ko Liang it seemed to be successful in its
wars with Wei, but some years after the death of that statesman, thanks
probably to the incapacity of the successor of Liu Pei, it was conquered
by its northeastern rival.

The dynasty of the house of Ts'ao did not long survive the end of Shu
Han. As Ts'ao Ts'ao and his son first dominated and then deposed their
titular masters, the last of the Later Han, so in turn their descendants
fell under the control of and eventually were displaced by the family
of their chief minister. In 265 Ssu-ma Yen, whose father had been premier
of Wei, deposed the last of Ts'ao Ts'ao's descendants to bear the title
of Emperor and established himself as the first Emperor of a dynasty
which he called by the name of Chin (also romanized Tsin and usually
denominated the Western Chin or Tsin to distinguish it from its continuing
branch, the Eastern Chin). A few years later, in 280, Ssu-ma Yen suc
ceeded in overthrowing the ruler of Wu. China was now nominally once
more under one monarch.

A Striking Change 113

THE CHIN (OR TSIN) DYNASTY

Ssu-ma Yen managed to hold most of his domains together
during his lifetime, and to his court came envoys — or at least so Chinese
historians declare — from Ta Ch'in (the Roman Orient) and from distant
portions of Central Asia on the extreme edge and even beyond the widest
extension of the Han domains. He is known to posterity as Wu Ti, or
to distinguish him from the others under different dynasties who had been
given that title, Chin Wu Ti.

Ssu-ma Yen died A.D. 290 and his descendants soon fell upon evil
days. His immediate successor proved incapable of maintaining peace,
but, feeble and mentally incompetent, was largely under the control of
a vigorous and unscrupulous wife. Civil strife ensued, chiefly among
members of the imperial family. Non-Chinese peoples took advantage
of the situation to extend their conquests in Chinese territory. The house
of Ssu-ma Yen was unable to compose its differences and present a united
front against the invaders, and in 316 the grandson of Wu Ti and the
fourth Emperor of the line surrendered to one of the barbarian chiefs,
abdicated, and shortly afterward was put to death.

AN ERA OF DIVISION : THE CHINESE STATES OF THE SOUTH

Now came many decades of division. In the Yangtze Valley
princes of Chinese blood ruled, and their domains extended along the
south coast. Occasionally they pressed their boundaries northward beyond
the confines of the basin of the Yangtze. In the North non-Chinese peoples
established states. They usually adopted Chinese culture and their leaders
often aspired to the title of Emperor. The time was one of great con
fusion, but the reader may be helped to see its main features by an outline
— first, of the chief political events in the South, and then of those in
the North. The regional classification is not as artificial as it might seem,
for in the course of the centuries the culture of the South became some
what distinct from that of the North. But the two influenced each other
and ultimately merged.

In the South a branch of the Ssu-ma family maintained itself somewhat
precariously for a little over a century (317-420) with its capital on the
Yangtze at a place denominated Chien-yeh or Chien-k'ang (now Nanking)
and is known as the Eastern Chin. Much of the course of the dynasty was
punctuated by revolts and intrigues — the common lot of all Chinese ruling
houses — and also by wars with the states on the north. About the middle
of the fourth century the throne was dominated by an unusually able
general, Huan Wen, who regained for his master Szechwan (for the pre
ceding third of a century or so largely comprised in a Chinese state in that

114 VOLUME I

region founded in ca. 304 by a family who had assumed the imperial
title) and for a time extended the frontiers of the Eastern Chin to include
much of the North China plain, So powerful was he that he deposed the
reigning Emperor and placed his own puppet, still of the Ssu-ma family,
on the throne. This puppet, it is generally supposed, was to abdicate upon
demand in favor of the king-maker. However, he died prematurely and
was soon followed to the grave by the ambitious Huan Wen. The Ssu-ma
line thus obtained a fresh reprieve and reigned for nearly half a century
longer.

The end of the Eastern Chin came in 420. It was brought about by
another ambitious general, Liu Yii. Liu Yii claimed descent from a
brother of the founder of the Han dynasty but had been born and reared
in poverty. Not until middle life did he achieve prominence. Then, enlist
ing as a soldier, he quickly displayed ability, rose rapidly to high command,
subdued a number of revolts, and carried the boundaries of the Chin to
the Yellow River in successful fighting against the northern states. Liu Yii
took advantage of the virtual dictatorship which these victories gave him
to have the feeble Emperor killed. He set up another of the Ssu-ma line
who soon abdicated (by request) and shortly afterward was also killed.
Liu Yii, who had been known as prince of Sung, now established a new
dynasty by that name. To distinguish it from the later and more renowned
dynasty of Sung it is often called the Liu Sung.

The fall of the Eastern Chin (420) is usually paid to mark th§ begin
ning of the era known to the Chinese as the Nan Pei Cftpo, or the South
ern and Northern Dynasties, which lasted until 589. Another classifica
tion — inclusive of a longer period — employed by Chinese historians is the
Six Dynasties, by which are meant the six kingdoms and dynasties between
the downfall of the Han and the reunification of China in 589, which
had for their capital what is now Nanking. They were Wu, the Eastern
Chin, the Liu Sung, the Southern Ch'i, the Liang, and the Ch'en. In
reality the end of the Eastern Chin marked no especial revolution. China
was divided, to be sure, but not much more so than it had been for decades.
The confusion became only a little more confounded.

The Liu Sung quickly ran its course. Liu Yii, known to posterity by
the familiar title Wu Ti, did not long enjoy the power for which he had
murdered his masters, but died in 423. The seven members of his family
who successively followed him on the throne were short-lived. Four came
to violent ends before reaching their twentieth birthdays, and the oldest,
known to posterity as Wen Ti, who reigned for nearly thirty years and under
whom the realm experienced a fair degree of prosperity, was put to death
by his own son. Family wars and intrigues make the chronicles of the
dynasty peculiarly sordid and bloody. By a certain rough justice of fate,
the Liu Sung was brought to a close, as it had been begun, by a vigorous

A Striking Change 115

general. Hsiao Tao-ch'eng, its chief commander, slew the last two Emperors
of the line and in 479 placed himself on the throne.

Hsiao Tao-ch'eng became the first Emperor of the dynasty known as
the Southern Chi This had even shorter shrift than the Liu Sung. The
founder died a little less than three years after mounting the throne and
of his six descendants who held the imperial title only one reigned for
more than two years and four died by violence. Domestic strife and war
with one of the states of the North permitted little quiet. Again a general
made an end of the dynasty (502) and founded a new one, the Liang.

The first monarch of the Liang, Hsiao Yen, known to posterity as Wu
Ti (or, to distinguish him from the many others of the same appellation,
Liang Wu Ti), was a distant connection of the rulers of the preceding
dynasty. He held the throne until his death in 549, or for nearly half a
century. Frugal, an enemy of luxury and excess, and something of a
scholar, he appears to have sought conscientiously the welfare of his realm.
He reduced taxation, ordered the establishment of schools, and strove for
peace. At first an ardent Confucianist, in late middle life he became a
devout Buddhist. In his extreme old age (for he lived to be eighty-six)
misfortunes overtook him. In the South, Annam revolted (in 541, but it
was soon reconquered, the return of Chinese power beginning in 545),
and a famous attempt to overwhelm the northern kingdom of Wei through
the prolonged siege of the strategic city on the Han, later called Hsiang-
yang, failed because of the disastrous collapse of the dam which the
attackers were building tcr drown out the beleaguered. In the North a vassal
prince rebelled and crossed the Yangtze, and the new feeble Liang Wu Ti
died in penury in what was later to be known as Nanking.

Great confusion marked the next few years. The rebel prince sought
to establish a new dynasty, but was speedily slain. Violent struggles for the
succession brought several members of the family of Hsiao Yen to the
throne, but one after another these were quickly killed. In 557 the Liang
dynasty is said officially to have ended, although a branch of the Hsiao
family retained a precarious hold upon a section of the country until 589
and is known as the Hou Liang, or Later Liang (not to be confused with
a Hou Liang of the tenth century) .

The last Emperor of the Liang had been compelled to abdicate by one
of his officials, Ch'en Pa-hsien, a descendant of a renowned statesman
of the Han. Ch'en Pa-hsiea established at the present Nanking a dynasty
called the Ch'en, but died about two years after his accession. His descend
ants held the throne for approximately thirty years. Their rule was termi
nated by Yang Chien — of whom more below — who once more united all
China and founded the Sui Dynasty.

With all the division, it is significant that the title of Emperor and with
it the idea of unity were not allowed to lapse. Thanks to the work of the

116 VOLUME I

Ch'in and the Han — and to the traditions of pre-Ch'in times — the Chinese
still thought of themselves as part of a cultural whole over which there could
be only a single fully legitimate supreme ruler. Civilized human society,
even though at times divided, must ultimately, they believed, be politically
one.

AN ERA OF DIVISION: THE NON-CHINESE STATES OF THE NORTH

During these centuries of division, events in the North were
even more confused and kaleidoscopic than in the South. The many states,
most of them established by invaders, usually had rapidly shifting bound
aries, and as a rule, several were in existence at one time. Wars among
them and with the dynasties of the South were frequent. Only the chief
of the states and a few of the more prominent events need here be men
tioned.

We have seen that the Western Chin came to its end largely through
the attacks of non-Chinese peoples. These were the Hsiung-nu, so fre
quently mentioned in the preceding pages. Their power had been broken by
the Han, but they had maintained their separate existence under their own
chiefs and were numerous in the northern marches. Many of them were
in the service of the Emperors. When the Chin began to show weakness
they threw off its yoke. Their ruling family claimed descent from the
Han through a princess of that house who had been given to one of its
ancestors in marriage. Accordingly, it assumed the family name of Liu,
began to pay reverence at the graves of the Han, and gave the designation
Han to the state which it founded — sometimes called the Pei (Northern)
Han. It was obviously making a bid for the mastery of all China and
was seeking to give to its aspirations the guise of legitimacy. In 308
one of the line, Liu Yiian, felt himself strong enough to take the title of
Emperor. It was his son, Liu Ts'ung, who brought the Western Chin to a
violent termination.

Liu Ts'ung changed the name of the Hsiung-nu dynasty from Han to
Chao (after an ancient state by the latter name), usually called the
Ch'ien (Earlier) Chao. Liu Yiian was succeeded by a kinsman, and he
in turn was slain by one of his own generals, also a Hsiung-nu, who
took the throne and whose short line is known as Hou Chao, the Later
Chao. These Hsiung-nu states, it is well to note, had their strong
holds in the Northwest and sometimes their capital was at Ch'angan.

The Later Chao was succeeded in the Northwest by a state estab
lished by a Tibetan people. They gave to the brief dynasty they founded
the name of Ch'in — the same as that of the state which in the third
century B.C. had united China. During its comparatively brief course it
was divided into two sections called Ch'ien and Hou — the Earlier and

A Striking Change 117

the Later Ch'in. In the second half of the fourth century the most power
ful ruler of the Earlier Ch'in, Fu Chien, extended his boundaries into
what is now Sinkiang and Szechwan, and over much of North China.
He overran, among other small states, one which had its center in
North Shansi and which had been founded by a family — possibly
Mongol in stock — early in the fourth century. Fu Chien built up a highly
Sinized administration and in his armies combined his cavalry with
Chinese infantry. He came to grief in an attempt (A.D. 383) to push his
conquests to the south against the Eastern Chin. Defeated, he was killed
in a revolt of his own generals. One of the latter founded the Later
Ch'in.

In the far Northwest, a Tibetan general whom Fu Chien had dis
patched into Central Asia, Lu Kuang, was returning from a successful
campaign when he heard of the fall of his sovereign. Pausing in what
is now Kansu, he carved out for himself a principality which he ulti
mately called Liang (Hou Liang, or the Later Liang, to distinguish it
from another and slightly earlier northern principality which is called the
Ch'ien, or Earlier, Liang). Not long afterward, two of Lu Kuang's own
subordinates, taking advantage of a reverse he suffered at the hands of
the Later Ch'in, revolted and seized part of his territory, founding petty
states which are known as North and South Liang.

While these events were taking place in the Northwest, in the North
east another people were establishing themselves. The Hsien Pei (often
written Hsien Pi), of whose racial connections we are not quite sure but
who seem to have been Mongols, were widely spread in what is now
North China, Manchuria, and Mongolia. They occupied, among other
regions, much of the area formerly held by the Hsiung-nu. During
most of the fourth and into the fifth century a portion of the Hsien Pei —
whose seat was in what is now southern Manchuria — under the lead
ership of various branches of the Mu-jung family set up in the North
east, with its center in the modern Hopei, a state known as Yen. This
again, thanks to the vicissitudes of war, had several subdivisions — the
Earlier Yen, the Later Yen, the Northern Yen, and the Southern Yen.
Several members of the Mu-jung family took the title of Emperor, thus
displaying both their political ambition and their desire to be thought of as
in the Chinese cultural stream.

During these confusing years of division we hear also, in the first
half of the fifth century, of the dynasty of Hsia, with its center in the
Ordos, north of what is now Shansi. Its name was derived from the first
of the traditional Chinese "dynasties," for its ruler claimed descent from
that house.

The longest lived and most powerful of the states of the North was
founded by the T'u Pa (or Toba). Their dynasty, the Northern Wei (or

118 VOLUME I

Yuan Wei), lasted from 386 to 534, and two shorter succeeding dynasties,
the Western Wei (Hsi Wei) and the Eastern Wei (Tung Wei), also
of the T'u Pa, persisted until 557 and 550 respectively. As is the case
with so many of these northern peoples, the ethnological connections of
the T'u Pa are somewhat uncertain. They are usually said, perhaps
wrongly, to be a branch of the Hsien Pei and they may have been either
Mongols, "proto-Mongols," or Turks. They seem to have absorbed some
of the Hsiung-nu. Their language appears to have been of Turkish
origin. In the latter part of the fourth and in the first half of the fifth
century, under a succession of able and vigorous leaders, the T'u Pa
overran most of the North and united it under one rule, bringing to
an end the petty states of Liang and Yen and the other principalities in
that area. In the middle of the fifth century they carried their arms into
what is now Sinkiang. Several of the leading oases and trading centers
of that region, including Turfan and Kashgar, became tributary to them.

The T'u Pa monarchs first fixed their capital at P'ingch'eng (now
Tat'ung), in Shansi, but later in the last decade of the fifth century,
moved to Loyang in Honan. They strove to adopt and patronize Chinese
institutions and culture. Eventually the T'u Pa language and costume
were proscribed, conformity to the Chinese in these matters, in family
names, and in court ceremonial was ordered, and intermarriage with
the Chinese encouraged. The T'u Pa became defenders of Chinese civiliza
tion against fresh invasions from the North — building for that purpose
at least two frontier walls. For a time theirs was the strongest state in
East Asia. As we shall see in a moment, some of the line were espe
cially noted for their advocacy of Buddhism, although others espoused Con
fucianism, and still others Taoism.

Among the most powerful of the enemies on the north, against
which the Northern Wei strove to defend their realm, were a people
with Mongol and Turkish elements, perhaps identical with the Avars
who appear in European history, known to the Chinese as the Juan
Juan, meaning to wriggle, like a worm, possibly a pun on their true
name. They gave the northern marches much trouble. About the middle
of the sixth century the Juan Juan were hi turn .defeated by some of
their former vassals, the T'u Chiieh, a Turkish people, who thereupon, in
the second half of the sixth century, proceeded to build in Mongolia
and Central Asia an empire of vast dimensions. They joined in over
throwing the Hephthalites, or "White Huns," possibly related to or identical
with the Juan Juan. In the middle of the fifth century the Hephthalites
had become a great power centering in the valley of the Oxus and had
been successful invaders of India. The T'u Chiieh were not very highly
civilized and had derived such culture as they possessed probably not
from Chinese but from Iranian and Aramaean sources. They formed a
temporary alliance with the Sassanian monarchs of Persia and obtained

A Striking Change

the territory in which are now Bokhara and Samarkand, thus control
ling in part the caravan routes by which silk was carried from China to
the Byzantine Empire. We find these Turks, however, soon turning
against their quondam allies. They demanded free passage across the
Persian possessions for the commerce between China and Constantinople,
seized from the enfeebled Sassanids territory south of the Oxus, and
made approaches for concerted action by the Byzantine Empire and
themselves against the Persians. The Byzantines attacked from the west
and the Turks from the east. These Turks now had the strongest state
in Central Asia.

To return to North China and the fate of the Wei. By the middle
of the fifth century the vigor of the T'u Pa line was running low. The
Northern Wei, as we have seen, in 534 broke into the Western and the
Eastern Wei. The Eastern Wei was set up by a powerful general who
dominated its puppet prince, and in 550 the son of this general took in
name the power which his father had exercised in fact. He founded
the Pei Ch'i, or Northern Ch'i dynasty. In like manner, the Western Wei
was founded — at Ch'angan — under the direction of a general who kept
on the throne a prince of the legitimate line. Similarly also, this roi
faineant was made to abdicate (556) and was then killed (557), and
a son of the king-maker was placed on the throne as the first monarch
of the Pei Chou, or Northern Chou dynasty. In 557 the Northern Chou
overran and annexed the Northern Ch'i, so that most of China was divided
between two ruling lines, the Ch'en in the South and the Northern Chou
in the North.

The time was now ripe for the reunification of China. Neither the
Ch'en nor the Northern Chou was especially strong and a vigorous
and able leader would meet no insuperable difficulty in overturning them
both. He appeared in the person of Yang Chien, an official under the
Northern Chou and a descendant of a distinguished scholar and states
man of the Later Han. His daughter was married to his master and
when the offspring of that union, his grandson, succeeded to the throne,
Yang Chien soon (581) persuaded him to abdicate in his favor and
established himself as the first monarch of the Sui dynasty. A few years
later his armies overthrew Ch'en and he became head of a reunited
China (589). His achievement was aided by the persistent belief-
dating from at least the Chou era and furthered by the Ch'in and
the Han — that all civilized mankind should be under one rule.

CULTURAL CHANGES: GENERAL

To those for the first time reading Chinese history, the
period which we have just recorded must seem a hopelessly confused
mass of names and wars. A detailed account would be even more

120 VOLUME I

perplexing. Not only have many important figures and events of the
period not been mentioned, but several of the minor states which arose in
these years of disunion — some of them with Chinese and some with
non-Chinese rulers — have not been so much as named. A perusal of
the annals of the period gives the impression of almost continuous
strife, of wave upon wave of barbarian invasion, of an apparently un
interrupted series of rebellions, and of widespread anarchy. A large
proportion of the so-called Emperors came to violent ends, and sordid
intrigue and selfish betrayal seem to have been the order of the day.
In the chronic fighting, and especially in the destruction of the capital
cities and their libraries, much of such literature as had survived the
Han or had been freshly produced was destroyed.

Fortunately, however, this is only one phase of the story. Disorder
and anarchy there were, but the very wars brought about a geographical
extension of the Chinese people and their culture. Then, too, over con
siderable portions of time large sections of the land enjoyed comparative
peace and prosperity. The partial breakdown of government and the
consequent loosening of the political, social, and intellectual structure
that had been developed under the Ch'in and the Han permitted a flexi
bility in mind and culture which had not been known since the later
years of the Chou era. Foreign commerce continued and may have
increased. Contacts with non-Chinese peoples and civilizations multiplied.
More contributions entered from outside than in any previous period,
and since China was comparatively malleable, profound changes followed.
To obtain a well-balanced picture of the era, therefore, we must notice
the nonpolitical side of the story somewhat in detail.

The wars and the barbarian invasions in the North brought about a
southward ^migration of the Chinese. The movement was partly one of
officials and the wealthy, but millions of the country folk also changed
their homes. Heretofore the Yangtze Valley had been on the fringes
of Chinese civilization and had been occupied only partially by Chinese
stock. Now, for the first time, it gradually became a chief center of
Chinese culture. The non-Chinese elements were partially assimilated.
Indeed, as we have seen, for nearly three centuries the purely Chinese
dynasties had the seat of their government there. The growth in the
population of the region appears to have been rapid during the fourth
and much of the fifth century, and to have slowed down only with the
disorders which marked the course of the later southern dynasties.
In its new environment, moreover, Chinese culture took on some fresh
forms, especially in literature and art. From the South came the drink
ing of tea. Our first reference to that custom is from the second half
of the third century. The use of tea was long confined chiefly to the
southern and central parts of the Empire. Not until the eighth or ninth

A Striking Change 121

century did it become common in the North. In moving to the South,
the immigrants were forced to adjust themselves and their agriculture
to the climate and soil of the region, including the wet cultivation of
rice.

In the meanwhile, Chinese civilization did not permanently lose ground
in the North. Many of the non-Chinese conquerors bowed to the civiliza
tion of their subjects, and in time adopted it. Intermarriages wrought
modifications of racial stock, and presumably there were changes in the
spoken language. However, in spite of all the innovations brought by
the wide acceptance of Buddhism (of which more in a moment), in
the North, as in the Yangtze Valley, Chinese culture inherited from
the Han was cherished by scholars and leading families, persisted, and
toward the end of the period was partly revived. The dream of an
empire embracing all civilized mankind was cherished.

Some of the Chinese attempted to keep themselves free from the
taint both of alien and of plebeian blood. Great aristocratic families arose,
especially in the South, who monopolized a large portion of the chief
offices and possessed extensive landed estates. They intermarried among
themselves in spite of the efforts of some of the rulers to prohibit the
practice. In time their ways were aped and their lineages appropriated
by commoners. Their failure to conserve exclusiveness was accompanied
by the spread of their culture and the preservation of many of the older
Chinese ideas and customs.

The periods of peace and prosperity which large portions of the
land enjoyed permitted the carrying on of the institutions of the past
and the perpetuation of the arts of civilization. Many of the rulers,
both Chinese and non-Chinese, were patrons of learning as interpreted
by the Confucian school. In the third century, the Wei dynasty — estab
lished by the Ts'ao — had some of the classical books of antiquity engraved
on stone at the capital, Loyang. Repeatedly we read of monarchs found
ing schools, and at times Confucius appears to have been fully as honored
as under the Later Han. We hear of a Confucian temple built in 505, with
an image of the Sage in it. Some rulers favored Taoism, and Buddhism
was often, and in the main, increasingly popular with the rulers, Con-i
fucian scholarship seems to have made no great gains, and to have dis
played no especial creativeness, but Confucian philosophy persisted as the
theory on which the state and society were supposedly chiefly grounded.

The names of some eminent men of letters have come down to us.
Wang Pi, of the first half of the third century, composed commentaries
on the / Ching and the Tao Te Ching, trying to find in the former wisdom
rather than divination and to make of the latter a consistent philosophic
whole. The "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" of the third century were
freethinking philosophers and poets who took a Taoist outlook on life,

122 VOLUME I

kept largely aloof from conventional society, and lived simply — albeit
bibulously. It may be that some of the Taoist texts usually ascribed to great
figures of the Chou dynasty are their work. They helped, moreover, to
develop the verbose, superficial, and highly artificial prose style, which dur
ing the centuries of disunion and into the succeeding period largely sup
planted the concise, semirhythmical style of antiquity. A poet (still famous)
was T'ao Ch'ien (365-427), a native of the modern Kiangsi province.
Several times he had been in official life, but he longed for quiet and
retirement. Interestingly enough, late in life he made the acquaintance of
Hui Yuan, who, as we shall see presently, more than any other appears to
have been responsible for the early stages of the growth of the Pure Land
School of Buddhism.

Poetry seems to have been stimulated to fresh life by the new southern
environment of Chinese culture under the Six Dynasties, as well as by
contact with Buddhism. Taoism, as we have suggested, had its influence.
Many a man, weary and disillusioned by the disorders of the time, withdrew
from public life to solitude or to his estates and sought to bring himself
into harmony with nature, partly by the methods advocated by Taoism.
Some of these recluses endeavored to express themselves in verse.

Wang Hsi-chih (321-379), one of China's most distinguished callig-
raphists, a Taoist by belief, belongs to these centuries.

Taoism flourished and underwent marked developments. It continued
to cultivate practices which it believed would lead to physical immortality.
Those who had attained that state were known as hsien. Part of the tech
nique was sexual acts, both individual and group, which the Buddhists,
who esteemed asceticism and continence, and the Confucianists deemed
highly immoral. The sexual element flourished in these centuries but later,
because of criticism, either disappeared or became less public. In the search
for an elixir of life, contributions were made by Taoists to medicine. Partly
under the influence of Buddhism a Taoist pantheon was created and Taoist
communities arose. But unlike Buddhism, Taoism encouraged marriage.
Taoist temples were erected with deities and with depictions of heavens and
hells — again a reflection of Buddhist influence. On the philosophical side
some of the Taoist intellectuals were moved to fresh interpretations. A
kind of mysticism was nurtured. In painting, Taoism, with its glorification
of nature, contributed to the emphasis on landscape.

Forerunners of a voluminous class of Chinese literature, local gazetteers,
appeared, modeled on the Ch'un Ch'iu. Histories were written, some of
them in the style of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's great work. Cartography developed.
Works on botany began to be written.

A form of writing was developed, the p'ien t'i, or parallel style, by
which sentences were so arranged that the meanings and sounds of words
were balanced in pairs.

A Striking Change 123

Great libraries were collected under state supervision. Many of them
were scattered or burned in the political upheavals of the times, but the love
of books never died out and numbers of the writings of the past survived.
Some ancient literature, moreover, was conserved in anthologies of prose
and poetry collected during these years.

Modifications were made in the bureaucracy developed under the Ch'in
and the Han. More than once, however, a strong ruler attempted to enforce
his authority through some form of organization which showed the influence
of the models of the past,

Innovations were made in other phases of life. The wheelbarrow and
the water mill appeared. For the first time we hear of sedan chairs and
dice. Coal began to be used. Improvements were seen in the calendar. A
form of compass was invented. The mathematical TT was determined with
a close approximation to accuracy.

FOREIGN COMMERCE

Foreign commerce continued, both by the overland routes
and by way of the ports on the south coast. Trade by the overland routes
was probably often interrupted or hampered by war, but we have already
noted that the Northern Wei extended its power to the extreme west of
what is now Sinkiang. The silk trade appears to have been maintained.
Of the southern ports, those in Tongking, on the delta of the Red River,
were earlier of chief importance, but Canton was growing as a rival.

Chinese merchants seem not to have ventured very far afield and to
have left chiefly to strangers the initiative in foreign trade, but outsiders
found China a profitable country with which to deal

Now and again we obtain glimpses of this foreign commerce or its
concomitants that show us something of its extent. In 226 a merchant from
the Graeco-Roman Orient — Ta Ch'in, as the Chinese called it — arrived
via Tongking at the court of the state of Wu. Other merchants from Western
Asia are reported to have come in fairly large numbers to what is now
Vietnam and even to Canton. Sun Ch'iian, the first Wu Emperor, made
at least two attempts to get in touch with the outer world, the initial "one
through an official whom he started back with the merchant from Ta Ch'in,
but who died on the way, and the other through representatives whom he
sent to the countries to the south. In 433 an embassy reached China from
a state in the South — either from Java or from the Malay Peninsula. Be
ginning with the latter part of the third century, the kings of Champa, just
to the south of the, Chinese domains, began sending envoys. Some of these
rulers, indeed, recognized Chinese suzerainty, although others did not
scruple to invade the adjoining imperial domains. Embassies, too, are said
to have arrived from Ceylon and India to the Liu Sung court to congratu-

124 VOLUME I

late it on the progress of Buddhism in its domains. The large number of
Buddhist missionaries in China who came by sea probably indicates a fairly
extensive ocean shipping. Sericulture reached Khotan from China early
in the fifth century. The cultivated walnut seems to have been introduced
into the northwest of China, possibly from Tibet, by the fourth century,
and the pomegranate, which was probably of Iranian origin, in about the
third century. Methods of manufacturing glass appear to have been brought
by Syrian or Indian artisans in the first half of the fifth century, brocades
came from Persia as early as 520, and commerce in walrus ivory and other
northern products trickled through from the far North and perhaps even
from across the Bering Straits.

It must not be thought that the bulk of this trade was very large,
compared with present-day international commerce. Measured by that
standard, it was a mere trifle. Possibly it was small even when contrasted
with the foreign commerce of the T'ang, the great dynasty which followed.
For the times, however, especially when we recall the disasters which were
overtaking the Mediterranean world during the fifth and sixth centuries,
it was not insignificant.

It may be noted here, although it does not bear directly on commerce,
that the music of Kucha, a highly cultivated center in what is now Sinkiang,
had an influence on that of China, for an orchestra was brought back from
there by Liu Kuang's forces.

It must also be added that Japan was feeling the influence of Chinese
civilization. In the third and fourth centuries, a strong state with Chinese
rulers was established in what is now the southern portion of Manchuria
and northern Korea, and Chinese culture was potent in the Korean penin
sula. In the fourth century, after the collapse of this state, the stream
dwindled but by no means disappeared. Under Chinese influence and with
Chinese art forms, Buddhism reached even southern Korea in the fifth
century. While the Chinese were in Korea, Japan and the peninsula were
very closely in touch with each other, partly through Japanese invasions,
and Chinese culture flowed into the islands. Japanese envoys visited
northern China, and Chinese penetrated to Japan. Chinese and Korean
immigrants helped to provide that country — then very rude — with scribes,
and the Chinese characters were introduced, although possibly not for the
first time. As the years passed, direct connections between Japan and the
China of the Yangtze Valley were made. Industries, especially weaving,
were introduced to Japan. Numbers of Chinese immigrants settled in the
country and some of them built Buddhist temples. During part of the time,
Japan was regarded by the Chinese as a vassal, and honorary titles were
said to have been conferred on its rulers. Japan was being brought into
the Chinese cultural area.

A Striking Change 125

THE CONTINUED INTRODUCTION AND GROWTH OF BUDDHISM

One of the clearest evidences of Chinese contact with the
outer world, and at the same time the greatest foreign contribution to the
China of the period, was the rapid growth of Buddhism.

There is something surprising in the firm establishment, great popu
larity, and wide acceptance of Buddhism in China. Usually a religion
spreads to another land through one or more of five agencies: (1) con
quest by adherents of the faith, with the subsequent conversion of the
vanquished either by force or by the advantages which accrue to conformity
with the religion of the rulers; (2) intimate commercial contacts by which
merchants or professional missionaries propagate the faith; (3) the bring
ing together of peoples of different cultural strata, those of lower civiliza
tions being ashamed of their "barbarism" and taking over the religion along
with the other features of the higher civilization; (4) a large body of
earnest missionaries; and (5) a deep sense of religious need, which the
native faiths leave unsatisfied and which the new religion gives promise
of meeting. Of these five agencies the first three in this case were almost
entirely lacking. There was little or no conquest of China by peoples
previously Buddhist; commercial contacts, as we have seen, were com
paratively slight; and Chinese culture in many respects was equal and even
superior to that of the peoples of India and Central Asia from whom the
Chinese received Buddhism.

It will be remembered that Buddhism had arisen in a civilization whose
dominant interests were seemingly quite different from those of China.
Indian culture, as represented by its intellectuals, was other-worldly, deeply
concerned about the fate of the individual after death, firmly convinced of
the reality of the transmigration of souls, and given to mysticism. Except
for Taoism, Chinese thought was chiefly absorbed in successfully ordering
human society and in such related problems as the quality of human nature.
It upheld the traditional honors to ancestors, but for long it had been in
fluenced by an undercurrent of skepticism about the reality of life after
death. It had no inkling of metempsychosis. Mysticism, if present at all,
was there only in rudimentary form. Why should Buddhism, which arose
out of specifically Indian needs and problems, meet with such successes in
a cultural atmosphere as alien to it as that of China?

Moreover, Buddhism, ran counter to much that was fundamental in
Chinese life. It advocated celibacy, a practice destructive to the family,
that social institution by which Confucian thought and Chinese tradition
set such store. In its monastic communities it tended to create imperia in
imperio, which an autocratic state, such as was China in its centuries of
power, must regard with suspicion and certainly must insist upon con
trolling. Its premium on mendicancy was obnoxious to statesmen who

126 VOLUME I

must have regarded sturdy beggars as parasites on society. Its asceticism
was contrary to Confucian moderation and humanism,

Then again, no other foreign faith, not even Islam or Christianity, has
ever obtained anything like the hold in China which Buddhism achieved,
and that notwithstanding the fact that Islam has been continuously repre
sented in the Middle Kingdom for eleven or twelve centuries — ap
proximately two-thirds of the time that Buddhism has been there — and
Christianity has been in the Middle Kingdom intermittently as long as
Islam and continuously for as many centuries as were required to give
Buddhism wide acceptance.

On further consideration, however, at least some of the reasons for
Buddhism's success become apparent. Although limited, commercial con
tacts between China and Buddhist peoples did exist. In some respects — as
in some phases of art, letters, and philosophy — the adherents of Buddhism
could teach the Chinese. Zealous and scholarly Buddhist missionaries came
in large numbers.

Moreover, Buddhism seemed to meet some basic demands of the human
spirit for which the then existing Chinese religions offered no satisfaction.
Mahayana Buddhism — the type which ultimately predominated in China —
presented a more definite picture of the future life and could promise to
all who followed its precepts the assurance of bliss beyond the grave — an
ample and happy existence of which it gave glowing and specific portrayal.
It also terrified the timid and warned the wicked with its hells. To be sure,
the conception of nirvana was too abstruse for most Chinese, and the prob
lem — of escape from rebirth and suffering — for which it was the solution
and which gave it an appeal to the Indian mind, was alien to Chinese
thought. For most Chinese Buddhists, however, nirvana faded into the
background.

Buddhism may also have been a welcome relief from the rigid deter
minism of some forms of Confucianism. Its doctrine of karma, by which
an individual's present lot is fixed by his deeds in all his previous existences,
seems hopelessly fatalistic. But a man by his deeds in this life could modify
his karma and so affect his lot in a future existence.

Then, too, Buddhism, with its philosophies, its pantheon and saints,
its images, its stately worship, its music, its voluminous religious literature,
its cosmology, and its elaborate forms of the religious life, greatly enlarged
the spiritual horizons of the Chinese and made a powerful aesthetic and
intellectual appeal. To some, moreover, the celibacy, the asceticism,
and the authoritarian community life must have proved attractive.

Buddhism, again, in practice exalted the individual as the native
philosophies did not. Confucianism and Taoism were aristocratic, and
Taoist immortality was only for the few. Buddhism was for all: any one,
no matter how humble, might share in its salvation for himself, or more

A Striking Change 127

popularly, through an easy reliance on monk, ceremony, saint, or savior.

Moreover, Buddhism proved adaptable and its interpreters accommo
dated it in large part — although never entirely — to previous Chinese
prejudices and conceptions, including the traditional honors to ancestors.

Finally, the time was eminently favorable for the growth of Buddhism
in China. The faith was still in its heyday in the land of its birth, and
Buddhist missionaries were enthusiastically propagating it in new lands.
Mahay ana Buddhism especially was strong (although Hinayana was not
unrepresented) in what is now Northwest India (Gandhara and Kashmir)
and in some of the regions to the north (Kashgar, Yarkand, and other
centers) across which ran the trade routes between China, Persia, and the
Roman Orient. Here, then, was a great spiritual movement in the full flood
of missionary enthusiasm and expansion, and in lands with which China
had commercial contacts.

Just when this was true, in China the structure of society had been
enfeebled by disorder. The state was not in a position to offer the effective
resistance to Buddhism — even when it wished to do so — that it could under
the great monarchs of the Han. Confucian orthodoxy suffered from the
irregularities and partial collapse of the educational and bureaucratic struc
ture which were its bulwarks, and from the civil strife which must have
taken heavy toll of its leaders. Moreover, Confucianism was burdensome,
and its debility may have been greeted with a feeling of relief. To be sure,
Taoism was often popular, as under the Eastern Chin, when it was dominant
in court circles. However, a few Taoists, distressed by the degradation of
their faith, greeted Buddhism as akin to the reform which they were seeking.
Then, too, Chinese, disheartened by the chaos in society, welcomed the
refuge from the world which Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist philos
ophy seemed to afford. In the North, finally, were non-Chinese peoples,
some of whom had contacts with that Central Asia where Buddhism was
now so strong, and upon most of whom the esteem for native Chinese
culture rested more lightly than upon the pure Chinese. It is not surprising,
therefore, that these centuries saw Buddhism become an integral and in
fluential part of Chinese life.

Buddhism was brought to China through numerous foreign missionaries.
From the names that have come down to us we know that some were from
Cambodia, some from Ceylon, and some from India, including South India,
and that others, perhaps the larger proportion, were from what are now
Northwest India and Afghanistan (where, it will be recalled, the Kushan
kings, a Yiieh-chih dynasty, had espoused it), and from regions in Central
Asia to which the faith had spread from that center— Parthia, for ex
ample, and what is now Sinkiang. Some came to the South by way of the
sea, and others to the North by the overland trade routes.

Among the many names that we have is that of Dharmaraksha, a native

128 VOLUME I

of Tunhuang — near what is now the extreme western border of Kansu,
and so a center where many influences were to be found coming over the
trade routes. He is said to have known thirty-six languages or dialects.
Arriving at Loyang in 266, in the next half-century he is reported to have
made translations of more than one hundred and seventy-five Buddhist
works. We hear also of Kumarajiva (344-413), the son of an Indian
father and of a princess of Kucha, a famous Buddhist center in the later
Sinkiang, He was educated in part in Kashmir, was brought back a captive
from Kucha by the expedition of Lli Kuang at the close of the fourth
century, and labored with marked success in Ch'angan. Sometimes called
the greatest translator of Buddhist texts, during nine years at Ch'angan
he organized a bureau, which had in it hundreds of monks and which,
under his supervision, put ninety-four works into Chinese. He and others
helped to emancipate Buddhist from Taoist ideas.

Much of the work of the missionaries, as these examples attest, con
sisted in the translation of Buddhist books into Chinese — a labor in which
Chinese shared. To no small degree, the success of Buddhism in the
Middle Kingdom appears to have been due to these literary labors. Long
lists of the works put into Chinese, from the Han dynasty onward, have
been preserved. This voluminous literature won the respect of a people
who have traditionally held the written page in high esteem.

Buddhism was further encouraged in the Middle Kingdom by the
journeys to India of ardent Chinese monks who sought in the home of
their religion not only inspiration but also sacred books and relics as
tangible aids to the faith in China. These travelers seem to have been
fairly numerous. The most famous of the period covered by this chapter
was he whose religious name was Fa-hsien. Fa-hsien set out in 399 with
the purpose of obtaining in India more nearly perfect copies of Buddhist
sacred books than were to be found in his native land. He went by one of
the caravan routes across the Tarim basin, in India visited important
Buddhist centers and collected copies of the works for which he was in
search, and, returning by way of Ceylon and the ocean route, landed on
the north coast after an absence of fifteen years. Somewhat less dis
tinguished was Sung-yiin, who, sent in 518 with a companion by an
Empress Dowager of the Northern Wei to acquire Buddhist books, reached
India by the overland route and arrived home in 521.

Chinese monks were not content simply with translations of the Indian
scriptures of their faith, but began the production of an independent
native literature on Buddhism.

Through the labors of the missionaries and their converts Buddhism
became extremely popular. It spread in the South among the aristocracy,
partly through men who gave it prestige in court circles. In the North it
was aided by many of the non-Chinese rulers. Buddhism did not always

A Striking Change 129

have smooth sailing. On several occasions monarchs of Confucian or Taoist
convictions instituted persecutions, destroying monasteries and ordering
the monks back into secular life. The old order was not so moribund that
it could offer no resistance. In the North a method was developed for a
state control of Buddhism through an inclusive structure which persisted for
centuries. At times Taoism was sufficiently powerful at one or another of the
courts to bring about a temporary proscription of Buddhism. On occasion
the elimination of both Buddhism and Taoism was ordered. Often Buddhism
was espoused by the rulers, an act which could not fail to augment the
popular following. Devotees of Buddhism were found both among the
Chinese monarchs of the South and the non-Chinese princes of the North.
Probably- the most famous of the southern imperial converts was Liang Wu
Ti who, as we have seen, after being an earnest Confucianist, in middle life
embraced Buddhism. He publicly expounded Buddhist sutras, collected a
Chinese edition of the Tripitaka, issued edicts against animal sacrifices,
was a strict vegetarian, and three times retired to a monastery. Several
monarchs of the Northern Wei, of the T'u Pa line, stand out as patrons
of the faith. At least two of them opposed it, but the majority endorsed it.
Some even took part in Buddhist ordinations and preached Buddhist
sermons. We read of thousands of monasteries and of hundreds of thou
sands of monks, and have a report that in 381 nine-tenths of the inhabitants
of northwestern China were Buddhists. Accurate statistics are, of course,
lacking, and these numbers are probably exaggerations, but taking as a
whole the centuries between the Han and the Sui, Buddhism undoubtedly
grew in popularity. By the advent of the Sui it had become an integral and
powerful part of Chinese life.

Both Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism were found in China, but,
as we have suggested, Mahayana predominated and became standard.

Buddhism had a manifold influence upon the life of the period. Re
ligiously it introduced new conceptions, among them many gods, the
transmigration of souls, and much clearer -convictions about life after
death. Ethically it reinforced some features of traditional Chinese morality,
including kindness and regard for human life, and it also carried these
particular virtues further, insisting on regard for all animate existence. In
time many of its concepts crept into folklore and popular festivals, and
so all, whether avowed Buddhists or not, more or less unconsciously were
affected by it.

In literature and language, Buddhism not only introduced many new
terms, but, in their study of Chinese, Buddhist missionaries, coming with
the perspective of foreigners, originated a phonetic analysis — by means
of what are called initials and finals — which entered into later Chinese
philology and literature.

In art especially, Buddhism brought fresh contributions. It was in

130 VOLUME I

Northwest India, particularly in Gandhara, that statues of the Buddha
were first made. Here Greek influence was still strong, so the earliest
Buddhist iconography was distinctly Hellenic in form. It was through
Gandhara that die easiest — although not the shortest — of the trade routes
passed by which communication was had between what is now Sinkiang
and India. Hence this Graeco-Buddhist art spread into Central Asia and
eastward into the Tarim basin and on to China. In the oases of the later
Sinkiang and in China, statues large and small were carved or cast in
metal, frescoes were painted on the walls of rock temples, stone carvings
were made, and stelae were set up, a large proportion of them showing
Graeco-Buddhist features. Other, more purely Indian art came in by the
shorter but more difficult route across the Pamirs. In Sinkiang surviving
examples of this period and of the centuries immediately succeeding show
a mixture of many strains — Graeco-Roman, Persian, Byzantine, Indian of
the Gupta period (fourth, and fifth centuries), Graeco-Buddhist (of Gand
hara), and others of as yet unknown provenance. Given the trade routes,
this art could not fail to have its effect in the Middle Kingdom. Impressive
survivals of Gandhara Graeco-Buddhist influences in China are in Tat'ung,
in a gorge called Lungmen, near Loyang, and in many monuments and
images which have been brought to museums in the Occident. The Buddhist
art associated with the name of the Northern Wei is noted for its Gandhara
characteristics, its beauty, and its relative simplicity. In the Yangtze Valley
a current from Southern India seems to have entered. Here, too, as possibly
in North China, the Buddhist stream merged in part with Taoist impulses.
Probably the greatest painter was Ku K'ai-chih, of the fourth and fifth
centuries, a native of Kiangsu, who often employed Buddhist themes but
who was influenced by Taoism. One of the stories told of him is that he paid
a large subscription to a Buddhist temple by painting a picture on the
temple wall and having the monks charge a fee of the throngs who flocked
to see it. It must be noted that Ku K'ai-chih also painted landscapes,
portraits, and scenes from daily life. He was a well-known figure of his
generation, a sort of "inspired eccentric" who, in addition to his achieve
ments in art, held office for much of his life.

BUDDHIST SCHOOLS (OR SECTS)

Not only did Buddhism make its impress on Chinese civiliza
tion: China wrought changes in Buddhism. Buddhists took over much of
Taoist terminology, studied Taoist literature, and even wrote commentaries
on the Tao Te Ching. As a result, Taoism had its effect on the foreign faith,
although exactly to what extent is difficult to trace. As any vital religion
will do, Buddhism developed schools (or sects). Some were imported from
India, but those most influential in China were largely of indigenous growth.

A Striking Change 131

The Chinese, indeed, eventually made of Buddhism something quite dif
ferent from that which had come to them. Much of the intellectual and
religious activity of the years of political disunion and of the immediately
succeeding centuries was both stimulated by and expended upon Buddhism.
The energy which under the Chou had found an outlet in the creation of
the many schools of thought of that dynasty and which under the Han had
gone into Taoism and into establishing Confucianism was now largely ab
sorbed by Buddhism. Often the new developments in Buddhism professed
to find their authority in Indian texts or founders; as in the case of most
religions, sanctions were sought in the past. In fact, however, they showed
distinctly the marks of the Chinese genius.

Eventually ten principal schools were recognized — three of them
Hinayana and the others Mahayana. Several were short-lived. In general
the Buddhist schools were between two poles. One pole, gradualism, was
the approach to ultimate reality by long study, and was akin to Confucian
ism with its slow accumulation of knowledge and wisdom. The other,
subitism, held that apprehension of reality was by sudden enlightenment,
and had likenesses to Taoism. Another division might be described as
between Being and Not-being: on the one hand the conviction that the
elements of existence and the ego are real, and on the other that they
are unreal.

One of the most prominent of the Chinese schools — the Ch'an, or to
give it its better known Japanese name, Zen — declared that salvation was
to be achieved by inward enlightenment. Enlightenment came, so it said,
hi an instant, as it had to the Buddha. Good works, asceticism, ceremonial,
the study of books, and meditation were held to be at least secondary and
perhaps in vain. To make contact with reality and to understand it one
must look within. Knowledge, in other words, was purely subjective. The
sect is reported to have been introduced into China by Bodhidharma.
Tradition has it that Bodhidharma spent nine years at Loyang, silently
gazing at a wall in meditation. As a matter of fact, we know very little
about him, for most of our accounts of him are pure legend. He
appears to have arrived in the fifth century, and after about fifty years
in China, to have died in 479. He was only one of many contributors
to the formation of Ch'an. The sect was really the result of a long
evolution. It did not come to its fullest form until the seventh and
eighth centuries A.D. It began at least as far back as the fifth century, with
Chu Tao-sheng (died in 434), a disciple of Kumarajiva and Hui Yuan.
Chu Tao-sheng Attacked the Indian idea of merit and enunciated the prin
ciple that Buddahood is reached by sudden enlightenment and not by the
long and arduous practices of regulated and disciplined meditation. Ch'an
appears to have been indebted at least in part for its popularity, and per
haps for some of its basic ideas, to Taoism, which had long prepared the

132 VOLUME I

ground by its emphasis upon quietism and simplicity. It represented, too, a
reaction against the complicated ritual and philosophy by which some of
the current Buddhist teaching had hedged about the road to salvation.

The T'ien Tai sect had as its founders two Chinese known as Chih I
(or Chih K'ai, 531-597) and Hui Ssu, who died in 577. Chih I, a pupil of
Hui Ssu, had once been a teacher of Ch'an Buddhism but came to see
what he believed to be its weaknesses. He declared that salvation is to
be achieved not by Ch'an processes alone but by a combination of medita
tion, concentration, the study of books, ritual, moral discipline, and insight.
He stressed particularly one of the Buddhist writings known as the Lotus
Sutra, and tended to a theistic explanation of the Buddha nature. To him
reality was not purely subjective, as in the Ch'an, but an objective activity
exerting itself for the good of all beings. The school took its name from a
mountain in Chekiang called T'ien T'ai, to which Chih I retired to teach
and to practice his doctrine. Its moderation and its systematization and
simplification of Buddhism appealed to many of the cultivated classes,
trained by the Confucian tradition to distrust extremes and to shun intricate
metaphysics. It made for tolerance and produced many scholars.

A third sect, and the most widely popular among the laity, was the Pure
Land (Ch'ing T'u) or Lotus school. It is said to have been founded by
Hui Yuan (334-416) of Shansi, who later established a Buddhist center
in the present Kiangsi, in hills not far from Kiukang. Its distinctive teach
ing, however, was much older and went back to non-Chinese roots. It
declared that salvation is by simple faith in Amitabha, or Amida (in the
colloquial, O-mi-t'o-fo) , one of the many Buddhas with which Mahayana
peoples the spiritual universe. This faith, expressed in calling upon the
name of Amida, it held, is all that is necessary to secure admission after
death into the Western Paradise. The Pure Land way freed the humble
believer, who must needs go about the daily occupation of making his
living, from the study of books, the elaborate meditation, and the ritual
which could be followed only by the professionally religious. It is interest
ing, and possibly significant, that before his conversion Hui Yuan had been
an earnest Taoist and that at least one other of the early leaders of the
sect had also been a Taoist. It may be that the longing for immortality
which had possessed these men, and which they had sought to satisfy
through Taoism, led them to welcome and to propagate the Pure Land,
which offered a future life of bliss, not to the few and at the price of long
practice, as did Taoism, but to the many, and by the much easier road
of faith. Certainly some of the more earnest Taoists of the period found
in Amida the answer to their highest aspirations, and Taoism influenced
the terminology of the school. It seems possible, moreover, that the dis
orders of these centuries bred in many a weariness of the world and caused
them to seek to escape from it to a future life of bliss by a simpler method,

A Striking Change 133

more possible for the layman, than the difficult road of Ch'an or T'ien T'ai.
Other schools were to follow in the next century or two — upon the
narrative of which we are shortly to enter. The end of the sixth century
and the reunification of the Empire saw Chinese Buddhism in its heyday,
prepared to take a prominent part of the brilliant era then dawning. That
era was to owe much of the distinctiveness of its culture to the contributions
brought by the foreign religion.

SUMMARY

The three and a half centuries of comparative internal weak
ness, civil strife, and foreign invasion which followed the downfall of the
Han dynasty had at last come to an end. They had been marked by almost
incessant warfare. Ambitious rulers, Chinese and non-Chinese, many of
them taking the title of Emperor, had sought to annihilate their rivals. The
sufferings of the masses had often been intense, and for long periods
extensive sections of the country had been given over to what was little
better than anarchy. However, civilization had by no means collapsed, the
non-Chinese peoples were being assimilated, and in some directions ad
vance was registered. Buddhism was winning a large place for itself, bring
ing with it important contributions from other lands. The breaking of the
hard and fast molds of the Han and the entrance of fresh ideas may have
been necessary if there was to be a new period of cultural development.
However, the China of the seventh and succeeding centuries, while dis
playing many new features, was still basically unaltered from that of the
Han. The revolution was not nearly so thoroughgoing or so prolonged
as in the Occident. Possibly as a consequence, the Europe of the thirteenth
and sixteenth centuries differed much more from the Graeco-Roman world
than did the China of the seventh to the twentieth century from that of the
Ch'in and the Han. Yet it was a somewhat altered China which emerged
from the years of distress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best full Chinese sources for the period are the dynastic histories. The
San Kuo Chih, or Memoir of the Three Kingdoms, was composed by Ch'en
Shou of the third century and so is practically contemporary with the events
recorded. Being a subject of the Chin, the author was biased in favor of the
state of Wei. Much of it is dry as to style, but it was enriched in 429 by an
abundant and valuable commentary by P'ei Sung-chih, and is said to be one
of the best of the Chinese historical works. The Chin Shu, or Book of Chin,
was compiled in the Tang dynasty by imperial order from the works of
preceding authors. The Sung Shu, or Book of the (Liu) Sung, is by Shen Yo
(441-512), as are also histories of the Chin and the Ch'i. The Nan Ch'i Shu,
or the Book of the Southern Ch'i, is by Hsiao Tzu-hsien (489-537). The

134

VOLUME I

Liang Shu and the Ch'en Shu, or the Book of Liang and the Book of Ch'en,
were both written by Yao Chien (died 643) at imperial order, largely on the
basis of material collected and partially compiled by his father, Yao Ch'a, an
official under the Ch'en. The Wei Shu was written by Wei Shou (506-572),
was twice revised in the next two decades, and in its present form was revised
and added to from other sources under the Sung (960-1279). It is unique
among the dynastic histories in having an essay on Buddhism and Taoism, for
the writers of most of these histories, being orthodox Confucianists, tended to
ignore the rival faiths. The Pel Ch'i Shu, or book of the Northern Ch'i, in
rather different literary style, was written by Li Po-yao (565-648) from
sources assembled by his father, Li Te-lin, an official under the Northern Ch'i
and the Northern Chou. The Chou Shu was compiled early in the T'ang
dynasty, by imperial order, from contemporary, or nearly contemporary, ma
terial. The Nan Shih, or Southern History, an abbreviated account of the
Sung, Southern Ch'i, Liang, and Ch'£n, was compiled by Li Yen-shou of the
seventh century and revised by a contemporary, Ling-hu Te-fen. From the
literary standpoint it is inferior, but it contains some information not found
in the separate histories of these dynasties. The Pel Shih, or Northern History,
an abbreviated account of the Northern Wei, the Northern Ch'i, the Northern
Chou, and the Sui, also by Li Yen-shou, is much better done than the Nan
Shih and fills many of the lacunae in the separate histories of these dynasties.
In both works the author made use of his father's notes.

It is noteworthy that several of these histories were composed by imperial
order. The T'ang initiated the custom of having the records of the preceding
dynasty officially compiled by its successor. Before that time the dynastic his
tories had been private enterprises.

For a translation of a portion of an eleventh century history covering the
Three Kingdoms see Achilles Fang, The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms
(220-265): Chapters 69-78 from the Tzu Chih Tung Chien of Ssu-ma Kuang
(1019-1068) (Harvard University Press, 1952, pp. xx, 698).

For general and specialized accounts see L. C. Goodrich, A Short History
of the Chinese People (New York, Harper & Brothers, 3rd ed., 1959), pp.
58-114; O. Franke, Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches (Berlin, Walter de
Gniyter & Co., Vol. 3, 1936), pp. 1-307; Wolfram Eberhard, A History of
China (University of California Press, 1950), pp. 110-176; P. A. Boodberg,
"Marginalia to the Histories of the Northern Dynasties," Harvard Journal oj
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 223-283; Gerhard Schreiber, "History of the
Former Yen Dynasty," Monumenta Serica, Vol. 14, pp. 374-480, Vol. 15, pp.
1-141; Wolfram Eberhard, Das Toba-reich Nord-chinas; eine Sozialische
Untersuchung (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1949). On the language of the Toba see
Peter A. Boodberg, "The Language of the T'o-pa Wei," Harvard Journal oj
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 1, pp. 167-185; Chauncy S. Goodrich, Biography of
Su Ch'o, translated and edited (University of California Press, 1953, pp. 116);
A. F. Wright, "Fo-t'u-teng, A Biography," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
Vol. 15, pp. 321-371; G. Schreiber, "The History of the Former Yen Dynasty,"
Monumenta Serica, Vol. 14, pp. 374-480, Vol. 14, Fasc. 1, pp. 1-141; Abel
des Michels, Histoire Geographique des Seize Royaumes (Paris, 1891); Hans
S, Frankel, Catalogue of Translations from the Chinese Dynastic Histories for
the Period 220-960 (University of California Press, 1957), very important for
excerpts from the pertinent histories; the biography of a fourth century gen
eral, Biography of Lu Kuang, translated and edited by R. B. Mather (University
of California Press, 1959, pp. 141).

A Striking Change 135

For translations of the historical novel, San Kuo Chih Yen I, see C. H.
Brewitt-Taylor, San Kuo, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Shanghai,
Kelly & Walsh, 2 vols., 1925); and the extensively annotated Nghiem Toan
and Louis Ricaud, Les Trois Royaumes (Saigon, Bulletin de la Societe des
Etudes Indochinoises, new series, Vol. 35, 1960), Vol. 1, pp. xlix, 447, iv.

On foreign wars and conquests see W. M. McGovern, The Early Empires
of Central Asia (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1939),
pp. 311-355; Maspero, "Le Royaume de Champa," Toung Pao, 1910, pp.
125, 165, 3; 9, 489, 547; 1911, pp. 53, 236-291, 451-589; Ch. B. Maybon,
"La Domination Chinoise en Annam (111 av. J. C.— 939 ap. J. C.)," The
New China Review, Vol. 1, pp. 237-248, 340-355; Ch. Piton, "China under
the Chin Dynasty," China Review, Vol. 11, pp. 297-313, 366-378, Vol. 12,
pp. 18-25, 154-162, 353-362, 390-402; E. Chavannes, Documents sur les
Toukiue (Turcs) Occidentaux (St. Petersburg, 1903) and Paul Pelliot, "Note
sur les T'ou-yu-houen et les Sou-p'i," Toung Pao, 1920, pp. 323-331. For
an account of the sack of Loyang by the Hsiung-nu in A.D. 311 see Arthur
Waley in History Today (London), Vol. I, April, 1951, pp. 7-10. See also
Thomas D. Carroll, Account of the T'u-yu-hun in the History of the Chin
Dynasty (University of California Press, 1953, pp. 47); Rene Grousset, Lf Em
pire des Steppes (Paris, Payot, 1948).

On commerce, cultural importations, and influences on other peoples, see
B. Laufer, "Arabic and Chinese Trade in Walrus and Narwhal Ivory,"
Toung Pao, 1913, pp. 315-370; F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient
(Shanghai, 1885); B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica (Chicago, Field Museum of Natural
History, 1919, pp. iv, 185-630); Sylvain Levi, "Le Tokharien B,* Langue de
Koutcha," Journal Asiatique, He serie, 2, 1913, pp. 311-380; M. Aurel Stein,
Innermost Asia (4 vols., Oxford, 1928); M. Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan (2
vols., Oxford, 1907); M. Aurel Stein, Serindia (5 vols., Oxford, 1906 et seq.}\
George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford University Press, 1958),
pp. 41-66; Roy Andrew Miller, translator, Accounts of Western Nations in the
History of the Chin Dynasty (University of California Press, 1953).

On various cultural and political developments aside from philosophy and
religion see, for a brief but suggestive summary of general cultural develop
ments, Arthur F. Wright in J. K. Fairbank, Chinese Thought and Institutions
(The University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 73-77; on law, chiefly in the
sixth century, fitienne Balazs, Le Traite Juridique au Souei-Chou (Leiden,
E. J. Brill, 1954), pp. vi, 227; Lien-sheng Yang, "Notes on the Economic His
tory of the Chin Dynasty," in Studies in Chinese Institutional History (Harvard
University Press, 1961), pp. 199-197; Wang Yi-fung, "Slaves and Other
Comparable Social Groups during the Northern Dynasties (386-618)" Har
vard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 293-364; Yii Kuan-ying, Han
Wei Lie-ch'sao shih lun ts'ung (Studies in Han, Wei and Six Dynasties Poetry)
(Peking, T'ang-ti Publishing Co., 1953), pp. 5, 173, reviewed by G. W. Baxter
in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 453-461; Kiyoshi Yabuuchi,
"The Development of the Sciences in China from the 4th to the End of the
12th Century," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondale, IV-2, 1958, pp. 330-347; fitienne
Balazs, "Le Traite ficonomique du 'Soueichou,' fitudes la Societe et 1'Economie
de la Chine Medievale I," Toung Pao, Vol. 42, pp. 113-329; E. Stuart Kirby,
Introduction to the Economic History of China (London, George Allen &
Unwin, 1954), pp. 87-124; Mabel Ping-hua Lee, The Economic History of
China, with Special Reference to Agriculture (New York, Columbia University
Press, 1921), pp. 188-226, valuable for its summaries and excerpts from

136 VOLUME I

sources; Liu Hsieh, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, transla
tion and notes by Vincent Yu-chung Shih (New York, Columbia University
Press, 1959, pp. xlvi, 298), a work of literary criticism of about A.D. 500,
giving a picture of some phases of the literature of the period; William Acker,
Tao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by Tao Ch'ien (London, Thames and Hudson,
1952), poems of a fourth and fifth century nature poet; Laurence Sickman and
Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956),
pp. 41-69, 227-235; Paul Pelliot, "Notes sur Quelque Artistes des Six Dynas
ties et des T'ang," Toltng Pao, 1923, pp. 215-291; Rene Grousset, The
Civilizations of the East: China, translated by C. A. Phillips (New York, Alfred
A. Knopf, 1934), pp. 110-199; D. A. Roy, "The Theme of the Neglected Wife
in the Poetry of Ts'ao Chih," The Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 19, pp.
25-31; Yoshikawa K6jir5, translated by G. W. Baxter, "The Shih-shuo Hsin-yii
and Six Dynasties Prose Style," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 18,
pp. 124-141; R. H. Van Gulik, Hsi K'ang and His Poetical Essay on the Lute
(Monumenta Japonica, 1941, pp. 90); Chen Shih-hsiang, translator, Biography
of Ku K'ai-chih (University of California Press, 1959, pp. 31); Donald Holz-
man, La vie et la Pensee de Hi K'ang (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1957), an account
of one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove; Donald Holzman, "Les Sept
Sages de Foret des Bambous," T'oung Pao, Vol. 44, pp. 317-346); William
Aker, Sixty Poems by Tao Ch'ien (London, Thames and Hudson, 1952); J. R.
Hightower, "The Fu of T'ao Ch'ien," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.
17, pp. 169-230.

On philosophy and religion other than Buddhism see Fung Yu-lan, A
History of Chinese Philosophy (Princeton University Press, Vol. 2, 1953), pp.
168-292; Henri Maspero, Melanges Posthumes sur les Religions et d'Histoire
de la Chine (Paris, Civilizations de Sud, S.A.E.P., Vol. 2, 1950), pp. 71-184;
J. K. Shryock, The Origin and Development of the State Cult of Confucius
(New York, The Century Co., 1932), pp. 113-129; J. K. Shryock, The Study
of Human Abilities: The Jen wu chih of Liu Shao (New Haven, Conn.,
American Oriental Society, 1937, pp. x, 168); Kimura Eiichi, 'The New
Confucianism and Taoism in China and Japan from the Fourth to the
Thirteenth Centuries, A.D.," Cahiers d'Histoire,'' Mondiale, Vol. 4, 1960, pp.
802-829; Hisayuki Miyakawa, "The Confucianization of South China," A. F.
Wright, ed., The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1960), pp.
21-46.

On Buddhism see Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, an Historical
Sketch (London, 3 vols., 1921), chaps. 42-45; Samuel Beal, Si-Yu-Ki,
Buddhist Records of the Western World (London, 2 vols. 1906); James Legge,
A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa
Hein of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-424) in Search of the
Buddhist Books of Discipline, Translated and Annotated -with a Corean Recen
sion of the Chinese Text (Oxford, 1886); Friedrich Weller, "Kleine Beitrage
zur Erklarung Fa Hsiens," Hirth Anniversary Volume (London, Probstain &
Co., 1923), pp. 560-574; Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History
(Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 42-64; Arthur F. Wright, "The Eco
nomic Role of Buddhism in China," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 16, pp.
408-414; D. C. Twitchett, "The Monasteries and China's Economy in Medieval
Times," University of London, Bulletin of the School or Oriental and African
Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 526-549; Jacques Gernet, Les Aspects £conomiques du
Buddhisme dans la Societe Chinoise de Ve au Xe Siecle (Saigon, Ecole

A Striking Change 137

Frangaise d'Extreme Orient, 1956); Kenneth Ch'en, "Anti-Buddhist Propaganda
during the Nan-ch'ao," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 15, pp. 166-
192; Kenneth Ch'en, "On Some Factors Responsible for the Anti-Buddhist
Persecution under the Pei-ch'ao," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17,
pp. 261-273; Kenneth Ch'en, "The Economic Background of the Hui-chang
Suppression of Buddhism," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 19, pp.
67-105; Yang Lien-sheng, "Buddhist Monasteries and Four Money-raising
Institutions in Chinese History," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 13,
pp. 174-191; Walter Liebenthal, "Chinese Buddhism During the 4th and 5th
Centuries," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 11, pp. 44-93; Wm. Theodore de
Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New
York, Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 306-408; the very important E.
Zlircher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: the Spread and Adaptation of
Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2 vols., 1959); Paul
Demieville, "La Penetration du Bouddhisme dans la Tradition Philosophique
Chinoise," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, Vol. 3, pp. 23, 24; Arthur E. Link,
"The Earliest Chinese Account of the Compilation of the Tripitaka (I),"
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 81, pp, 87-103; Leon Hurvitz,
"Wei Shou: Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism: An English Translation of the
Original Chinese Text of Wei-shu cxiv and the Japanese Annotation by Tsuka-
moto Zenryu," reprinted from Yun-kang, the Buddhist Cave-Temples of the
Fifth Century A.D. in North China, Vol. 16 Supplement, pp. 25-103 (Kyoto,
Kyoto University, Jinbunkagaku Kenkyusho, 1956); Walter Liebenthal, The
Book of Chao: a Translation from the Original Chinese, with Introduction,
Notes, and Appendices (Peking, The Catholic University of Peking, 1948, pp.
xvi, 195); Walter Liebenthal, "Shih Hui-yuan's Buddhism as Set Forth in His
Writings," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 70, pp. 243-258;
Hu Shih, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," Chinese Social and
Political Science Review, Vol. 15, pp. 475-505. On Bodhidharma see Paul
Pelliot in Tourig Pao, 1923, pp. 252-265, where it is held that our accounts
of him are legendary. On Gandhara Buddhist art, see A. Foucher, FArt Greco-
Bouddhique du Gandhara. Etude sur les Origines de Flnfluence Classiques
dans FArt Bouddhique de I'lnde et de I' Extreme-Orient (Paris, 2 vols., 1905-
1918). On Buddhist art see E. Chavannes, Mission Archeologique dans la Chine
Septentrionale (Paris, 1909-1915), especially Tome I, Deuxieme partie, La
Sculpture Bouddhique (Paris, 1915); Kenneth Ch'en, "On Some Factors
Responsible for the Anti-Buddhist Persecution under the Pei-ch'ao," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 261-273; A. F. Wright, "Biography of
the Nun An-ling-shou," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 15, pp. 193-
196; W. Liebenthal, Chinese Buddhism during the 4th and 5th Centuries/'
Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 11, pp. 44-83; Albert Dien, "Yen Chih-tui
(531-581), a Buddho-Confucian," in A. F. Wright, Confucian Personalities
(Stanford University Press, 1962); A. F. Link, "Shih Seng-yu and His Writ
ings," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 80, pp. 17-43.

CHAPTER FIVE

REUNION AND RENEWED ADVANCE: THE Sui
(A.D. 589-618) AND TANG (A.D. 618-907)
DYNASTIES

INTRODUCTORY

The prolonged disunion and internal and external weakness
had at last come to an end. We do not know all the reasons why unity
was achieved. Some were attributable to monarchs under whom it was
accomplished. Leading ministers who served as advisers to the emperors
had a share. But there may have been additional factors, cultural and
economic, of which we are not fully aware. A major factor was the
centuries-long conviction cherished in China that all truly civilized man
kind — as the Chinese understood civilization — must be under one ruler.
Whatever the reasons, there now followed one of the most brilliant periods
in the entire history of China. United politically, the Middle Kingdom
entered upon renewed prosperity and expanded her borders farther even
than under the Han. In the seventh and eighth centuries China was one
of the most extensive and powerful states on the planet.

During the centuries of division cultural differences had developed
between the North and the South. In the North life tended to be more
austere than in the South, with monogamy and simpler food, clothing, and
manners. Northerners regarded the Southerners as effete and lacking
in martial virtue. In the South life was easier, concubinage more common,
and the educated regarded the literary style of the North as crude and
harsh. Under the political unity brought by the Sui and T'ang these dif
ferences, although not fully disappearing, became less marked. In her
prosperity China's population increased and with it her commerce. Peo
ples all over East Asia were dazzled by her might and her culture and
attempted to learn from her. Compared with China of the Sui and Tang,
contemporary Europe was divided into small, semibarbarous states.

Under the Sui and the T'ang, moreover, China registered fresh
advances in civilization. Originality in political thought, although by no
means absent, was not so marked as in the later years of the Chou, and
the dynasties produced no innovating administrative genius equal to those

138

Reunion and Renewed Advance 139

of the Ch'in and the Han. Yet creative statesmanship was not lacking.
While in political theory and governmental organization the Sui and the
T'ang were content to build upon foundations laid in the past, they showed
skill in utilizing and modifying the principles and framework which had
precedents from the Chou, the Ch'in, and the Han. Never after the Sui
and the T'ang was China to have such prolonged disunion and near
anarchy as preceded them, and it may well be — although it cannot cer
tainly be demonstrated — that this was due to the effectiveness with which
their statesmen did their work. In the realm of the aesthetic, moreover,
especially in art and in poetry, the China of the T'ang attained a level
previously never approached. In the last years of the period of disunion,
under the Sui, and during the most prosperous years of the T'ang,
Buddhism in China reached its acme and joined with other forces in
stimulating a new outburst of the Chinese spirit — this time in an expres
sion of the emotions in art and poetry. Buddhism also continued to stir
the Chinese mind to grapple with problems of philosophy.

To the traditional Chinese historians, committed to the dynastic
cycles as the determinative framework of China's past, the nearly three cen
turies constituted an era. But in them were subdivisions. The rebellion of An
Lu-shan (A.D. 755-757) was notably a dividing point. Cultural devel
opments in the decades which followed that event saw the inception or
growth of movements which were a prelude to those which were seen
in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

THE SUI DYNASTY

As the Ch'in preceded the Han but had only a brief life as
compared with the latter, so the Sui enjoyed only a short tenure of power.
The Sui, however, although responsible for many important develop
ments, did not make so notable a contribution to the permanent heritage
of the nation as had the Ch'in.

Yang Chien, the founder of the Sui, and known to posterity under
the title of Kao Tsu or Wen Ti (known to posterity as Sui Wen Ti to
distinguish him from the Wen Ti's of other dynasties) was a strong ruler.
Of Chinese descent, as we have said, he married an able woman of non-
Chinese stock. She was strong-minded, a devout Buddhist, and insisted,
successfully, that he abstain from the extra-marital relations customary
among men of his rank. Until the age of thirteen he had been reared by
a Buddhist nun. He was therefore amenable to his Empress's wish of
having nightly readings of the Buddhist scriptures to the court. He was
suspicious and given to violent outbursts of rage, but was loyal to friends
when he gave them his confidence. His most trusted minister advocated
strict autocratic centralized rule. Wen Ti's policy was a combination

140 VOLUME I

of Legalism modified by Confucianism, and Taoism underlain by Buddhist
piety. Wen Ti followed an austere manner of life, was hard working, a
superb administrator, a shrewd judge of the abilities and weaknesses of those
about him, and was decisive in action. In 589 he conquered the South.
To replenish the North, he moved into it peoples from the more pros
perous South. Under him the administration of the Empire was reorgan
ized, and modifications were made in the territorial divisions over which
members of the bureaucracy were placed. Even more systematically than
had the Han, he developed the examination system and the centralization
of power by appointment from the capital. He stressed a succession of
canals to connect the Yellow River with the Yangtze — advantageous in
unifying the North and the South. Whether these were begun de novo,
or were a renovation and enlargement of a series which can be traced
to Chou times, is not clear. They were also devised to ship to the North
the grain from the prosperous South, for it was on grain that the land
tax was largely levied. He created central granaries for the storing of
the surplus products of the soil. During his reign the Chinese reconquered
what is now Tongking and part of Annam, which, on the southern edge
of the Empire, had been in revolt since at least 590 — in the years when
Wen Ti was attempting to consolidate his rule. Under Wen Ti the Chinese
again took a hand in the politics of Central Asia. In the second half of
the sixth century, the T'u Chiieh, or Turks, it will be recalled, had estab
lished a federation extending over a vast area in Mongolia and Central
Asia. Like so many of these ephemeral empires, theirs soon broke apart:
the Eastern (also called the Northern) Turks separated from those of
the West (582). The Chinese sought to deepen the divisions among the
Turks, as a preliminary to increasing their influence in the region and
possibly also as a means of defense.

A major achievement of Sui Wen Ti was the creation of a new capi
tal. Like the capital of the Former Han and of some of the dynasties
between the Han and the Sui, it was called Ch'angan and was in the
valley of the Wei. But the Ch'angan begun by Wen Ti was entirely new.
It was near the former Ch'angan, but much larger. The old Ch'angan was
troubled by brackish water. Moreover, it was regarded as being haunted
by ghosts of its earlier inhabitants. Wen Ti's Ch'angan was a rectangle,
nearly six miles from east to west and more than five miles from north
to south. It is said to have been the first planned city in history. It was
laid out by engineers and with buildings designed by architects. The main
outlines of streets and walls were completed within a year. Some of the
ideas were from Loyang, which, it will be recalled, had been the capital
of the Later Han, but that city was not slavishly copied. To feed the
population, Wen Ti's successor completed the Grand Canal — from Hang-
chow to Ch'angan — and so insured a supply of food. Water continued

Reunion and Renewed Advance 141

to be a problem. At its height, under the T'ang dynasty, Ch'angan seems
to have had about a million people within its walls and another million
outside them. It was clearly the most populous city which the world had
seen up to that time — with the possible exception of Bagdad — and in
that respect outstripped Rome and Constantinople at the height of the
Roman Empire.

Wen Ti died suddenly in 604, perhaps killed by his son, the heir
apparent, who succeeded him. This son, Yang Kuang, better known to
posterity as Yang Ti, is an enigma. He fared badly at the hands of orthodox
Chinese historians, for they saw in him the stereotype of the evil ruler
whose wickedness was responsible for the loss of the Mandate of Heaven
and exaggerated his foibles, vices, and weaknesses. He was obviously a
man of abounding energy, vaulting ambition, and creative imagination.
While retaining the center of administration at Ch'angan, he made Loyang
a second capital and established a third on the Yangtze at the modern
Yangchow. He completed, by means of a vast army of laborers, the
chain of canals developed by his father to connect Ch'angan and the
Yellow River with the Yangtze. He built, at heavy cost, two walls, por
tions of that bulwark of frontier fortifications which, from at least the
time of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, intermittently played so large a part in the
defense program of the Empire along its northern borders— a boundary
which nature has left unusually vulnerable. He also erected vast palaces.
He made changes in the administrative machinery of the Empire: he
restored a type of territorial division that had been abolished earlier in
the dynasty and created a new set of officers — traveling inspectors whose
charge it was to report on the conduct of other members of the bureauc
racy, thus, presumably, to insure efficiency and prevent sedition. In con
trast with his father, who had recruited his bureaucracy largely from
Northerners, many of non-Chinese blood, he depended mainly on South
erners. Also unlike his father, while still utilizing Buddhism, he stressed
Confucianism. He encouraged schools. He modified the examinations for
the civil service. He is credited with the introduction of what became the
examination in the capital leading to the degree of chin shih— which
persisted into the twentieth century. He augmented the imperial library,
partly by adding to it existing works and partly by commanding scholars
to come to court and each to write on his specialty.

Yang Ti continued the vigorous foreign policy of his father. In the
South, in 605, a punitive expedition was dispatched against the Chams
(in the present Vietnam), who had been raiding the Chinese domains.
Chinese arms were possibly carried as far as the Gulf of Siam. Yang Ti
further extended Chinese influence in what is now Sinkiang, aiding one
Turkish prince against another and establishing Chinese sovereignty over
some of the oases along the trade routes, among them Turfan. Yet the

142 VOLUME I

Turks remained strong. Prince Shotoku, who led in the introduction of
Chinese culture to Japan, sent embassies to the court of Yang Ti.

Failures in foreign policy were the immediate cause of the dynasty's
downfall. Yang Ti put forth great efforts, costly to }iis realm, in successive
expeditions against a state in what is now the southern portion of Man
churia and the northern portion of Korea. The first met with disaster, a
second with failure, and while, after a third, the Korean ruler offered
a qualified submission, tthe Emperor had suffered greatly in prestige.
These misfortunes were followed by a further loss of kudos when Yang
Ti was trapped in a fortress (in Northern Shansi) by the Turks and was
saved only through the strategy of a young officer, Li Shih-min — of whom
more in a moment. These reverses fanned into flame the discontent which
the vigorous measures and costly public works of the Emperor had
fomented. Revolts broke out in several sections. Yang Ti shut himself up
in one of his palaces in Yangchow and gave hiipself over to pleasure.
Some of the rebels forced their way in and killed him (618). Of the two
puppets of the imperial family who were set up in the course of the revolt,
one was killed and the other abdicated, both in 619.

THE FOUNDING OF THE T'ANG DYNASTY: KAO TSU (REIGNED
A.D. 618-626) AND T'AI TSUNG (REIGNED A.D. 627-649)

Several of the rebels against the Sui attempted to set them
selves up as its successor. One, however, Li Yuan, partly because of the
ability of his second son, Li Shih-min, eliminated the others. Li Yuan
was of aristocratic lineage, a native of the North, and related to the imperial
house. His mother was of non-Chinese extraction. The dynasty of which
he was first monarch, the T'ang, is dated from 618. The capital was estab
lished at the Ch'angan begun by Sui Wen Ti, so that again, as so often
before, the center of Chinese power was on the fertile plain of the Wei.
The position was one from which commerce could be carried on across
the overland trade routes and military expeditions be dispatched to the
Northwest, that dangerous highway of invasions. During most of his reign,
Li Yuan, or, as he is better known to posterity, Kao Tsu, was largely
engrossed in suppressing his rivals and in making his position secure. In
627, in his early sixties, he abdicated in favor of Li Shih-min.

Li Shih-min, or, to give him the title by which he is best known, T'ai
Tsung (to make clear, his dynasty, T'ang T'ai Tsung), was one of the
ablest monarchs and had one of the most brilliant reigns in China's long
history. Still only twenty-one years of age when his father ascended the
throne (618), he contributed markedly to the latter's triumph, and
although he opened his own way to the succession by killing two of his
brothers, he proved to be, for an autocrat, fairly magnanimous, frugal in

Reunion and Renewed Advance 143

his private life, usually affectionate to his family, and one who could
attract and hold the loyalty of subordinates. During the nearly quarter
of a century of his reign (he died in 649) he succeeded in thoroughly
unifying the country, in stimulating its culture and increasing its pros
perity, and in placing it on a new pinacle of power.

T'ang T'ai Tsung addressed himself to the administration of his realms.
The districts inhabited by non-Chinese peoples were ruled through their
own princes, but the latter were given Chinese titles. For China proper,
he and his father perpetuated most of the essential features of the govern
mental machinery of the Sui. Over such of the Empire as was predomi
nantly Chinese in population was a bureaucracy recruited largely — at
least in theory — through civil service examinations. The Emperor could
and did go outside the successful candidates at these examinations for
some of his officials. Men who were reliably recommended to him as
promising 'or whose ability he himself remarked, were appointed, even
when they were not holders of literary degrees. The examination system
helped in part to break the power of the old aristocratic families, but they
still had prestige, and naturally could give their scions an education which
was of advantage in preparation for the tests. In some other ways they
maintained a privileged position.

Several modifications of detail were made. The Empire was redivided
into teji (ao, or provinces, and these in turn into chou, or prefectures — of
wltfch 639 there were 358— and the chou into hsien, or subprefectures.
In Addition to members pf the official hierarchy assigned tp <?ach of these
divisions, there were imperial commissioners who were sent directly by
fte Emperor to handle emergencies, such as droughts, floods, or rebellions.

All officials were apppinted directly from the capital, so that centraliza
tion characterized the system. The civil officials were charged, in true Con
fucian manner, with looking after the welfare and encouraging the morals
of the people. Agriculture was fostered. The system of public granaries
was re-established in which stores were accumulated in years of plenty
to be distributed to the poor for food and for seed hi times of dearth.
The "equal field" system, begun before the Sui and elaborated by Sui
Wen Ti, was further developed. Under it land holdings were in theory
equalized and a basis was laid for taxation.

As a foundation for this bureaucracy, T'ai Tsung maintained and
reinforced the state schools and the public examinations. Although his
family professed descent from Lao Tzii (for the latter's reputed patro
nymic was likewise Li) and had Taoist leanings, he strengthened the Con
fucian cult by decreeing that in all the colleges of the Empire Confucius
and Confucius's favorite disciple should be venerated. T'ai Tsung com
manded a temple to be erected to Confucius in each of the chou and
hsien, and later (647) honors were ordered paid in these not only to

144 VOLUME I

Confucius but to twenty-two noteworthy scholars as well, mostly of the
Han.

It must be noted, however, that examinations and degrees were not
confined to the Confucian Classics narrowly interpreted, nor even to the
literature of the Confucian school. They were also given, among other
subjects, in history, law, mathematics, poetry, calligraphy, and Taoist
philosophy.

As a warrior, T'ai Tsung continued to deserve the reputation which he
had earned in the campaigns that brought his family to the throne. He
reorganized the army, placing it on a more regular and efficient basis,
and improved its weapons. He laid emphasis on the cavalry — important
because of the use of the horse by his non-Chinese opponents on the
north and west. He gave China a very good fighting machine.

It was not strange that under T'ai Tsung the Empire again entered on
a career of foreign conquest. Especially in the West he extended its power.
He pushed the Chinese frontiers farther into Central Asia than they had
been at any time since the Han. Toward the close of his father's and at
the outset of his own reign, the Eastern Turks, taking advantage of the
still imperfect pacification of the Empire, made raids up to the very walls of
Ch'angan, and the city was saved largely by the personal bravery and
energy of T'ai Tsung. Before long, however, T'ai Tsung was able to turn
the tide. He was not content with building ramparts on the north against
the invader — he is said, indeed, to have declined to repair the Great
Wall — but insisted on carrying the war into the enemies' territory and
rendering the marches safe from attack by subduing the would-be invaders
in their native haunts. As Sui Wen Ti had before him, he sowed dissension
among the Turkish peoples. When this had done its work, his armies
conquered the Eastern (or Northern) Turks (630) and brought their
territories within his Empire. He took the title "Heavenly Khan," thus
designating himself as their ruler. A little later the Western Turks, although
then at the height of their power, were badly defeated, and the Uighurs,
a Turkish tribe, were detached from them and became sturdy supporters
of the T'ang in the Gobi. The Khitan, Mongols in Eastern Mongolia and
Southern Manchuria, made their submission (630). In the Tarim basin
and along the overland trade routes were several small states of Tochari
and other peoples who seem to have been of Indo-European stock and
whose language was certainly Indo-European. Some of them, including
one in Turfan, were reduced to vassalage. Kashgar and Yarkand accepted
Chinese garrisons, and across the mountains Samarkand and Bokhara
acknowledged Chinese .suzerainty. The vast Chinese domains in these
regions were grouped into two administrative protectorates. At its greatest
extent — after T'ai Tsung's death — they included much of what more
recently have been called Sinkiang, Russian Turkestan, and Afghanistan

Reunion and Renewed Advance 145

— although on much of this, Chinese rule sat fairly lightly. The great
land routes were now more firmly under Chinese control than at any time
since the Han. T'ai Tsung received and sent envoys from and into India,
and it is said that in 643 an embassy arrived from the ruler of Fulin —
probably from somewhere in what we now call the Near East and identical
with Ta Ch'in. The Tibetans, recently (607) become a unified power,
proved a formidable enemy, but T'ai Tsung, after his armies had beaten
off an attack by them, gave to their prince a Chinese princess in marriage,
and she is said to have had much to do with introducing among her new
subjects Chinese customs and the Buddhist faith.

Having reduced the barbarians by force and diplomacy, T'ai Tsung
was eager to assimilate them. Although they were usually placed under
the administration of their own princes and governed according to their
own customs, numbers of them were brought to Ch'angan in the military
service of the Empire, and many sons of barbarian princes were educated
in the schools of the capital.

In only one of his major foreign enterprises did T'ai Tsung fail. He,
like Yang Ti, attempted to reduce the Kingdom in northern Korea, and
like Yang Ti, was unsuccessful. However, the reverse was not followed
by any upheaval such as overthrew Yang Ti. T'ai Tsung passed on his
power, unquestioned, to his son.

KAO TSUNG

So effectively had T'ai Tsung done his work that under his
successor the boundaries and the prestige of China for a time continued
to expand. This successor, known to posterity as Kao Tsung, was on
the throne even longer than his father — from 649 until 683. Under him,
two of the three states which made up Korea were at last conquered,
together with part of Manchuria, and the third accepted the suzerainty of
China. For years T'ang control was vigorously maintained in the far West.
By the aid of the Uighurs, the Western Turks were crushed (657-659)
and their territories were claimed by the Chinese, thus carrying Chinese
authority into the valley of the Oxus and to the borders of India. The
Arabs, recently started on their phenomenal career of conquest under
the impulse of Islam, were now beginning to make themselves felt in Persia
and Central Asia. The Sassanids, weakened by their struggle against the
Byzantine Empire and the Turks, collapsed before them. A Sassanid
aspirant to the throne of Persia is said to have sought the aid of China
against them. Some of the Sassanian line are reputed to have taken refuge
in Ch'angan and there to have entered the imperial service. Owing in
part to dissensions among the Arabs, which temporarily halted the onward
march of the Moslem arms, the Chinese for a time retained and even

146 VOLUME I

strengthened their influence in the valleys of the Oxus and the Jaxartes.

Kao Tsung, moreover, did what there had been much talk of doing
during his father's reign, and renewed the sacrifices of feng and shan,
which had been celebrated by Han Wu Ti. The revival seems to have been,
in part, to show the glory of the imperial house and to secure for it some
thing of the prestige and divine assistance that were supposed to have
accrued to the Han. The ceremonies certainly involved elaborate prepa
ration and great expense. Kao Tsung was a devout Buddhist and under
him many monasteries were erected. He built, too, a famous palace at
Ch'angan. It was immediately outside the north wall of the city and became
the center of imperial administration.

Kao Tsung was not the warrior that his father had been and disasters
eventually overtook him. The Tibetans, now become more powerful,
wrested from the Chinese some of the most important cities in the Tarim
basin. It became impossible for the Chinese to intervene in Transoxiana.
Turks in Hi and Mongolia took advantage of the situation to throw off the
Chinese yoke. Most of Korea, so recently subdued, again slipped out of
Chinese hands. It was during Kao Tsung's reign that, strengthened by
an alliance with the T'ang, the Korean kingdom of Silla (or Shilla, Sin-ra
— Japanese Shiragi) in Southern Korea conquered and united the penin
sula — the first time that such a feat had been accomplished.

WUHOU

Kao Tsung eventually fell largely under the control of an
able and ambitious woman, most frequently known to posterity as Wu Hou,
or, at times, as Wu Tse T'ien. She had been one of T'ai Tsung's concubines
and on that monarch's death had retired to a Buddhist nunnery. Kao
Tsung's Empress recalled her from seclusion to win the Emperor's affec
tions from a concubine of whom the Empress was jealous. Wu Hou not
only succeeded in displacing this concubine but also supplanted the
Empress herself and had her killed. She achieved such an ascendancy over
Kao Tsung that during the later years of his life she was virtually the ruler.
On his death, she quickly disposed of his successor when the latter showed
too great independence, and placed another puppet on the throne. Before
long she deposed this next roi faineant and openly assumed control of the
government. She officiated at the imperial sacrifices, declared the inaugura
tion of a new dynasty under the name of Chou, and ruthlessly exiled or
executed such members of the imperial family and their supporters as dared
oppose her. She had her favorites, a Buddhist monk and later two hand
some brothers, and scandalous stories were inevitably whispered about
her relations with them. Whatever her private life may have been, she
proved a competent and energetic monarch. She partly re-established the

Reunion and Renewed Advance 147

prestige of the Empire abroad (the Tarim basin, for example, was re
covered in 692), and at home governed with an iron hand. She showed
Buddhism great favor. In Chinese political history only two women rank
with her, the Empress Lii of the Han and the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi
of the Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty. All three had much in common, especially
in masterfulness. At length, in 705, when Wu Hou was about eighty years
of age and ill, a successful conspiracy deposed her and restored the first
of the puppet Emperors whom she had dethroned.

This spineless creature continued to be a figurehead. He was dominated
by his wife, a woman who had none of the ability of the great Wu Hou
but was vicious enough and before many years had her husband poisoned.
An insurrection soon made way with her and placed on the throne the
second of the shadow Emperors whom Wu Hou had set up. After about two
years he abdicated in favor of his third son, Li Lung-chi, who is best
known as Hsiian Tsung or Ming Huang.

THE T'ANG REACHES ITS HEIGHT: HSUAN TSUNG (MING HUANG)

Hsiian Tsung held the throne from 712 until 756, the longest
reign of the dynasty. He began with great promise. It was largely because
of his initiative that his father had been restored to the throne, and he was
successful in crushing court intrigues which threatened him. Under him
the T'ang reached the pinnacle of its glory. The Empire was wealthier and
more populous than the Han had ever been. That was partly because the
fertile Yangtze Valley had been extensively developed by the Chinese.

Chinese authority again expanded in the west. The power of one of the
most notable Turkish enemies of the Chinese collapsed, and two peoples
allied with the Chinese (one of them the Uighurs) controlled Mongolia
and much of the later Sinkiang. The Tibetans, formidable during much
of the T'ang, after one outbreak were forced to agree to a truce, and a
Turkish people in alliance with the Tibetans were reduced to submission.
On the far west, the Chinese were feeling again the pressure of the young
Moslem Empire. About 670 the Arabs, having adjusted their differences
of a few years before, were beginning to menace Tokharistan, on the
middle Oxus, and between 705 and 715 the Moslem arms were carried
into Sogdiana, between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and even farther. Some
of the little states west of and across the mountains from the Tarim basin,
in Transoxiana, which during T'ai Tsung's reign had acknowledged Chinese
suzerainty, now sought the protection of the Middle Kingdom against the
renewed Arab advance. The princes of Samarkand, Bokhara, Tashkend,
and Tokharistan repeatedly asked assistance. Armed aid was not accorded
to the most distant of the vassals, but after the death of a noted Arab
general, Chinese diplomacy seems to have contributed to a temporary

148 VOLUME I

expulsion of the Arabs from a part of the region. The actual fighting was
done by Turks and the local inhabitants. To the states in the Pamirs and in
Kashmir Hsiian Tsung gave more substantial support, and in 747 Kao
Hsien-chih, a general of Korean extraction in the service of the Chinese
and head of the garrisons in the .four most important Western outposts,
successfully led an expedition from Kashgar across the high and difficult
passes in the Pamirs and the Hindukush to the upper Oxus and parts of the
higher portions of the valley of the Indus, with the object of breaking the
junction which (about 741) the Tibetans had formed with the Arabs. Kao
Hsien-chih's expedition was a most remarkable feat and greatly enhanced
Chinese prestige in the West. Indian princes in the Indus Valley accepted
Chinese suzerainty.

At home Hsiian Tsung's reign was marked by a burst of cultural
achievement. In Ch'angan the Emperor founded an institution known as
the Hanlin Yuan. While under the T'ang it included court favorites,
jugglers, and musicians, as well as scholars, in later centuries membership
in it became one of the most highly prized of literary honors. Hsiian Tsung
inaugurated a school for the teaching of music. Although he was personally
attached to Taoism, encouraged the study of its literature, and gave the
Tao T£ Ching the status of C/zwg, or Classic, placing it on equality with
the Confucian texts with that designation, he accorded Confucius addi
tional honors. At his court were some of the most distinguished poets and
painters whom China has known — Li Po and Tu Fu among the former, and
Wu Tao-Tzu, Han Kan, and Wang Wei among the latter — all of them
names to conjure with and of all of whom we shall have occasion to say
more in a moment.

In spite of its brilliance, the glory of Hsiian Tsung's reign was partly
illusory. Even before his accession, at the collapse of Wu Hou's regime,
changes looking toward decentralization had been made in the bureaucracy.
In place of direct control from Ch'angan over all members of the hierarchy,
a resident commissioner or governor was appointed for each province with
the duty of overseeing the officials within his jurisdiction. At the time the
innovation probably seemed a wise method of supervising the Empire, but
it proved a step toward disintegration, for it tended toward the re-establish
ment of local states.

Hsiian Tsung, too, was to live to witness the decline of the prestige of
Chinese arms abroad. In 751 Kao Hsien-chih was badly defeated by the
Arabs north of Ferghana. Its weakness thus vividly demonstrated, in
much of the West Chinese rule toppled like a house of cards, and the region
passed largely into the hands of two Turkish peoples. To the Northeast the
Khitan (Ch'i-tan) moved from the southern portion of Manchuria into
the North China plain. In the Southwest the Chinese suffered disastrous
reverses (751) in what is now Yunnan. Here a native principality called

Reunion and Renewed Advance 149

Nan Chao had submitted to the Tang, and there had followed the most
nearly effective control which the Chinese had yet exerted in the area. Now
Chinese armies were defeated.

In China proper, revolt arose against Hsuan Tsung. His wars and his
court extravagances impoverished the people, and complaint against him
was widespread. Even in the days of his prosperity, his most influential
minister, Li Lin-fu, a member of the imperial clan, although a very able
administrator, had been a sinister influence, and among other acts, had
encouraged him to slay the heir apparent without trial. The Emperor, too,
fell largely under the control of one of the most famous of Chinese beauties,
Yang Kuei-fei. Yang Kuei-fei had been the wife of one of the sons of
Hsiian Tsung, but in 738 she was taken by the Emperor into his own
household as his chief favorite. She encouraged her infatuated imperial
master, now in his fifties, in a life of extravagance and gaiety. Members
of her family were given high rank, but neither she nor they appear to have
had political ability to match her feminine charms. In his old age Hsiian
Tsung was unable or unwilling to throw off her baleful influence, and power
began slipping from his weakening hands.

The rebellion which proved the final undoing of Hsiian Tsung was led
by An Lu-shan, an able fellow of non-Chinese stock who had first acquired
distinction in the Chinese service by aiding in repressing some of the raids
of the Khitan, and had risen high in the favor of the Emperor and of
Yang Kuei-fei. In 755 An Lu-shan unfurled the standard of revolt in the
Northeast, was soon master of most of the territory north of the Yellow
River, and proclaimed himself Emperor. Hsiian Tsung fled from Ch'angan
to Szechwan. On the way, the imperial troops either themselves put to death
or obtained the execution of Yang Kuei-fei and some of her family. Hsiian
Tsung, now seventy years of age and thoroughly discredited, abdicated
(756) in favor of one of his sons. He lived on, in seclusion, until 762, long
enough to see the rebellion crushed. An Lu-shan was killed by his own
son (757), and the murderer in his turn perished at the hands of another
rebel of non-Chinese stock, Shih Ssu-ming. Aided by contingents from
Central Asia, including some Arabs, the T'ang forces retook Ch'angan
(757). Shih Ssu-ming proclaimed himself Emperor, but within a few years
was destroyed by his own eldest son, and shortly afterward the latter was
overthrown and put to death by the T'ang forces.

The An Lu-shan rebellion became a major dividing point in Chinese
history. That is because it proved to be a climax of several preceding
developments. These were in part economic, arising from the previous
migrations to the Yangtze Valley and changes in the land and tax structure.
They were in part political — the growing importance of officials emerging
from the civil service examinations encouraged by the Empress Wu in an
effort to curb the landed aristocracy. To some degree they were ideological,

150 VOLUME I

with fresh emphasis on Confucianism. Scholars who took refuge in the
South from the disorders which centered in the North contributed to a
ferment of thought which flowered in the Neo-Confucianism of the suc
ceeding centuries. From the military standpoint, the militia, recruited by
levies, were more and more replaced by professional soldiers.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE T'ANG DYNASTY

The rebellion of An Lu-shan marked the beginning of the
end of the T'ang. The Li family held the throne for nearly a century and a
half longer, and the brilliance of the era, although waning, displayed oc
casional temporary revivals. From the reign of Hsiian Tsung, however, the
course of the house of Li Yuan was downward.

An Lu-shan's defection and the accompanying disorder unleashed
other forces. From the northern and western frontiers came raiding
barbarians, ever ready to pounce on the fertile and wealthy plains and
valleys to the south. The Tibetans especially were persistent, and at one
time took Ch'angan (763). In stemming invasions and reducing internal
revolts, the T'ang summoned non-Chinese peoples to their assistance.
This was quite different from the Han, when the commanders and the
conquering armies appear to have been entirely or chiefly Chinese.

Did this mean a decline in the vigor of the Chinese race? We do not
know. The Chinese were certainly to increase in numbers and to occupy,
as farmers and merchants, more territory, but it may be significant that
during somewhat more than half the time that has elapsed from then to
now at least part of the territory inhabited by the Chinese was under
foreign control, that during a third or a fourth of it, all the Chinese were
subject to foreigners, and that never since the T'ang, with the possible
exception of the Communists after 1949, has China under purely native
rule attained to the total area in square miles that it reached under the
T'ang. The explanation may in part be in the growing commitment to
Confucianism in the period to which the rebellion of An Lu-shan was the
transition and the associated conviction that the use of military force is
uncivilized. It is well to remember, however, that even in the nineteenth
century there were notable Chinese generals and that the exploits of at least
one of them, Tso Tsung-t'ang, rivaled the greatest of those of the Han and
the T'ang. It must also be recalled that the Chinese have never been a pure
race. It is one evidence of their strength that they have been willing to
utilize and able to absorb peoples of many different stocks. Their unity has
been cultural rather than racial. The large numbers of men of prominence
under the T'ang who were partly or entirely of foreign descent may mean
in part that the assimilation was in process.

The T'ang did not collapse all at once. When, in the middle of the

Reunion and Renewed Advance 151

ninth century, one of the princes of Nan Qiao assumed the title of Emperor
and invaded Annam ("the Peaceful South" — a name which the Chinese
had given to the extreme southern portions of their possessions in the pres
ent Vietnam — balanced by Anhsi, "the Peaceful West" — the designation
of an administrative district that covered their holdings in the far West;
Anpei, "the Peaceful North"; and Antung, "the Peaceful East"), a Chinese
general, Kao P'ien, succeeded in driving him back into his own territory
and later on expelled him from Szechwan. Chinese authority, too, was
preserved on the western marches in the region of Tunhuang, and the
northern portion of Korea was under Chinese control. Early in the ninth
century the Tibetans, now weakened, made their peace with the Chinese
and ceased to be a serious menace. Until nearly the middle of the ninth
century, the Uighurs, long allies and supporters of the Tang, dominated
Mongolia and much of what is now Sinkiang. Even when they lost most
of their territory to the Kirghiz, for a time they remained powerful in much
of the Gobi and the Tarim basin. They were often called in to help the
T'ang suppress internal rebellion and regarded themselves as at least the
equals of the Chinese. A ninth century travel diary of a Japanese monk
gives a picture of centralized control with serious attention to instructions
from higher ranks of the bureaucracy.

However, while outwardly the T'ang was still imposing, and Ch'angan,
in spite of the damage it had suffered in civil wars and foreign invasions,
was impressive and prosperous, the family of Li was declining. Eunuchs,
long employed in the court, by their intrigues gained much influence.
Spasmodic attempts at reform brought no lasting improvement. The tax
system devised early in the dynasty was breaking down, with resulting
embarrassment to the central government.

Toward the end of the ninth century ineptitude and luxury at the capi
tal and misgovernment were paralleled by widespread discontent and
revolt. The growth of population during the early reigns of the dynasty
contributed to the unrest. Pirates ravaged the coasts. A popular uprising
laid waste vast sections, including some of the port cities, and in the general
disorder many of the foreign merchants living in the latter were massacred.
A leader of the rebels, Huang Ch'ao by name, captured Ch'angan in 880
and proclaimed himself Emperor. The T'ang sent against him Li K'o-yung,
a general of Turkish stock, with a force of Turks who had been in Chinese
service, and the would-be Emperor was slain. Li K'o-yung was rewarded
with a' principality in Shansi and before many years was practically an
independent monarch.

The end of the T'ang soon followed. Chu Wen, a lieutenant of Huang
Ch'ao, transferred his allegiance to the T'ang and was rewarded with a
principality in Honan. In 904 Chu Wen deposed and killed his imperial
master and placed a boy on the throne. In 907 he compelled this puppet

152 VOLUME I

to abdicate in his favor and proclaimed himself the first of a new dynasty,
the Later Liang. The Tang had at last lost the Mandate of Heaven. In
the mounting disorders Ch'angan was pillaged and all but abandoned.
The Hsianfu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries occupied only one
corner of its former vast area.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: COMMERCE

As we have several times said, the nearly three centuries of
the T'ang were, with the exception of some of the later years of weakness
and turmoil, among the most prosperous and culturally brilliant in the
history of China. During the years of disunion before the Sui and the T'ang,
foundations were being laid for a new flowering of civilization. The Sui had
encouraged the revival of culture. The internal order that characterized
most of the first century and a quarter of T'ang rule made for prosperity.
Although the census figures are probably highly inaccurate, the population
seems to have been fairly large. A conjecture for 618, possibly excessive,
speaks of a total of nearly one hundred thirty millions. When every allow
ance is made for obvious errors, that figure discloses a state which must
have been one of the two most populous of its time — rivaled only by the
Arab empire. So large a body of people could not fail to attract merchants
from other lands.

Foreign trade appears to have reached greater proportions under the
T'ang than at any previous time. As in the earlier periods, it was due
chiefly to the initiative of aliens.

As in earlier dynasties, it was both by land and by sea that foreigners
came to China. The routes through the basin of the Tarim to the Northwest
were traversed, especially during the first century and a quarter or more
of the T'ang, when the authority of the Empire was usually strong in
Central Asia. From the middle of the eighth century, when Chinese
dominion in that region crumbled and disorders in China increased, trade
by these roads probably was of lesser dimensions. Even then it continued —
in spite of tolls and exactions from local rulers, which must have pressed
heavily upon it, and of raids and wars, which must have interrupted it.
Ch'angan, the seat of empire and a gateway to the populous regions of
China, was naturally an important terminus of the trade, and its streets
and inns must have presented a lively and cosmopolitan appearance, with
merchants from many a city and land in the distant West.

The sea routes to the south coast grew in popularity. Even as early as
the seventh century they were much employed. Canton won from the ports
of Tongking the primacy in overseas trade. By the eighth century, Persians,
Arabs, and merchants from India were coming to Canton in large vessels,
and a special office was created in the city for the registry of ships, the

Reunion and Renewed Advance 153

control of exports, and the collection of duties. With the rise of their power
under the first flush of Islam, Arabs began to have an important part in
this sea-borne traffic and continued to hold it for many years. Chinese goods
were to be had in the bazaars of Bagdad, the capital of the Abbasid
caliphate. In 758, Arabs and Persians were sufficiently strong in Canton
to loot the city — perhaps in retaliation for Chinese exactions. In the ninth
century we hear of Nestorian Christians, Jews, Moslems, and Persians in
Canton — all of them obviously from the West. In that century the Canton
trade was still closely controlled by the state, and a Moslem was appointed
to administer the law of Islam among his co-religionists and so to maintain
order. By at least that time others of the ports of South China, notably
what is now Ch'iianchow, near the present Amoy, entered into competition
with Canton. Yangchow also had foreign merchants and a share in sea
borne trade. Koreans controlled much of the coastwise shipping.

As under previous dynasties, the leading commodities of this commerce
combined small bulk with large value. Silk was still a major article of
export, and spices and porcelain, some of the latter from Fukien, were
also carried abroad. To China came such goods as ivory, incense, copper,
tortoise shell, and rhinoceros horn, It seems probable, too, that Negro
slaves were brought by the Arabs to China and sold there.

Whether many Chinese merchants journeyed to foreign lands is doubt
ful. We know that for at least a time under Tai Tsung an imperial rescript
forbade Chinese going abroad — from which it may be fair to assume that
some were in the habit of doing so. Chinese knowledge of the geography
of neighboring lands was increasing, but with the one exception to be noted
in a moment, the accounts that have come down to us in any complete
form appear not to have been derived through first-hand observation but
from the kind of information which might seep through from aliens.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG;
BUDDHIST PILGRIMS AND MISSIONARIES

This one exception is important. The journeys continued,
which, as we have seen, had been made to India by Chinese Buddhists
from at least the close of the fourth century. The best known of the
Buddhist pilgrims of the T'ang was he whose religious name was Hsiian-
tsang. Hstian-tsang was born in Honan in the first decade of the seventh
century, the son of a learned official. Reared in the Confucian tradition,
in his youth he was converted to Buddhism and became distinguished as
a teacher of the faith. Dissatisfied with his knowledge, he wished to eluci
date to his own satisfaction debated points of doctrine by inquiry and study
in the land where Buddhism had had its birth. In spite of the imperial
prohibition of foreign travel, in the year 629 he left for India, going by the

154 VOLUME I

overland route through the Tarim basin. In India he visited many of the
sites made sacred by the life, teachings, and death of the Buddha, studied
with experts, and collected sacred books. After an absence of about sixteen
years, he returned to China, also overland, and spent the nearly twenty
remaining years of his life in teaching and in translating some of the books
which he had brought back with him. The amount of literature whose trans
lation is ascribed to him is stupendous — about twenty-five times as
voluminous as the Christian Bible. He gave a great impetus to the popu
larity and spread of Buddhism in China. In such esteem was he held that
two of the Emperors wrote prefaces for his translations, and at his death
the state honored him with an official funeral. The record of his travels is
so full and accurate that in recent times it has proved of assistance to
archaeologists in India and Sinkiang.

A few years after Hsiian-tsang's death, another Chinese, I-ching, left
for India on a similar mission (about 671 or 672). He made the journey
by sea, from South China, and returning in 695 via Canton, he also brought
books to be translated. We have accounts of more than fifty other pilgrims
of the second half of the seventh century, several of them from Korea and
other countries bordering on China, and some from China. Some went by
land and others by sea. Many of whom we have no record must have made
the journey.

Although Buddhism was beginning to decay in India, missionaries
still came to China — but apparently did not have quite as large a place in
Chinese Buddhism as in the earlier centuries. Still, at least one sect,
Chen-yen (Japanese Shingon) claims as its first patriarch an Indian who
arrived in the first quarter of the eighth century.

Through Buddhism and its culture contacts, mathematics, astronomy,
and medicine were stimulated.

There was an extraordinary amount of movement, then, throughout the
Buddhist world: Chinese monks going to and from India, Indian monks
arriving in China, and monks from countries adjacent to China traversing
the Middle Kingdom. Monks came to China from Japan. To one of them
we owe a detailed and intimate account of life in China in the ninth
century. Buddhism was helping to give a certain amount of cultural unity
to Central, Eastern, and Southern Asia.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: FOREIGN INFLUENCES,
ESPECIALLY THE INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN FAITHS

The contacts between the Chinese and other peoples brought
foreign influences into the Middle Kingdom. The presence of Turks and
others of non-Chinese stock in North China, commerce, with its foreign
merchants and products in both North and South, and Buddhist pilgrims

Reunion and Renewed Advance 155

and missionaries, could not fail to have their effect upon the life of the land.
The natural obstacles between China and the other chief centers of civiliza
tion were formidable, but the isolation which they tended to produce was
by no means complete. The empire of the Turks, followed by the westward
expansion of Chinese power, helped to overcome the barriers and to facili
tate trade and the exchange of ideas. Currents of life in other parts of
Asia made themselves felt in the T'ang dominions.

Many foreign influences are difficult or impossible to trace. Ideas, in
ventions, and institutions do not always bear the labels of their origin, and
the dates of the introduction of plants and animals of alien antecedents
are seldom easily determined. It was under the T'ang that the art of
making wine from grapes seems first to have come to China, that some
thing was learned — from India — of manufacturing sugar from the cane,
and that spinach, one species of garlic, and one of the several kinds of
mustard were brought in. The garden pea was cultivated in China at least
as early as the T'ang. Chinese knowledge of optical lenses, seemingly
derived from India, is first authentically reported in the T'ang.

The introduction of foreign religions is more easily traced, although
even here exact dates often elude us. Usually the T'ang Emperors were
tolerant of foreign faiths and at times encouraged them. Occasionally, how
ever, they proscribed and persecuted them.

It was apparently under the T'ang that Christianity first entered China.
Certainly our earliest evidences of its existence there date from that time.
What came was at least chiefly Nestorianism. This, the prevailing form
of Christianity in Mesopotamia, was actively missionary for hundreds of
years — until, in the fourteenth century, the later Mongol invasions dealt
it all but fatal blows. It had numerous communities in cities in Central Asia
with which the Chinese were in touch under the T'ang. It is not strange,
therefore, that Nestorianism made its way to China. Our fullest account
of it is engraved on a famous monument erected at Ch'angan in 781 and
discovered in the first half of the seventeenth century. Other traces are in
documents uncovered in the grottoes of Tunhuang in the far Northwest, in
three imperial edicts of the T'ang, and in several other contemporary
records. In the Ch'angan inscription, the introduction of the faith is
ascribed to A-lo-pen of Ta-ch'in (Ta-Ch'in being the name, it will be
recalled, by which for several centuries the Chinese referred to the region
which we, with equal inexactness, term the Near East). A-lo-pen is re
ported to have arrived in Ch'angan in 635, during the reign of T'ai Tsung,
and to have been received with honor by the Emperor. T'ai Tsung is said
to have ordered translations made of Nestorian sacred books and to have
encouraged the dissemination of the faith. A monastery was built in the
capital. The faith persisted in China proper until at least the middle of
the ninth century, and from time to time new missionaries came. A metro-

156 VOLUME I

politan for China was appointed sometime before 823, and churches were
erected in several cities. Nestorianism seems never to have had many
Chinese adherents but to have depended largely upon foreigners for
initiative and leadership. About the middle of the ninth century a severe
persecution practically wiped it out.

Some of the documentary remains of Christianity under the T'ang
indicate at least the possibility of the presence not only of Nestorians but
also of Jacobite Christians, We know that there were thousands of Jacobites
in the Sassanid Empire, and it is possible that some of them penetrated to
China.

Another foreign faith under the T'ang was Manichaeism. Originated
by Mani in the third century and showing both Persian and Christian in
fluences, by the time of the T'ang it had spread westward into Mesopotamia
and the Mediterranean world and eastward into Persia and Transoxiana.
Its first appearance in China seems to have been in the last decade of
the seventh century, through Iranians. The use of the seven-day week in
China appears to have accompanied it. In the latter half of the eighth cen
tury, Manichaeism was introduced among the Uighurs and won many
adherents from them. Since the Uighurs were then prominent in Central
Asia and often gave their support to the T'ang, it made some headway in
China. Manichaean temples were erected in Ch'angan, Loyang, and
several other centers. Manichaeism was never popular in the Middle King
dom and it suffered from the collapse of the Uighur power in the ninth
century. Until the thirteenth century it persisted, greatly weakened, in
what is now Sinkiang. In China it took the form of a sect with political-
magical-religious activities — one of the many such in the history of the
country — with certain outward resemblances to Taoism and Buddhism. It
lived on in Fukien, subject to persecutions, until at least the beginning of
the seventeenth century.

The early history of Islam in China is shrouded in obscurity and un
certainty. We know that Moslems were in the Middle Kingdom during the
T'ang, some of them as merchants in the ports on the south coast and
some of them as soldiers of fortune — notably the Arabs who assisted in
suppressing the rebellion of An Lu-shan. We know, too, that several
embassies came to the T'ang court from Moslem Arab officials in
Transoxiana. Whether any converts were made from among the Chinese
we do not know. Certainly it was not until several centuries later that large
Moslem bodies appeared in China.

Mazdaism had entered China before the T'ang. We hear of it, too, in
T'ang times, but like Islam, as the faith of foreign residents — Persian
merchants and refugees from the Arab invasions. We know that there were
Mazdean priests and that Mazdean temples existed in Ch'angan. We are not
certain, however, that any converts were sought from among the Chinese.

Reunion and Renewed Advance 157

Jews were in the China of the Tang, but probably few in number and
all merchants. The Jewish community in Honan, which disintegrated only
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was probably of later origin.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: BUDDHISM REACHES
ITS APEX

From what has been repeatedly said in the preceding pages,
it can readily be inferred that under the T'ang Buddhism prospered.
It will be recalled that in the centuries immediately preceding the advent
of the T'ang it had been increasing in influence. During the earlier years
of the T'ang its growth continued and throughout the T'ang it was very
prominent. The T'ang may be called the Buddhist age of China. Buddhist
temples and shrines dotted the landscape and were conspicuous in the
cities. Buddhist ceremonies were a normal part of daily life. Buddhism
encouraged works of mercy — the creation and maintenance of hospitals,
dispensaries, and low cost or free hostels for travelers. Indian Buddhist
teachers inspired advances in astronomy and mathematics.

This does not mean that Buddhism was without enemies in high places.
Scholars of the Confucian school often opposed it. To their mind it was
superstitious, destructive to the family, derogatory to the authority of
the Emperor, and in general antagonistic to that social and political struc
ture which Confucianism cherished and upon which it depended. With
the emphasis by the T'ang upon recruiting the civil bureaucracy from
those trained in the Classics and with the granting of fresh honors to
Confucius, Confucianism partly regained the prominence which it had
won under the Han. From time to time one or another of its exponents
denounced Buddhism to the Emperor. More than once an Emperor took
vigorous action against it. Under Kao Tsu a minister of state raised his
voice in criticism of it. In 626 Buddhism and Taoism were ordered abol
ished. Early in the eighth century a vigorous anti-Buddhist memorial
was presented. The most noted of the protests was that of the famous
Han Yii, the outstanding exponent of Confucianism during the T'ang. In
819 he took the occasion of an official reception accorded to a bone of
the Buddha to condemn that act and the Buddhist faith. His temerity cost
him his position at court, but that was because he had chosen an unfor
tunate time for his tirade. Kao Tsung, T'ai Tsung, and Hsiian Tsung,
the strongest monarchs of the dynasty, all sought to restrict the number
of monks and nuns and to keep the religion under control. In 835 an
imperial decree forbade the further ordinations of Buddhist monks. In
845 an Emperor who was a devoted Taoist issued an anti-Buddhist decree
which is said to have led to the destruction of more than forty thousand
temples, the confiscation of temple lands, and the return to secular life

158 VOLUME I

of more than a quarter of a million monks and nuns. While these figures
are quite probably an exaggeration, Buddhism undoubtedly was dealt a
severe blow at a time when it had already entered on a slow decline. The
motives back of the decree were partly religious, but seem as well to have
been fear of the power of the Buddhist monks, the diversion of much
of the wealth of the country into Buddhist channels, the economic unpro
ductiveness of the inmates of Buddhist monasteries at a time of labor
shortage, and the charge that the growing weakness of the Empire arose
from the corruption of the country by the foreign faith.

On the other hand, none of the persecutions appears to have lasted
any length of time, nor was any of them so severe as those which the
early Christian church met in the Roman Empire, or as some which
Christians have inflicted on each other, or Moslems on unbelievers. Prob
ably the anti-Buddhist edicts were usually allowed quickly to become
dead letters. Several rulers of the dynasty were ardent Buddhists, among
them the great Wu Hou, who for a time had been in a nunnery and under
whose rule Buddhist monks were very influential. Hsiian Tsung in later
years was more favorable to Buddhism than an earlier decree of his against
the faith would indicate, and his successor was a devout believer.

Buddhist literature continued to be produced. Not only were foreign
authors translated but original works were produced in Chinese as well. The
larger proportion of the T'ang activity in the realm of philosophy was in
Buddhism.

Buddhism showed its vigor, too, by continuing to give birth to new
schools. Ch'an was further developed late in the seventh century by Hui-
neng, who professed to hark back to Bodhidharma but really differed from
him in experiencing and teaching sudden enlightenment as the way to
salvation. In the latter half of the eighth century an imperial commission
made Ch'an, in the form which it had been developed by Hui-neng and
his successors, the orthodox school of Buddhism. Hsiian-tsang is largely
responsible for the Fa-hsiang, or Tzu-en-tsung, also known as the Wei-
shih-hsiang-chiao. Its founder was an Indian teacher, but to Hsiian-tsang
are due the standard translations of its chief works. Fa-hsiang taught that
the visible world is only an expression of thought. It advocated Yoga
practices as a way to religious realization. Closely related to the Fa-
hsiang was the Hua-yen school. The Lii-tsung or Vinaya school frankly
had a Chinese origin. Is was founded by Tao-hsiian in the seventh century.
Perhaps partly because of the Confucian background in China which
emphasizes virtue, it stressed moral discipline and asceticism as the way
to salvation.

The last Chinese Buddhist school to appear was Chen-yen ("True
Word," in Japanese Shingon) or Mi-chiao ("Secret Religion"), in the
eighth century. Although, like so many of its predecessors, it claimed for

Reunion and Renewed Advance 159

itself an Indian origin and for its first head in China an Indian missionary,
and although it was a development of India Tantrism, a late and some
what degenerate form of Buddhism, like the others it could not have sur
vived and prospered if it had not fitted into the Chinese environment.
In its more intellectual expressions pantheistic, rejoicing in symbolism,
declaring that the one spirit manifests itself in many emanations and forms,
and claiming that it had an esoteric — "true word" — doctrine revealed
to initiates only after a long and grueling novitiate, in practice it stressed
magic formulae and ceremonies and thus provided a short cut to salva
tion.

Thus Buddhism became naturalized in China. Its major schools, espe
cially Ch'an, T'ien T'ai, Ch'ing T'u, and Chen-yen, were adaptations
to the Chinese environment and Chinese needs. It is interesting to find
a Buddhist monk of the eighth and ninth centuries attempting to prove
the accord of Buddhist and Confucian morality and of Taoist and Buddhist
metaphysics.

In no dynasty after the Tang did Buddhism develop a new school.
While Buddhism was to go on as an outstanding feature of Chinese cul
ture, by the end of the T'ang its vitality had begun to ebb.

The cause of this decline must be in part a matter of conjecture.
One was probably the decay of Buddhism in India and the consequent
paucity of fresh currents flowing from there to China. Another was the
recruiting of so many members of the bureaucracy from those trained in
the Confucian texts. With short interruptions, state examinations based
upon non-Buddhist literature were to continue into the first decade of the
twentieth century. Since through them lay the chief road to social and
political distinction, they tended to absorb the best brains of the country.
Buddhism was weak in that it was other-worldly and had no political
program. Chinese rulers, seeking a system which would help them govern
the Empire, found in Confucianism what Buddhism lacked. Whatever the
cause, with the later years of the T'ang, Buddhism began slowly to decay.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: CONFUCIANISM AND
TAOISM

As we have hinted, Confucianism experienced a marked
growth under the T'ang. In their personal practices and beliefs, the major
ity of the Emperors were more inclined toward Taoism or Buddhism
than toward this "cult of the learned." Taoism, indeed, seems to have
reached the apex of its influence at court. Hsiian Tsung gave much atten
tion to it. We hear, too, of a later ruler of the dynasty who seriously
impaired his health by taking potions supposed to be the elixir of life.
With such advocacy in high quarters, Taoism was popular in the nation

160 4 VOLUME I

at large. One of the celebrated eight "Immortals" (Hsien) of Taoism,
Lii Yen, lived in the eighth century, and to him is traditionally attributed
a famous Taoist treatise on ethics. Political expediency, however, demanded
that the monarchs give official support to Confucianism. Here was a sys
tem on which government and society could be based far more effectively
than upon Taoism or Buddhism. Taoism in its primitive documents
would do away with much of government and social organization
as the Chinese knew them, and with important exceptions — as in the
Yellow Turbans of the Han — was individualistic and stressed the
devotion of one's energies to the achievement of personal immortality
through unsocial practices. Buddhism, other-worldly, with its eyes centered
on life beyond the grave, demanded of those who followed it completely
the renunciation of family and of participation in ordinary political and
economic life. Confucianism, however, was essentially this-worldly, empha
sized the family and political theories, and was in accord with the tradi
tional structure of Chinese society. It is not strange, therefore, that the
T'ang reinforced Confucianism and further developed the administrative
and educational machinery which perpetuated it.

As we have noted, T'ai Tsung ordered (630) that in every chou and
hsien a temple should be erected to Confucius. He also commanded that
sacrifices be offered there by scholars and government officials. To the
twenty-two names of distinguished exponents of the cult which he ordered
placed in the temples, others were added later in the dynasty. The Con
fucian temple, indeed, became in time a kind of national hall of fame.

In schools which the T'ang ordered maintained in the capital and
the provinces, the subjects of study were the Confucian Classics of the
Chou period, the histories of Ssu-ma Ch'ien and of the Han dynasties, and
— for the legal experts — the law.

The tests by which admission was had to the bureaucracy were not
of the kind to encourage any great originality of thought. The state
examinations were elaborated under the T'ang and included a large variety
of degrees and something of a choice of topics. Those which admitted
to the degree of chin shih, for instance, might be either in the Classics,
law, calligraphy, or mathematics. One set of examinations was in Taoist
studies, and for the army, tests were given largely in skill in martial exer
cises. However, degrees taken in the Confucian Classics appear to have
been the most highly esteemed. Any radical departure from established
theories would scarcely commend itself to the bureaucrats who read the
papers. Except in Buddhism, creative philosophic effort seems to have
been largely lacking.

Still, the literary output was immense. Owing to the examination sys
tem and the training it presupposed, many an official was also an author.
Essays, poetry, and the writing of histories of the preceding dynasties,

Reunion and Renewed Advance 161

all had their devotees. Tu Yu produced the Tung Tien, a treatise on the
constitution, a masterly work which helped to set the precedent for a new
type of history. Liu Chih-chi wrote the Shih Tung, or Comprehensive
Study of History, notable for its critical acumen. Some well-known dic
tionaries were compiled. Literary form was at a premium.

The greatest master of prose style of the dynasty was Han Yii (768-
824) — later canonized as Han Wen Kung. A native of the North and an
eager student from his boyhood, he rose to the presidency of the Boan
of Rites. His official career was somewhat checkered, especially since o]
at least two occasions he did not hesitate to incur imperial displeasure witl
frank-spoken memorials. Han Yii's work was long considered a model
He contributed to a new era in prose writing. His style was more suppl«
than that of the Han and less ornate, simpler, and more direct than thai
of most of the scholars of the period of disunion, of the Sui, and of the
earlier years of the T'ang. In part it was modeled on the Classics of the
Chou and was a reaction against the artificial "parallel" form of the
centuries which immediately preceded him. The reaction took the form of
the ku wen, or "ancient literary style." It was associated with fresh
approaches to the Confucian Classics of the Chou, notably the com
mentaries on the Ch'un Ch'iu. But, as with many other vital movements,
it had varied expressions.

Han Yii, it will be noted, was a champion of Chinese conservatism
— or what today might be called nationalism. Along with other Confucian-
ists, he vigorously opposed those who would seek alliance with the
Uighurs and who would admit Manichaeism and tolerate Buddhism and
other contributions from without. In the end, as we shall repeatedly see,
it was this nationalistic tendency which triumphed, although its victory
was tempered with concessions to importations from without. It was sig
nificant that Han Yii lived after the An Lu-shan rebellion. He was a
pioneer and a leading representative of the new age that dawned in the
later centuries of the T'ang.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: POETRY

The T'ang saw the greatest Chinese poetry and some of the
best Chinese painting. Such tides of the spirit are always difficult to account
for. In this case they almost certainly had some connection with Taoism
and Buddhism, for both these faiths encouraged the man of insight to
look below surface appearances— held to be illusory— to the reality beneath.
Buddhism, too, with its many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, with its con
ceptions of heaven and hell, and with the art forms that came with it,
both stimulated the imagination and provided it with subjects. Buddhism
was impressed with the impermanence of life — a note of sadness which

162 . VOLUME I

runs through much of the T'ang poetry. On the other hand, the fact
must be included that some of the greatest of the poets were of the
orthodox Confucian school and were scornful of both Buddhism and
Taoism. Unquestionably, also, the order and the prosperity which the
T'ang gave the country afforded opportunity for the arts of civilization.

A technical discussion of Chinese verse would presuppose a knowledge
of the Chinese language and would be both confusing and boring to the
average Occidental reader. It need not, therefore, be entered upon here.
This much must be said, however. To rhyme and length of line, which
the older poetry had stressed, the T'ang added emphasis on tone, a prac
tice begun in the centuries of disunion. As in prose, form and style
were highly prized, and it was in the originality and perfection of these
that the T'ang poetic genius best expressed itself. In the ninth century,
moreover, the songs of popular entertainers and of dancing girls led to a
new type of verse, which was to flourish for four centuries or so. The
songs were written to go with popular tunes, had irregular lines, and so
displayed more melody and greater variety than the older, orthodox, poetry.
The subjects and sentiments of T'ang poems often harked back to those
of preceding dynasties, but there was also a widening of the range of
themes. Among the favorite topics were battle, a deserted concubine, the
emotions aroused by a landscape, friendship, the meeting and parting of
friends, a ruin, the song of birds, the moonlight, and wine. Transla
tions of Buddhist poetry exerted a marked influence.

The two most famous poets of the dynasty, and usually deemed the
greatest in all Chinese literature, were Li Po and Tu Fu. Li Po was
probably, although not certainly, born in the far West. The year seems
to have been between 699 and 705. Most of his life he was a wanderer.
In his youth he was something of a swashbuckler, and always he was
fond of wine. At one period he retired to a mountain as a member of a
gay group dubbed the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook." His matri
monial ventures were many. He was never successful in attaining to high
public office — the conventional road to distinction — nor was he long far
removed from poverty. He was too much of a Bohemian for that. For
a time in early middle life he was in Ch'angan, where he was a favorite
with Hsiian Tsung and was one of the brilliant and gay group who made
the court of that Emperor famous. In company with others of the "Eight
Immortals of the Wine-cup" he frequented the taverns of the city, and
on at least one occasion is said to have been brought drunk into the
imperial presence. After three years he fell into disgrace — why is not
known. Again he went on his travels. In his later years his wanderings
were troubled by the confusion attending the uprising of An Lu-shan, and
he narrowly escaped execution for having attached himself to the for
tunes of another unsuccessful rebel of those stormy years. A popular

Reunion and Renewed Advance 163

tradition has it that he finally came to his end by drowning when, drunk
and out boating, he attempted to embrace the reflection of the moon in
the water. Unfortunately for romance, he seems to have died, in most
prosaic fashion, in 762, while living with a kinsman in the present Anhui.
He was fond not only of the town and of gay and loose living, but of
the mountain and the stream, and in him ran a strong Taoist strain. His
poems appear to have been largely spontaneous, dashed off rapidly, not
labored, and are noted for their lyric beauty, their mastery of the use
of words, their originality of style, and both for their skill in handling
the older poetic forms and for their successful variations of and departures
from literary conventions. He knew anxiety and disappointment, fyut
sought escape from them — and helped his readers to do so — into a dream
world, lifted there in an ecstasy of form and rhythm.

Tu Fu (712-770), also for a time at the court of Hsiian Tsung and one
of the "Eight Immortals of the Wine-cup," led a life marked by suffering.
Although precocious as a youth, he failed to attain distinction in the
imperial examinations. After much waiting and disappointment, in middle
life he won favor, through his writing, with Hsiian Tsung. He was sepa
rated from his family for long periods during the years of civil strife
at the end of that reign, and some of his children starved to death.
Appointed in 759 to an official charge which irked him, he left it, thor
oughly disillusioned. In the capacity of censor, he fell into disgrace for
dealing faithfully with Hsiian Tsung's successor. In contrast with Li Po,
he took great pains with his composition; his work lacks a certain daring
and lyrical quality found in the other. The iron had entered deeply into
his soul and he was a stark realist, portraying suffering in very moving
fashion.

Later than Li Po and Tu Fu was Po Chii-i (772-846). The son of
a minor official, he himself early passed the state examinations and
entered upon an official career. Most of his life was spent in public office
in the capital and the provinces, sometimes in and sometimes out of
imperial favor, and accordingly, occasionally in virtual banishment to
an obscure and distant local post. Trained in the Confucian Classics, he
valued content above form and sought to make his verses the medium
for moral instruction. In this he was not always successful, for the poet
in him often broke the bonds of his Confucianism. It was the romantic
lines which he composed while in this mood that were the most popular.
He could use either the classical or the newer poetic forms and was
careful to make his work simple — testing it, so we hear, by its intelligibil
ity to an old peasant woman. For years many of his poems were enor
mously popular and were on the lips of high and low.

Many another poet of the T'ang might be mentioned — the soldier
Ch'en Tzu-ang, the military counselor Sung Chih-wen, Wang Wei the

164 VOLUME I

painter, the Taoists Ch'ang Chien and T'ao Han, and Liu Tsung-yiian,
the earnestly Buddhist friend of Han Yu. One collection includes nearly
fifty thousand poems of the period.

FICTION

It must also be noted that there was prose fiction, written
in the vernacular and made up mostly of short stories and rudimentary
novels, It arose from the professional storytellers who entertained their
hearers with tales, sometimes in verse, sometimes in a mixture of verse
and prose, and sometimes in prose. Beginning with about the eighth
century, the storytellers began to put their tales into writing, much as
they narrated them to their public. This helped to give rise to a vernacular
literature.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: ART

The T'ang is only a little less famous for its painters than
for its poets. There was, indeed, a flowering of several kinds of art. In
this, Buddhism had a large part. The religious enthusiasm aroused by
it stimulated the imagination, it was the vehicle for many new forms,
and its temples were ornate with statues and paintings, most of them
the work of Chinese. It will be recalled that in what is now Sinkiang many
non-Chinese artistic influences were found — Greek as mediated through
Gandhara, Sassanid, Graeco-Roman, and Indian of the Gupta period
(fourth and fifth centuries)— utilized by that great variety of peoples,
Indo-European, Turk, and Mongol, who were found there. They could
scarcely fail to have effects in the Middle Kingdom. Their blending with
older Chinese styles and ideals can be vividly seen in the Buddhist rock
temples in the grottoes of Tunhuang, near the far western edge of Kansu.
In China itself many forms of sculpture were developed. Chinese
sculpture, indeed, reached its apex in the first century of the T'ang. In
some places the Han tradition survived, with its portrayals of animals and
of scenes from human life. In Buddhist shrines the predominant motifs
showed either the effects of Graeco-Buddhist Gandhara or of the some
what later Gupta period, with its more sinuous lines. Buddhist art of the
T'ang possessed greater elegance than that of the Northern Wei, but less
vigor. It was, however, of a very high order, and some of the most beau
tiful statues ever produced by man were the work of this period — as may
be seen from surviving examples in China and Korea. In secular art
much of the Han tradition, modified, was represented in huge monoliths
and in wall carvings. The best of the sculpture had mostly been done
before the downfall of Wu Hou. As the dynasty progressed, sculpture

Reunion and Renewed Advance 165

tended to be less produced. In such as was created, secular influences
increased at the expense of Buddhism, and there was more naturalism and
less adherence to convention.

There have come down to us many earthenware figurines which dis
play unusual vigor, grace, and lifelikeness — mounted horsemen, animals,
foreigners, men, and women — showing artistic freshness and marked
skill

It was probably in the sixth and seventh centuries, after a long pre
liminary development, that one of the most characteristic of Chinese
artistic mediums, true white porcelain, first appeared, Not until later
dynasties, however, was it to be put to its most extensive uses.

Painting now attained a high pinnacle — in the judgment of some,
the highest in Chinese history. Buddhism and Taoism seem to have been
chiefly responsible. The principles of calligraphy,, a fine art in China,
were also now fully applied to painting, with resulting improvement in
skill and emphasis upon line. The greatest painter of the T'ang —
possibly of all Chinese history — was Wu Tao-hsiian (also known as Wu
Tao Tzu and Wu Tao-yiian), who was one of the glories of the brilliant
court of Hsiian Tsung. A master of landscapes, in which field he was
said to have initiated a new school, he was also, and especially, devoted to
Buddhist and Taoist themes. It is about him that there grew up the interest
ing story of a landscape with which he had decorated a wall for the
Emperor. As the two, the artist and the monarch, stood before it, the
artist clapped his hands, a door opened, and he passed within it. Before
his astonished patron could accept his invitation to follow, the door closed,
and the painter was never again seen. Wu's greatest work, it is said, was
on the walls of temples at Ch'angan and Loyang. He was an extreme
realist but did not depart from the classical canons of his art. He also
possessed both fertility of imagination and technical skill.

A friend of Wu Tao-hsiian was the poet, official, physician, and painter
Wang Wei. An earnest Buddhist, he spent much time in quiet retire
ment in the country. His last years were greatly disturbed by the rebellion
of An Lu-shan, for he accepted office under that upstart and was imprisoned
for a time after the collapse of the revolt. His monochrome landscapes are
especially famous, and later critics thought of him as belonging to the
Southern, as opposed to the Northern, School This distinction had only
partial geographical significance and "went back to a classical allusion.
The Southern School was supposed to be dreamy and to deal in subdued
tones, and the Northern to use strong colors and to be characterized by
force and precision. The classification is, however, artificial when applied
to the T'ang.

A friend and protege of Wang Wei was Han Kan, a noted painter
of horses. His subjects were usually the steeds sent as tribute to the

166 VOLUME I

imperial court by the peoples of the North and West. A distinguished
landscape painter, later regarded as outstanding in the so-called Northern
School, was Li Ssu-hslin, a great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty.
He was followed and perhaps excelled by his son, Li Chao-tao. Yen Li-te,
of the seventh century, and his younger brother, Yen Li-pen, were both
in high official position and both employed Taoist and Buddhist subjects
and historical scenes. We hear, too, of painters of flowers and birds, of
plants and insects — but to give the names of all the artists of distinction
would be confusing.

It is possible that in many of the paintings were earlier Chinese influ
ences — from the ceremonial processions seen in the tombs of the Han,
and from the formal observances in connection with the ancestral rites.
Certainly there was more than one strain — Taoism, different schools of
Buddhism, impulses and models from the seminomadic peoples with whom
the Chinese were in touch on the northern frontiers and in the northern
provinces, traditional Chinese forms, and the contributions from other lands
and cultures which we have noted above. These were all present, acting
either singly or in various mixtures on different men and localities.

Calligraphy, in the Chinese mind closely related to painting, had many
devotees, and the works of earlier masters were sought out and repro
duced by imperial order. The dynasty could not, however, boast of cal-
ligraphers as great as could some others.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE T'ANG: PRINTING

It is from T'ang times that we have our earliest examples
of that revolutionary art, printing. From Japan, then recasting its life
under Buddhist and Chinese influence, come charms of the latter part
of the eighth century, in Sanscrit and Chinese, printed by wood blocks.
From the grottoes of Tunhuang we have the earliest known extant printed
book, a Buddhist sutra, struck off in 868, also from wooden blocks, for free
distribution — presumably as an act of piety. How many years before these
specimens the art originated we do not know — possibly as early as the
Sui. Apparently it was an evolution, conceivably — although by no means
certainly — from the use of seals. It was to have a noteworthy develop
ment in China, and as late as the close of the eighteenth century the
Empire may have contained more printed books than all the rest of the
world.

ECONOMIC LIFE

One would like to know something of the life of the toiling
masses of the Sui and T'ang — the way in which they made a livelihood,

Reunion and Renewed Advance 167

and their agricultural and industrial organizations. Some fragments of
information are accessible to us, but we still lack adequate monographs
on the subject. As we have seen, both Sui Wen Ti and T'ang T'ai Tsung
espoused the "equal field" system with an attempt to equalize the land
holdings. We know, too, that efforts were made again and again to pre
vent the sale of these holdings, and so to forestall the growth of large
landed estates. That was partly to maintain revenues through preventing
the growth of tax-exempt property. The system inevitably broke down
and complaints were repeatedly registered of landless poor against wealthy
landowners. However, peasant proprietorship seems to have been fairly
general. We hear of governmental promotion of irrigation canals. We
read of movements to disband part of the army and to move the soldiers
back to the land. We have records of famines — even before the declining
years of the T'ang — and often the government sought to give relief by
distributing food and remitting taxes. Taxes were of many kinds, some
of them based on the land and some on trade and commodities. At times
they were very heavy. Standard forms in use during the initial centuries
of the T'ang were levies on individual land owners, a levy in kind on
each family (chiefly for town-dwellers), and required labor — which might
be compounded by the payment of silk. Toward the close of the eighth
century a statesman, Yang Yen, substituted for all these a single tax on
the land, payable twice a year, a practice continued under later dynasties.
There were currency troubles, with debased coinage and attempts to
improve it. Copper coins and silk were used as currency, and negotiable
certificates were tried out. Nowhere in T'ang times, however, do we have
any such thoroughgoing radical social and economic experiments as under
Wang Mang, or as were to be made under the Sung.

After the suppression of the An Lu-shan revolt, changes in land
owning proceeded rapidly which had begun before that uprising. The
"equal field" system, with its peasant proprietorship, was passing. Great
landed estates arose under absentee owners and administered by resident
agents. These states were augmented by the suppression of monasteries
and the acquisition of many of their properties by the landed proprietors.
All this meant the rise of a new aristocracy. At the same time cities multi
plied and grew in size with a mounting urban population and a growth in
trade and industries.

INFLUENCE OF CHINA ON SURROUNDING COUNTRIES

One last outstanding feature of the T'ang must be noted —
the influence of China upon her neighbors. So extensive, so prosperous,
and so brilliant an Empire could not fail to have a profound effect upon
surrounding peoples. Even when they beat back the arms of the T'ang,

168 VOLUME I

they could not, or at least did not, resist her culture. Already under the
Sui, Buddhism and with it Chinese civilization — which had been trickling
in for centuries — were pouring into Japan. Japanese came in numbers to
China. Some of them were students, largely monks, and lived in the Middle
Kingdom for many years before returning home. Others were official
envoys. Chinese embassies were also sent to Japan, and intercourse between
the governments of the two countries was maintained. The Japanese
copied the plan of Ch'angan in their capitals, first in Nara and then in
Heian (Kyoto), and in art, literature, religion, and administrative organ
ization sought to imitate their great neighbor. The result was a Sinicized
Japan — although the islanders proved to be skillful adapters and not
blind copyists. Korea, too, took over much of the culture of China, as
indeed she had long been doing, even in those sections which had been
politically independent. Much of what is now Vietnam was within the
circle of T'ang cultural influence. Tibet seems to have derived some
of its Buddhism from China. In the present Sinkiang the influence of
Chinese art .was felt, and Chinese Buddhism appears to have had some
converts. It seems also to have been during the T'ang that the use of
paper, in its origin a Chinese invention, spread to Samarkand — through
Chinese captured by the Arabs after the defeat of Kao Hsien-chih in
751 — and to Western Asia, whence, in due time, it made its way to
Europe. A Chinese, made prisoner at the time of the fall of the T'ang
power in the far West, journeyed to Mesopotamia and reported that at
Kufa, one of the Abbasid capitals, some of his fellow countrymen had
inaugurated — a possible exaggeration — painting, the manufacture of silk,
and work in gold and silver. China was a giver as well as a receiver of
civilization.

SUMMARY

Under the T'ang, China was for centuries a unified, pros
perous, and highly civilized empire. During the first century and a half
of the T'ang its territories surpassed in extent those of the Han, and even
during the latter half of the dynasty it retained control of most of what
is now China proper. If the T'ang rulers showed no striking originality
in administrative devices, they had the good judgment to avail themselves
of the machinery which had come down to them from earlier centuries
and to develop it further. Their code of laws became basic for the codes
of later dynasties.

The culture of the Sui and the T'ang exhibited features markedly
different from that of preceding dynasties. Contrasted with the Han, the
Sui and the T'ang achieved a further and notable development of that
examination system and bureaucracy which has been the most distinctive

Reunion and Renewed Advance 169

political achievement of the Chinese and which led to the firm establish
ment of the Confucian school. The art and poetry of the T'ang were in
many respects dissimilar to those of the Han and even of the period of
disunion. In poetry and sculpture the T'ang was never to be surpassed.
Buddhism reached its heyday, and in its philosophy, partly imported
but partly rethought by Chinese monks, it displayed profound and pains
taking intellectual activity and religious insight, As against the dynasties of
the centuries of division, the Sui and the T'ang re-established union and
determined that China was not to be permanently divided nor to be
always subject to aliens. Chinese civilization became more firmly estab
lished south of the Yangtze than ever before. The cultural differences
which had developed in the centuries of division were partly overcome.
It is significant that the Chinese of the far South later denominated them
selves the "men of T'ang," much as those of the Yangtze Valley and the
North called themselves the "men of Han." The Sui and the T'ang gave
a fresh impetus to Confucianism and did much to insure that that cult
rather than Buddhism should be dominant. While they witnessed the years
of the greatest prosperity of Chinese Buddhism, they were also partly
responsible for its slow decline. The Confucianism of the T'ang and the
literary style of the T'ang showed modifications in what had been handed
down from preceding periods.

The Sui and the T'ang were not only a brilliant age to which the
Chinese rightly look back with pride. They also witnessed distinctive
changes. In the later years of the T'ang, movements began which intro
duced a new era and were largely to shape the future China.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Pel Shih, by Li Yen-shou of the seventh century, based in part on his
father's notes, contains an account of the Sui. A longer account in the Sui Shu,
was compiled by an imperial commission under T'ang T'ai Tsung. For the
T'ang there exist two officially recognized dynastic histories. The Chiu Tang
Shu is made up in large part of material compiled by at least three hands dur
ing the dynasty and was composed shortly after the fall of the house. It was
severely criticized and in the eleventh century the Hsin Tang Shu was compiled
under imperial commission. It is based largely on the Chiu Tang Shu. The Tzu
Chih Tung Chien, by Ssu-ma Kuang, of the eleventh century, with accompany
ing works by the same hand, begins in the fourth century B.C. and comes down
through the five short dynasties which immediately succeeded the T'ang. The
Tung Chien Kang Mu is a reconstruction and condensation of this work, made
under the direction of the famous Chu Hsi, of the twelfth century. Several
times in succeeding centuries it was revised. It forms the basis of the largest
history of China ever published in a European language, de Mailla's Histoire
Generate de la Chine (13 vols., Paris, 1777-1785).

Among the general books in European languages useful for this period are
the works mentioned in previous chapters: H. Cordier, Histoire Generate de la

170 VOLUME I

Chine (4 vols., Paris, 1920-1921); and 0. Franke, Geschichte des Chinesischen
Reiches (Berlin, Vol. 2, 1936, pp. 308-607).

Special works and articles dealing with the political history and the foreign
wars of the Sui and T'ang are Woodbridge Bingham, The Founding of the
Tang Dynasty; The Fall of Sui and Rise of Tang (Baltimore, Waverly Press,
1941, pp. xiii, 183), based on the sources, carefully done; C. P. Fitzgerald,
Son of Heaven: A Biography of Li Shih-min, Founder of the Tang Dynasty
(Cambridge University Press, 1933, pp. ix, 232), readable, based chiefly on a
general history of China written in the Sung Dynasty; C. P. Fitzgerald, The
Empress Wu (London, The Cresset Press, 1956, pp. vii, 252); Nghiem Toan
and Louis Ricaud, Wou Tso-t'ien (Bulletin de la Societe fitudes Indochinoises,
new series, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1959, pp. 171), translation and annotation of the
official biography of the Empress Wu Hou (Wu Tse-t'ien); Lin Yutang, Lady
Wu: A True Story (London, Heinemann, 1957, pp. xiv, 245); Edwin G.
Pullyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1955, pp. vii 264), extremely important; Arthur F. Wright, "The
Formation of Sui Ideology, 581-604," in J. K. Fairbank, Chinese Thought and
Institutions (The University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 71-104, an original
and valuable analysis; M. Tchang, "Tableau des Souverains de Nan Chao,"
Bulletin de I'ficole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. 1, pp. 312-321; Henri
Maspero, "Le Protectorat General d'Annam sous les T'ang," ibid., Vol. 10,
pp. 539-584, 665-694; E. Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs)
Occidentaux (St. Petersburg, 1903), a masterly work shedding much light on
Central Asia during the period, with translations of Chinese documents and
copious critical footnotes; E. Chavannes, "Notes Additionelles sur les Tou-kiue
Occidentaux," ToungPao, 1904, pp. 1-10; Aurel Stein, "A Chinese Expedition
across the Pamirs and Hindukush," The New China Review, Vol. 4, pp, 161-
183; Biography of Huang Ch'ao, translated and annotated by Howard S. Levy
(University of California Press, 1955, pp. 144); Woodbridge Bingham, "Li
Shih-min's Coup in A.D. 626," Journal of the American Oriental Society, New
Series, Vol. 70, pp. 89-95, 259-271; J. K. Rideout, "The Rise of Eunuchs in
the T'ang Dynasty," Asia Major, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 1; Bernard S.
Solomon, The Veritable Record of the Tang Emperor Shun-tsung (Han Yu's
Shun-tsung shih-lu) (Harvard University Press, 1955, pp. xxxi, 82); E. G.
Pullyblank, "The Tzyiyh Tongjiann Kaojih and the Sources of the History of
the Period 730-763," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
Vol. 13 [1950], pp. 448-473; H. S. Levy, Harem Favorites of an Illustrious
Celestial (Taipei, Chungt'ai Printing Co., 1958), translation of biographies of
four women in the court of Ming Huang.

On the administrative organization of the T'ang see Robert des Rotours,
"Les Grands Fonctionnaires des Provinces en Chine sous la Dynastie des
T'ang," Toung Pao, 1928, pp. 219-332; Robert des Rotours, Le Traite des
Examens Traduit de la Nouvelle Histoire des Tang (Paris, Libraire Ernest
Lerous, 1932, pp. 414); Robert des Rotours, Traite de Fonctionnaires et Traite
de I'Armee, Tarduits de la Nouvelle Histoire des Tang (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2
vols., 1947); Etienne Balazs, Le Traite Juridique du "Souei-Chou" (Leiden,
E. J. Brill, 1954, pp. vi, 227); Karl Bunger, Quellen zur Rechtsgeschichte der
Tangzeit (Monumenta Serica, The Catholic University, Peiping, No. 9 [1946],
pp. xiv, 311); D. C. Twitchett, "The Salt Commissioners after An Lu-shan's
Rebellion," Asia Major, New Series, Vol. 4, pp. 60-89; D. C. Twitchett, "The
Fragment of the T'ang Ordinances of the Department of Waterways Dis-

Reunion and Renewed Advance 171

covered in Tunhuang," Asia Major, Vol. 6, pp. 23-79; D. C. Twitchett, Finan
cial Administration under the Tang Dynasty (Cambridge University Press,
1963), pp. xii, 373.

On commerce and travel see F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient
(Shanghai, 1885); F. Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua (St. Petersburg,
Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1912, pp. x, 288); E. O. Reischauer, "Notes
on Tang Dynasty Sea Routes," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 5,
pp. 142-164; M. Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia (Oxford, 1928); Henry Yule,
Cathay and the Way Thither, edited by Henri Cordier, Vol. 1 (London, 1915);
Gabriel Farrand, Relations de Voyages et Textes Geographiques Arabesf
Persans, et Turcs relatifs a I'Extreme Orient du Vllle au XVIII Siecles (Paris,
1913); Chang Hsing-lang, "The Importation of Negro Slaves to China under
the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907)," Bulletin No. 7, Catholic University of
Peking, Dec. 1930, pp. 37-59; Jane Gaston Mahler, The Westerners among
the Figurines of the Tang Dynasty in China (Rome, Instituto Italiano per il
Medio ed Estreme Oriente, 1959); E. H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of
Samarkand; A Study of Tang Exotics (University of California Press, 1963),
pp. xiii, 399.

On the closely related topic of the Buddhist pilgrims, see Baron A. Stael-
Holstein, "Hsuan Tsang and Modern Research," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1923, pp. 16-24; Samuel Beal, The Life
of Hiuen-Tsiang by the Shaman Huei Li (London, 1911); Samuel Beal,
Buddhist Records of the Western World. Translated from the Chinese of
Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629) (2 vols., London, 1906); Rene Grousset, In the Foot
steps of the Buddha, translated from the French by Mariette Leon (London,
1932); Paul Pelliot, "Deux Itineraires de Chine en Inde a la Fin du Vllle
Siec/e," Bulletin de I'tcole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. 4, 1904, pp. 131-
413; E. Chavannes, translator, Memoir e Compose a Vtpoque de la Grande
Dynastie Tang sur les Religieux tminents que Allerent Chercher la Loi dans
les Pays d' Occident, par 1-tsing (Paris, 1894).

On the cultural interchange between China and Iran, see B. Laufer, Sino-
Iranica. Chinese Cultural Contributions to the History of Civilization in
Ancient Iran (Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1919, pp. iv, 185-
630).

On the history of thought, see A. Forke, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen
chinesischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 1934).

On the closely related Buddhism, see Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese
Philosophy, translated by D. Bodde, Vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1953),
pp. 293-405; Hu Shih, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," The
Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. 15, pp. 475-505; Kenneth
Ch'en, "The Economic Background of the Hui-ch'ang Suppression of Bud
dhism," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 67-105; Emm's
Diary. The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law, translated
by E. 0. Reischauer (New York, The Ronald Press Co., 2 vols. 1955), a
remarkable picture of China and of the Buddhism of that country in the
later years of the Tang; Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton
Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press,
1960), pp. 327-408; Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stan
ford University Press, 1959), pp. 65-85; Heinrich Dumoulin, The Develop
ment of Chinese Zen after the Sixth Patriarch in the Light of Mumonkan,
translated from the German by Ruth Fuller Sasaki (New York, The First Zen

172 VOLUME I

Institute of America, 1953), pp. 3-32; C. H. Hamilton, translator, Wei Shih Er
Shih Lun — . . . or the Treatise in Twenty Stanzas on Representation, by
Vasubandhu, Translated from the Chinese Version of Hsiian Tsang (New
Haven, American Oriental Society, 1938, pp. 82); C. H. Hamilton, "Hsiian
Chuang and the Wei Shih Philosophy," Journal of the American Oriental So
ciety, Vol. 51, pp. 291-308; J. J. M. de Groot, Sectarianism and Religious
Persecution in China (Amsterdam, 2 vols. 1903); Chou Yi-liang, "Tantrism in
China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 8, pp. 241-332, translations
of biographies of three Tang experts, with extensive notes and appendices;
Arthur Waley, The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces (London, George Allen &
Unwin, 1952, pp. 9-130), on Hsiian-tsang.

On various other religions of foreign origin in China, see a summary in K. S.
Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York, The Mac-
millan Co., 1929), pp. 51-60; A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the
Year 1550 (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930), pp.
27-77, the best summary account, with footnote references to the sources;
P, Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China (Tokyo, The
Maruzen Co., 1937, pp. 518, 30, 96), the fullest collection of Nestorian docu
ments, with Chinese and Syriac texts with English translations and notes; F. S.
Drake, "Nestorian Monasteries in the T'ang Dynasty," Monumenta Serica,
Vol. 2, pp. 293-340; Henri Havret, La Stele Chretienne de Si-ngan-fou
(Shanghai, 3 parts, 1895, 1897, 1902); John Foster, The Church in the Tang
Dynasty (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1939, pp. xvi,
168), readable and scholarly; E. Chavannes and P. Pelliot, Un Traite Mani-
cheen Retrouve en Chine, Traduit et Annote (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale,
1913, pp. 357); P. Pelliot, "Les Traditions Manicheennes au Foukien," T'oung
Pao, 1923, pp. 193-214; P. Pelliot, "Mo-ni et Manicheens," Journal Asiatique,
lie Serie, Tome 3, 1914, pp. 461-470; T. A. Bisson, "Some Chinese Records
of Manichaeism in China," Chinese Recorder, July, 1929, pp. 413-428, an
excellent summary; A. V. Williams Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism with
Special Reference to the Turfan Fragments (New York, Columbia University
Press, 1932, pp. xxxviii, 254); Isaac Mason, "How Islam Entered China,"
The Moslem World, Vol. 19, pp. 249-263; F. S. Drake, "Mohammedanism in
the T'ang Dynasty," Monumenta Serica, Vol. 8, pp. 1-40.

On Confucianism, see J. K. Shryock, The Origin and Development of the
State Cult of Confucius (New York, The Century Co., 1932), pp. 131-146;
E. G. Pulleyblank, "Neo-Confucianism and Neo-Legalism in T'ang Intellectual
Life, 755-805," in Arthur F. Wright, editor, The Confucian Persuasion (Stan
ford University Press, 1960), pp. 77-114; Wm. Theodore de Bary, "A Re
appraisal of Neo-Confucianism," in Arthur F. Wright, editor, Studies in
Chinese Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 81-88, on Han Yu;
H. H. Frankel, "The Lives of 101 Tang Literati: a Composite Biography and
Analysis," in A. F. Wright, editor, Confucian Personalities (Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1962); D. Twitchett, "Lu-chin (754-805), Personal Adviser and
Court Official," in A. F. Wright, editor, Confucian Personalities (Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1962).

On the civil service examinations, see Edouard Biot, Essai sur I'Histoire de
^Instruction Publique en Chine (Paris, Benjamin Duprat, 1847), pp. 250-321;
Robert des Rotours, Le Traite des Examens (Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1932).

On literature, especially prose, see E. D. Edwards, Chinese Prose Literature
of the T'ang Period (London, 2 vols., 1937-1938); Georges Margoulies, Le

Reunion and Renewed Advance 173

Kou-wen Chinois. Recueil des Textes avec Introduction el Notes (Paris, 1926);
Elizabeth Te-chen Wang, translator, Ladies of the Tang (Taipei, Heritage
Press, 1961, pp. xi, 347): for a bibliography of some of the authors of the
T'ang, in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages, see Franke, Sinologie,
pp. 165-172; Bruno Belpaire, translator, Tang Kien Wen Tse (Florilege de
Litterature des T'ang) (Paris, Editions Universitaires, 1957, pp. 412).

On poetry, see Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chii-I, with
Translations of 100 New Poems (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1949, pp.
238); William Hung, Tu Fu, China's Greatest Poet (Harvard University Press,
2 vols. 1952); Arthur Waley, The Poetry and Career of Li Po (London,
George Allen & Unwin, 1950); S. Obata, The Works of Li Po, The Chinese
Poet, Done into English Verse (New York, Button, 1922); C. Y. Sun,
"English Translations of Li Po's Poems," Chinese Political and Social Science
Review, Vol. 11, pp. 463-476, 632-644; Florence Ayscough, Tu Fu, The
Autobiography of a Chinese Poet Arranged from His Poems and Translated
(Boston, 2 vols., 1929, 1934); W. Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu, translators,
The Jade Mountain, a Chinese Anthology. Being Three Hundred Poems of
the Tang Dynasty, 618-907 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929, pp. 277);
Han Yu's poetische Werke, ubersetzt von Erwin von Zach, 1872-1942, edited
with an introduction by James Robert Hightower (Harvard University Press,

1952, pp. xi, 303).

On art and architecture, see Laurence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The
Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 56-93, 236-254;
Rene Grousset, The Civilizations of the East: China, translated from the
French by C. A. Phillips (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1934), pp. 200-278;
P. Pelliot, "Notes Sur Quelques Artistes des Six Dynasties et des T'ang,*'
Toung Pao} 1923, pp. 215-291; Osvald Siren, Chinese Sculptures from the
Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (London, 4 vols., 1925); A. L. Hetherington,
The Art of the Chinese Potter from the Han Dynasty to the End of the Ming
(London, 1923); B. Laufer, The Beginnings of Porcelain in China (Chicago,
Field Museum of Natural History, 1917, pp. 79-183); Dagney Carter, Four
Thousand Years of China's Art (New York, The Ronald Press, 1948), pp.
155-213.

On Printing, see T. F. Carter, The Invention of Printing and Its Spread
Westward (New York, 2nd ed., The Ronald Press, 1955, pp. xxiv, 293);
Paul Pelliot, Les Debuts de I'Imprimerie en Chine (Paris, Impr. Nationale,

1953, pp. viii, 138).

On economic life, see S. Belazs, "Beitrage zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der
Tang-Zeit," Mitteilungen des Seminars fiir orientalische Sprachen, Vol. 34, pp.
1-92; C. P. Fitzgerald, "The Consequences of the Rebellion of An Lu-Shan
upon the Population of the T'ang Dynasty," Philobiblon, Sept., 1947, pp. 4-
11; E. S. Kirby, Introduction to the Economic History of China (London,
George Allen & Unwin, 1954), pp. 125-140; K. K. S. Ch'en, "The Economic
Background of the Hui-ch'ang Suppression of Buddhism," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 67-105; Jacques Gernet,. "La Vente en Chine
d'apres les Contrats de Touen-houang (ixe-xe Siecles)," Toung Pao} Vol. 45,
pp. 295-391.

On science see Kiyoshi Yabuuchi, "The Development of the Sciences in
China from the 4th to the End of the 12th Century," Cahiers d'Histoire
Mondiale, IV-2, 1958, pp. 336-341.

174 VOLUME I

On the influence of China on Japan, see George Sansom, The History of
Japan to 1334 (Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 67-138; K. Asakawa,
The Early Institutional Life of Japan: A Study of the Reform of 645 A.D.
(Tokyo, 1903),

CHAP T ER SIX

POLITICAL WEAKNESS BUT CULTURAL
BRILLIANCE: THE FIVE DYNASTIES AND THE
TEN KINGDOMS (A.D. 907-960): THE
SUNG DYNASTY (A.D. 960-1279)

INTRODUCTORY

The collapse of the T'ang was followed by internal division
and civil strife. For more than half a century the Empire was divided among
several states, some of them dominated by rulers of alien extraction. When,
in the latter half of the tenth century, a family of the older native stock
once more united most of China proper, the political recovery was not
complete: part of the Empire which had been traditionally Chinese and
whose population was predominantly so remained in the hands of for
eigners. Eventually most of the earlier seats of Chinese culture passed into
the control of invaders from the North, and only the Yangtze Valley and
the South continued to be under Chinese princes. In the latter part of the
thirteenth century all China became part of the great Mongol Empire.
Not until the second half of the fourteenth century did a native dynasty
succeed in effectively asserting its authority over all of the country that,
because of its population and culture, could rightly be called Chinese. Even
then, its rule did not extend over all the territory formerly under the Han
and the T'ang. As before the Sui and the T'ang, so now after the T'ang,
the Empire was again — and this time for nearly five centuries, rather than
a little less than four — partly or entirely under the heel of conquering
outsiders.

This long period of partial or complete subjection to foreigners was not,
however, marked by as much political weakness as the earlier one had been.
The Sung dynasty, which held the throne from 960 to 1279, was stronger
than any of the dynasties, Chinese or foreign, between the Han and the Sui.
The years, moreover, registered much greater achievements in civilization
than did those of the preceding long period of disunion. In political theory,
in philosophy, and in literature and art, they were distinguished by out-

175

176 VOLUME I

standing genius. Movements that arose in the later years of the Tang
continued and grew. Indeed, the latter portion of the Tang, the ensuing
period of disunion, and the Sung constituted a distinct era in which much of
the later China was shaped. Here was a time of profound and enduring
change. Although governed in part by invaders, China made great strides
toward regaining her cultural independence. The foreign faith, Buddhism,
which had engrossed most of the best intellectual energy of the Chinese for
the seven centuries between the downfall of the Han and the later years of
the T'ang, had now been largely assimilated to Chinese life. It remained an
integral part of that life, but under the Sung, vigorous thought of a very
high order was once more to be found in that chief of the native schools,
Confucianism. The forms in which orthodox Chinese intellectual life was to
be set until the close of the nineteenth century were then molded.

THE FIVE DYNASTIES

The years between the final disappearance of the T'ang, in
907, and the inauguration, in 960, of the Sung, are conventionally desig
nated by Chinese historians as the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms.
During these years five successive states arose in the North, in which the
imperial succession is supposed to have been preserved. The Ten Kingdoms
were mostly in the South; Although the center of their power was in the
region in which the imperial capitals had been through much of China's
history and in the traditional home of Chinese culture, the Five Dynasties
usually controlled only parts of the present Shensi, Shansi, Honan, Hopei,
and Shantung, and their authority was disputed by families who carved
out the Ten Kingdoms in other sections of China.

On the north and northeast, moreover, was a newly emerging barbarian
state, the latest successor to the many which had troubled the fertile valleys
to the south. Toward the close of the ninth and at the beginning of the
tenth century, a people known to the Chinese as the Khitan or Ch'i-tan,
were establishing an empire in the later Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.
Their rulers later (A.D. 937) called their dynasty Liao. Until early in the
twelfth century they menaced the northern frontiers and much of the time
occupied part of China proper. It is from Khitan that Cathay is derived,
the name by which medieval Europe knew North China, and it is from the
same source that Khitai, the Russian designation for China, came. The
Khitan rulers were cattle breeders and endeavored to preserve their culture
uncontaminated by Chinese ways. Indeed, their nobles were punished if
they studied Chinese or took the civil service examinations. The commoners
kept their old ways and intermarried little with the Chinese. The Chinese
were taxed heavily but retained their old customs.

Chu Wen, as we have seen, made an end to the enfeebled T'ang and

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 177

set himself up (907) as the first monarch of the Hou Liang, or Later Liang,
He was troubled both by external foes and by dissensions in his family and
in 914 was murdered by his eldest son, who feared for his own succession
to the throne.

In 923 the Later Liang was overthrown by Li Tsun-hsii, a general of
Turkish stock, whose father, Lo K'oyung, had served under the T'ang and
had been granted their family name, Li. On the downfall of the T'ang, Li
K'o-yung set up a state in what is now Shansi and waged war on Chu Wen.
The dynasty inaugurated by Li Tsun-hsii had its capital at Loyang and
was called, because of the imperial surname Li, the Hou T'ang, or Later
T'ang.

The Later T'ang was terminated, in its turn, in 936, by one of its own
generals, Shih Ching-t'ang, also of Turkish stock. Shih Ching-t'ang, al
though son-in-law of the next to the last Emperor of the Later T'ang,
plotted against the line and called to his aid the Khitan. When, by their
assistance, he overthrew his master and founded a new dynasty, the Hou
Chin, or Later Chin, he paid them tribute. Shih Ching-t'ang's son and
successor attempted to cast off the suzerainty of the Khitan, but instead
was carried into* captivity.

The throne thus left vacant was occupied (947) by a general of the
late dynasty, Liu Chih-yuan, also of Turkish descent, who forced the Khitan
to retreat. His dynasty, the Hou Han, or Later Han, was even more short
lived than those of its three predecessors, for in 950 his son and successor
was killed by the latter's own generals.

In 951 the commander of a victorious expedition against the Khitan
was raised by his own soldiers to the throne and gave to his dynasty the
name of Hou Chou, or Later Chou. An able general and administrator,
he died (954) before he could bring peace to the distraught Empire. His
successor, his adopted son, although an efficient ruler who added to the
territory which he had inherited, did not conquer all China, and the minor
who followed was powerless to do so.

Politically fragmented though the first half of the tenth century was,
the normal processes of peaceful life were by no means entirely suspended
and some advance was registered. Much of the administrative machinery
appears to have gone on but little disturbed by the rapid change of ruling
houses. One statesman, for example, Feng Tao, who described himself as
the "ever gay old man," held high office under all but the first of the Five
Dynasties. The intellectual currents, which had begun in the T'ang after
the rebellion of An Lu-shan, persisted. Printing by wooden blocks was
further developed and gave a fresh impetus to scholarship. In the East,
under the aegis of several of the changing central dynasties, and under the
inspiration of Feng Tao, an imperial commission prepared a revised text
of the Classics, and the completed edition, printed, was presented to the

178 VOLUME I

Emperor in 953. The way was further prepared for the remarkable painting
of landscapes that characterized the succeeding Sung dynasty.

THE TEN KINGDOMS

Some of the Ten Kingdoms were longer lived than any of the
Five Dynasties. The Ten Kingdoms were Wu, with its capital at Yangchow;
Wu Yiieh, mainly in the later Chekiang; the Nan (Southern) Tang, with
its capital at what is now called Nanking; Ch'u, chiefly in what we know
as Hunan; the Ch'ien (Earlier) Shu, followed by the Hou (Later) Shu,
both centering in the Chengtu plain; the Nan (Southern) P'ing, a small
state, spanning the Yangtze north and west of the T'ung-t'ing Lake; Nan
(Southern) Han, embracing the mouth and much of the valley of the West
River; Min, with Foochow as its capital; and Pei (Northern) Han in
northern Shansi. Some of the rulers of the Ten Kingdoms took the title
of Wang (king) and others of Ti (Emperor).

THE FOUNDING OF THE SUNG DYNASTY

The welter of disorder was at last brought to an end by Chao
K'uang-yin. Chao K'uang-yin traced his descent through a line of T'ang
officials and had risen to be the chief general of the Later Chou. He was
proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers and proved able enough both to retain
the title, and having pacified the Empire, to pass it on to his family. The
dynasty was called Sung, and Chao K'uang-yin was known to later genera
tions as T'ai Tsu. With military skill T'ai Tsu combined magnanimity and
political astuteness. He expanded his rule southward rather than north
ward, where he was confronted by the formidable Khitan. Before his
death, with the aid of some subordinates, he had annexed several of the
Ten Kingdoms. T'ai Tsu set up, as had other strong dynasties, a hierarchy
of civil officials, substituting it for the military rule and semi-independent
principalities which had been increasing since the rebellion of An Lu-shan.
Once more the Empire was highly centralized under an autocrat ruling
through a bureaucracy. The power of the Emperor was extended and con
solidated. T'ai Tsu showed favors to Confucianism, the school through
which the members of the civil service were trained. Education was fostered,
presumably with something of the same purpose. The country appears to
have welcomed a hand strong enough to suppress the predatory armies and
restore order.

Chao K'uang-yin's accomplishments during the thirteen years that he
wore the imperial title were noteworthy, but when he died in 976 the area
that had owed allegiance to the T'ang, even within what is now China
proper, did not all own his sway. In the Northeast the Khitan still held

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 179

territory — in the present Hopei and Shansi— that was traditionally Chinese.
In the present Shansi, with its capital at T'aiyiian, was the Northern Han.
On the south coast Wu Yiieh held out, and in the modern Yunnan, Nan
Chao maintained its autonomy. It became, therefore, the chief task of
Chao K'uang-yin's successor, a younger brother, known to history as T'ai
Tsung, to complete the unification of the Empire. This he only partially
achieved. Wu Yiieh was annexed and the Northern Han eliminated.
Attempts to oust the Khitan, however, failed. Some gains against them
were registered, but reverses were also suffered. The two powers, the Sung
and the Khitan, seemed about evenly matched. Nan Chao was not subdued
and for many years was independent.

THE EXTERNAL POLITICS OF THE SUNG TO 1127

The successors of T'ai Tsu and T'ai Tsung fell even further
short of clearing the Empire of alien rulers than had the founders of the
dynasty. None of the line appears to have shown marked political ability.
Several were dissipated weaklings, and the best were interested in literature
and art, but did not provide the type of leadership needed by an empire
confronted with vigorous enemies. Divided counsels at court gave rise
to vacillation in foreign policy. Sometimes offering effective military re
sistance under able generals, sometimes buying peace at humiliating terms,
at others seeking to play off one enemy against another, the Sung Emperors
often presented a sorry spectacle. Step by step their territories were wrested
from them and eventually they lost their throne to foreign invaders.

For years the Khitan plagued the Sung. In the Northwest a new menace
arose. In the later years of the Tang, a Tangut people, speaking a Tibeto-
Burman language, had established a state called Hsi Hsia. They reached
the acme of their power in the eleventh century, when one of the most
vigorous of their rulers assumed the title of Emperor. Their territories
eventually included much of the Ordos country and of the present Kansu
and some of the modern Shensi. Occasionally the Sung were aided against
the Hsi Hsia by the Uighurs, still something of a power in the west, and at
times, too, the Hsi Hsia and the Khitan were at war.

Although the fortunes of battle were not always against them, the Sung
slowly lost ground. From time to time they were forced to sign agreements
with the Khitan, promising them tribute and yielding them territory.

Early in the twelfth century relief seemed at hand. A Tungusic people,
called by the Chinese Juchen (also Nuchen), first heard of in Manchuria,
in the basin of the Sungari, and vassals of the Khitan, overthrew the latter
(1123) and occupied their territory, including part of China proper, and
their chief assumed the imperial title, calling his dynasty Chin, meaning
Gold. At first the Sung welcomed the Juchen as allies and sent armies

180 VOLUME I

against the Khitan. They were speedily undeceived, however, for the new
invaders proceeded to make humiliating demands of them. The Emperor
Hui Tsung was a painter of note and a patron of the arts, but not a fit
leader for his people in an emergency of this kind. Much of the control
of the state and especially of the army centered in the hands of an ambitious
eunuch. The nation was heavily taxed to maintain wars and an expensive
and luxurious court. Discontent in the provinces and party struggles at court
added to the general weakness.

Hui Tsung, discouraged by his impotence before the Juchen, abdicated
in favor of a son (1125), and on the approach of the Juchen, abandoned
the capital (Pienliang, the later K'aifeng) and fled southward. The new
Emperor bought off the invaders by a huge indemnity and the cession of
territory. Soon, however, he violated the treaty, and the Juchen, returning
to the attack, captured Pienliang, and carrying into exile the reigning
monarch and Hui Tsung and their families, appointed as Emperor Chang
Pang-ch'ang, a Chinese who had advocated submission to the invaders.

THE SOUTHERN SUNG DYNASTY (1127-1279)

The Chinese were not prepared to submit tamely to the
dictates of foreigners. A son of Hui Tsung, usually known to historians
under his posthumous title Kao Tsung, escaped capture by the Juchen
and was raised to the throne. This was done partly with the assistance of
Chang Pang-ch'ang, who, deserting his Juchen masters, threw his support
to the Sung and accepted office under the new regime. The Sung capital,
after being moved from place to place, was eventually fixed at Linan, the
present Hangchow. The dynasty after the break is known as the Southern
Sung, in distinction from the Northern Sung, its designation before the
southern migration. Linan was made over into a beautiful and wealthy
metropolis. Marco Polo, who saw it after the fall of the Sung, described
it as "beyond dispute, the finest and noblest [city] in the world."

The change of capitals did not mean peace with the Juchen. The Sung
were unwilling to relinquish the territory north of the Yangtze, and for a
time the Juchen seemed bent on annexing the whole of the Empire. The
result was prolonged war. Moreover, rebellion broke out in various parts
of the Sung domains, and in the North, with the permission of the Juchen,
Liu Yii, who had been an official under the Sung, set himself up as Em
peror.

Kao Tsung reigned for about thirty-five years, but he interested himself
more in the pleasures of his court than in the camp. The struggle against
the Juchen, however, was manfully carried on by his generals, the most
famous of whom was the brave and loyal Yo Fei. Early in the reign of
Kao Tsung the Juchen crossed the Yangtze and took several cities. They

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 181

found it impossible to maintain themselves south of the great river and soon
recrossed it. They were pressed from two sides — by the Sung armies from
the South and by enemies in their rear on the north. For a time they even
lost part of the North China plain. Liu Yii, failing of support by the Juchen
and badly defeated, was forced to abandon his imperial aspirations.

Even had the Sung pursued their apparent advantage, the North could
probably not have been permanently rewon. The Chin (Juchen) were too
strongly entrenched to be driven out and from the military standpoint
usually had the superiority. It may have been from recognition of this fact
that peace policies prevailed at the Sung court. The minister Ch'in Kuei —
ever since regarded with scorn by patriotic Chinese — obtained the imprison
ment and execution of Yo Fei, who had been markedly successful and
would have pushed the battle against the invaders. Kao Tsung agreed to
cede to the Juchen a large part of the former Sung domains in the North,
making the Huai River the boundary between the two states, and promised
the Chin an annual tribute.

The second quarter of the twelfth century saw the Chin (Juchen) at
the pinnacle of their power. They were the acknowledged masters of North
China and Manchuria, they had subdued the Hsi Hsia, and they had re
ceived the submission of the Uighurs. Their dominions stretched from the
borders of the present Korea into and perhaps beyond what is now the
western part of Kansu. About 1153 they moved their capital from the
present Manchuria to Yenching (later Peking).

The peace between the Chin and the Sung proved unstable. In 1 161, for
example, the Chin (Juchen) attempted, although in vain, to force their
way across the Yangtze, and in 1206 the Sung essayed, but also failed,
to reduce the North. The two monarchies seemed about equally matched,
and neither appeared likely to alter greatly the boundary between them.
However, the Sung Emperors had to accept a kind of subordination to the
Chin rulers and gave the latter a large annual "present."

Although the Sung abandoned the North, the Chinese people and their
culture did not do so. Some infusion of non-Chinese blood in this region
undoubtedly occurred, but again, as so often in the past, the vigorous but
rude conquerors were being assimilated. The Chin rulers attempted to
preserve the distinctive customs of their people, but they had the Chinese
Classics translated into the Juchen language and maintained sacrifices to
Confucius, and the Hsi Hsia rulers were also adopting Confucianism. The
cultural reconquest of the North had quietly begun.

THE MONGOL INVASION AND THE END OF THE CHIN AND THE SUNG

About the time that relations between the Sung and the Chin
had settled down to an uneasy stalemate, the scene was completely changed

182 VOLUME I

by a fresh invasion from the North. A new power arose which overthrew
both the Chin and the Sung and set up the most extensive empire yet
created by man.

The authors of this new realm were the Mongols. The Mongols were
related linguistically, and possibly racially, to the Turkish and the Tungusic
peoples of whom we have seen so much in the preceding pages. At the
beginning of the twelfth century most of them were living, divided into
many tribes, to the south and east of Lake Baikal. Originally of little conse
quence politically, they were welded into a formidable fighting force by
Temuchin. Temuchin was born about 1155 or 1156, the son of a chief of a
kind of confederation of some of the Mongol tribes. After his father's death,
Temuchin had to fight his way to the headship of the confederation. This
he did with ruthlessness and success.

Under Temuchin's vigorous leadership, the confederation was extended
to include more of the Mongol tribes. In his late forties, Temuchin felt
himself strong enough to attack his overlords, the Keraits, a Turkish people
who had recently become Nestorian Christians and were the outstanding
power in Mongolia. The conquest of the Naiman, in what at present is
the northeastern part of Mongolia, followed the defeat of the Keraits.
Temuchin was now master of Mongolia and in 1206 was greeted by his
people as Jenghiz Kahn, the "Universal Emperor" of the Turko-Mongol
peoples. The capital of the new empire was at Karakorum, in the general
region of the modern Ulan Bator (Urga). Jenghiz Khan's domains were
soon augmented by the voluntary recognition of his suzerainty by the
Uighurs and by the Karluks, both in what is now Sinkiang.

Having brought together the peoples of Mongolia and, in part, of
Sinkiang, Jenghiz Khan turned his attention to the populous and prosperous
land to the south. He first attacked Hsi Hsia, and after several campaigns
(1205, 1207, and 1209) obtained its submission. The Chin (Juchen)
were also attacked. The present Shansi and Hopei were invaded in 1211,
and Yenching, the Chin capital, fell in 1215, The Chin offered stubborn
resistance and moved their capital to the present K'aifeng. In 1219 Korea
became vassal to the Mongols, and by 1223 the Chin had lost nearly all of
their former domains except approximately those south of the Yellow
River. Pressed on the one side by the Sung and on the other by the Mon
gols, they were in a sad plight.

The Chin (Juchen) gained an uneasy reprieve by the diversion of the
conqueror's attention elsewhere. Through developments the details of
which need not here concern us, even before 1223 Jenghiz Khan left the
campaign against the Chin to be pressed by his lieutenants and directed his
own energies against states in the West. Within a short time the remainder
of what is now Sinkiang was annexed and the victorious Mongol arms were
carried into the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes, to the banks of the Indus,

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 183

into Persia, and even into the southeastern portions of Europe. Jenghiz
Khan did not forget China, however, and died (1227) while directing the
campaign which wiped Hsi Hsia from the map.

The onward sweep of the Mongol armies was not halted by the death
of the ''Universal Emperor." The vast domains of Jenghiz Khan were
divided among his four heirs: the son of his deceased eldest son, and his
three other sons. This did not mean the breakup of the empire, however,
for in 1229 an assemblage of Mongol chiefs chose Ogodai, Jenghiz Khan's
third son, for the head of the whole (Grand Khan). Ogodai pressed the
Mongol advance into China against the Chin. The Chin fought with des
peration, but the Mongol armies closed in on them. The Sung, lured by
the promise of some of the Chin territory, accepted the Mongol offer of an
alliance and joined, probably not unwillingly, in the attack against their old
enemies. What is now K'aifeng fell after a long siege (1233), and in 1234
the Chin line of rulers came to an end with the suicide of one and the
killing of another.

The victorious Mongols could scarcely be expected to keep the peace
with the Sung. The latter were not given all the portion of the former Chin
possessions which they alleged had been promised them. They proceeded to
seize some of the land which they claimed. This gave the Mongols the
excuse for the inevitable attack. The Sung domains, however, were not
easily taken. The Mongols made gains, especially in the present Szechwan,
but the bulk of the Sung territory, south of the barrier offered by the
Yangtze, long remained inviolate.

The Mongols meanwhile" extended their power in other directions.
Korea was further reduced to subjection, and the Mongol arms carried
terror into the West, as far as Mesopotamia, Georgia, and Armenia in
southwestern Asia, and into Hungary and Poland in Europe.

Following the death of Ogodai (1241), for ten years a weak or divided
leadership gave pause to the Mongol advance. With the accession of Mangu,
a grandson of Jenghiz Khan, to the Grand Khanate ( 1251 ), the boundaries
of the empire again expanded. In the West, Mangu's brother Hulagu
captured Bagdad and administered the death blow to the Abbasid
Caliphate, and Aleppo and Damascus were taken. In China, from the
vantage point of Szechwan an attack was launched by Mangu and another
of his brothers, Khubilai, against Nan Chao. Nan Chao was defeated and
annexed (1253). From it a Mongol army penetrated to Tongking and thence
northward into Kwangsi and Hunan. Its purpose was to join forces with
another army, which, under Khubilai, had crossed the Yangtze and was
besieging Wuchang. The death of Mangu, in Szechwan in 1259, halted the
campaign, and confronted with the probability of a struggle for the succes
sion to the Khanate, Khubilai hastily arranged a treaty with the Sung — by
which the latter agreed to acknowledge the Mongols as their overlords and

184 VOLUME I

to pay them tribute — and repaired north to press his claims to the throne.

Khubilai was soon declared Grand Khan by his army in North China,
but one of his brothers was also given the title by a faction, and at the old
Mongol capital, Karakorum. Not until 1264 was this brother defeated and
made captive, and only later was Khubilai ready to resume with vigor the
conquest of China.

Meanwhile the Sung authorities had treated with contumely the Mongol
representative sent to announce the accession of Khubilai and so had given
ample provocation for the renewal of hostilities. The Sung court was under
the domination of the minister Chia Ssu-tao. He it was who had arranged
the humiliating peace with the Mongols in 1259.

In spite of the feebleness of the Sung, the Mongol conquest was not
quickly completed. The most famous episode was the five-year seige
(1268-1273) of the cities of Hsiangyang and Fanch'eng, on opposite sides
of the Han River, in the present Hupeh. Commanding the water approach
to Central China, they occupied a strategic site which at least once before
had figured prominently in struggles for the mastery of China. After a
gallant resistance the two cities were reduced, the Mongol forces penetrated
to the Yangtze, and slowly making their victorious way eastward, closed
in on the Sung capital. This was taken in 1276, and the infant Emperor was
captured and sent north. Some of the Sung statesmen and generals, refusing
to acknowledge the inevitable, declared Emperor another infant scion of
the house of Sung, took refuge in the fleet, and fleeing south, made Canton
their headquarters. Canton fell in 1277 and the luckless boy ruler, a
fugitive, died the following year. A remnant continued to hold out, and
placing another child on the phantom throne, defended themselves in the
fleet off the coast of Kwangtung. Here, in 1279, they were overwhelmed
by the Mongols, and the Sung commander, bidding his wife and children
throw themselves into the sea, took the young Emperor on his back and
did likewise. The Sung had come to its end. For the first time in recorded
history, all China was in the hands of non-Chinese conquerors. The
Mongol Khubilai, from Cambaluc (Khanbaligh) — the present Peking —
which he had set up on and near the site of Yenching, was Emperor of a
new dynasty, the Yuan.

The question naturally arises as to the reasons for the Mongol success.
How did it happen that this people, at the outset barbarous and divided,
conquered in less than a hundred years most of what is now China, much
of southwestern and central Asia, and part of Europe, and established the
most extensive empire that the world had yet seen?

One reason was the weakness of some of their opponents. In spite of
the support of a few brave and able generals, the Sung Emperors were
incompetent. Both the Sung and the Chin suffered from their long and
indecisive wars with each other. In the West the Abbasid Caliphs were a
decaying power.

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 185

The lack of vigor on the part of opponents does not account for all the
Mongols' success, for some of the conquerors5 victims put up a very able
resistance. Thoroughgoing ruthlessness was also in part responsible for the
victories. The Mongols slaughtered almost the entire populations of whole
cities and provinces. This was not, apparently, simply from the lust of
killing but from deliberate policy, perhaps to inspire terror, possibly as a
simple but effective means of preventing insurrection. In the later stages
of the conquest of China, the Mongols showed more clemency. Also im
portant was able leadership. Jenghiz Khan was an excellent tactician and
a severe disciplinarian. He chose many of his generals from a comparatively
small corps, which underwent an exacting training. He seems to have been
an excellent judge of men. The Mongols owed much to their cavalry: they
equipped their horsemen with plenty of mounts and were able to move
swiftly and to strike with surprising quickness. Jenghiz Khan and his suc
cessors were eager to take advantage of all the latest techniques and
machinery in military operations, learning wherever and from whomever
they could. For example, Moslems and even a German engineer were
employed in constructing siege machinery in the beleaguerment of Hsiang-
yang.

Then, too, the Mongols appear to have shown some skill in managing
subject races. Religiously they were tolerant. They availed themselves of
the services of other peoples and were willing to learn from them. Some
of their foremost ministers were foreigners. For instance, If eh-lii Ch'u-ts'ai,
a Sinicized Khitan, who had held offices under the Chin, served prominently
under both Jenghiz Khan and Ogodai, and Uighurs were given high posi
tions. Under the guidance of non-Mongol counselors, the Mongols made
advances in civilization and administration. They took over, with modifica
tions, the Uighur alphabet. Some of their youth were put to school to study
the Confucian classics, and the beginnings of a civil administrative system
showed Chinese influence.

It was an enormously difficult and, as it proved, an impossible task to
hold together for long the vast empire which had been so quickly acquired,
but in conquering it the Mongols displayed marked ability and energy,
and the greatest of them were not without astuteness in governing it.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: THE SOUTHWARD MIGRATION
OF THE CHINESE

As was said at the outset of this chapter, in spite of its
political divisions, and, as compared with the Han or the T'ang dynasties,
its political weakness, the China of the Five Dynasties, the Ten Kingdoms,
and the Sung witnessed striking prosperity and marked activity in thought
and art.

The barbarian invasions of the North and the southward migration of

186 VOLUME I

the Sung were far from meaning that either the Chinese people or their
institutions were overwhelmed. Some infiltration of non-Chinese blood
undoubtedly took place, for many of the conquerors, in addition to forming
much of the ruling class, settled on the land, and in spite of the efforts of
some of the foreign rulers, the inevitable intermarriage modified the
character of the population. How large the alien element was we do not
know, but the older Chinese stock probably still predominated, and num
bers of the newcomers tended to take on Chinese civilization.

The frequent fighting in the North between the Sung and the invaders
also gave a decided impetus to the southward movement of the Chinese
and made the Yangtze Valley and the south coast loom more prominently
than heretofore in all phases of the Empire's activities. It is significant that
some of the greatest figures of the dynasty, notably Wang An-shih and Chu
Hsi, were born south of the great river. Never before had so much of the
leadership of the Empire come from natives of that region.

FOREIGN COMMERCE UNDER THE SUNG

With so much of the North in the hands of aliens and with
the southward shift of the center of Chinese population and culture, it is
not strange that there was much foreign commerce from the ports on the
south coast. It had suffered in the disorders at the close of the T'ang. Under
the Sung it revived and seems to have attained larger proportions than
ever before. Navigation was aided by the employment of the mariner's
compass, sea charts, and improvements in shipbuilding. Some of the
vessels had staterooms and Negro stewards and had several hundred
persons as passengers and crew. The Chinese now, for the first time, con
trolled the sea routes to the Southeast and India, What is now Ch'iianchow
(known to Medieval Europe as Zaitun) in Fukien, and Canton (known
in some foreign writings of the time as Khanfu, although the identification
of Khanfu with Canton is not universally accepted by Sinologists) were
usually the chief centers of this trade. Canton at first had most of it, but
Ch'iianchow presently became a formidable rival and eventually was pre
dominant. Commerce in some commodities was a government monopoly,
open only to licensed vendors, who obtained their goods at state ware
houses. The state derived a valuable revenue from an ad valorem tax
on the trade. Early in the Sung an imperial embassy was sent abroad to
encourage foreign, merchants to come to China, and special licenses were
promised them. For the first time China became a naval power. A navy
was established on a permanent basis. In 1237 it was said to have twenty
squadrons and a personnel of 52,000.

The Sung was comparatively mild in its treatment of foreign merchants
in its ports. Not only did it continue the T'ang custom of allowing them

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 187

to settle many of their disputes among themselves, but it also permitted
them to decide according to their own laws all but the more serious offenses
of foreigners against Chinese. The foreign merchants seem mostly to have
been Moslem Arabs. Many of them married Chinese women. A colony of
Jews, which was finally absorbed into the surrounding population only in
our own day, built a synagogue at the later K'aifeng.

Trade with Japan flourished. Japanese Buddhist monks, principally of
the Zen (Ch'an) , journeyed to China to visit the strongholds of their school.
Chinese monks, coming to Japan, were often given high positions in
monasteries and were transmitters, not only of Buddhism, but also of
Chinese civilization in general, including the Confucian Classics and secular
literature. Sung Neo-Confucianism was to have marked effects in the
islands.

The Chinese records assert that tribute-bearing embassies arrived in
the Sung court from Champa in the present Vietnam, from states in such
distant regions as Java and Sumatra, and even from India. Whether these
embassies indicate the recognition of China's suzerainty is highly doubtful,
but they probably show that these principalities deemed commercial rela
tions profitable. Before the dynasty was driven south, two embassies came
from Fulin, what we now call the Near East.

The Chinese knowledge of geography was expanding, and a work of
the time shows that some information concerning such distant countries
as Egypt and Sicily had reached the Middle Kingdom. This was brought
not only by foreign merchants but also by Chinese who went abroad and
returned with news of distant lands.

The articles of trade included, as heretofore, only those which combined
small bulk with large value — among them piece-goods, lead, gold, silver,
porcelainware, incense and scented woods, drugs, ivory, coral, rhinoceros
horns, amber, ebony, pearls, tortoise shell, rare woods, and rock crystal.

The Sung faced an adverse balance of trade. Gold, silver, and especially
Chinese copper coins were exported in such quantities that the government,
although without success, tried to stop the precious metals from disappear
ing by forbidding the use of the luxuries to which the drainage was
attributed. The extent of this outward flow of specie is shown by the fact
that Sung coins have been unearthed in Java, Singapore, and even in
Zanzibar and on the Somali coast in Africa, and that their circulation in
Japan proved an embarrassment to the government of that country. To
the resulting dearth of coin in China is ascribed, possibly in part correctly,
the resort to paper money which was one of the outstanding features of
the fiscal policy of the Sung. The evils attendant upon inflation constituted
a recurring problem, but the temptation to use the device proved too
strong to be resisted.

Whether because of this contact with aliens or for other reasons,

188 VOLUME I

innovations were seen. The use of chairs became general. Tea was a com
mon drink in both South and North. Sedan chairs were widely employed.
The binding of women's feet was begun — why is not clear — and gradually
spread.

THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND ACCOMPANYING CHANGES IN
SOCIAL STRUCTURE

A feature of the Sung and its commerce was the growth of
cities. Previously the centers of political power had constituted the chief
cities. The capitals continued to be important, but during the Sung, from
a development which had begun earlier, additional urban communities
grew. They were chiefly in the Yangtze Valley and on the south coast.
Some of them had populations of several hundred thousand. One or two
were said to have over a million inhabitants and were probably larger
than any cities elsewhere on the globe of that day.

The growth of cities was accompanied by a marked increase in wealth.
Rich merchants were prominent. Some were admitted to the society of
the ruling classes, and numbers of officials engaged in trade. Merchants
were organized into guilds, apparently an innovation since the T'ang.
Merchants and the state collaborated. Through that co-operation some
merchant groups acquired monopolies — local or wider — notably in tea
and porcelain.

In the cities culture flourished, scholars multiplied, literacy spread,
and through printing, books became numerous.

MODIFICATIONS IN THE ECONOMY

The mounting urban life was paralleled by changes in the
economy. Internal trade grew. With it went greater regional specialization
in crops and industry, for a given area could exchange with other areas
the distinctive products which each produced. Farmers became less self-
sufficient. Devices were created for the transfer of funds from one city to
another and increased provision was made for credit for merchants, handi
crafts, and farmers. Money was more important, first in the South. Copper
coinage reached new dimensions. Silver was widely employed, but, as later,
in the form of small cast ingots.

Landed estates multiplied. The ownership of land was the chief mark
of success and social position. This was chiefly in the Yangtze Valley and
on the south coast. The support of the landowning interests is said to have
been at least in part responsible for the success of Ch'in Kuei in obtaining
the execution of Yo Fei. In the North peasant proprietorship was more
common than in the South.

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 189

In the South earlier ripening varieties of rice were introduced from
Champa by imperial command. They were brought in about A.D, 1100,
Their wide use contributed to a large increase in population — a total which
is said to have reached about 100,000,000.

Before the Juchen conquest of the North, the output of iron in that
region was said to have multiplied twelvefold. Iron was used for plow
shares, hoes, spades, sickles, and weapons.

As forests were cut off and wood and charcoal became scarce, coal
was extensively employed in industry and to heat houses.

Mounting wealth led to speculation and to combinations of individuals
who sought to take advantage of the expanding economy.

PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL

Marked though foreign commerce was, we have no indication
that ideas coming through it from abroad profoundly influenced either
Chinese thought or life. Nor did the occupation of much of the North by
non-Chinese peoples seem to work any great transformation in Chinese
culture. Chinese Buddhist pilgrims still went to India by the overland
routes and continued to do so until, about the middle of the eleventh
century, the spread of Islam closed the roads to them. However, they had
no such marked effect on Chinese life as did their predecessors of pre-T'ang
and T'ang times. While the Mongol conquests were in progress, and before
they finally overwhelmed the Sung, Chinese and more or less Sinicized
non-Chinese of North China traveled westward, sometimes as officials
or envoys for the Mongols. They reached the valley of the Oxus and saw
such cities as Samarkand and Balkh. At least one of them brought back
reports of Bagdad and Egypt. It seems improbable, however, that the new
ideas with which they came into contact made a pronounced impression
upon the Chinese at home. Such innovations as they brought probably
affected chiefly the China of the North, and the North was so distinct from
the Yangtze Valley, where centered so much of the cultural life under the
Sung, that European travelers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
regarded it as a separate country.

The Sung period marks the flowering of a new intellectual era. The
era which opened in the later years of the T'ang now reached major pro
portions. The general level of education was rising.

The intellectual ferment was associated with the further development
of the examinations conducted by the government. As we have seen, these
examinations, as a means of recruiting officials, had their inception under
the Han and were augmented under the T'ang. The Sung witnessed their
striking increase. Elaborate techniques were devised to make them more
objective. Through them a mounting proportion of the bureaucracy

190 VOLUME I

emerged. They afforded avenues of advancement for elements in the popu
lation which had heretofore been represented but little if at all. Through
them the power monopoly of the small circle of northern aristocratic
families was broken. A large proportion of the successful candidates were
from the Southeast, where urbanization had reached the largest dimensions.
Many of them came from the new families with great landed estates in the
Southeast, the beginning of whose growth in the later years of the T'ang
we have noted. We must also remark that the growth of the bureaucracy
recruited by the examinations enhanced the power of the throne. Many
of the scholars who were most active in shaping the thought of the
era came from the lower Yangtze Valley and the south coast. They were
from social strata which were emerging into prominence and were less
bound by tradition than were the scholars of the North — where were the
older centers of culture.

The enhancement of recruitment to public office through successful
candidates in the highly competitive state examinations was paralleled by
the development of a system of recommendation to office by responsible
people. This was not new, but under the Sung it was elaborated and safe
guards were devised for the selection of sponsors and for taking the latter
to account for the conduct of their proteges. The procedure became
characteristic of much of later Chinese practice, both in the government and
in private employment.

Under the Sung the thought-forms were shaped to which most of the
educated class assented down to the opening of the twentieth century.
These patterns achieved their pre-eminence out of controversy. The
debates that marked the course of the dynasty, especially before the
transfer of the Sung capital to Linan (Hangchow), probably stirred the
thinking portion of the nation as profoundly as any that China had ever
known, certainly more than at any time since the Chou.

WANG AN-'SHIH AND HIS REFORMS

The most acrimonious of the controversies, the one that
influenced most of the others, centered around the political, economic,
and educational program instituted by Wang An-shih. The program was
known collectively as the hsin fa, or New Laws. Wang was born in 1021
and died in 1086, and his lifetime therefore spanned some of the most
vigorous years of the dynasty. His reforms contemplated a thorough
going reorganization of the fiscal and military policy of the state and
were accompanied by important modifications in agriculture and internal
commerce. The purpose back of them seems to have been to increase
the prosperity of the masses and to strengthen the Empire in its struggle
against the northern invaders.

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 191

Wang An-shih was a native of what is now Kiangsi and so was from
the newer families who were emerging in the South. He passed success
fully through the examination system and was a scholar of no mean
attainments. His first offices were in the South, not the North. He made
no attempt to revolt against the authority of the Confucian Classics,
but professed to find in these revered works and the practices ascribed
to the model rulers the sanction for his proposals. The main features of his
system included (1) the appointment of a commission to draft a budget
for the state, proposed as a means of effecting a large annual saving in
expenses; (2) a state monopoly of commerce, by which Wang would
have the produce of each district used first for the payment of taxes and
then for the needs of the district, the surplus to be purchased by the
government and held either against future local needs or to be trans
ported elsewhere and sold, and depots to be set up for the exchange of
goods and for advancing loans on merchandise and property (by this
means Wang hoped to insure to the cultivators a more certain market
for their produce and to increase the revenue of the government); (3)
loans by the state at two per cent a month to farmers in the planting season
on the security of growing crops; (4) the division of the land into equal
sections and the annual reappraisal of it for purposes of taxation, thus
to avoid the exemption of some of the cultivated soil from taxation
and to insure a more equitable distribution of the land tax; (5) the tax
ation of all a man's property, both real estate and movable; (6) the
abolition of the conscription of labor by the state and the substitution
for it of a graduated tax" based upon the division of property-holders into
five groups according to their wealth; (7) akin to this step, a reorgan
ization of local administration by what was called the hired service
system; (8) military reorganization, by which unnecessary troops were
to be returned to civilian and productive life, and external defense and
internal order were to be maintained by a system of compulsory military
service, families being organized into groups of tens and fifties, each
family with more than one male providing one for the frontier forces
and one for the local police (this was called the poo chia plan and was
for the purpose of obtaining local order and was also used for military
conscription); (9) a method of supporting the cavalry needed in the
wars against the northern invaders by requiring each family in certain areas
to keep a horse, which, with its food, was to be supplied by the state;
(10) a cash assessment on the guilds as a substitute for contributing
supplies to the court; and (11) shifting emphasis in the state examina
tions from literary style to the application of the principles of the Classics
to current problems — a change designed to fit the successful competitors
more directly for the fulfillment of official duties.

Few if any of these policies were entirely new. In principle they were

192 VOLUME I

not unlike the programs of the Legalists and they resembled the reforms
of Wang Mang and his assistants. Proposals similar to some of Wang
An-shih's had been put forward under the T'ang. Wang An-shih professed
to base his plan upon the teachings of ancient sages honored by the Con
fucian school, notably Mencius, and prepared commentaries on some
of the classical books which attempted to show that the latter sanctioned
it. He made much of the Chou Li, that Utopian political program which
dated from the late Chou or the Han.

However, in their totality and at the time Wang's schemes were revo
lutionary. They involved an enhanced paternalism on the part of the
state, the assumption by the government of much larger responsibilities
than under the earlier years of the Sung, and deprivations for the wealthy.
They were sufficiently radical to bring down on the heads of their pro
ponents the vigorous denunciation of conservative scholars and states
men. Many of the conservatives were from the North. They stressed
the Ch'un Ctiiu, finding precedents in its historical narrative. They advo
cated the cultivation of morals rather than dependence on political insti
tutions and laws and argued for the Confucian theory of the rule of the
prince by good example rather than by force.

In proposing his reforms, Wang An-shih seems to have been entirely
sincere and public-spirited. Frugal in his private life even to the neglect
of care for his own person, having the welfare of the common people
passionately at heart, serenely confident in the righteousness of his cause
and in the wisdom of his program, and an ardent advocate by word and
pen, he belongs to a type familiar in many ages and countries.

Wang rose to high office, and for a time the Emperor gave him
free rein. He had a few loyal and intelligent lieutenants, but the majority
of the bureaucracy were time-servers, intent on their own advancement,
and some who followed Wang An-shih were corrupt. The opposition was
divided into several factions. The debate continued through most of the
last four reigns of the Northern Sung, and echoes of it were heard after
the southward migration of the dynasty. Emperors gave their support first
to one and then to the other group. The program of Wang An-shih was
adopted in whole or in part for a few months or years, only to be abandoned
and then, in turn, to be tried again. It had imperial support from 1069 to
1085, was rejected from 1085 to 1093, and was revived in part in 1093-
1125.

Eventually Wang's program was abandoned, but some of its less
novel features, in modified form, were adopted for longer or shorter periods
down almost to our own day. The failure of the plan to win permanent
acceptance was probably due to the absence of a sufficient body of intelli
gent, enthusiastic, and unselfish officials to make it effective, to the venality
and self-seeking of some of its advocates, and to the opposition of many

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 193

of the scholar class. The dissension accompanying Wang's program con
tributed to the weakness of the Northern Sung, and to it must there
fore be assigned a part of the responsibility for the misfortunes of the
dynasty.

What the twentieth century Occident called "state socialism" and
"the welfare state" did not end with the defeat of the program of Wang
An-shih. The government undertook the care of aged people, gave free
burial to the poor, assumed responsibility for orphanages, and main
tained medicine shops. To obtain revenue it operated restaurants and
taverns.

Under the Southern Sung, Chia Ssu-tao (died 1276) headed a move
ment for land reform. The opposition of the landlords is reported to have
weakened the dynasty in its final struggle with the Mongols.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: THE NEO-CONFUCIAN SCHOOL

Wang An-shih and the debate over his proposals formed
only one feature of that intellectual ferment which gave to the Sung one
of its most distinctive characteristics.

Another outstanding phase of intellectual activity was a fresh interpre
tation of Confucianism, which for more than six centuries constituted the
orthodox philosophy of the scholar class and which during most of that
time had the support of the state through the established system of educa
tion and examinations.

The Neo-Confucianism developed under the Sung claimed, like the
reforms of Wang An-shih, to be based upon the Classics of the Con
fucian school but displayed some features which would not have been
recognized by the authors of these documents. Although its formulators
professed to be guided by the Confucian Classics, Neo-Confucianism
was really a synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, in which
Confucianism predominated. Buddhism as a separate cult was declining:
there was not nearly such intellectual activity within its monasteries as
in the T'ang and the centuries immediately before the T'ang. It was still
sufficiently strong, however, to make itself felt in the reviving Confucianism.

Sung Neo-Confucianism was an attempt to put into orderly form
what the educated believed about the universe — to integrate into a con
sistent whole the philosophies of the age. As, not far from the same
time, the schoolmen of Europe were formulating a cosmogony and a
cosmology which claimed to be Christian but which were indebted to the
Aristotelian tradition, and as out of them came the work of Thomas
Aquinas (12257-1274), which gave to the theology of the Roman Catho
lic Church what proved to be its official expression, so Sung thinkers,
stimulated by Buddhist and Taoist thought, remolded Confucianism into

194

VOLUME I

the form which was long to remain standard. The recognized master was
to be Chu Hsi.

The stream of thought that culminated in Chu Hsi had its springs
in scholars of the T'ang, especially after the An Lu-shan rebellion. Its
formulators were deeply indebted to Han Yii (786-824). Among the
principles vigorously advocated by Han Yii were the rejection of Taoism
and Buddhism as destructive of public morality; emphasis on Confucian
ethics as essential to civilized society; the rejection of some ideas of foreign
origin; establishing the authentic texts of Confucianism; and the defense
of what he regarded as Confucian orthodoxy.

Many Sung thinkers contributed to Neo-Confucianism. To give the
names of all would overburden these pages. However, a few must be
mentioned. Hu Yuan (993-1059), through a private academy which he
maintained, sought to instill in his pupils a respect for the Confucian
Classics as containing eternal truth. Sun Fu (922-1057) founded
a school near T'ai Shan in Shantung, in which he taught an appreciation
of the Classics. Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-1070) declared that China's ills
were due to the abandonment of Confucian teachings for Buddhism. An
older contemporary, Fan Chung-yen (989-1052), born in the later Kiangsu
and so, like many of the Neo-Confucianists, from the South, graduated
chin shih in his early twenties, vigorously opposed Buddhism and had
no use for the supernatural. Hp stressed the understanding of the Con
fucian Classics, advocated the establishment of a state system of educa
tion through which men of worthy character could be recruited and trained
for the civil service, and anticipated in his recommendations measures
akin to some in Wang An-shih's program. For a time he was in high
office. His Neo-Confucian orthodoxy was eventually recognized by the
placing of his tablet (1715) in the Confucian temples. Shao Yung (1011-
1077), born in later Hopei, based his philosophy on the principle of
numbers. He persistently declined to accept public office, preferring to
live in poverty and have leisure for thought. However, many sought his
counsel, among them some of the most prominent leaders of the anti-
Wang An-shih group, and his writings had a marked influence. He made
a special study of the / Ching. He was a mystic and much of his thinking
had a Taoist origin. Chou Tun-i (1017-1073), a native of the present
Hunan, through most of his mature life held office. Usually his literary
pursuits were in intervals snatched from administrative and judicial duties.
Although reckoned as in the stream of Confucian tradition, he was influ
enced by both Taoism and Buddhism. Chou Tun-i was for a time the
teacher of Ch'eng Hao (1032-1085), also known as Ch'eng Ming-tao,
and his brother Ch'eng I (1033-1107), known also as Ch'eng I-ch'uan,
and for him they had the greatest respect. The sons of an official of
sturdy, independent character, an opponent of Wang An-shih, the Ch'eng
brothers shared their father's political views. Both continued the family

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 195

tradition by holding office, but the younger spent much of his time in
retirement and study. They wrote voluminously, chiefly essays and letters,
and Ch'eng I, with his longer life and greater freedom from official cares,
thought through a philosophy more fully than did his brother. An uncle
of the two Ch'engs, Chang Tsai (1020-1076), by his teaching and writings
reinforced the trend represented by them.

Chu Hsi (1130-1200) was younger than any of the preceding, and
in consequence, was able to take advantage of their labors. He was the
son of an official; the service of the state claimed most of his adult
years; and he seems to have performed his duties with fidelity and ability.
By disposition, however, he was more the scholar than the administrator
and had intervals of retirement, some of them voluntary and with sinecure
positions which gave him leisure for study, but at least one of them due
to the opposition of enemies at court. During a period of his life he was
greatly impressed with Taoism and Buddhism, and while he later turned
to what he deemed the classical Confucian tradition, he never escaped
their influence. His was an intellect which delighted in synthesis and he
was gifted both with clarity of thought and with an admirable literary
style. Through his mind passed the ideas of the predecessors of the
school to which he eventually gave himself, and adding to them and
giving to the whole the interpretation and integration which were the fruits
of his own genius, he left behind him that system of thought which for
centuries was to dominate the majority of the scholars of the Empire.

To summarize accurately and in a few words the tenets to which
Chu Hsi gave their standard form is a difficult undertaking, particularly
since to the Occidental mind many of his concepts seem strange.

As we have said, the school was partly shaped by Buddhism, and
especially by Ch'an. Taoism, too, -contributed markedly. Chu Hsi's writings
contain much of Taoist metaphysics.

Many of the Sung Confucianists showed the effects of their Buddhist
environment by practicing meditation. This they did from ethical and
spiritual motives — to cultivate the nobler and to eliminate the baser
side of their natures. The better to succeed, they often retired to quiet
and beautiful spots, sometimes alone, at other times collectively. As we
have suggested, groups of students around their teachers, somewhat apart
from the world, were numerous, and the stimulus given by them in part
accounted for the intellectual activity of the time. The Neo-Confucian-
ists could, if they chose, plead precedent in the example of their Con
fucian predecessors, for one of the most important of the immediate
disciples of Confucius had declared that he daily examined his actions
and his thoughts to see whether they were correct and upright, and Con
fucius and some of his successors were surrounded by admiring pupils
in a more or less informal fellowship.

Negatively, many of the Sung thinkers revealed their Ch'an back-

196 VOLUME I

ground by reacting against it. The Ch'an Buddhist held knowledge to be
intuitive, derived by purely subjective processes. He offered no way of
verifying the information obtained in this fashion and could not tell whether
it corresponded with outward reality. He believed that the only reality is
mind. Neo-Confucianists opposed to this a Taoist conception of a uni
versal reason, of which both external nature and ourselves are a part. This
would exalt reason, and although numbers of Sung Neo-Confucianists held
to the sudden enlightenment of the Ch'an, many had a philosophy arrived
at by rational rather than intuitive processes. They believed that by looking
within we understand the rest of the universe, and that we can correct
the information so obtained by an investigation of the world ouside our
selves. This investigation of the external world was justified in part by
reference to a passage in the Ta Hsueh ("Great — or Higher — Learning"),
a small treatise of the Confucian school of the Chou dynasty which had
been imbedded in the Li Chi and to which the Neo-Confucianists gave
especial study and honor. This passage declared that the ancients had
discovered that all ordered government, proper social organization, and
ideal human conduct depend ultimately on the extension of knowl
edge, and that this, in turn, is to be achieved by the "investigation of
things." Chu Hsi especially made much of the "investigation of things."
He did not completely discard the sudden enlightenment of the Ch'an, but
he held that to be effective as the road to truth it must be preceded
by long and profound study of all things under heaven. It should be noted
that this "investigation of things," which on the surface seems closely
akin to the modern scientific methods of the West, was in practice largely
confined by the Sung scholars and their successors to things of the mind
and to the ethics found in the Classics of the Confucian school.

Associated with this process of arriving at knowledge were a cos
mology and cosmogony. For their ultimate formulation, Chu Hsi, by
temperament peculiarly fitted for synthesis and clarity of statement, was
chiefly responsible.

Chu Hsi regarded the universe as a dualism, as having in it two ele
ments or principles, but these, he believed, are so inseparably associated
as to make a unity, a "universe." The two are li and ch'i, which can
roughly, but by no means exactly, be translated as "law" and "material
force." Li contains the ethical phases of the universe. In contrast with K,
ch'i is the material element in all its myriad forms. Chronologically speak
ing, neither li nor ch'i is prior to the other, although when pressed, Chu
Hsi seemed, guardedly, to give li a kind of precedence.

Chu Hsi was true to Confucius in that he made much of a high stand
ard of morals. He held that morality in man is the expression of the li
which is basic in the universe — that it is of the very warp and woof
of reality.

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 197

Chu Hsi spoke of the fai chi, translated as the "great ultimate" or
"great extreme," and also as the absolute, or the infinite. This term is found
in one passage in the / Ching. The fai chi in turn produced the yin and
the yang, terms which, since the Chou, had been familiar to Chinese
thinkers as expressing a kind of dualism: inertia and energy, darkness
and light, female and male. Through the interaction of the yin and the yang
spring the five elements: fire, water, earth, wood, and metal.

In spite of his power of synthesis and his beauty of literary style,
Chu Hsia's conceptions present great difficulty to Western students, and
marked differences of opinion exist as to their meaning. Western and
Chinese categories differ so greatly that it is next to impossible to trans
fer the one into the other, and easy-going parallelisms are misleading.
Occidental scholars have been divided over the significance of Chu Hsi's
philosophy for theistic belief. Some maintain that he tended toward mate
rialism, or at least toward a depersonalizing of the ancient Chinese con
ception of Tien. Others declare that Chu Hsi gave to li the moral views
of personality, and that, while eliminating all physical anthropomorphism
from his portrayal of Tien, he held views which leaned essentially toward
theism. Whatever may have been Chu Hsi's personal beliefs, his teaching
strengthened the agnostic tendencies in Confucianism. If he ascribed to
Tien personal qualities, it was in such abstract terms that for the rank
and file it became little better than impersonal law.

Neo-Confucianism was in several respects a departure from the views
of the sage whose memory it professed to revere. Its views about sudden
enlightenment, and its attempts to tell how the world came to be, were
alien to the teachings of Confucius as found in the ancient records. At best
they could legitimately claim only to be implicit in the sage's sayings.
Yet members of the school seem sincerely to have believed that they were
true to the spirit of Confucius, and their emphasis upon the Lun Yu
(Analects), the Ta Hsueh (Great Learning), the Chung Yung (Doctrine
of the Mean), and the Book of Mencius was not mere lip service, but
sprang from a conviction of the authority and permanent value of these
documents.

The views of Chu Hsi did not immediately win the unqualified accept
ance of the majority of the scholar class. The followers of Wang An-
shih opposed them. Among the conservatives who denounced Wang An-
shih and who may be classed as Neo-Confucianists were many who could
not agree with them. Chu Hsi entered into controversy with several rival
interpreters of Confucianism whom he deemed heterodox. One famous
opponent was Lu Chiu-yuan (1140-1192), also known as Lu Hsiang-
shan, who emphasized personal, subjective education and meditation and
opposed any study beginning with the external world. His two elder
brothers, less distinguished as scholars, joined in his opposition to Chu Hsi,

198 VOLUME I

Extended conferences with Chu Hsi only intensified the reciprocal dissent.
Lu Chiu-yuan incorporated a marked strain of Ch'an Buddhism, while Chu
Hsi emphasized study and speculation and carried the impress of Taoist
metaphysics. There was also a utilitarian school which gave itself to the
study of political, economic, and military problems. Still another was the
so-called Shu school, whose greatest scholar was Su Shih (1036-1101).
Su Shih sought truth in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and did not
commit himself to any one philosophy, although for many years his tablet
was in the Confucian temple. His writings were long widely influential.

When, in later dynasties, Chu Hsi became dominant, there were still,
as we shall see, dissenting thinkers, some of whom claimed that he had
done violence to true Confucianism. In the main, however, for nearly seven
centuries his interpretations were regarded as final and authoritative.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: DEVELOPMENTS IN BUDDHISM AND TAOISM

The surge of Neo-Confucianism did not mean that
Buddhism and Taoism had been completely smothered. Both were still
vigorous. In Buddhism, Ch'an was particularly influential. Many laymen
became expert in it. Among the populace the Pure Land (Ch'ing T'u) sect
was prominent, stressing faith in Amitabha as a means to salvation.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: OTHER LITERARY DEVELOPMENTS

The literary energy of the Sung was not confined to the
discussion of political science provoked by the proposals of Wang An-
shih and to the philosophical works of the Neo-Confucianists and their
rivals. It also expressed itself in poetry, essays, and history — particularly
history. Both Wang An-shih and his critics sought in the Classics justifica
tion for their schemes. Sung scholars showed a greatly quickened interest
in the writing of history. In addition to the compilation of dynastic his
tories of the T'ang and of the Five Dynasties, they prepared accounts
which covered the entire sweep of China's past. The most famous and
widely used of these works was, fittingly (when one recalls the Shih-chi of
Ssu-ma Ch'ien of the Han), by a Ssu-ma— Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1086).
This was the Tzu Chih Tung Chien and covered the period from near
the end of the fifth century B.C. to the close of the Five Dynasties. The
author was an outstanding leader in the opposition to Wang An-shih, and
part of the necessary leisure for his magnum opus was obtained during the
long intervals when he and his associates were out of power and Wang
was in the ascendant. Ssu-ma Kuang supplemented his larger history with
a number of smaller compilations such as tables and the discussion of
doubtful points. The Tzu Chih Tung Chien became the basis of several

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 199

other works, notably a reconstruction and condensation of it, the Tung
Chien Kang Mu, made under the direction of Chu Hsi. Another, pre
pared by Yuan Ch'u, was a rearrangement by topics of the material in the
Tzii Chih Tung Chien. It was called the Tung Chien Chi Shih Pen Mo
and served as a precedent for a new type of history. Judged by the stand
ards of modern Occidental scholarship, Cheng Ch'iao probably deserves
the first rank among Sung historians. His Tung Chih covered Chinese
history from Fu Hsi to the T'ang.

In addition to the general histories of China were many studies of
special periods, persons, and phases of the past. Antiquarians and their
publications were numerous. Some of the earliest of the local topog
raphies and histories were compiled — eventually a voluminous section of
Chinese literature. Collections of extracts from the literature of the past
were made, many critical essays were written on the works of earlier
authors, records were prepared of the rites and customs of the court, and
facts supplementary to the official historical records were gathered. To the
close of the Sung and the opening years of the Mongol dynasty belongs
Ma Tuan-lin. Taking as a basis a work of the T'ang dynasty, Tu Yu's
Tung Tien, he collected the W en Hsien Tung K'ao, a compilation which
contained a vast amount of information on government and related
subjects. With true historic sense, Sung scholars also wrote many essays
on contemporary events, valuable source material for later devotees of Clio.

The Sung dynasty witnessed an expansion in the lei shu — collections of
extracts from earlier works and often translated, although not with entire
accuracy, as encyclopedias. Their beginnings date from hundreds of years
before the Sung, but with their penchant for the past, the Sung scholars
compiled a number of them, some relatively short and on restricted
groups of topics, and others longer than any which had yet appeared. The
most famous was the Tai P'ing Yu Lan, prepared under imperial direction,
comprising more than a thousand books and quoting from nearly seven
teen hundred works.

To this zeal of Sung scholars for the past, later generations have
owed the preservation of much material which otherwise would have been
lost. The Sung savants were not without serious defects and then: inac
curacies often misled their successors in subsequent dynasties* Yet they
were not uncritical of their historical source material. Some doubted the
authenticity of the Chou Li, others accepted only three of the Five Classics,
another regarded the appendices to the I Ching as late interpolations, and
Chu Hsi rejected the prefaces to the Shih Ching and threw doubt on the
so-called "ancient text" of the Shu Ching, in later centuries conclusively
proved to be a forgery.

Even poetry showed the effect of regard for the past, and much of
it was more closely bound to convention than that of the T'ang. It did not,

200 VOLUME I

accordingly — at least in the judgment of many — rise to the heights attained
during the T'ang. As a rule it was not the work of professional poets,
as had been much of the best verse of the T'ang, but scholars whose chief
interests were elsewhere: in other literary pursuits, in the duties of public
office, or in religion. One of the most famous of the Sung poets, Su Shih,
or Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101), was a brilliant scholar, a distinguished phi
losopher, who, as we have noted, came up through the ordinary channels of
the state examination and spent much of his life in the employment of
the government, was an art critic and the builder of a causeway in the
West Lake (adjoining Linan), and wrote essays as well as poetry. Another
was primarily a recluse who gave much time to Taoist studies, and still
another finished his life as a Buddhist monk.

OTHER CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS

With all this interest in the past, under the Sung the Chinese
mind was not so closely bound by it as the preceding pages may have
appeared to indicate. Works on astronomy, medicine, botany, and mathe
matics showed concern for other than humanistic, historical, and political
studies. For example, several treatises on flowers and fruits have come
down to us, among them what is probably the most ancient scientific
account of the varieties of citrus fruits known in any language. In 1054
the appearance was noted of a supernova, the stellar explosion which
gave birth to the Crab nebula in Taurus. Chinese mechanical inventive
ness, too, was displaying itself. It was probably under the Sung that gun
powder, previously employed for fireworks, was first applied to warfare
— in explosive hand-grenades. As we have seen, the compass came into
use as an aid to navigation. Remarkably accurate maps of the Empire were
made and engraved on stone. Near the close of the dynasty occurs the
earliest known reference to the abacus, that now familiar device for
reckoning. Whether it was an importation or of native origin we do not
know. Fiction was written, and in the vernacular.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING

Inventiveness and mechanical skill showed themselves in
printing. As we have said, as far as our records show us, that art was
first developed under the T'ang, and under the Five Dynasties and Ten
Kingdoms had been employed, among other purposes, to print the Classics.
It now reached its flowering. Voluminous dynastic histories were published
as a governmental enterprise, and private firms issued many works. The
calligrapher, whose skill has been highly esteemed in China, could express
himself through the block method of printing, the form chiefly in use; and

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 201

his name, together with that of the author and printer, appeared on the
finished works. Examples of the Sung editions still survive, and for quality
of workmanship have never been surpassed. Movable type was invented,
made first of earthenware. This device, however, was not so extensively
employed as was the carved wood-block, nor did it yield such artistic
results.

The rapid development of printing had a close connection with the
literary and intellectual activity of the dynasty. It both stimulated it and
was stimulated by it. The rapid multiplication of books made possible by
printing encouraged authors to write, and augmented the number of libraries
and the places where study could be pursued; it put the tools of literary
work and of scholarship at the disposal of more people.

CULTURE UNDER THE SUNG: PORCELAIN AND PAINTING

It was not only in the realm of political science, philosophy,
literature, science, and mechanical invention that the Sung genius expressed
itself. It also appeared in art. For this the court was partly responsible. Hui
Tsung, the unfortunate Emperor who shared in the collapse of the North
ern Sung, was, as we have noted, a painter of some distinction and a devoted
patron of the arts. He founded an institute of calligraphy and painting,
and government examinations in painting were begun. The Emperors of the
Southern Sung continued the tradition, greatly beautifying their capital,
appointing official painters, and maintaining the institute of art. The very
surroundings of Linan (HangchowJ provided incentive. The West Lake,
which the city eventually enclosed, the proximity of inspiring scenes of
mountain, river, and sea, and the rich southern flora and fauna — all
proved a stimulus to the aesthetic.

Porcelain loomed prominently as a medium for aesthetic expression.
In beauty and craftsmanship, cups, bowls, and other objects made from it
could bear comparison with the bronzes and jades of the ancients. It was
covered with thick glazes. Often, although by no means always, only one
color was used on one object. Sung glazes were in many colors, some of
them delicate and of rare beauty. Before the application of the glaze,
figures were often placed on the clay, either by incision or in relief. Many
objects were covered by crackle-glaze. Porcelain was made at a number
of centers, including the imperial factories located at the present K'aifeng
and at Ching-te-chen, in the present Kiangsi. The latter, to be long the
most famous source of the ware, took its name from a Sung^reign period
(Ching Te, 1004-1008). The overseas commerce gave wide distribution
to the ware and many highly prized examples survive.

Sculpture did not occupy the place under the Sung that it had under
the T'ang, perhaps because of the waning of Buddhism. The sculpture was

202 VOLUME I

influenced by painting and tended to overrefinement, especially after the
southward migration of the dynasty, The manufacture of earthenware
figurines, so characteristic of the T'ang, largely fell into abeyance.

Landscape painting now came to the fore and reached heights of per
fection never again attained in China. It was stimulated by the movement
of the center of culture to the South — where were mountains, mists, lakes,
rivers, and lush verdure. Much of the popularity of landscape in painting
may have come as a reaction against the growing urbanization of life.
No landscape painting equal to the Sung had ever appeared anywhere in
the world, or was to appear, except possibly in a Japan inspired by it,
and in recent times in Europe and America. Landscape was not the
exclusive subject of the Sung painters. Flowers, birds, animals, and Buddhas
and Bodhisattvas were portrayed. Even in painting, the love for the old,
powerful in philosophy and literature, asserted itself, and some of the
artists spent much time in copying the masterpieces of the past. Calligraphy,
in Chinese practice so closely allied to painting that it profoundly modified
it, received attention.

The prominence of landscape appears to have been due in part to
Ch'an Buddhism. At least the spirit in which it was done was indebted
to it. Ch'an looked below the surface of nature and saw through it to
another and ideal world, subjective in character. This vision the painters
sought to portray. Taoism reinforced the tendency, for, as we have seen, in
some respects, notably in its attitude toward the visible universe, it was
closely akin to the Ch'an.

In painting, one color rather than several was the rule: under the
Sung monochrome reached its highest point. Both the Northern and South
ern Schools, mentioned in the last chapter, were represented.

Some of the outstanding painters are worthy of special mention, even
in so abbreviated an account as this. Kuo Chung-shu, whose life spanned
the latter part of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms and the
earlier years of the Sung, held office, but was much of a wanderer and
addicted to wine. He was noted for his pictures of buildings set among
the hills. Kuo Hsi, born ca. 1020, did much of his work on the walls of
temples and palaces. He achieved fame as a painter of distances and of
winter landscapes and as a writer of a treatise on painting. Li Lung-mien
(bora ca. 1040) belonged to the party of Wang An-shih but was also
a friend of Ou-yang Hsiu and Su Tung-p'o. He was a versatile and brilliant
genius, a poet and a prose-writer of parts, a master of calligraphy, and as
a painter won distinction by his horses, his Buddhist subjects, and his
landscapes. The memory of Mi Fei (1051-1107), a native of the present
Kiangsu, an eccentric court painter who held both civil and military
offices, has been preserved by his landscapes and figures of men and ani
mals, his calligraphy, and his writing. He and his son initiated a school,
which enjoyed a great vogue in Korea. Hsia Kuei loved, among

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 203

other subjects, to portray the rugged seacoast and the tides. Attached to
the court at the present Hangchow, he was much influenced by the scenery
of the neighborhood. Another court painter of the Southern Sung was Ma
Yuan, the greatest of a distinguished family of artists. His pictures include
views of the West Lake and the villas of the great men of the capital. A
school of Ch'an monks, not connected with the court or its imperial
academy of painting, delighting in landscapes and living in monasteries in
beautiful natural surroundings, had as its leading name Mu Ch'i, about
whom personally we know very little.

SUMMARY

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms constituted an impor
tant transition from one to another great epoch in China's history. Behind
them lay the T'ang with its territorial conquests, the golden age of
Buddhism, and the best period of Chinese poetry. After them came the
three centuries and more of the Sung. Yet they registered no sharp break.
In some respects the closing century and a half of the T'ang witnessed
the beginnings of a new cultural era, which embraced as well the half-
century of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms and the Sung.
Although harassed on the north by enemies which it was never able to
expel and before whom it finally succumbed, the Sung proved that from
the cultural standpoint the creativeness of Chinese genius had by no means
been exhausted. Some of its thinkers wrestled with political and economic
theory with a boldness and originality not displayed in these fields since
the Chou and the Han. Others worked through afresh the heritage of
Confucianism in the light of the impulses that had come from Taoism
and Buddhism and created a cosmogony and a cosmology which, with
all their professed devotion to the past, show a breadth of conception and
a profundity of thought that place them among the outstanding intellectual
achievements of the race. Something of the same comprehensiveness of
view and adherence to the past found expression in the writing of histories.
Printing was perfected and widely used. Striking advances were made in
the'sciences. Commerce, internal and external, flourished. Cities multiplied
and a growing urban life wrought changes in the social structure of the
nation. A China was emerging which had continuity with the past, yet
was strikingly different from what preceded it. A migration of population
to the lower Yangtze Valley and the South Coast made that region the
chief center of wealth, cities, and culture. Art — both ceramics and paint
ing — registered memorable activity. Whatever may have been their fail
ures in the political realm, the Chinese mind and spirit had never, in any
one period, except in the philosophic schools of the Chou, broken out in as
many fresh ways and with such lasting results. Just as the T'ang differed
in culture from the Han, so the Sung was quite distinctive as compared

204 VOLUME I

with both the Han and the earlier years of the T'ang. Yet the Chinese
spirit under the Sung was becoming ingrowing and was being confined to
the national heritage. Not nearly so many new ideas were coming in
from abroad as under the T'ang. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the
Chinese would have welcomed them. China, on the defensive politically,
tended to draw within itself culturally.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Among the most important Chinese accounts of the Five Dynasties and the
Sung are the Chiu Wu Tai Shih, or Old History of the Five Dynasties, com
piled officially in the earlier years of the Sung, later fallen into disuse and
almost lost, and of which our existing texts seem to be reorganized and im
perfect reproductions; the Hsin Wu Tai Shih, or New History of the Five
Dynasties, by Ou-yang Hsiu, who had first been a patron of Wang An-shih
and then had opposed him; the Sung Shih, or History of the Sung, a chief
author of which was T'o-t'o, a Mongol, and whose Annals section, by him, is
not of very high quality; the Liao Shih, or History of the Liao (Khitan), by
the same author, and which suffers from the loss of most of the records of
the Khitan at the time of the overthrow of that people; the Chin Shih, or
History of the Chin (Juchen), again by T'o-t'o, and of better quality than
either the Sung Shih or the Liao Shih\ the Tzu Chih Tung Chien of Ssu-ma
Kuang, which comes down to the end of the Five Dynasties, and the shorter
Tung Chien Kang Mtrbased upon it; the Hsu Tzu-chih-t'ung-chien Ch'ang-pien,
a collection of documents on the Northern Sung privately compiled by Li Tao
in 1174; Sung Hui-yao Chi-kao, a selection of government documents.

See useful bibliographical references, largely of recent monographic studies,
mainly but not entirely political, in Herbert Franke, Sinologie (Bern, A.
Francke Verlag, 1953), pp. 130-133.

On political history see E. H. Bowra, 'The Liu Family, or Canton during
the Period of the Five Dynasties," China Review, Vol. 1, pp. 316-322; E.
Chavannes, "Le Royaume de Wou et de Yue," Toung Pao, 1916, pp.'l 29-264;
James Russell Hamiltpn, Les Uighours a Ffipoque des Cinq Dynasties d'apres
les Documents Chinois (Paris, Impremie Nationale, 1955); J. C. Ferguson,
"Southern Migration of the Sung Dynasty," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1924, pp. 14-27; J. C. Ferguson, "Political
Parties of the Northern Sung Dynasty," ibid., 1927, pp. 36-56; J. C. Ferguson,
'The Emperor Hui Tsung, A.D. 1082-1135," China Journal of Arts and
Sciences, 1924, pp. 204-209; Edward H. Schafer, The Empire of Min (Rut
land, Vermont, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1954, pp. xii, 146. Published for the
Harvard- Yenching Institute); Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers:
Social Forces in Medieval China (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1952), pp. 89-121;
Harold J. Wiens, China's March Toward the Tropics (Hamden, Conn., The
Shoe String Press, 1954), pp. 156-162, 180-183; Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng
Chia-Sheng, History of Chinese Society: Liao (907-1125) (Philadelphia, The
American Philosophical Society, 1949, pp. xv, 752), a massive work, based on
extensive research in the sources; Karl A. Wittfogel, "Public Office in the
Liao Dynasty and the Chinese Examination System," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 10, pp. 13-40; Michael C. Rogers, "Factionalism and
Koryo Policy under the Northern Sung," Journal of the American Oriental

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 205

Society, Vol. 79, pp. 16-23; E. L. Oxenham, "A Chip from Chinese History,
or the Last Two Emperors of the Great Sung Dynasty, 1101-1126," China
Review, Vol. 7, pp. 167-176, 292-299, Vol. 9, pp. 100-107, 175-181, 481,
498, Vol. 13, pp. 90-101, 264-273, Vol. 14, pp. 151-163, Vol. 15, pp. 144-
150, 197-206; E. Rocher, "Histoire des Princes du Yunnan," Toung Pao,
1899, pp. 132 et seq., 115-154, 337-368, 437-458; Gore, "Marches Tibetaines
de Sseu-tch'uan et da Yunnan," Bulletin de Vtcole Francaise d'Extreme-
Orient, Vol. 23, pp. 318-398; G. Maspero, "Le Royaume de Champa,"
Toung Pao, 1910, pp. 125-165, 319, 489, 547; 1911, pp. 53, 236, 291, 451,
589; Louis M. J. Schram, "The Monguors of the Kansu-Tibetan Frontier, Part
111, Records of the Monguor Clans'' in Transactions of the American Philo
sophical Society (Philadelphia, May, 1961, pp. 116), pp. 11-22; H. H.
Howarth, History of the Mongols from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century
(3 parts, London, 1876-1888); H. D. Martin, The Rise of Ginghis Khan and
His Conquest of North China (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1950); James
T. C. Liu, "An Administrative Cycle in Chinese History: the Case of the
Northern Sung Emperors," The Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 21, pp. 137-
152; Wang Gungwu, "Feng Tao (882-954) : An Essay of Confucian Loyalty,"
in A. F. Wright, editor, Confucian Personalities (Stanford University Press,
1962) ; H. Wilhelm, "From Myth to Myth; The Case of Yueh Fei's Biography,"
in ibid.; H. Franke, "Chia Ssu-tao (1213-1275): a 'Bad Last Minister'," in
ibid.; Igor de Rachewiltz, "Yeh-lu Ch'u-ts'ai (1189-1243): Buddhist Idealist
and Statesman," in ibid.; James T. C. Liu, "An Early Sung Reformer: Fan
Chung-yen," in J. K. Fairbank, Chinese Thought and Institutions (University
of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 105-131; Peter Buriks, "Fan Chung-yen's
Versuch einer Reform des chinesischen Beamster Staates — 1043-4," Oriens
Extremus, Vol. 3, pp. 57-80, 153-184; Johanna Fischer, "Fan Chung-yen,
985-1052; Das Lebensbild eines chinesischen Staats-mannes," ibid,, VoL 2, pp.
39-85, 142-156; Owen Lattimore, Ghingis Khan and the Mongol Conquests
(Scientific American, August, 1963), pp. 55-68.

On foreign and domestic trade with the accompanying growth of cities and
monetary and other economic developments, see W. W. Hirth and W. W. Rock-
hill, Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the twelfth
and thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chi (St. Petersburg, Printing Office
of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1912, pp. x, 288); Lo Jung-pang, "The
Emergence of China as a Sea Power during the Late Sung and the Early Yiian
Periods," Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 14, pp. 489-503; J. Kuwabara, "On P'u
Shou King, a Man of the Western Regions . . . together with a General Sketch
of Trade with Arabs in China during the T'ang and Sung," Mem. of the
Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, II, 1928, pp. 1-79; E. Huber,
TItineraire du Pelerin Ki Yi dans 1'Inde," Bulletin de I'Scole Frangaise
d'Extreme-Orient, 1902, pp. 256-259; E. Chavannes, 'TItineraire de Ki-ye,"
ibid.f 1904, pp. 75-81; Gabriel Ferrand, Relations de Voyages et Textes
Geographiques Arabes, Persans et Turcs Relatifs a I'Extreme-Orient de Vllle
au XVIII Siecles (2 vols., Paris", 1913, 1914); an account of an embassy from
the Sung to the Chin court in 1177 in "Pei Yuan Lou: Recit d'un Voyage dans
le Nord traduit par E. Chavannes," Toung Pao, 1904, pp. 163-192; The
Travels of an Alchemist: the Journeys of the Taoist Chang Ch'un from China
to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan, Recorded by His Disciple,
Li Chih-ch'ang, translated by A. Waley (1931); Kato Shigeshi, "On the Hang
or the Association of Merchants in China," Memoirs of the Research Depart
ment of the Toyo Bunko, Vol. 8, pp. 43-83; K. Enoki, "Some Remarks on the

206 VOLUME I

Country of Ta-ch'in as Known to the Chinese under the Sung," Asia Major,
Vol. 4, pp. 1-19; Lien-sheng Yang, Money and Credit in China (Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1952), pp. 38, 44, 45, 52-61; Lien-sheng Yang, Studies in
Chinese Institutional History (Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 216-224;
Lien-sheng Yang, "The Form of the Paper Note Hui-yzu of the Southern Sung
Dynasty," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 365-373; E. Stuart
Kirby, Introduction to the Economic History of China (London, George Allen
& Unwin, 1954), pp. 141-160; Mabel Ping-hua Lee, The Economic History
of China (New York, Columbia University Press, 1921), pp. 72-92; E. A.
Kracke, "Sung Society: Change within Tradition," Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol.
14, pp. 479-488.

On Chino-Japanese intercourse, see George Sansom, A History of Japan to
1334 (Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 129-138, 422-424.

A. C. Moule, Quinsai, with Other Notes on Marco Polo (Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1957), chiefly on Hangchow in the Southern Sung; Jacques
Gernet, La Vie Quotidienne en Chine a la Veille de I' Invasion Mongole (Paris,
Hachette, 1959), translated by A. M. Wright as Daily Life in China on the Eve
of the Mongol Invasion 1250-1276 (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1962,
pp. 254), chiefly on Hangchow and based largely on the sources.

On the reforms of Wang An-shih, see H. R. Williamson, Wang An-shih
(London, Arthur Probstain, 2 vols., 1935, 1937); James T. C. Liu, Reform in
Sung China: Wang An-shih (1021-1086) and His New Policies (Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1959, pp. xiv, 140, xix); J. C. Ferguson, "Wang An-shih,"
Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1903, pp. 1
et seq.\ J. C. Ferguson, "Political Parties of the Northern Sung Dynasty," ibid.,
1927, pp. 38 et seq.\ Tcheou Houan, Le Pr&t sur Recolte Institue en China au
Xie Siecle par le Ministre Novateur Wang-ngan-che (Paris, 1930), a doctoral
dissertation; O. Franke, "Staatssocialistische Versuche im alten und mittel-
alterlichen China," Sitzungsberichtee der Preussischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, philosophische-historische Klasse, 1931, pp. 218-242; O. Franke, "Der
Bericht Wang Ngan-schis von 1058 liber Reform der Beamtentums," ibid.,
1932, pp. 264-312. See also, above, studies on Fan Chung-yen, whose reforms
preceded those of Wang An-shih.

On a related but more enduring change, see E. A. Krancke, Jr., Civil
Service in Early Sung China — 969-1067 — with Particular Emphasis on the
Development of Controlled Sponsorship to Foster Administrative Responsibility
(Harvard University Press, 1953, pp. xv, 262) contains a useful introduction
to the economic, social, and administrative structure of the contemporary
China; Denis Twitchett, Land Tenure and the Social Order in Tang and Sung
China (University of Loncjon, 1962), pp. 40,

On education, with changes by Wang An-shih and others with developments
in- contemporary non-Chinese regimes, see E. Biot, Essai sur VHistoire d'
Instruction Publique en Chine et de la Corporation des Lettres (Paris, Benjamin
Duprat, 1847), pp. 317-402.

On the Confucian revival and Neo-Confucianism, see John K. Shryock,
The Origin and Development of the State Cult of Confucius (New York, The
Century Co., 1932, pp. xiii, 298), pp. 147-164; J. P. Bruce, Chu Hsi, 1130-
1200, The Philosophy of Human Nature, by Chu Hsi, translated from the
Chinese, with Notes (London, Probstain & Co., 1922, pp. xvi, 444) ; J. P. Bruce,
Chu Hsi and His Masters. An Introduction to Chu Hsi and the Sung School
of Chinese Philosophy (London, Probstain & Co., 1923, pp. xvi, 336); Fung

Political Weakness but Cultural Brilliance 207

Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk Bodde, Vol. II
(Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 407-592; Carsun Chang, The Develop
ment of Neo-Confucian Thought (New York, Bookman Associates, 1957, pp.
376) ; A. C. Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers: Ch'eng Ming-tao and Ch'eng
Yi-chuan (London, Lund Humphries, 1958); Shu-chi Huang, Lu Hsiang-shan:
A Twelfth Century Idealist Philosopher (New Haven, Conn., American
Oriental Society, 1944, pp. 116)— a critic of Chu Hsi; W. Theodore de Bary,
Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, compilers, Sources of Chinese Tradition
(Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 426-463, 510-568; W. Theodore de
Bary, "A Reappraisal of Neo-Confucianism," in Arthur F. Wright, editor,
Studies in Chinese Thought (The University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 81-
111; Olaf Graf, "Chu Hsi und Spinoza," Proceedings of the Xth International
Congress of Philosophy, Amsterdam, August 11-18, 1948 (Amsterdam, North-
Holland Publishing Co., Vol. 1, pp. 663-667); C. M. Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's
Political Career: A Study in Ambivalence," in A. F. Wright, Confucian Per
sonalities (Stanford University Press, 1962).

On other literature, see G. Margoulies, Le Kou-Wen Chinois: Recueil de
Textes avec Introduction et Notes (Paris, 1926); Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius:
The Life of Su Tung-po (New York, John Day Co., 1947); H. F. Schumann,
"On Social Themes in Sung Tales," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.
20, pp. 239-261; A. Forke, Dichtungen der Tang-und Sung-Zeit (German text,
Hamburg, 1929; Chinese text, Hamburg, 1930, both by Friederischsen, de
Gruyter & Co.); C. D. LeGros Clark (with wood engraving by A. LeGros
Clark), Selections from the Work of Su Tung P'o (London, 1932).

On inventions, discoveries and mechanical devices, see T. F. Carter, The
Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward, revised by L. C.
Goodrich (New York, 2nd ed., The Ronald Press, 1955), pp. 67-116; Joseph
Needham, Wang Ling, and Derek J. de Solla Price, Heavenly Clockwork, the
Great Astronomical Clocks of Ancient China (Cambridge University Press,
1960, pp. xv, 254); L. C. Goodrich and Feng Chia-sheng, "The Early De
velopment of Firearms in China," Ms, Vol. 36, pp. 114-123, 250, 251;
Wang Ling, "On the Invention and the Use of Gunpowder and Firearms in
China," Isis, Vol. 37, pp. 160-178; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization
in China (Cambridge University Press, Vol. Ill, 1959), pp. 425^34, 546-551;
Robert Hartwell, "A Revolution in the Chinese Iron and Coal Industries during
the Northern Sung, A.D. 960-1126," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 21,
pp. 153-162.

On art, in addition to the comprehensive bibliography in the chapter XIX
on Art, see Rene Grousset, The Civilizations of the East: China, translated
from the French by Catherine Alison Phillips (New York, Alfred A. Knopf,
1934), pp. 279-332; Dagny Carter, Four Thousand Years of China's Art (New
York, the Ronald Press, 1948), pp. 196-239; W. C. White, Chinese Temple
Frescoes. A Study of Three Wall-Paintings of the Thirteenth Century (Toronto,
1940)— of uncertain dates but probably of the Late Sung or Early Yuan;
A. G. Wenley, "A Note on the So-called Sung Academy of Painting," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 269-272; L. Sickman and A Soper, The
Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 94-145, 255-268.

On daily life on the eve of the Mongol conquest' of the South see Jacques
Gerent, La Vie Quotidienne en Chine a la Veille de I'lnvasion Mongole (1250-
1276) (Paris, Hachette, 1959).

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHINA UNDER THE RULE OF THE
MONGOLS (A.D. 1279-1368)

INTRODUCTORY

When the commander of the remnant of the Sung forces, in
defiant despair, terminated the hopeless struggle against the Mongols by
throwing himself and the boy Emperor into the sea, it was not only a
dynasty but an era which had come to an end. China was now a part of
the Mongol Empire and was ruled by foreigners. It was too huge to be
absorbed into any alien civilization, and the Mongols, far from forcing
their own crude culture on the Middle Kingdom, adopted much of that
of their subjects. Gone, however, was the Sung court, which, with all its
political weaknesses and mistakes, had done much to foster literature and
art. Immigrants of many different races and cultures shared in the admin
istration of the country. The rich flowering of culture under the Sung faded.

Contacts with foreigners under the Mongols did not stimulate the
Chinese genius to new life at all comparable with that which had followed
the introduction of Buddhism. Some few significant and widely influential
developments there were — in the drama and in the writing of novels, for
instance — and Moslems now became a factor in Chinese life with which
the realm had henceforth to reckon. However, no intellectual, social, or
religious movements that profoundly affected the entire life of the people
entered from the outside world. When the Mongols were at last expelled
and the Empire was once more under a native dynasty, culturally the
Chinese tended to fall back upon the heritage of their pre-Mongol past.
While in some respects they elaborated it, they discouraged departure from
it. The Mongol conquest, in other words, was the beginning of that period
of comparative cultural sterility, of sturdy and largely undeviating adherence
to traditional models, from which the Chinese were not to be shaken
until their revolutionary contacts with the Occident at the close of the
nineteenth and in the twentieth century. Critics of this complacent ortho
doxy were not wanting, but they were in the minority. Some significant
innovations and noteworthy cultural achievements were registered. Com
pared with earlier periods, however, the tempo of change was slow.

Why this comparative stagnation should have prevailed is not clear.

208

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 209

We can only offer conjectures. One is that Islam, the single spiritual im
portation of importance which under the Mongols was so strengthened as to
win a permanent place in Chinese life, made less of an impression than had
the Indian faith: the type of Islam which reached China was not the bearer
of a particularly varied or rich culture. Another possible reason is that the
antiforeign reaction accompanying the expulsion of the Mongols sought
to restore and conserve the national heritage and discouraged originality.
Then, too, as we have seen, the Sung, with all its brilliance, stressed the
indigenous heritage. It is clear also that to the triumph of the examination
system must be assigned at least some of the responsibility for the un-
progressive conservatism. Whatever the cause or causes, the Mongol
conquest marks the end of a period of creativity and the beginning of a
long era of relative lack of originality.

THE REIGN OF KHUBILAI: EXTERNAL POLITICS:
MONGOL RULE AT ITS HEIGHT

The domination of the Mongols, from which dates this transi
tion in Chinese culture, was of relatively brief duration. Less than a century
after the extinction of the Sung it had come to an end. The reign of
Khubilai, during which the conquest of China was completed, saw the
Mongol Empire at its apex. From the vantage of several centuries, it is
today clear that in spite of the splendor of his reign Khubilai saw the tide
of Mongol conquest reach its flood and begin to ebb.

Theoretically, Khubilai's rule extended over all the vast domains in Asia
and Europe occupied by the members of his family. Practically, however, in
the sections more remote from China, that suzerainty was little better than
nominal and in wide regions it was disputed. Khubilai was the Grand
Khan, but time-distances in the huge Empire were so great that the sub
ordinate khans who possessed the actual rule on the periphery, especially
in central and western Asia and eastern Europe, were in practice almost,
if not entirely, autonomous. During much of the life of Khubilai, more
over, a relative, Kaidu, effectively disputed his rule in much of what is
now Sinkiang and the southern part of Siberia, and for a time invaded
Mongolia and threatened Karakorum. Another Mongol ruler, Nayan, a
Nestorian Christian, whose domains were in Manchuria and Korea, joined
Kaidu in defying Khubilai's power. Khubilai's forces defeated Nayan and
put him to death, but Kaidu successfully continued his resistance until
after Khubilai's death.

In several of his attempts to extend his domains Khubilai notably
failed. He succeeded in putting down revolts in Korea and in bringing that
peninsula more effectively under the sway of the Mongols. When, however,
he assayed to conquer Japan he encountered signal defeat. Beginning with

210 VOLUME I

1266 several embassies sought to induce the Japanese to submit without
fighting. That effort failed, and in 1274 Khubilai launched against the
island realm an expedition of Mongols and Koreans. This effected a land
ing on Kyushu, but the Japanese, although unable to cope in the open
field with Mongol tactics and equipment, put up a stubborn fight and the
invaders withdrew. A storm came up and the Mongol fleet suffered heavy
losses. After Khubilai had conquered the Southern Sung, he renewed the
attack on Japan with a much larger force. The extensive maritime re
sources of the South of China were now at his disposal. In the summer
of 1281 a huge armada of Mongols, Chinese, and Koreans was dispatched
against the recalcitrants. Again a landing was made; again the Japanese
offered stout opposition, this time by both land and sea; again the elements
came to the rescue of the attacked, and a storm destroyed a large proportion
of the invading ships. The Chinese contingents were especially heavy suf
ferers. Khubilai did not at once give up hope of renewing the attempt, but
the Mongols and the Koreans had no more stomach for the project, the
heavy demands on the Chinese brought restlessness, and when the revolt
of Nayan absorbed Khubilai's attention the idea of another invasion seems
to have passed into oblivion. Later in the Yuan amicable relations between
the Mongol regime and Japan were renewed.

In the South Khubilai's forces either encountered disaster or won
relatively sterile victories. While the Sung rule was collapsing and the
sweep of the Mongol arms seemed irresistible, the ruler of Champa, in
what later was Vietnam, accepted the suzerainty of Khubilai and dis
patched envoys to the court of the Grand Khan. When, however, Khubilai
demanded, as a more substantial recognition of his authority, a visit
of the ruler in person to his court, he met with a refusal. To make his
power effective, Khubilai thereupon sent an army (1282), by sea from
Canton, to reduce Champa to a more obedient frame of mind. The expe
dition took the citadel of the Chams (1283), but the quarry escaped
to the hills and eluded capture.

The efforts of the Mongols to control Annam proved as futile as
those in the neighboring Champa. Some of the adherents of the Sung
fled to Annam to escape the Mongol advance. This helped to attract
the attention of Khubilai to that state. Like the ruler of Champa, the
Annamese monarch was willing to acknowledge the suzerainty of the
Mongols through formal embassies to Khubilai's court, but persistently
declined to come in person to make his submission. Khubilai sent army
after army to bring the region to a more humble attitude and to place
a creature of his own on the throne. In 1280, 1285, and 1287, Mongol
armies penetrated Annam. On the open field they were usually victorious,
but the tropical climate proved their undoing. Twice, shattered by dis-

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 211

ease, they were forced to retire, and the third time, enfeebled by the
same enemy, they were overwhelmed by the Annamese with the loss of
their fleet. Khubilai wished to continue the attack but had to be content
with threats on his part and — to him — unsatisfactory present-bearing
embassies from Annam.

Mongol experience in Burma was less disastrous but led to no con
tinuing conquest. Beginning with 1277 and ending in 1301, five separate
expeditions sought to establish the rule of the Grand Khan. The invading
armies were usually fairly successful in battle. Three of them penetrated
the valley of the Irrawaddy, at least two of them to the south of the present
Mandalay. But they failed to establish any lasting foothold.

A Mongol-Chinese armada was sent to Java to punish a prince in the
eastern part of the island who had treated with contumely an envoy sent
by Khubilai to demand the recognition of Mongol suzerainty. With the aid
of a local magnate, the force achieved initial successes, but after a few
months the great distance from its base, heavy losses of life, and continuing
resistance led the army to re-embark.

Tribute was received from a state in the present Thailand, but no
troops seem to have been ordered there.

An attempt to subdue the Liu Ch'iu (Ryu Kyu) Islands ended in
failure, apparently because of the untimely death of the Chinese pilot of
the invading fleet.

From the vantage of the centuries, it is evident that the miscarriage of
these attempts to extend the Mongol possessions across the seas and to the
south was an indication that the tide had reached its flood and was about
to recede. Other factors than lack of vigor entered into the failures of
Khubilai's forces. The Mongols had been eminent as strategists on the land,
but it is not strange that, coming from the desert and the steppes, they
should not be at home on the sea. In the South, moreover, the tropical
climate proved uncongenial and was a handicap which they could not
fully overcome.

It must not be forgotten that Khubilai greatly widened the Mongol
borders. He completed the conquest of the Sung (no light task), and his
generals permanently added Yunnan to the Chinese Empire. They brought
to an end the independent, or semi-independent, state which had existed
there for centuries, although the native line was continued for a time as
Mongol officials.

Then, too, Khubilafs envoys went farther than official envoys of China
had ever gone before. Embassies were dispatched to Ceylon and South
India and even to Madagascar— or at least so Marco Polo declares— but
these appear to have been for the purpose not of political conquest but of
encouraging trade.

212 VOLUME I

THE REIGN OF KHUBILAI: INTERNAL POLITICS

The spectacular and rapid rise of the Mongol Empire had
been a tribute to the genius and energy of the men responsible for it. A
greater test of capacity, however, was the task of welding together into
some sort of permanent whole the vast area and the great diversity of races
and cultures that had been conquered. If in this the Mongols signally
failed, it was probably quite as much because of the difficulty of the prob
lem as because of their lack of ability. At the outset of their conquest —
that of the North — the Mongols allotted to their leading men large land
holdings and taxed the peasants heavily, both with the traditional levies
and with new ones. They farmed out the taxes. They used merchants to
assist in the exploitation of their new possessions.

Under Khubilai striking changes were effected. A much more highly
centralized administration was introduced. After the acquisition of the
South, the landowners of that region were utilized to aid the government.
As we have seen, these land holdings had developed under the Sung. At
the outset of the conquest the landed class was won to the support of the
Mongol regime. For the first time in China's history a nation-wide paper
currency was created and substituted for local currencies.

Khubilai's policy seems to have been in part one of conciliation of the
conquered, in part an attempt at a cosmopolitan blending of races in the
government, and in part the promotion of prosperity. He maintained
traveling inspectors to report on the economic status of his subjects. He
had public granaries in which the surplus grain of good seasons was
stored for distribution in years of dearth. He made provision for the public
care of aged scholars, orphans, and the infirm, and for the distribution
of food among the poor. He encouraged education. In general, these policies
had precedent under the Sung.

Religiously, Khubilai was tolerant. For himself, he seems to have held
to some of the primitive shamanistic practices of his fathers and to have
inclined toward Buddhism of the Tibetan type. He had a new Mongol
alphabet devised on the basis of the Tibetan script, the old having been
taken from that of the Uighurs. Officially he gave support, financial and
otherwise, to several faiths. Like Ogodai and Mangu, he exempted Taoist
and Buddhist monks, Nestorian priests, and Moslem teachers from taxa
tion, with the condition that they offer prayers in his behalf. As had his
immediate predecessors, Khubilai used the clergy of these faiths to aid in the
local administration. His only religious animosity appears to have been
against the Taoists, but these seem to have been discouraged and their books
ordered burned more because their violent antagonism to the Buddhists
threatened the peace of the realm than from any dislike for their teachings.
Even toward the Taoists Khubilai was by no means implacable. He called
into his presence the head of the cult and officially confirmed the title of

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 213

Tien Shih, or "Heavenly Teacher," which the latter had previously borne.
Khubilai honored Confucianism and summoned to court the representatives
of the family of the sage. Confucianism regained much of the ground which
it had lost in the North under the Khitan and the Juchen.

In political administration, Khubilai enlisted Chinese scholars. Even
under Jenghiz Khan Chinese political ideas had begun to mold Mongol
policy. Chinese scholars naturally favored an organization modeled on
those of preceding dynasties. Khubilai became a Chinese Emperor somewhat
of the traditional type. He employed Chinese in the government of the
country.

However, some modifications were introduced. Especially marked was
the use of non-Chinese. Relatively few Chinese were placed in the higher
offices. Foreign contingents were in the Mongol armies and garrisons, and
many aliens were appointed to administrative posts — as governors of
provinces and in leading positions in the cities. Foreign merchants were
favored as against the Chinese. Of the foreign commerce, to Chinese
merchants was assigned only the trade with the lands to the south. Khubilai
forbade the Chinese to carry arms and took away those which they already
possessed.

Khubilai's capital, as we have seen, was at Cambaluc, the later Peking,
on and near the site on which had often been a capital of one of the
states of China. Here he built an entirely new city, on a grand scale. As
the administrative center of the Mongol Empire it attracted a large popula
tion and was the marvel of European travelers. By moving his capital from
the old Mongol headquarters, Karakorum, he was better able to govern
that most populous and wealthy portion of his domains, the Middle King
dom.

To improve communications and so to facilitate the administration of
China and the shipment of grain from the fertile South to Cambaluc,
Khubilai reconstructed the Grand Canal, which connected the Yangtze
Valley with the North. This waterway, as we have seen, had been begun
many centuries before, and much labor had been expended on it to make
it a means of through traffic between the North and the South. Khubilai
put it again into good working order, extended it to Cambaluc, and
partly altered its route. Some of the tribute grain from the South was
brought by sea around the Shantung promontory. Khubilai improved
several of the main highways and provided for rapid posts, as a means of
holding his domains together.

THE SUCCESSORS OF KHUBILAI

Khubilai died in 1294, at the ripe age of eighty. None of his
successors approached him in ability, but Mongols held the throne of China
for nearly three-quarters of a century longer. The Yuan Emperors were

214 VOLUME I

still recognized as Grand Khans — the overlords of the vast Mongol do
mains — and when, after Khubilai's death, the revolt of Kaidu came to an
end, there were no important areas in the Mongol Empire where nominally
that suzerainty did not prevail

However, the huge structure was falling apart. Distances, difficulties of
communication, and cultural differences were proving too formidable to
permit permanent union. The Mongols were taking over the customs of
their subjects, and so were losing their own unity of culture. In Persia and
Transoxiana, for example, they were becoming Moslems. In China they
were more and more conforming to the ancient ways of the Middle King
dom. Like Khubilai, they here favored Buddhism, particularly of the
Tibetan type, and continued to exempt Buddhist, Taoist, Nestorian, and
Moslem teachers and monks from taxation. Even more than he, they sup
ported Confucianism. In the fourteenth century the civil service examina
tions and the Hanlin Academy , were restored, and fresh honors were
decreed for Confucius, for Mencius, and for Confucius's disciple Yen Hui.
The temples to Confucius were maintained and jiever had the ceremonies
in them been more ornate or elaborate.

The ruling line at Cambulac lost in vigor. In the forty years or so
between the death of Khubilai and the accession of the last Mongol
Emperor in 1333 there were eight monarchs, none of them of outstanding
merit, and the majority with too short a tenure of office to achieve distinc
tion. Khubilai's grandson and successor, to be sure, ruled for about thirteen
years and labored diligently to reform abuses, reduce corruption, achieve
a more equitable system of taxation, and in other ways to improve the
administration. Most of the others, however, were less energetic.

The last of the line to hold China came to the throne when he was little
more than a boy and proved weak and pleasure-loving. During the thirty-
five years that he reigned from Cambaluc the power of the Mongols almost
steadily declined. The exploitation of the peasants and Chinese merchants
was enhanced. Rebellious secret organizations flourished, among them the
Pai Lien Hui, or White Lotus Society, which was to have a long and stormy
career. Revolts broke out in several different parts of the country. Attempts
oi the Mongols to suppress sedition, such as the renewal of the interdiction
of arms to the Chinese and the rumored proposal to slay all Chinese bearing
certain common surnames, increased the unrest. Famine in the North and
trouble with the ever-treacherous Yellow River added to the problems of
the alien rulers. The financial straits to which the Mongols were reduced
led to an increase in the issue of paper money inadequately supported by
metallic reserves, until the currency became worthless and the people were
reduced to barter. Heavy taxation added to the dissatisfaction. The Mongols
were divided among themselves and could not present a united front to
their enemies.

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 215

Had the leaders of the various revolts been able to agree among them
selves, the Mongols would probably have been expelled more quickly than
they were. As it was, each was ambitious for his own interests and some
were almost as incompetent as the rulers against whom they rebelled. A
little effort was made to restore the Sung, but victory finally rested with a
man of humble birth, Chu Yuan-chang; in the rough-and-tumble struggles
of the time, native ability and not heredity was the best guarantee of success.

Chu Yuan-chang was born in the present province of Anhui in the
year 1328. His family was poor, and in his middle teens his parents and
elder brother died in one of the famines that scourged these unhappy years.
For a while he sought a livelihood in a Buddhist monastery. When, in the
disorders of the time, this refuge was burned and the monks scattered, he
entered military service under the leader of a force of rebels in the neigh
borhood. Here he displayed signal ability and rose rapidly. He made himself
master of a large area in the lower part of the Yangtze Valley, and in 1364
assumed the title of Prince of Wu. Chu's energy, discretion, and clemency
quickly extended his domains in the South, and in 1367 he felt strong
enough to press northward. In 1368 Cambaluc fell before one of his
generals (Hsu Ta) and in that year he was proclaimed Emperor of a new
dynasty, the Ming. The incompetent Mongol ruler fled northward and died
before two years were out. For decades thereafter the Mongols sought to
re-establish themselves south of the Great Wall, and invasions by them
were a fairly constant menace, but their day of power had passed. In China
proper their dominion was only a memory.

FOREIGN CONTACTS UNDER THE MONGOLS: MIGRATIONS AND COMMERCE

One of the marked features of the Mongol period was extensive
contacts with other peoples and cultures. As we have seen, it was a de
liberate policy of the Yuan to appoint non-Chinese to a fairly large pro
portion of the official positions in China. Not only Mongols but members
of other non-Chinese races were also given office. Moreover, bodies of
foreign troops were brought in. For example, we hear of a contingent of
Alans, Christians from the Caucasus, in Cambaluc.

Mongol rule made for a degree of security for travel in a vast area
which had never before been brought together under one sway. China's
foreign commerce flourished accordingly. It probably reached dimensions
not previously attained. Merchants from many countries frequented the
chief marts. Arabs, Persians, and representatives of races of Central Asia
entered in large numbers. Chinese merchants ventured abroad, and Chinese
junks made their way to Java, India, and Ceylon. Chinese engineers were
utilized in the irrigation of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. There were Chinese
colonies in Moscow, Novgorod, and Tabriz. The Yuan Emperors had

216 VOLUME I

commercial agreements with the princes of at least two of the states of
South India.

Foreign trade was carried on both by sea and by the ancient overland
tracks across the present Sinkiang. Many of the cities of China, both on
the coast and on the internal trade routes, shared in the prosperity which
it brought. As under the Sung, a major emporium was the present
Ch'iianchow (known to European medieval travelers as Zaitun), in Fukien.

Commerce was not without its problems. The drain of copper coinage
embarrassed the Mongol rulers as it had the Sung. Silver flowed out of
the realm. The Mongols, too, found it difficult to maintain a state monopoly
over foreign trade or to enforce the regulations which they desired.

As heretofore, commerce was chiefly in those commodities which com
bined small bulk and weight with large value. The leading export appears
still to have been silk in various forms — several varieties of silken fabrics
being mentioned in the lists of merchandise — but porcelains and other
wares helped to swell the total. Imports included, among other items, spices,
pearls, precious stones, and fine cloths.

From the standpoint of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one of
the most interesting features of this foreign trade was the earliest known
direct contact of China with the peoples of western Europe. Mongol
armies penetrated far into Europe and brought alarm to the sovereigns of
the western part of that continent. Travelers from the Mongol possessions
reached that region. We know of a Uighur (or possibly an Ongut) Nes-
torian monk, Rabban Cauma (or Sauma) , who had been born in Cambaluc
and who in 1287 and 1288 visited Rome, Bordeaux, and Paris on a
diplomatic mission from the Mongols.

Compared with some of the states of the time, the kingdoms of western
Europe were then small in area and population and were by no means
so important for their contemporaries as were several other realms. Nor
were they as populous or prosperous. A European traveler in China in the
fourteenth century, for instance, declared that the former Sung domains
contained "two hundred cities all greater than Venice." In the thirteenth
century, however, western Europe was displaying some of that remarkable
growth which was to make it dominant in the world's life and which six
and seven centuries later was to work the greatest revolution in China in
that Empire's history. Even before the birth of Jenghiz Khan and the
Mongol advance, the Crusades had carried the arms of western European
peoples into the Levant, and Italian cities had made commercial contacts
there. The thirteenth century saw extensive trade between Italy and the
Near East. It also witnessed the rise of the Franciscans and the Dominicans
and with it a new burst of Christian missionary endeavor, both inside and
outside Europe. Given the facility of travel in Asia which the Mongols had
created, it would, therefore, have been strange if Europeans had not
reached China.

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 217

How many merchants from western Europe made the journey to China
we do not know. Judging from those of whom our comparatively scanty
records tell us, the number must have been considerable. We hear of
Genoese and Venetians in China, and of many in Venice who had made
the round trip. Travelers went either by the land roads — of which the most
frequently traversed was one by way of the Black Sea, the Volga, Hi, and
Kansu, and one through Persia, the Tarim River basin, and Kansu — or by
sea via India to the ports on the south coast of China.

Due to the fact that he left behind him a record of his travels, the most
famous of these medieval adventurers was a Venetian, Marco Polo. Several
years before the Mongols had made an end of the Sung rule in South China,
Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, the father and uncle of Marco, had come to
Cambaluc. Khubilai was much interested in them and dispatched them to
the West with letters to the Pope asking for a hundred teachers of science
and religion. Because of a papal interregnum the answer to the request was
delayed. When at last the Polos started on their return journey, they were
accompanied by only two of the hundred missionaries asked for, and these,
frightened by the dangers in the way, turned back before going very far.
The two brothers, however, were undeterred and in due course, together
with Marco, whom they had taken with them, reached China. Khubilai
received the Polos with cordiality (1275) and seems to have treated with
especial kindness Marco, then about twenty-one years of age. Marco
entered his employ and held various positions, among them some which
carried the young Venetian over much of China.

After a little more than a decade and a half in China, in 1292 the
Polos left it as members of a large company appointed to escort a princess
to Persia, where she was to become the wife of the reigning Mongol khan.
After seeing their charge safely to her destination, the Polos returned to
Venice. It was probably while a prisoner of war in Genoa that Marco
dictated an account of his travels and observations to a fellow captive.
, The result was to have a large influence upon European knowledge of
geography and geographic discoveries. Few works of travel have had so
wide a circulation or such far-reaching effects. Columbus, for example,
owed much to it. Even today, it is one of our best sources of information
about China and the countries of central and southern Asia in the days of
the Mongols.

FOREIGN CONTACTS UNDER THE MONGOLS: FOREIGN RELIGIONS IN CHINA

Among the many influences from the outside which the
presence of so many aliens brought to the Middle Kingdom, some of the
most interesting were religious.

The timidity of the two Dominicans who began the journey with the
Polos by no means characterized all their fellow friars. During the thirteenth

218 VOLUME I

and fourteenth centuries Dominicans and Franciscans, taking advantage of
the comparative ease of travel under the Mongols, covered much of Central
Asia and went to India and China.

Some friars were sent on political errands by European rulers; more
of them went on purely religious missions. Notable among the diplomatic
envoys were two Franciscans, John of Piano Carpini, who (1245-1247)
accomplished the round trip to Karakorum, and William of Rubruck, who
made the journey to the same Mongol capital and back a few years later
(1253-1255).

The first friar of whom we hear as reaching China proper was one who
went with a purely religious objective, a Franciscan, John of Montecorvino.
John arrived in Cambaluc in 1294. He gained the favor of the Emperor, and
by 1305 had baptized about six thousand converts and had built a church.
When, shortly after 1305, the news of his success reached Europe, the
Pope appointed him Archbishop of Cambaluc and sent him reinforcements,
three of whom, all Franciscans, reached China. Other Friars Minor went
to China during the next few years, and we learn of houses of the order
at Zaitun (Ch'iianchow), the present Hangchow, and Yangchow — all three,
it will be noted, important commercial cities — as well as at Cambaluc. So
far as we know, the last Roman Catholic missionary to penetrate to China
in the Middle Ages was a papal legate, John of Marignolli. Following the
overland route, he reached Cambaluc in 1342, remained there three or
four years, and returning by the sea route, arrived at Avignon in 1353.
Within two decades the Mongols were expelled from China, their empire
had collapsed, and communications with western Europe were cut off. Such
Roman Catholic communities as existed — relatively small at best — dis
appeared, partly because they were either foreign in membership or were
associated in the public mind with the now unpopular alien, and nothing
remained of them but a few memories (mostly in 'Europe) and still fewer
physical relics.

Nestorians, too, were in China under the Mongols. Nestorian Chris
tianity was at that time widely spread in Central Asia and on the
borders of China proper, and numbers of the foreigners who came from
these regions into China under Yuan were of that faith. A Turkish tribe,
the Keraits, which was closely affiliated with the Mongols, and from
which many high officials and the mother of Mangu, Hulagu, and
Khubilai were drawn, were Nestorians. So, too, were the Onguts, who
lived near the northern bend of the Yellow River, and some of the Uig-
hurs, whom the Mongols employed extensively. We hear of a Nestorian —
probably from Syria — who under Khubilai was placed in charge of
the astronomical bureau in Cambaluc and later became a member of
the Hanlin Academy and a minister of state; of a Nestorian physician
from Samarkand who was governor of Chinkiang; of a Nestorian arch
bishopric in Cambaluc; of a Nestorian Uighur (or possibly an Ongut)

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 219

born in North China, who went to Bagdad and in 1280 became patriarch
of the entire Nestorian communion; of an office established by Khubilai to
supervise the Christians; and of Nestorians in such widely separated cities
and portions of China as Yangchow, Hangchow, Chinkiang, Kansu, Yun
nan, and Hochienfu (in the present Hopei) . The collapse of the Mongol rule
was followed by the extinction of Nestorianism in China. Most of the
foreigners who professed the faith probably either left the country or were
killed. On the edges of China and in Central Asia, Nestorianism was
superseded by Islam and Buddhism, and no centers remained from which
missionaries might again propagate the faith in the Middle Kingdom.

We know that Armenian Christians resided in China under the Mon
gols, and that the contingent of Alans who were a portion of the Mongol
armed forces in Cathay belonged to one of the eastern Christian com
munions before their conversion to Roman Catholicism by John of
Montecorvino. These had no more permanent influence than did Roman
Catholicism and Nestorianism,

Islam fared better than Christianity. Moslems from abroad appear
to have been much more numerous in China under the Mongols than were
Christians. Merchant communities of Moslem Arabs were found in several
of the chief commercial cities. Much of the present Yunnan was gov
erned by a Moslem official who had rendered notable service during the
conquest of China. His son succeeded to his power, and descendants,
still Moslem by faith, were prominent in China after the expulsion of the
Mongols. It is not surprising that a large Moslem community arose in
that region, for not only is it probable that Moslem troops were serving
there under the banner of their coreligionist, but many of the inhabi
tants as well would be likely, from motives of expediency, to accept
the faith of their governors. Nor is it strange that in North China,
and particularly in what is now Kansu, where the overland trade routes
from the West debouched, many Moslem immigrants were found. Neither
is it remarkable that Moslem communities survived the downfall of the
Mongols. They were more numerous than the Christians, and the growth
of Islam in Central Asia maintained a constant Moslem influence in
China's Northwest. The Arab control of much of the sea-borne commerce
between western, southern, and eastern Asia in the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries aided the persistence of Islam on the south
coast. Moslems had been in China before the Yuan, but from this dynasty
dates their prominence in Chinese life.

CULTURE UNDER THE MONGOLS

As we suggested at the beginning of this chapter, contact
with foreigners and foreign civilizations under the Mongols was not
followed by any such burst of cultural creativity as succeeded the intro-

220 VOLUME I

duction of Buddhism. Through the coming of scholars from the South to
Cambaluc, the teachings of Chu Hsi made headway in intellectual circles
in the North. But many Confucian scholars, taught loyalty to their rulers
by Neo-Confucianism, refused to hold office after the Sung had been
displaced. They despised the Mongols as crude and — from the stand
point of Chinese culture — uncivilized barbarians. They retired from public
life. Later, as the Mongol rule waned, corruption in the government
mounted and high-minded Confucian scholars increasingly found official
position irksome or impossible.

Some effect the extensive contacts with alien cultures had, how
ever: the Mongol period is different from the Sung and marked devel
opments took place. In mathematics and medicine innovations were made,
due chiefly, apparently, to foreign contacts. Chaulmoogra oil became
known and was used in the treatment of leprosy. Spectacles were intro
duced — a foreign invention.

In painting, the Sung traditions, especially those which had arisen
under the influence of Ch'an Buddhism, were continued in monasteries
in the Yangtze Valley and the adjoining coast. Some secular artists
among the scholars, in their disdain of things Mongol, attempted to
maintain the Sung forms. There was also a reversion to T'ang styles.
The Mongol conquest had a decided effect, however. Thanks to fairly
close contact with the West, Persian art here and there left its mark.
Because of their Buddhist proclivities, the Mongol rulers favored religious
paintings of that faith. Especially noteworthy were the reintroduction of
movement and color and the portrayal of scenes of everyday secular
life. Horses provided favorite subjects, as did the festivities and diversions
of the rich and the powerful. The so-called Northern School, with its more
vigorous style, came to the fore. One of the greatest artists of the dynasty
was Chao Meng-fu, a descendant of the founder of the Sung. He held
high office at court and was noted as a painter of landscapes and of
horses, men, and historical scenes.

Not only in painting but also in ceramics changes were registered.
Persian influences made themselves felt in the forms of vases and in
ornamentation. Cloisonne, of Byzantine origin, now seems to have appeared
for the first time. New Indian impulses were present in Buddhist iconog
raphy.

In literature the outstanding developments were in the drama and
the novel. Acting was not new in China but had a long history in con
nection with worship, in the pantomimes and historical recitals asso
ciated with the ancestral rites of antiquity, and in acrobatic performances
stressing the use of weapons. There were jugglers, dancers, and simple
plays as early as the Han, and the drama in several forms — comedies
among them — was found in succeeding dynasties. The drama was also
encouraged in the T'ang, notably under that great imperial patron of

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 221

the arts, Ming Huang, and scores of titles of plays have come down from
the Sung. Now, however, the stage came to sudden flowering, and hence
forth occupied a prominent place in Chinese life. The novel became pop
ular. One of the most famous of the historical romances of China, the
San Kuo Chih Yen I, or "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," portray
ing some of the stirring events of the period that succeeded the down
fall of the Han, seems to date from the Yuan — although it is very probable
that only the crude original was written in that period and that it under
went many revisions before it appeared in the sixteenth century in its
finished form. Both the drama and the novel were usually written in a
style which approached the vernacular and helped toward a popularization
of literature.

Why the drama and the novel should now first have flourished is not
entirely certain. One conjecture has it that it was because of outside
influences. Another surmise is that scholars, cut off from holding office,
and through the suspension of civil service examinations denied the usual
method of promotion, turned their energies into these channels. What
ever the causes, the fact is clear.

CHINESE INFLUENCE ON FOREIGN PEOPLES

While, thanks to the partial unity brought to so much of Asia
by Mongol rule, foreigners were having some influence upon Chinese
culture, China, in turn, was not without its effect upon other peoples.
Numbers of the foreigners in the Mongol employ in China conformed
to Chinese culture. Some became distinguished exponents of Confucianism
and a few were converted to Taoism. At first the Mongol conquerors
despised the Chinese, treated the Confucian scholars with contumely,
and forced them into servile employment. But eventually some Mongols
adopted much of Chinese civilization. Khubilai, great statesman that he
was, sought to rule as a Chinese Emperor, and more than he, some of his
successors fitted into that pattern. Commerce spread the use of Chinese
silks and porcelains, and these left their stamp upon the fabrics and the
designs of Central and Western Asia. The Chinese impress is seen upon
the painting of miniatures in Central Asia. It is just possible, moreover,
that knowledge of that art of printing which had reached so high a stage
of development in China under the Sung penetrated to the West in Mongol
times and had some share in the preparation for the revolutionary growth
of the press in Europe a century or so after the downfall of the Yuan.

SUMMARY

The Mongol period was marked by distinct changes in
Chinese life and was the break — or the transition — between the brilliant

222 VOLUME I

culture of the Sung and the prosperous but somewhat commonplace
and uninspired centuries which began with the Ming and were to continue
nearly to our own day. It witnessed the coming of many aliens, but saw
the introduction of very few foreign contributions which were long to
have a prominent place. It is distinguished for the rapid development
of the drama and the novel. By inducing a reaction from foreign control,
it contributed to the dominance of stereotyped and uncreative Confucian
ism in the dynasties which followed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The standard Chinese sources are the two dynastic histories, the Yuan Shih,
composed hastily in the early years of the Ming dynasty, and with many im
perfections, and the Hsin Yuan Shih, compiled in the twentieth century and
recognized officially (1919). E. Haenisch has "Untersuchungen liber das
Ylian-chao Pi Shi" (Die Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen) (Leipzig, 1931),
a study of a Mongol text which underlies part of the unofficial history of the
Yuan dynasty.

Among the special books and articles on political history are (on the
invasion of Burma) Edouard Huber, "Etudes Indochinoises. V. La Fin de la
Dynastie de Pagan," Bulletin de I'Scole Francaise de I' Extreme-Orient, 1909,
pp. 633-680; R. Grousset, I'Empire des Steppes. Attila, Genghiz-Khan,
Tamerlan (Paris, 1939); A. C. Moule, "The Siege of Saianfu and the Murder
of Achmach Bailo," Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 1927, pp. 1-35; A. C. Moule, "The Murder of Achmach Bailo," ibid.,
1928, pp. 256-258; A. C. Moule, "A Table of the Emperors of the Yuan
Dynasty," ibid., 1914, p. 124; Louis Hambis, Le Chapitre CVI1 du Yuan Che;
les Genealogies Imperiales Mongoles dans I'Histoire Chinoise de la Dynastie
Mongole (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1945, pp. XII, 181); Louis Hambis, Le Chapitre
CVH1 du Yuan Che: les Fiefs Attributues aux Membres de la Famille
Imperiale et aux Ministres de la Cour Mongole d'apres I'Histoire Chinoise
Officiale de la Dynastie Mongole (Leiden, E. J. Brill, Vol. I, 1954); F. W.
Cleaves, "The Sino-Mongolian Inscription of 1335 in Memory of Chang Ying-
jui," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 13, pp. 1-131; and W. P.
Groeneveldt, "The Expedition of the Mongols against Java in 1293 A.D.,"
China Review, Vol. 4, pp. 246-254. See also H. H. Howarth, History of the
Mongols from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (4 parts, London, 1876-
1927). On the invasion of Japan, see George Sansom, A History of Japan to
1334 (Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 438-450. On the chief in com
mand in the Mongol conquest of the Southern Sung, see F. W. Cleaves, "The
Biography of Bayan of the Barin in the Yuan Shih," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 185-303.

On administration, see F. W. Cleaves, "A Chancellery Practice of the
Mongols in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 14, pp. 493-526; H. Franke, "Amed, ein Beitrag zur
Wirtschaftsgeschichte Chinas unter Qubilai," Oriens, Vol. 2, pp. 222-236; P.
Olbricht, Das Postwesen in China unter der Mongolenherrschaft im 13 und 14
Jahrhundert (Weisbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1954).

On the economy and economic measures, see H. F. Schumann, Economic
Structure of the Yuan Dynasty. Translation of Chapters 93 and 94 of the

China Under the Rule of the Mongols 223

Yuan Shih (Harvard University Press, 1956, pp. xviii, 248); H. Franke, Geld
und Wirtschaft in China unter der Mongolenherrschaft (Leipzig, Otto Harrasso-
witz, 1949, pp. 171); Jung-pang Lo, "The Controversy over Grain Conveyance
During the Reign of Qubilai Qagan 1260-94," The Far Eastern Quarterly,
Vol. XIII, pp. 263-286; Chii Ch'ing Yuan, "Government Artisans of the
Yuan Dynasty," E-tu Zen Sun and J. De Francis, editors, Chinese Social
History (Washington, American Council of Learned Societies, 1956) pp. 234-
246.

On other foreign contacts under the Mongols, see H. Yule, Cathay and the
Way Thither (new edition by H. Cordier, 4 vols., London, 1913-1916); H.
Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo (third edition, revised by H. Cordier, 2
vols., London, 1921); A. C. Moule and P. Pelliot, Marco Polo, The Descrip
tion of the World (London, 2 vols., 1938); Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo
(Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, Vol. 1, 1959, pp. x, 611); E. Bretschneider,
Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources. Fragments towards the
Knowledge of the Geography and History of Central and Western Asia from the
13th to the 17th Century (2 vols., London, 1910 [Preface, 1887]); W. W. Rock-
hill, The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World,
1253-55, as Narrated by Himself, with Two Accounts of the Earlier Journey
of John of Pian de Carpine (London, 1900); W. W. Rockhill, "Notes on the
Relations and Trade of China with the Eastern Archipelago and the coasts
of the Indian Ocean during the Fourteenth Century," Toung Pao, 1913, pp.
473-476, 1914, pp. 419-447, 1915, pp. 61-159, 236-271, 374-392, 435-467,
604-626; Gabriel Ferrand, Relations de Voyages et Textes Geographiques
Arabes, Persans et Turcs a I' Extreme-Orient du VHIe au XVUle Siecles (2
vols., Paris, 1913-1914); H. Cordier, Ser Marco Polo, Notes and Addenda
(London, 1920); George Phillips, "Two Medieval Fuhkien Trading Ports,
Chiian-Chow and Chang-chow," Toung Pao, 1895, pp. 449-463; H. Cordier,
Les Voyages en Asie au XlVe Siecle du Bienheureux Frere Odoric de Por-
denone, Religieux de Saint-Francois (Paris, 1891); and Kaiming Chiu, "The
Introduction of Spectacles into China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
Vol. 1, pp. 186-193.

On general cultural developments, see Herbert Franke, "Beitrage zur
Kulturgeschichtechinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft. Das Shan-ku sin-hua des
Yang Yii," Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, XXXII, 2,
Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner for Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, 1956,
pp. 160, a translation with copious notes (Yang Yu died 1361). See also
F. W. Mote, "Confucian Eremetism in the Yuan Period," in A. F. Wright,
editor, The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 202-
240.

On religion under the Mongols, see L. Wieger, A History of Religious
Beliefs and Philosophical Opinions in China, translated from the French by
E. T. C. Werner (Hsien-hsien, 1927), Lesson 72; Ed. Chavannes, "Inscriptions
et Pieces de Chancellerie Chinoises de l'£poque Mongole," Toung Pao,' 1904,
pp. 354-477, 1905, pp. 1-42, 1908, pp. 297-428, gives documents which bear
upon Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism under the Mongols; J. K. Shryock,
The Origin and Development of the State Cult of Confucius (New York, The
Century Co., 1932), pp. 165-180.

On Christianity in China under the Mongols, the best account is A. C.
Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (London, Society for Pro
moting Christian Knowledge, 1930), pp. 78-264.

On Islam in China, see M. Broomhall, Islam in China (London, 1919) —

224 VOLUME I

not altogether reliable — and D'Ollone, Recherches sur Us Musulmans Chinois
(Paris, 1911).

On art, see B. Laufer, Tang, Sung, and Yuan Paintings Belonging to
Various Chinese Collectors (Paris and Brussels, 1924); 0. Siren, Chinese
Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (4 vols., London, 1925);
R. L. Hobson, The Art of the Chinese Potter from the Han Dynasty to the
End of the Ming (London, 1923); L. Sickman and A. Soper, The Art and
Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 94-102, 146-162, 269-282;
D. Carter, Four Thousand Years of China's Art (New York, The Ronald
Press, 1948), pp. 240-250.

On literature, see A. E. Zucker, The Chinese Theater (London, 1925);
Index du Tcho Keng Lu (Universite de Paris, Centre d'fitudes Sinologiques
de Pekin, 1950), a detailed index of the largest of the pi-chi (an important
kind of literature) of the late Yuan; F. W. Mote, "The Poet as Hero— A
Fourteenth Century Poet's Life: Kao Ch'i," in A. F. Wright, Confucian Per
sonalities (Stanford University Press, 1962).

For additional bibliography, especially on the Mongols, in general, East-
West relations, and Marco Polo, see C. 0. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp 22-25.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHINA AGAIN UNDER CHINESE RULE: THE
MING DYNASTY (A.D. 1368-1644)

INTRODUCTORY

The dynasty that Chu Yuan-chang founded was denominated
Ming, which may best be translated "brilliant" or "glorious." To a cer
tain degree it lived up to the implied promise. The genius of the period
lay largely in being practical and efficient. From the military standpoint,
-the Ming was stronger than any native Chinese ruling house since the
T'ang. It became the master of all of what we call China proper, as the
Sung had never done. It interfered in Mongolian affairs and for a time held
portions of what is now Sinkiang. It made its power felt as far south
as Ceylon. Its form of government was, with slight changes, taken over
by its successor, and was to last into the twentieth century. In culture,
leading achievements were in the applied arts. In the earlier years of the
Ming the Empire was prosperous. There was much building. The manu
facture of cotton cloth greatly increased. From time to time vigorous
intellectual movements appeared.

However, the Ming only partly deserved its title. It was never able
to extend its boundaries to those occupied by the Han and the T'ang.
Possibly as a reaction against domination of the Mongols, it tended to
be ethnocentric, resistant to foreign influences, and culturally conserva
tive. In government it was content to perpetuate, with modifications, the
machinery of its predecessors. Under it the Empire was elegant, wealthy,
and populous, but only here and there had a tendency to break out
creatively into new channels. Neither in intellectual nor in artistic achieve
ment did the China of the Ming display the originality of that of the T'ang
and the Sung.

POLITICAL HISTORY: THE HUNG wu EMPEROR

Chu Yuan-chang spent most of his reign in completing the
conquest of China, hi seeking to extend his power to neighboring lands,
and in putting the machinery of government into working order. His dy
nastic title was T'ai Tsu, but he is usually best known as the Hung Wu

225

226 VOLUME I

Emperor. Hung Wu is the name (or nien hao) by which the period of his
reign is designated.

The expulsion of the Mongols from Cambaluc and the proclamation
of the new dynasty were soon followed by the acknowledgment of the
authority of the Ming by the remainder of China. Hsu Ta, the general
who had taken Cambaluc for Chu Yuan-chang, reduced Shansi, Shensi,
and Kansu. Szechwan, where an independent principality had been set
up by an adventurer, was brought under the control of the Ming. By
the end of 1382 Yunnan had succumbed.

Several outlying territories were also induced to recognize the Ming.
The southern portion of what is now Manchuria made its submission.
Under the Hung Wu Emperor's successors, it may be added, most of Man
churia was for a time to a greater or less extent within the Chinese domains.
Korea and the Liu Ch'iu (Ryu Kyu) islands recognized the suzerainty
of the Ming, and embassies were received from Burma and Nepal. Not
content with expelling the Mongols from south of the Great Wall, the
Hung Wu Emperor carried the war into their own territory. Twice during
his reign a Chinese army reached the ancient Mongol capital, Karakorum.
He appears to have considered himself the legitimate successor of the
Mongol Grand Khans who had ruled from Cambaluc, and as such he
sought to extend his sway over their former possessions in the West. His
forces took at least one of the oases in that region, Kami, and his envoys
obtained the acceptance of his suzerainty by several other centers in what
is now Sinkiang.

When, however, Ming emissaries crossed the mountains to Samarkand,
they met with a far different reception. In this region they found the
truculent and energetic Tamerlane building a new empire out of some
of the fragments of Mongol power and were imprisoned. In the course
of time they were released, and Tamerlane and the Ming exchanged
several embassies. The Chinese regarded those which came to them as
bearers of tribute. Far from acknowledging the overlordship of the Ming,
however, Tamerlane was planning the invasion of China when (1405)
death terminated his career.

In another direction the Hung Wu Emperor met with moderate success.
Japanese pirates were ravaging the coasts of China, and the Ming dis
patched an envoy to Japan to request that they be restrained. Japan was
then nearing the end of a long period of civil war, during which there
had been much anarchy, and some of the local magnates had become
practically independent of the central authority. One of these latter,
a scion of the Japanese imperial line, prevented the envoy from reach
ing Kyoto, the capital. A few years later, this same prince, possibly
hoping for Chinese aid in the domestic strife, sent an embassy to the
Ming court. The Chinese appear to have accepted it as coming from the
Japanese Government, thus opening the way for an official intercourse

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 227

between the two countries, which continued intermittently for years,
although not without friction. The Chinese regarded the Japanese embassies
as bearers of tribute from a subordinate prince. The pirates were never
completely suppressed, partly, at least, because the Japanese authorities
were unable to cope with them.

In internal administration the Hung Wu Emperor displayed great
vigor, and the country appears to have settled down fairly promptly to its
ordinary pursuits. He was confronted with occasional revolts, but none of
them was of unusual consequence. His capital he established at what
was later known as Nanking. There he began the construction of an
enlarged city on magnificent lines. He promulgated a code of laws modeled
on those of the T'ang. He adopted the traditional bureaucratic organization
of the Empire. Although he modified this by dividing the country into
principalities over each of which he put one of his sons as Wang, these
were in addition to and not a substitute for the usual administrative
subdivision and the regular official hierarchy. He abolished the premier
ship and replaced it with what was eventually the Nei Ko, or Grand Secre
tariat, directly dependent on himself. His autocratic power was thereby
enhanced. After some hesitation — first inaugurating them and then for
a decade or so restricting them — the Hung Wu Emperor firmly re-estab
lished the civil service examinations and the principle of filling govern
ment offices from the successful candidates. Under the Ming, indeed, the
examinations acquired an inflexibility — stressing a minute knowledge
of the classical books and an artificial literary style — which may have
had much to do with discouraging originality among the educated.

Mindful of his early background, the Hung Wu Emperor showed
favor to the Buddhist monks. He organized them nationally into a hier
archy, but this may well have been for the purpose of facilitating state
control of the monasteries.

In spite of his friendliness to the Buddhists, the Hung Wu Emperor
strengthened Confucianism. He showed marked deference to Confucian
scholarship; he ordered the establishment of an Empire-wide system of
schools in which the basis of instruction was the Confucian Classics; he
honored the Hanlin Academy; he preserved the traditional system of
state religious observances which were closely associated with Confucian
ism; he abolished all the state-awarded titles of the gods except ^those of
Confucius. It is not strange that a conservatism was nourished which made
later change difficult.

POLITICAL HISTORY: THE YUNG LO PERIOD

The Hung Wu Emperor was gathered to his fathers in 1398.
He had held the throne for thirty years and had established his family so
firmly upon it that they retained it for another two and a half centuries.

228 VOLUME I

His death was followed almost immediately by a struggle over the
succession, 'which for about four years plunged the country into civil
war. He had named as his heir a grandson, Chu Yiin-wen, the son of his
deceased oldest son. Only in his teens when the death of his grandfather
placed him on the throne, Chu Yiin-wen soon found himself in an impos
sible situation. He antagonized his uncles, including Chu Ti, the fourth son
of the Hung Wu Emperor, Chu Ti had been given by his father the
control of a large district in the Northeast, and he came to be known
as the Prince of Yen. A man of marked energy and ability, he speedily
found occasion to raise the standard of revolt. The young Emperor had
many loyal supporters who fought valiantly for him, and it was not until
1403 that Chu Ti, after a war which laid waste much of the territory
on the plain between the Yellow River and the Yangtze, succeeded in
taking Nanking. In the fall of his capital, Chu Yiin-wen disappeared, and
it was often asserted that he was not killed but escaped in the garb
of a Buddhist monk, lived in hiding in a monastery, and had his identity
disclosed many years later. Whatever his fate, he had permanently lost
the Empire.

Chu Ti, in spite of the bloodshed by which he had made his way to
supreme power, proved an able monarch. While more correctly called by
his dynastic title, Ch'eng Tsu, he is best known to us by the name of his
reign period, Yung Lo (1403-1424). Under him the Ming dynasty reached
the apex of its power. He vigorously maintained and extended Chinese
prestige abroad and gave the Empire an energetic domestic administra
tion.

In his foreign policy the Yung Lo Emperor was aggressive. He inter
fered actively in Mongolia and waged several campaigns there. He wel
comed diplomatic relations with Yoshimitsu, the Shogun who controlled
most of Japan. Yoshimitsu was eager for friendly intercourse with China.
He promised to restrain the Japanese pirates who troubled the coasts of
China and even acknowledged the Ming Emperor as his suzerain. In
Annam the Yung Lo Emperor took advantage of internal dissensions to
occupy much of the land and to divide it into Chinese administrative
districts. Under him the petty chiefs of Upper Burma submitted more or
less to Chinese authority.

The Yung Lo Emperor sent several naval expeditions to the lands
to the south. They visited Cochin China, Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, Siam,
India, and Ceylon. In Ceylon, a ruler who treated a Chinese envoy with
contumely was taken prisoner and transported to China, and at least
part of the island is said to have paid tribute to the Ming for the next half-
century. In several others of the lands visited the local princes were induced,
either peaceably or by force, to recognize Chinese overlordship. The lead
ing commander in these southern exploits was a eunuch, Cheng-ho, who

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 229

had first distinguished himself in the suppression of a rebellion in Yun
nan. Under his captaincy seven expeditions sailed to the southern
seas, the last of them after the Yung Lo Emperor's death. He visited
Annam, Cambodia, Malacca, Siam, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Cochin,
Ceylon, Bengal, Arabia, the Somali Coast (in eastern Africa), and Ormuz
(on the Persian Gulf). Tribute was received from Java, the Yung Lo
Emperor was sent presents from one or more rulers in South India and
conferred the title of king upon one, and even from the distant Somali
Coast four missions were dispatched to China before his death. During
no other dynasty was Chinese authority so far extended overseas.

In domestic administration, the Yung Lo period saw notable achieve
ments. The Emperor moved the seat of imperial government to the North,
to what he called Peking, or the Northern Capital, in contrast to his
father's choice, Nanking, or the Southern Capital. The reason for the
change may have been that Peking, so much nearer the northern marches,
was a better location for the defense of the Empire against its traditional
enemies. It may also have been because the North had been the center
of the Yung Lo Emperor's power and was more friendly than the South.
Peking, occupying part of the site of the Cambaluc of the Mongols, was
largely rebuilt. The grandeur of the conception of the architects can
be discerned in the walls and imperial palaces and temples as they existed
in the fore part of the twentieth century, for, repaired and altered from
time to time, in their main features they dated from the Yung Lo period.
Peking was long unrivaled in the entire world for the formal and stately
expression in buildings of its position as the seat of administration of a
vast empire.

The Yung Lo Emperor sought to promote the prosperity of his realm.
He encouraged the migration of settlers into the regions laid waste in
the wars that had brought him to the throne. For the purpose of facilitating
the transportation of rice to Peking and of avoiding the dangerous sea
passage around the Shantung promontory, he had the Grand Canal
improved. Although his personal inclination was toward Buddhism, espe
cially of the Tibetan type, officially he pursued his father's policy of
strengthening the Confucian cult: by showing favor to the Hanlin Academy,
by encouraging the study of the Confucian Classics, by honoring Con
fucius, and by maintaining the civil service examinations. He endeavored
to restrict the numbers of Buddhist monks by ordering some of them
to return to secular life. It was at his command that one of the most
gigantic compilations ever made, the Yung Lo Ta Tien, was accom
plished — a vast collection of excerpts and entire works from the mass
of Chinese literature. So huge was it that the cost of printing appalled
even the imperial treasury, and except for some sections, it remained in
manuscript only.

230 VOLUME I

POLITICAL HISTORY: THE SUCCESSORS OF THE YUNG LO EMPEROR

During the remaining years that it retained the Mandate
of Heaven, the family of Chu Yiian-chang produced no monarchs of the
vigor and ability of the Hung Wu and Yung Lo Emperors. Much of the
time the Empire was fairly prosperous — although often we hear of agri
cultural distress and even famine — but for the more than two centuries
which elapsed between the death of the Yung Lo Emperor and the
overthrow of the dynasty, no ruler emerged who was at all comparable
with the chief rulers of preceding lines. No noteworthy effort was made
to extend the frontiers: in area the Empire shrank rather than expanded.
Before the fifteenth century was half gone, Annam had regained its inde
pendence. Tribute from the states across the seas gradually lapsed. Fighting
with the Mongols was frequent, and the tide of battle did not always
flow in favor of the Chinese. About the middle of the fifteenth century
a Mongol army defeated and captured a Ming Emperor, and in the ensuing
peace the Chinese renounced all claim to intervention in Mongolian
affairs. It seems to have been more because of the weakness of her neigh
bors than because of her own strength that in the last several decades
of the dynasty China was not more frequently invaded.

Friction with the Japanese marked many of the later years of the
Ming. In spite of the friendly relations earlier established with the Ashi-
kaga Shoguns — the most powerful magnates in the Japan of the day —
Japanese pirates persisted in ravaging the coasts of China, for the control
of the Ashikaga was not effective over all the island realm. The raiders
sacked even such important cities as Ningpo and Yangchow. Estrange
ment between China and Japan followed (ca. 1531) and commerce dwin
dled. The difficulties culminated in a determined Japanese attempt to
invade and conquer China. The initiating and guiding mind in this venture
was Hideyoshi, an able and vigorous soldier of lowly birth. In the period
of internal turmoil which accompanied and followed the downfall of the
Ashikaga, he had made himself master of the land. Japan pacified, he
turned to the continent for further exploits. He asked the Koreans to
allow his forces to pass through their territories, but was rebuffed. His
armies thereupon invaded the peninsula (1592) and within a year had
taken several of its principal centers. The Chinese dispatched troops to aid
•the Koreans. Their first contingent was small and was quickly repulsed,
but a second, much larger, drove the Japanese southward, and Hideyoshsi
withdrew from the Peninsula all but a few thousand men. Negotiations
followed, but Hideyoshi angrily terminated them when the Ming envoys,
in what seemed to him an insultingly patronizing fashion, offered him
investiture as a vassal prince. In 1597 he renewed the invasion of Korea.

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 231

The following year a Chinese army in the peninsula was decisively
defeated. Hideyoshi's death (1598) led to the Japanese withdrawal from
the Korean adventure, and that particular threat to the Ming disappeared.

THE RISE OF THE MANCHUS AND THE END OF THE MING

The reign under which the Japanese invasion occurred — usu
ally known by its year title, Wan Li (1573-1620) — was the longest of the
dynasty. Thanks to the vigor of an able minister, its first days were aus
picious, but when this leadership was removed by death, the realm fell
upon evil days. The monarch was incompetent, the court was torn by fac
tions, taxes were oppressive, agricultural distress was frequent, rnisgovern-
ment was rife, great landed estates were assigned to imperial favorites and
the politically powerful, and brigandage and insurrections multiplied.

At this juncture, a new power arose in the Northeast, and by the middle
of the seventeenth century it had conquered the Empire. The latest of those
invasions from the north which were so frequent and important a factor
in China's history, it proved to be the most successful of them all: the
Manchus governed the whole of China — something which no foreign
conqueror except the Mongols had ever done — and held it for more than
two and a half centuries, approximately three times as long as had the
Mongols.

The Manchus were a Tungusic people, related to the Juchen, or Chin,
who had been prominent opponents of the Sung. At the dawn of the
sixteenth century they were dwelling in the valley of the Sungari, in parts
of the later provinces of Kirin and Heilungchiang. About the beginning of
the seventeenth century they were welded into a powerful organization
by Nurhachu (ca. 1559-1626). By the time of his death Nurhachu had
extended his frontiers to the sea on the east and to the Amur on the
north, and had moved his capital to Mukden, captured from the Ming.
Under Nurhachu and his successor a large number of Mongols were
subdued, and others voluntarily accepted the Manchu rule. Many Mongols
were incorporated into the Manchu armies and acknowledged the house
of Nurhachu as the imperial line of China. The name Ch'ing was assumed,
the title by which the dynasty was to be known in Chinese history. The
Manchus also launched repeated attacks against Korea and eventually
succeeded in bringing it to accept their suzerainty.

The Ch'ing often broke through the Great Wall and raided parts of
the North China plain. However, they did not succeed in obtaining a
permanent foothold south of the Wall until internal rebellion had fatally
weakened their opponents. The last of the Ming to rule in Peking made
desperate but vain efforts to retrieve the declining fortunes of his house.

232 VOLUME I

Resistance against the repeated attacks of the Manchus impoverished
an already depleted treasury. The death blow was a rebellion led by Li
Tzu-cheng, son of a village headman in Shensi. Famine and taxation had
driven Li, as they have many another Chinese, to turn brigand. He proved
an able general and disciplinarian, in 1642 captured K'aifeng and made
himself master of Shensi, and in 1644 proclaimed himself Emperor of a
new dynasty. In the latter year he marched upon Peking and took it.
The Ming Emperor, in despair, hung himself as the city fell.

On the northeastern frontier, holding it against the Manchus, was a
Chinese general, Wu San-kuei. When Peking passed out of Ming hands,
goaded on by the murder of his father by Li and by Li's seizure of a
favorite concubine, he joined forces with the Ch'ing. The combined armies
defeated Li in the open field and took the capital (1644). Li Tzu-ch'eng
retreated westward and southward, his armies melted away, and he was
soon eliminated.

The Manchus, although safely ensconced in Peking and supported by
the powerful Wu San-kuei, found the conquest of the remainder of China
no easy task. The adherents of the Ming made a determined resistance
and might conceivably have held part of the country for an indefinite
period had it not been for unfortunate weaknesses at the top. The Ming
aspirants to the throne were inept and dissensions unnerved their sup
porters. The Ch'ing took Yangchow with great slaughter, and not long
thereafter Nanking fell to them (1645). One of the Ming claimants set
up his headquarters in Chekiang, but soon fled, took refuge in a fleet,
lived a semipiratical life, and died in 1662. Another, who attempted to
establish himself in Fukien, perished when the enemy carried their victorious
arms through the province. Still another was put forward at Canton,
but in 1647 that city passed into the possession of the Manchus. Serious
resistance was encountered by the Ch'ing in Shensi and Shansi. In Szech-
wan, Chang Hsien-chung, who had headed a rebellion against the Ming
and who called himself the King of the West, was subdued. During his
rule the population of Szechwan was drastically reduced.

The last of the descendants of Chu Yuan-chang to claim the throne,
a prince who is usually known by his title, Kuei Wang, held out for some
years in Kwangsi and Yunnan. In 1648, indeed, it looked as though he
might regain the Empire. Chinese officers in Szechwan, Shansi, and south
of the Yangtze, who had assisted the Manchus in the conquest, disgruntled
with their new masters, turned to Kuei Wang. For a short time there was
held in the name of that prince much of Kwangtung, Kiangsi, Hunan,
Szechwan, Shensi, and Shansi, as well as Kwangsi, Kweichow, and Yunnan.
By the end of 1650, however, the Manchus had regained most of the lost
territory and only Kweichow and Yunnan remained to Kuei Wang. Al-

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 233

though he then ceased to be a serious menace to the conquerors, Kuei Wang
lived on in mountain fastnesses in the Southwest for a number of years and
did not come to his end until 1662.

In that same year, 1662, there died a picturesque and vigorous oppo
nent of the Manchus, the pirate Cheng Ch'eng-kung, who is usually known
to Europeans as Koxinga. A son, by a Japanese mother, of a famous
naval freebooter who had made loyalty to the Ming the excuse for ravag
ing the southern coasts, he was his father's chief lieutenant. His name
became a terror in the ports of China, and he took possession of part of
the island of Formosa. When his father and two of his brothers were
treacherously executed by the Manchus, he vowed to avenge their death.
Through the control of commerce which the possession of Formosa gave
him, he gained the sinews of war. So serious a menace did he prove that
the Manchus, to combat him and other Ming loyalists who were still strong
on the sea, ordered the population removed from the coast from Shantung
through Kwangtung. The measure was not fully carried out, but was most
nearly completed in Fukien. Cheng Ch'£ng-kung's possessions in Formosa
passed to his son, and only after the death of the latter were the Manchus
able to annex the island and so bring opposition to an end. It was not
until 1683 that an imperial order allowed the Chinese once more to dwell
on the coasts of Fukien.

Even before their final victory, the Ch'ing were adopting Chinese
civilization. The conquest was not, strictly speaking, by foreigners, but by
a people largely Chinese in culture and not unrelated to some of the
Northern Chinese in blood. Although to the very end of their power —
in 1912 — they endeavored to keep themselves aloof from the Chinese
as a race and to a certain extent in manners and customs, the Manchus
zealously supported Chinese institutions. They perpetuated the admin
istrative system and laws of the Ming with but little alteration. The fifteen
provinces of the Ming were increased to eighteen by the subdivision of
some of the larger ones. Manchu garrisons were placed in strategic cities
in a number of the provinces and were supported at public expense.
Manchus were appointed, along with Chinese, on the boards at Peking
and were admitted to competition in the civil service examinations. The
male Chinese were forced to shave part of their heads and wear the
queue — the Manchu form of headdress — as a sign of loyalty to the
dynasty. With these and a few other exceptions, however, government went
on as it had under Chinese rule. The great majority of the positions in
the bureaucracy, including some of the very highest, were held by Chinese,
Confucius was honored, the civil service examinations were conducted
with practically the same requirements and machinery as under the Ming,
and many of the Manchus became expert in Chinese lore.

234 VOLUME I

FOREIGN INTERCOURSE: EXTENSIVE COMMERCE WITH VARIOUS
SECTIONS OF THE ASIATIC WORLD AND RENEWED CONTACTS WITH
EUROPEANS

It may be an indication of the practical-mindedness of the
Ming age that during much of its history foreign trade flourished and
the Chinese often went actively forth to encourage it. This was particularly
true in the early, vigorous years of the dynasty. We have seen how, under
the Yung Lo Emperor, naval expeditions were sent to lands to the south.
Chinese carried on trade with Java, Sumatra, India, Siam, Ceylon, parts of
what is now Vietnam, and with lands even farther to the southwest.
However, Chinese ships were later restricted, by imperial command, to
coastal waters. With the Land of the Rising Sun, too, there was active
trade. It was the means of bringing many Chinese products and much
Chinese thought to Japan. For example, during part of the Ming the
chief circulating medium in Japan was Chinese copper coins, Japanese
Buddhist monks visited Chinese monasteries, and Chinese philosophy con
tinued to be influential.

Before the dynasty ended, those contacts with the Occident had begun
which eventually were to work the greatest cultural revolution in China's
history — infinitely greater than that wrought by the Mongols and Manchus
and more thoroughgoing even than that which followed the coming of
Buddhism. Commerce with Europe, it must be noted, was due to the
initiative of Westerners and not to Chinese enterprise. At the time, this
fresh touch with the Occident did not appear nearly so significant as did
some other events, and the Manchu rule was more than two-thirds over
before it had resulted in any very important changes in Chinese civiliza
tion. Because of its outcome in our own day, however, it must here be
chronicled.

After the fall of the Mongols, no western Europeans appear to have
come to China, and the little Christian communities which might have
perpetuated their influence seem entirely to have disappeared. However,
in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the expansion of European peo
ples of which the merchants and missionaries of the thirteenth and four
teenth centuries were a foreshadowing, began afresh. It was in the last
decade of that century that daring European voyagers discovered, to them,
a new world in the Western Hemisphere and an all-sea route around
Africa to India. Only a few years later their successors were knocking at
the doors of China. It was, indeed, the lure of the land Marco Polo's
famous story had portrayed to successive generations of Europeans that
drew some of the explorers. This was true of Columbus, who sailed
westward in the belief that the world was smaller than it proved to be
and that the east coast of Asia was about where America was found.

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 235

The first Europeans to arrive in China in this new day were the
Portuguese. It was they who first rounded the Cape of Good Hope and
gained a foothold in India. Malacca fell to their arms in 1511. There they
found Chinese ships. A few years later, probably in 1514, they reached
China. Before long they established themselves off the coast of Kwang-
tung and in ports in Fukien and Chekiang. Their early career in China was
stormy. The Moslem ruler of Malacca, whom they had dispossessed,
complained of them to the Chinese authorities. A Portuguese envoy,
Pires, who reached Peking in 1520 was treated as a spy, was conveyed
by imperial order to Canton, was there confined with several of his com
panions, and died in prison. A settlement which the Portuguese estab
lished near Ningpo was wiped out by a massacre (1545), and a similar
fate overtook a trading colony in Fukien (1549). For a time the Por
tuguese retained a precarious tenure only on islands south of Canton.

For this ill fortune the Portuguese had chiefly themselves to thank.
Truculent and lawless, regarding all Eastern peoples as legitimate prey,
they were little if any better than the contemporary Japanese pirates who
pillaged the Chinese coasts. The Ming authorities can scarcely be censured
for treating them as freebooters.

Within a few years after these events — the exact date is not quite
certain — the Portuguese succeeded in making a permanent settlement in
China, at Macao, on a peninsula which commanded a harbor on an island
south of Canton. Here they have remained to this day, although the
harbor is too shallow for the great oceangoing steamers of recent years,
and the sleepy little town, a bit of Portugal set down in East Asia, long
subsisted largely on dubious gains from gambling and opium.

While the Portuguese were journeying eastward, the Spaniards were
coming westward. The Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese Magellan
circumnavigated the globe in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
Before the hazardous voyage was completed Magellan lost his life in the
Philippines (1521). The Spaniards soon firmly established themselves in
the islands with Manila (founded 1571) as their capital. For a few years
in the first half of the seventeenth century the Spaniards had posts in
Formosa, but from these they were driven by the Dutch (1642).

In their occupation of the Philippines the Spaniards found the Chinese
a chronic problem. Soon after the beginning of their conquest they were
attacked by a Chinese pirate, seconded by a Japanese. Chinese migrated
to the islands and much of the business of Manila passed into their
hands. The Spaniards, alarmed, met the problem by the simple but cruel
expedient of wholesale massacres. In 1603 and again in 1639, insurrec
tions of Chinese were suppressed by putting thousands to the sword. In
spite of these disasters, the Chinese persisted in coming.

Before the downfall of the Ming the Dutch had arrived in China. In
1622 they made an unsuccessful attack on Macao, and then obtained

236 VOLUME I

a foothold in the Pescadores and a little later in Formosa. From the latter
they were driven by Koxinga.

Not far from the end of the Ming, a fourth European people, the
English, destined two centuries later to have a leading part in the foreign
affairs of the Empire, made their first effort to open trade with the Middle
Kingdom. In 1637 a squadron of five vessels arrived at Macao, proceeded
to Canton, silenced the batteries which attempted to oppose their passage
to that city, and disposed of their cargo. This troubled opening of rela
tions was a grim augury of the future.

From the north the Russians began to make their appearance, Adven
turers who were pushing the frontiers of the Czar eastward crossed the
borders of China, and before the Manchu conquest some had visited
Peking.

Under the Ming the merchants from Europe had no success in pene
trating far inland. It was with great difficulty that they obtained even a,
temporary entrance into the coast cities. Before the Manchu conquest,
however, European missionaries had not only traveled in the interior
but had as well effected a settled residence in several of the most impor
tant centers, including Peking itself.

The great wave of European exploration and discovery of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries was accompanied by a fresh burst of missionary
enthusiasm in the Roman Catholic Church. In the sixteenth century that
Church experienced a striking quickening of its life. The Society of Jesus
came into existence and older orders were stimulated into fresh activity.
Wherever the Portuguese and Spanish explorers and conquerors made their
way — and often in advance of them — went also the missionaries. In India,
Africa, both Americas, the West Indies, Japan, and the Philippines were
to be found the hardy and courageous representatives of the Roman Cath
olic faith.

The first missionary to seek to penetrate China in this new era was the
heroic Jesuit, Francis Xavier. In 1552 he spent some weeks south of
Canton, on the island of Shang-ch'uan, at that time the chief headquarters
of Portuguese traders. Thence he made futile attempts to reach the main
land, and there, near the close of 1552, he died.

Xavier was followed shortly by other missionaries, some of his own
Society, under Portuguese auspices, and some, of other orders, from the
Philippines. In time Macao became the seat of a bishop and of several
churches and religious houses and the center from which many missionaries
sought to enter the regions beyond.

The first successful mission outside Macao was established by the
Jesuits. Its leading figure was an Italian, Matthew RiccL Ricci arrived in
China in 1582 and died in Peking in 1610. In the intervening twenty-eight

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 237

years he did more than any other one man to win a hearing for his faith
and to develop the methods which were to be employed by his colleagues
and successors. He won the respect of many of the dominant scholar-
officials by dressing as they did, by applying himself diligently to the study
of the Classics which they held in esteem, by conforming to their practices
as far as he conscientiously could, and especially by his knowledge of
mathematics and astronomy, branches of learning in which Europe then
excelled China. He and his confreres saw that only through the friendship
of members of the ruling class could they hope to gain access to the masses
of China. It was by this means that Ricci made his way to Peking, and
he had the satisfaction of seeing two of the Hanlin Academy and an im
perial prince won to the faith.

Before the end of the Ming, Jesuits were to be found in several centers,
and Dominicans and Franciscans from the Philippines had entered Fukien.
Occasionally persecutions had broken out, some of them fairly severe, but
the faith was making headway. In Peking the Jesuits had gained further
recognition by being assigned to the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy to
reform the calendar.

The collapse of the Ming strengthened the position of the missionaries.
In Peking, the Manchus gave Schall, a German Jesuit, official rank and
entrusted him with the preparation of the calendar. Jesuits, too, were to be
found in the court of the last Ming aspirant, the unfortunate Kuei Wang.
That prince's heir, his mother, and his heir's mother were baptized, and
his chief general and leading eunuch were also professing Christians.

CULTURE UNDER THE MING.' FOREIGN INFLUENCES

Under vthe Ming, the contact with aliens, destined to be
revolutionary in the future, had little marked effect on Chinese culture.
Through the Europeans came a few plants from the New World. Late in the
sixteenth or early -in the seventeenth century tobacco was introduced from
the Philippines. Then or later were brought in the sweet potato, maize, and
the peanut — all of them of American origin, and all of them to become
important sources of food, eventually with striking effects on the agriculture
and population growth of China. The pineapple, also of American
provenance, reached China at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Syphilis, originally from America, entered. The Spanish peso appeared and
eventually had an important impact on the money economy of the Empire.
Through the missionaries there entered Christian influences, and new con
ceptions of mathematics, astronomy, geography, and mechanics. As yet,
however, none of these importations worked any very great modification
in Chinese life as a whole.

238 VOLUME I

CULTURE UNDER THE MING: RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

In religion and philosophy the nearly three centuries of the
Ming, when compared with some preceding dynasties that had enjoyed
a long tenure, were relatively sterile. Buddhism and Taoism continued, but
no new currents of life eventuating in important sects disturbed them. They
were, indeed, suffering from slow inward decay. To be sure, they seemed
securely fixed as permanent features of Chinese life. However, most of such
activity in philosophy as existed was to be found not in them, but in the
Confucian school.

Confucianism was the dominant philosophy of the scholar-officials
through whom the Empire was ruled, and was kept so by the civil service
examinations by which the members of that class were recruited. In official
Confucianism the school of Chu Hsi was orthodox. An eminent authority
declared that "ever since the time of the philosopher Chu, the truth has
been made manifest to the world: no more writing is necessary: what is
left to us is practice." The Confucian cult was reorganized. In the sixteenth
century tablets were ordered substituted in the Confucian temples for
images, the designation of the temple was changed from miao ("temple")
to tien ("hall") — alterations which tended to minimize the religious ele
ment — and some lesser modifications were made.

Why there should have been less originality than in some other dynasties
must be a matter of conjecture. It may have been the absence of sufficient
stimulus from the outside. No tides were flooding in from abroad as power
fully as had Buddhism in the centuries preceding and during the T'ang:
neither Islam nor Christianity as yet attracted as great a following as had
this other foreign faith. It may have been that, after freeing itself from its
conquest by the Mongols, China was seeking to restore and preserve its
cultural independence. It may have been the stereotyping of Chinese
thought through the agency of the civil service examinations. A majority
of the best minds sought official promotion and social recognition through
these tests, and in so doing were shaped by the conventional mold. The
autocracy of the Emperors was intolerant of dangerous deviation from the
established Confucianism.

However, much intellectual interest was seen. Many groups existed
for the discussion and study of philosophy and literature. They often en
gaged in debates and not infrequently were active in politics.

Some individuals became restive under orthodoxy and wished to
think for themselves. The most distinguished, Wang Yang-ming (ca. 1472-
1528), had the courage and originality to work out a philosophy which
differed from that of his class. Coming from a family of scholars and offi
cials, he passed through the normal routine of study and examinations and
spent much of his life in the service of the state, holding important offices.

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 239

He was unwilling, however, merely to work for degrees. He wished to arrive
at knowledge for himself, and not to repeat, parrotlike, the findings of
preceding thinkers. The quest led him into opposition to Chu Hsi and his
followers. That school, it will be recalled, had professed to advocate the
search for truth, moral and otherwise, through the "investigation of things."
Wang Yang-ming, on the other hand, by an experience of sudden illumina
tion after a long period of attempting to arrive at knowledge through the
method advocated by Chu Hsi, came to believe that truth must be sought
by looking within and that his own nature was a sufficient source of wisdom.
Like some critics who were contemporary with Chu Hsi, he emphasized
intuition — conscience — as the channel of information concerning the
moral law. As a corollary, he advocated self-discipline and action. In part
Wang Yang-ming displayed a resemblance to both Taoism and Ch'an
Buddhism. Probably, either consciously or unconsciously, he had been
influenced by both. He was, however, neither Taoist nor Buddhist, but
must be reckoned as in the Confucian line. His teachings proved not
nearly as potent in China as in Japan. In the latter country (under the
Japanese pronunciation of his name, Oyomei) he was to have a great vogue,
and the controversy between his followers and those of Chu Hsi often
became acute. In China those who followed him branched into several
schools. One of the latter sought a syncretism of Confucianism, Taoism,
and Buddhism and was called "the Wildcat Ch'an School."

In the latter part of the Ming a number of scholars, known as the
Tunglin Group, from a private academy in the modern Kiangsu, vigorously
dissented from the direction taken by this syncretism and sought a revival
of Confucianism. They endeavored to bring about the moral reform of a
government which was progressively corrupt. Eventually they ran afoul of
the notorious eunuch, Wei Chung-hsien, who dominated the Emperor and
the Empire. Wei Chung-hsien had numbers of them imprisoned and several
of them died under torture. Wei Chung-hsien was dismissed by the next
Emperor and committed suicide (1627). Many of his henchmen were
punished. But the Tunglin movement was not revived.

CULTURE UNDER THE MING: LITERATURE

In literature the Ming displayed little marked originality. No
new types of works of outstanding significance appeared. There was, how
ever, much literary activity. In quantity the output was large and the
quality by no means always mediocre. Great libraries were collected, both
under imperial auspices and by private individuals.

Printing, now for many years a commonplace, made the circulation of
books comparatively easy and inexpensive, and so continued to encourage
authorship. Both wooden blocks and movable type were employed. Gov-

240 VOLUME I

ernment presses at Nanking and Peking had a monopoly of the publication
of the Classics and of other works issued by imperial authorization. Fre
quently books so printed were distributed among the various educational
institutions. Private presses, some of them kept in the same families for
generations, printed many other works, including those which fall within
the classification of belles-lettres.

The drama was popular, and although the plays of former dynasties
continued to be produced, at least one new type with the accompanying
music was originated, simpler than the classical style.

The period made major contributions through the novel. This type of
literature was, as we have seen, not an invention of Ming scholars, but had
first risen into prominence under the Mongols. During the Ming, however,
it was a vehicle for much literary expression, and possibly because it was
less stereotyped than some of the traditional forms of literature, at times
gave indication of real genius. Most of the greatest fiction had circulated
for centuries in the form of collections of incidents pieced together by
popular professional storytellers and handed down by word of mouth.
Some of these cycles had wide popular currency, were familiar to a large
proportion of the population, and were retold again and again with many
variations. Then some of them were put into writing, at first crudely.
Eventually authors of outstanding ability took a few of them in hand, often
anonymously (for composition of such tales, especially in the vernacular,
was supposed to be beneath the dignity of a scholar), and lasting master
pieces came into existence.

It must be noted, moreover, that one of the greatest of Chinese travel
diaries, that by Hsu Hsia-k'o, dates from the Ming. Hsii, who lived toward
the close of the dynasty, traveled extensively through the Empire and wrote
detailed and vivid descriptions of rivers, mountains, buildings, and local
customs. Particularly he explored the Southwest, determined the source of
the West River, showed that the Mekong and Salween are separate streams,
and demonstrated that the Chin Sha Kiang, or River of the Golden Sand,
is the upper reaches of the Yangtze.

The activities of the Ming writers were molded in part by the dominance
of the civil service examinations. Since through them lay the road to
official preferment and social recognition, and since they emphasized a
knowledge of the Classics and of the orthodox commentators and form
rather than content, their tendency was to restrict the minds subjected to
them to pedestrian, laborious, and voluminous, but quite uninspired, effort
in the fields of history, government, and related subjects. Certainly the
energies of Ming scholars were expended very largely on sober writings
and compilations — among them local geographies and histories, works of
reference, collections of inscriptions, descriptions of government, biogra
phies, a long study of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi, treatises on military train-

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 241

ing and strategy, a great work on agriculture by the most eminent Christian
of the time, Hsu Kuang-ch'i, many treatises on law (which influenced
Korea, Japan, and Annam) , books on medicine, including a huge materia
medica (the Pen ts'ao kang mu, by Li Shih-chen, and based in part on
earlier works of the same kind), many encyclopedias, critiques of art, and
collections of Buddhist and Taoist works. All these required diligence, but
in imaginative power few if any rose above mediocrity. There were, to be
sure, poets, some of whom became famous — such as Li Tung-yang — but
none achieved the place in Chinese literature that those of the T'ang had
won. Late in the Ming the beginning of a new scientific study of philology
came into being. In a work published in 1543, Mei Tzu questioned the
"ancient text" of the Shu Ching — the portions of that venerable work which
in the next dynasty were conclusively proved to be spurious. Ming thought,
however, was largely confined to familiar channels. Scholar after scholar
was executed for departure from what was deemed proper. European mis
sionaries brought in new ideas in mathematics^ astronomy, and theology,
and wrote extensively on them, but down to the close of the Ming these did
little to stir the Chinese mind from its accustomed grooves.

CULTURE UNDER THE MING*. ART

In art, the Ming period is sometimes described as decadent.
For some forms the generalization holds true, but it is by no means entirely
accurate.

Buddhist sculptured figures, while produced in large quantities, for
vigor and religious feeling did not begin to approach those of earlier
dynasties. It is in secular subjects from everyday life, and in the carving
of jade, ivory, columns, and balustrades, that Ming sculpture is seen at its
best.

In painting it is questionable whether Ming artists attained the levels
reached by their predecessors of the T'ang and the Sung. The Hung Wu
Emperor established at Nanking an academy of painting. For some years
the Sung traditions in style and subject matter were continued. The
dynasty's roster of painters is a long one. The subjects included landscapes,
birds, flowers, and portraits of court ladies. The elegance, delicacy, and
careful finish of many of the paintings were praiseworthy. On the whole,
however, the work was inferior and appears to have become more so as
the dynasty progressed, especially after the capital was moved to Peking.
Ornateness was exaggerated, and in landscapes there was less intimacy with
nature than under the Sung. Expert criticism of painting flourished and a
well-known encyclopedia of painting was compiled.

In architecture, not only was the quantity produced prodigious, but
much of the quality was high. The Ming builders and engineers displayed

242 VOLUME I

an ability which often rose to the level of genius. Many of the bridges,
city walls, temples, and pagodas that were still seen at the outset of the
twentieth century, before the revolutionary age swept them aside, dated
from the Ming. The Great Wall was largely rebuilt: most of it as we see
it today dates from the Ming.

In some other fields of art the Ming registered marked advance. Mag
nificent pieces of cloisonne were produced. Rugs and carpets appear to
have surpassed those of preceding centuries — perhaps because of contacts
with that industry in Persia and the Near East. In the casting of bronze
the Ming craftsmen attained great skill, particularly in the Hslian Te
period (1426-1436).

It was especially in ceramics that the Ming excelled. The output was
enormous and both in form and style showed a marked and diversified
departure from the Sung. Under the Sung, monochrome prevailed. Under
the Ming, polychrome decoration was the rule, and monochrome products,
while continuing, were in the minority. White porcelain was decorated with
pictorial designs in colors — by glazes, enamels, and underglaze blues and
reds. A beautiful cobalt blue came in, for this could stand the high tempera
ture required to fuse the glaze. Later another blue, imported originally from
Persia, became popular. Still other colors appeared: green, yellow, purple,
reds of various shades, black, and more blues, put on in varying combina
tions. Many, too, were the figures, scenes, and designs portrayed.

Production was at many centers. The chief place of manufacture was
still at Ching-te Chen, in Kiangsi. Here vast natural deposits of the minerals
needed for manufacture of porcelain facilitated the industry. The finest
specimens are from the early reigns of the dynasty, before the best of the
clays were exhausted. The Ching-te Chen works either drove out of
competition or overshadowed the other centers arid were to retain their
supremacy until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Porcelain wares were largely exported and reached not only the Near
East but also Europe, and eventually were thought of, with silk and tea,
as the characteristic products of China.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS

In the earlier centuries of the Ming the Empire prospered.
Shifts of population replenished areas devastated by war and made the
Chinese dominant in areas where they had been minorities. At the com
mand of the Hung Wu Emperor, thousands of landless tenants were moved
into the Huai Valley and the North China plain, areas which had suffered
severely under the wars that had expelled the Mongols. Military colonies
were established in Manchuria and Yunnan. Voluntary migrants from
Kiangsi poured into Hunan.

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 243

A money economy grew. That was partly because of the influx of silver
from the Americas through the Spaniards.

In the domestic peace given by the Hung Wu and Yung Lo Emperors,
population mounted. In 1393 it seems to have been at least 65,000,000
and probably was in excess of that total. Presumably it was much larger
a half century later.

Taxation was simplified by what was called the "single-whip" system.

SUMMARY

The Ming, while in political might inferior to the Han and
the T'ang and in brilliance and originality not equal to the T'ang and the
Sung, spanned one of the noteworthy periods of China's history. It ruled
all of what we now think of as China proper, for a time it was master of
Annam and South Manchuria, and for shorter or longer periods Korea,
Japan, and lands to the south as far distant as Ceylon acknowledged its
suzerainty. In contrast to the earlier dynasties, instead of looking landward
toward the north and west as the natural direction in which to extend its
power, it faced seaward and south. Increasingly, commercial contacts were
not by the overland trade routes but by the ocean. In this was a foreshadow
ing of those intimate contacts with the West which later were to work the
greatest revolution that the Empire had known. The realm was prosperous.
More abundant supplies of silver and copper became available and both
metals were widely used as mediums of exchange. In culture the China of
the Ming dynasty displayed practicality, elegance, diligence, and in a few
directions originality, and influenced some of its neighbors, including es
pecially Korea and Japan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The dynastic history which covers this period is the Ming Shih, compiled
between 1697 and 1724 and revised under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor.

Among general histories covering this period are L. Wieger, Textes
Historiques (2 vols., Hochienfu, 1903, 1904); and Rene Grousset, Histolre
de V Extreme-Orient (2 vols. Paris, 1929).

Works and articles covering special phases of the political history, including
relations with Japan and the overseas expeditions to the South and West are
C. 0. Hucker, "The Traditional Chinese Censorate and the New Peking
Regime" (American Political Science Review, Vol. 45, pp. 1041-1057); Wang
Yi-t'ung, Official Relations between China and Japan 1368-1549 (Harvard
University Press, 1953); G. Sansom, A History of Japan, 1334-1615 (Stanford
University Press, 1961), pp. 167-178, 353-366; Y. S. Kuno, Japanese Ex
pansion on the Asiatic Continent (Vol. 1, Berkeley, 1937); Tilemann Grimm,
Erziehung und Politik im konfuzianischen China de Mingzeit (1368-1644)
(Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1961, pp. 177); C. O. Hucker, "Govern-

244 VOLUME I

mental Organization of the Ming Dynasty," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
Vol. 21, pp. 1-66; E. Hauer (translator), Huang-Ts'ing K'ai-kuo Fang-liieh,
die Crunching des Mandschurischen Kaiserreiches iibersetzt und erklart (Berlin
and Leipzig, 1926); F. Michael, The Origin of Manchu Rule in China:
Frontier and Bureaucracy as Interacting Forces in the Chinese Empire (Balti
more, 1942), excellent on the pre-Ch'ing development of the Manchus; W.
Fuchs, "Personal Chronicle of the First Manchu Emperor," Pacific Affairs,
Vol. 9, pp. 78-85; J. B. Parsons, "The Culmination of a Chinese Peasant
Rebellion: Chang Hsien-chung in Szechwan, 1644-46," The Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 387-400; Wolfgang Franke, "Yii Chien, Staatsmann und
Kriegminister, 1398-1457," Monumenta Serica, Vol. 11, pp. 87-122; Wolfgang
Franke, "Em Dokument zum Prozess gegen Yu Ch'ien," Studia Serica, Vol. 6,
pp. 193-208; P. Pelliot, "Le Hoja et le Sayyid Husain de 1'Histoire des Ming,"
Toung Pao, Vol. 38, pp. 81-292; P. Pelliot, "Les Grandes Voyages Maritimes
Chinois au debut du XVe Siecle," Toung Pao, Vol. 31, pp. 274-314, Vol. 32,
pp. 210-222; W. W. Rockhill, China's Intercourse with Korea from the XVth
Century to 1895 (London, Luzac & Co., 1905, pp. 60); W. W. Rockhill,
"Notes on the Relations and the Trade of China with the Eastern Archipelago
and the Courts of the Indian Ocean during the Fourteenth Century," Toung
Pao, 1915, pp. 61, 236, 374, 435, 604; J. J. L. Duyvendak, "The True Dates
of the Chinese Maritime Expedition in the Early Fifteenth Century," Toung
Pao, Vol. 35, pp. 341-412; E. Huber, "Une Ambassade Chinoise en Birmanie
en 1406," Bulletin de I'Ecole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient, 1904, pp. 428-432;
J. Bouillard and Vandescal, "Les Sepultures Imperiales des Ming," ibid., 1920,
No. 3, pp. 1-128; Gabriel Ferrand, Relations de Voyages et Textes Geogra-
phiques Arabes, Persans et Turcs Relatifs a I' Extreme-Orient du Vllle au
XVlIIe Siecles (2 vols., Paris, 1913-1914); Hsieh Kuo Ching, "Removal of
Coastal Population in Early Tsing Period," The Chinese Social and Political
Science Review, Vol. 15, pp. 559-596; Feray, "Le Japonais a Hai-nan sous la
Dynastie des Ming," Toung Pao, 1906, pp. 369-380; E. H. Parker, "Mongolia
after the Genghizides and before the Manchus," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1913, pp. 76-99; Hans Friese, "Das
Dienstleistungen-System der Ming-Zeit," Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fur
Natur — und Volkerkunde Ostasiens, Vol. XXXV A. (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz,
1956, pp. 163); C. O. Hucker, The Traditional Chinese State in Ming Times
(1368-1644) (University of Arizona Press, 1961); C. O. Hucker, "Confucianism
and the Chinese Censorial System," in D. S. Nivison and A. F. Wright, ed.,
Confucianism in Action (Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 182-208.

On European contacts, Cordier, Histoire Generate de la Chine (4 vols.,
Paris, 1920, 1921), Vol. 3; Cordier, "L'Arrivee des Portugais en Chine,"
Toung Pao, 1911, pp. 483-543; K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian
Missions in China (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1929), pp. 78-111; C. R.
Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century (London, Hakluyt Society, 1953,
pp. xii, 388); Louis J. Gallagher, translator, The Journals of Matthew Ricci,
1583-1610 (New York, Random House, 1953); P. M. d'Elia, "La Reprise des
Missions Catholique en Chine a la Fin des Ming (1579-1644)," Cahiers
d' Histoire Mondaile, Vol. 5, 1960, pp. 679-699; Chang T'ien-tse, Sino-
Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644 (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1934); Joseph
Needham, Chinese Astronomy and the Jesuit Mission: an Encounter in Culture
(London, China Society Occasional Papers, No. 10, 1958, pp. 20); G. H.
Dunne, Generation of Giants. The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last

China Again Under Chinese Rule: The Ming Dynasty 245

Decade of the Ming Dynasty (University of Notre Dame Press, 1962, pp.
389); D'Elia, Pasquale, M., Fonte Ricciane (Rome, La Libreria dello Stato, 3
vols., 1942-1949).

On the importation of plants of American origin, see B. Laufer, Sino-
Iranica (Chicago, 1919); B. Laufer, Tobacco and Its Use in Asia (Chicago,
1924); B. Laufer, "Plant Migration," Scientific Monthly, Vol. 28, pp. 239-251,
March, 1929; Ping-ti Ho, 'The Introduction of American Food Plants into
China," American Anthropologist, Vol. 57, pp. 191-201.

On population, see O. B. van der Sprenkel, "Population Statistics of Ming
China," London, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol.
15, pp. 289-326.

On philosophy and religion, see Wang, "Wang Yang-ming," Varietes
Sinologiques, No. 63, Shanghai, 1936; F. G. Henke, The Philosophy of Wang
Yang-ming (London, 1916), and a summary by the same author, "The Phi
losophy of Wang Yang Ming," Journal of the North China Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 1913, pp. 46-64; Chang Yii-ch'uan "Wang Shou-jen as
a Statesman," Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. 23, pp. 30-99,
155-259, 319-375, 473-517, on Wang Yang-ming; Carsun Chang, The De
velopment of Neo-Confucian Thought (Vol. II, New York, Bookman Associ
ates, 1962); W. T. de Bary and Wing-tsit Chang, Sources of Chinese Tradition
(Columbia University Press, 1960), pp, 569-597; Fung Yu-lan, History of
Chinese Philosophy, translated by D. Bodde (Princeton University Press, Vol.
II, 1953), pp. 592-629; C. O. Hucker, "The Tung-lin Movement in the Late
Ming Period," in J. K. Fairbank, Chinese Thought and Institutions (The
University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 132-162; C. O. Hucker, Su-chou and
the Agents of Wei Chung-hsien, a Translation of K'ai-tu chuan-hsin (Silver
Jubilee Volume of the Zinbun-Kagaku-Konkyusyo, Kyoto University, 1954),
pp. 224-256; J. K. Shryock, The Origin and Development of the State Cult of
Confucius (New York, The Century Co., 1932), pp. 181-196; H. Busch,
"The Tung-lin Shu- Yuan and Its Political and Philosophical Significance,"
Monumenta Serica, Vol. 14, pp, 1-163; B. R. Crawford, H. M. Lamley, and
A. B. Mann, "Fang Hsiao-ju in the Light of Early Ming Society," ibid., Vol.
15, pp. 303-327).

On education, see E. Biot, Essai sur I'Histoire de ^Instruction Publique en
Chine (Paris, Benjamin Duprat, 1847), pp. 422^466.

On literature, see L. C. Goodrich, "A Study of Literary Persecution under
the Ming, by Ku Chieh-kang," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 3,
pp. 254-311; G. Margoulies, Le Kou-Wen Chinois, Recueil de Textes avec
Introduction et Notes (Paris, 1926); V. K. Ting, "On Hsu Hsia-ko (1586-
1641), Explorer and Geographer," New China Review, Vol. 3, No. 5, Oct.
1921, pp. 325-337; K. T. Wu, "Ming Printing and Printers," Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 7, pp. 203-260.

On art, see R. L. Hobson, The Art of the Chinese Potter from the Han
Dynasty to the End of the Ming (London, 1923); R. L. Hobson, The Wares of
the Ming Dynasty (London, 1923); Osvald Siren, The Walls and Gates of
Peking (London, 1924); Osvald Siren, The Imperial Palaces of Peking (3
vols., Paris, 1926); A. Hubrecht, Grandeur et Suprematie de Peking (Peking,
1928); Ernest Boerschmann, Chinesische Architektur (2 vols., Berlin, 1925);
Dagney Carter, Four Thousand Years of Chinese Art (New York, The Ronald
Press Co., 1948), pp. 251-287; L. Sickman and A. Soper, The Art and
Architecture of China (Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 163-187; Nelson I. Wu,

246 VOLUME I

"Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636): A Study of Apathy in Government and
Fervor in Art," in A. F. Wright, ed., Confucian Personalities (Stanford Uni-.
versity Press, 1962).

For additional bibliographies, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 26-32.

CHAP T E R NINE

THE CH'ING (MANCHU) DYNASTY: ITS
HEYDAY AND THE BEGINNING OF ITS
DECLINE (A.D. 1644-1838)

INTRODUCTORY

The Ta Ch'ing dynasty — usually called simply the Ch'ing (as
a rule, translated "pure" or "unsullied") — which the Manchus established
was to be one of the longest-lived in the history of China. During the nearly
three centuries of its rule (1644-1912) the Chinese experienced some of
the most remarkable developments of then* entire career. Under the Ch'ing
the Empire reached its greatest territorial extent — not counting the Yuan
period, for China was then only the chief unit of the Mongol domains.
At its height the dynasty ruled over China proper, Manchuria, Mongolia,
Sinkiang, and Tibet, and received tribute — in recognition of a more or
less shadowy suzerainty — from Nepal, Burma, Laos, Siam, Arm am, the
Liu Ch'iu Islands, and Korea. Under the Ch'ing, too, the Chinese were
more numerous than at any previous time. Moreover, during the heyday
of the dynasty China attained a fresh level of material prosperity, probably
higher than ever before. In the latter part of the seventeenth and through
most of the eighteenth century, indeed, it was the most populous and
possibly the most prosperous realm on the planet. In numbers of people
it outstripped all the other great contemporary empires — the British, the
Spanish, the French, the Russian, the Ottoman, and the Mogul. From the
standpoint of order and justice it was probably as far advanced as any state
of the time, for that was before the humanitarian movement had ameliorated
the laws, the courts, and the prisons of the West. In total wealth, too, it
very possibly surpassed every other nation of the period. -

During these years, to be sure, culture underwent no especially great
changes : the country was content to shape its life according to the patterns
fixed in previous dynasties. This may have been in part because the
Manchus, wishing, for reasons of political expediency, to prove themselves
supporters of Chinese civilization, maintained orthodoxy with all the zeal
of conscious converts. It may also have been because the Ch'ing Emperors,
in their eagerness to prevent sedition and to root out any threat to their

247

248 VOLUME i

rule, endeavored to suppress cultural heterodoxy. Their emphasis, too, on
the civil service examinations — through which lay the paths to social
prestige, power, and wealth — induced most ambitious youths to confine
themselves to the well-defined curriculum which led to the coveted degrees.
The system first foreshadowed by the Han was being carried to its logical
conclusion. Originality and experimentation were inconsistent with its
perfect operation. Prosperity was accompanied by adherence to past con
ventions. Even so, however, a few of the intellectuals were active in move
ments of marked boldness and critical acumen which were to have
important consequences.

In the last three-quarters of a century that the Manchus were on the
throne, when their vigor was declining and the power slipping from their
hands, came the greatest cultural revolution that the Chinese have known. It
was then that the Occident at last surmounted the natural barriers which had
prevented it from establishing intimate intercourse with the Middle King
dom. In the closing years of the dynasty, under the impact of the West, the
familiar structure of Chinese life began to crumble. The traditional political,
intellectual, and to a certain extent economic, social, and religious institu
tions either disappeared or were profoundly modified. The changes into
which the country was hurried proved even more thoroughgoing than after
the disappearance of the Chou, when the Ch'in and the Han rulers estab
lished the Empire, or than in the centuries after the Han, when Buddhism
was being established. After the dynasty came to an end the changes were
rapidly accelerated. They seem, indeed, even yet only to have begun.

The history of the dynasty naturally falls into two parts, one before the
coming of the Westerner in force, and the other after that event. The divid
ing years are 1839-1842, when, in a successful war on China, Great Britain
led what proved to be the vanguard of the great invasion. The first of these
periods forms the subject of this chapter. More than half of it is included
in the reigns of two of the ablest monarchs that China has ever had, most
familiar to Westerners under the reign names by which chronology is
indicated, K'ang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung. The K'ang Hsi Emperor ascended
the throne in 1661 and died in 1722. Then, after a comparatively brief
reign, not especially noteworthy, of about thirteen years, came the Ch'ien
Lung Emperor, from 1736 to 1796. For nearly a century and a half,
therefore, with a short interruption, China's government was in the hands
successively of two extraordinarily strong men. It was probably due largely
to this coincidence of longevity and competence that the dynasty became
so firmly established and lasted so long.

THE K'ANG HSI EMPEROR

The first Manchu to rule in Peking, usually known by the
name of his reign period, Shun Chih, was placed on the throne as a boy

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 249

of nine the year before his troops came into possession of the Ming capital.
During his childhood he was under the tutelage of a very able uncle, and
did not assume the full management of the government until 1651, after
the regent's death. He himself died in his twenties, in 1661, and so scarcely
had time to make a marked impression on the Empire.

The Shun Chih Emperor was in turn succeeded by a minor son who is,
as we have said, commonly known as K'ang Hsi. The K'ang Hsi Emperor
was not quite seven when his father's death elevated him to the throne,
and he was to hold the imperial title for a little short of sixty-two years.
In 1667, when he was thirteen, he took control, although it was not until
1669 that he was able completely to break the power of the regents. For
more than half a century, therefore, he ruled the destinies of the Chinese.
A contemporary of such notable monarchs as Louis XIV of France, Peter
the Great of Russia, William III of England, and the fanatical warrior-
conqueror Aurangzeb of the Mogul dynasty in India, in personal ability he
was probably the equal and perhaps the superior of them all. He was
characterized by great physical energy, an active and inquiring mind, an
excellent memory, vivacity, and the will and the ability to lead and dominate
men. Fond of vigorous outdoor life, he spent many of his days in the chase.
He traveled extensively through his domains and gave much personal atten
tion to his official duties, priding himself on his concern for the welfare
of his subjects and on his frugality in his personal and court expenses.
Although originating nothing of great importance in governmental machin
ery, he gave to China as vigorous an administration as the Empire had ever
known, and fostered not only order and material prosperity but also
cultural activity.

When he was still in his teens, the K'ang Hsi Emperor faced success
fully the most serious menace that had yet threatened his line. After their
conquest of China, the Manchus had placed over much of the region south
of the Yangtze four of the Chinese generals who had been of most as
sistance to them. One of these died without leaving male issue, but his
son-in-law was given a position of trust in Kwangsi. Another was in
Kwangtung and a third in Fukien. The most powerful was Wu San-kuei,
who had had so large a part in introducing the Ch'ing to Peking. He had
conquered for his new masters Shensi, Szechwan, and Yunnan, and had
hounded the last of the Ming, the luckless Kuei Wang, to his death on the
Yunnan border. He had been loaded with honors, one of his sons had been
given in marriage a sister of the Shun Chih Emperor, and in Yiinnanfu,
his headquarters, he maintained a court which in splendor rivaled that of
Peking. In the South as they were, remote from Peking, these Chinese
dignitaries, with high titles and great authority, constituted a potential
danger; it was the kind of division among semi-independent magnates which
more than once had threatened the unity of the Empire.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to the exact steps by which

250

VOLUME I

the revolt came about. The occasion appears to have been the determination
of the Emperor to bring to an end the anomalous power of these satraps.
The K'ang Hsi Emperor ordered Wu San-kuei to report to Peking to pay
homage to the throne, but that worthy, warned by his son— a hostage in

Peking of a plot against him, twice refused. When one of the dignitaries,

Shang K'o-hsi, in Canton, because of age and the desire to escape from
the control of a son, asked leave to retire to Manchuria, the K'ang Hsi
Emperor promptly granted his request. Then when two others, as a matter
of policy, or following the requirements of Chinese custom, made similar
ofiers, the K'ang Hsi Emperor brought to a head the entire issue by taking
them at their word and ordering them to disband their troops. Thereupon
Wu San-kuei revolted (1673). Keng Ching-chung in Fukien, grandson of
the original supporter of the Manchu power, and Shang Chih-hsin in
Kwangtung, son of Shang K'o-hsi, also appealed to arms, the one fairly
promptly, the other more tardily. Hence the rebellion is known as that of
the San Fan, or the Three Feudatories.

The outlook for the Ch'ing was dark. Many Chinese joined in the
uprising. On the coast, the son and successor of Koxinga, still strong on the
sea and ensconced in Formosa, took the opportunity to attack his father's
old enemies. Most of the South — Hunan, Kweichow, Yunnan, Kwangsi,
Kwangtung, and Fukien — was in control of the rebels, and for a time
Szechwan, Kansu, and much of Shensi seemed lost. Wu San-kuei pro
claimed himself the first of a new dynasty. The Manchus, with only a boy
at their head, and with more than half of the area of China proper in the
hands of their foes, were in desperate straits. It looked as though they might
do wisely to accept the compromise suggested by Wu San-kuei and leave
to him, as the price of peace, the territory south of the Yangtze.

However, the boy ruler showed himself fully equal to the emergency.
He was aided by dissensions among his opponents. The rebels could agree
only on enmity to the Manchus and some of them fell to quarreling
among themselves. Numbers of influential Chinese remained true to the
Ch'ing. Before long the armies of the K'ang Hsi Emperor began to regain
the lost territories. The fate of the revolt was sealed by the death, in 1678,
of the formidable Wu San-kuei. In the ensuing months others of the chief
rebels were eliminated. So stubborn was the resistance, however, that not
until 1681 did it come to an end — when the grandson of Wu San-kuei,
beseiged in his last stronghold, committed suicide.

Thanks largely to the ability of the K'ang Hsi Emperor in suppressing
it, the uprising resulted in establishing the Manchu rule more firmly than
ever. The system of semiautonomous regions was abolished, and the con
trol of Peking over the provinces was strengthened by requiring officials
to report to the capital at periodical intervals and by dividing functions
among the head provincial officers and virtually setting them to watch each

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 251

other. Moreover, in 1683, for the first time in the history of China, For
mosa, after the death of the son of Koxinga (1682), was brought into the
Empire.

Not only did the K'ang Hsi Emperor succeed in confirming his family
in their control of China: he extended his authority beyond his inherited
frontiers. From time immemorial, as we have repeatedly seen, the fertile
plains and valleys of North China had been subject to invasion from the
less favored lands on the north, west, and northeast. Some of the rulers
of China had sought protection from the menace by constructing or main
taining the Great Wall. However, the greatest monarchs of the Han and
the T'ang, it will be recalled, had not been content with remaining on the
defensive, but had sought to dominate the regions from which the threats
issued. It was this bold policy which the K'ang Hsi Emperor adopted, and
in it he was followed by his two immediate successors. As a consequence,
by the end of the eighteenth century the territory controlled by the Ch'ing —
as we have suggested — was more extensive than that which had acknowl
edged the suzerainty of any line that had reigned in China except that of
Jenghiz Khan.

The K'ang Hsi Emperor was led to embark upon a program of ex
pansion, by a threat to his frontiers. At the accession of the Ch'ing, the
Mongols, as heretofore, were divided into many tribes. They were chiefly
in two groups, the Eastern and the Western. The Eastern Mongols, in
turn, were subdivided into the Northern, or Khalkhas, and the Southern,
on the northern edge of China proper. Before the Manchu conquest of
China proper, many of the Southern tribes had submitted to the Ch'ing.
One of the khans, or chiefs, of this region seized the opportunity given by
the rebellion of Wu San-kuei to revolt. The K'ang Hsi Emperor subdued
him and followed up the victory by claiming suzerainty over the entire
Mongol confederation. This presaged the extension of the power of the
Ch'ing over the Khalkhas.

The K'ang Hsi Emperor's authority over the Khalkhas did not become
effective until after a further development. The Western Mongols, or
Kalmuks, had among them a tribe called the Eleuths (or Oelots). A leader
of the Eleuths was then building one of those many, more or less ephemeral
states of Central Asia which have risen, flourished, and disappeared,
usually all within a few decades This chief not only became strong in the
Gobi, but intervened in Tibet, posing as the protector of the Dalai Lama.
His son, Galdan, was even more powerful. From his capital at Kuldja, he
maintained the influence built up by his father in Tibet and Mongolia, and
established his suzerainty over Kashgar, the rest of Eastern Turkestan,
Turfan, and Kami. Before long Galdan found an occasion to interfere in
the affairs of the Khalkhas and attempted to extend his sway over them.
A new Mongol empire appeared to be arising, with a threat to the Chinese

252 VOLUME I

frontiers. This the K'ang Hsi Emperor would not tolerate. He gave the
Khalkhas protection and in the last decade of the seventeenth century
dispatched armies to clear their territories of Galdan and the Eleuths.
Galdan was repeatedly defeated and his death (1697) was probably by
his own hand. The Khalkhas, however, had only exchanged the threat
of one master for the reality of another. The K'ang Hsi Emperor had
saved them from the Eleuths, but their chiefs now acknowledged the
suzerainty of the Ch'ing, imperial residents were placed among them, and
a garrison was installed in Urga. The K'ang Hsi Emperor did not complete
the conquest of the Eleuths' territory, but he put contingents of troops in
Kami and other strategic centers on the western frontier.

After the K'ang Hsi Emperor had ventured into the West, he was led,
apparently by the logic of events, to extend his control over Tibet. At the
close of the fourteenth and early in the fifteenth century a reform had been
made — chiefly by a great religious leader, Tsung K'apa — in the prevailing
Buddhist cult in that region, the "Red Sect," and a new type of Buddhism
had arisen called the " Yellow Sect" (from the color of its vestments),
with insistence, among other emphases, upon the celibacy of the clergy
and a more elaborate ritual. The heads of the new cult, and consequently
of Tibet, in time came to be the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The
holder of each title was supposedly a reincarnation of his predecessor, and
the successions theoretically traced back, respectively, to a great bodhisattva
(Avalokita) and a buddha (Amitabha), By far the more powerful of the
two politically was the Dalai Lama, with his capital at Lhasa. The Ming
Emperors had shown him honor, the early Manchus had established rela
tions with him, and a holder of the title visited Peking in 1652. It remained,
however, for the K'ang Hsi Emperor to extend the authority of the Ch'ing
over him and his realm.

Having embarked on a policy of controlling the Mongols, the K'ang
Hsi Emperor was almost inevitably led to concern himself with Tibetan
politics. Many of the Mongols had been followers of the Red Sect of
Lamaism, and by the time of the K'ang Hsi Emperor the Yellow Sect was
gaining many converts among them. The Eleuths early adhered to the
latter and sought to spread it — possibly as a means of extending their own
control — while for years the Khalkhas remained loyal to the Red cult.
Tibet, therefore, became a factor with which the K'ang Hsi Emperor had
to reckon in dealing with the situation on his northwestern frontiers.

In 1684, after many of the Khalkhas had become followers of the
Yellow Sect, the K'ang Hsi Emperor asked and obtained the co-operation
of the Dalai Lama in bringing about peace among them. Galdan had been
in communication with Lhasa, and the ensuing friction with Peking was
allayed only by his timely death. Then, too, the chief minister of the Dalai
Lama had had some dealings with Wu San-kuei during the latter's sedition

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 253

and had aroused the suspicions of the K'ang Hsi Emperor. About 1700 the
latter began strengthening his position in the great plateau. His troops
occupied parts of the Tibetan-Szechwan border and he commissioned as
regent of Tibet the friendly commander of the Eleuth forces which for a
time dominated Lhasa. Before many years a disputed succession to the
Dalai Lamaship led the K'ang Hsi Emperor to undertake the conquest of
the country. One of the claimants was enthusiastically supported by some
of the Mongols, Lhasa was taken, and the pro-Ch'ing group was put to
the sword. The movement seemed to presage the rise of still another new
Mongol Empire. In 1719, therefore, the K'ang Hsi Emperor came out
boldly on the side of one of the contestants, and in 1720 his forces entered
Lhasa as victors. His protege was successfully enthroned, Peking appointed
two high commissioners to direct him and installed a garrison in the city,
and troops were stationed at strategic points on the road to China proper,
Tibet was now politically an appendage of China,

The K'ang Hsi Emperor also dealt firmly with the Europeans who,
following the contacts made under the Ming dynasty, continued to come to
China. The authority of China over Macao, the one European settlement
on the coast, was unequivocally asserted. During the reign of the Shun
Chih Emperor the Dutch had sent representatives to Peking who allowed
themselves to be treated as envoys from a tributary state. They now dis
patched ships to help in the Ch'ing conquest of Formosa. Since the sixteenth
century the Russians had been moving into Siberia. During the Shun Chih
reign period an embassy and merchants came to the capital, and in the
early years of the K'ang Hsi period other emissaries and trading caravans
arrived. Russian pressure on the west helped to weaken the Eleuths in the
later stages of their contest with the K'ang Hsi Emperor. The Ch'ing forces
and the Russians came to blows in the valley of the Amur. The Russians
were there establishing small colonies and fortified posts, to the annoyance
of the Manchus. In 1685 a Russian post, Albazin, was captured, and some
of the garrison were taken to Peking, where they remained permanently.
Neither side was especially eager for war, and after other somewhat
desultory encounters, in 1689 a treaty was signed at Nerchinsk, the first
between China and a European state. Among other provisions, it defined
the boundary, restored to China some of the territory claimed by the Rus
sians, arranged for a limited commerce between the two countries, and
stipulated that if Russians or Chinese committed crimes in the other's
territory, they were to be sent across the border for punishment by the
officials of their respective governments. It was not, as were so many
treaties of the nineteenth century, dictated to a prostrate China by a
victorious Western power.

Against Roman Catholic missionaries, too, the K'ang Hsi Emperor
asserted his absolute authority over his domains. Jesuits, notably Schall,

254 VOLUME i

had attached themselves to the Manchus during the subjugation of China.
About the time of the conquest, Spanish Franciscans and Dominicans from
the Philippines succeeded in effecting a permanent foothold. Before the
death of the K'ang Hsi Emperor, Lazarists, French Jesuits, Spanish
Augustinians, Italian Franciscans, and seculars, including representatives
of the Societe des Missions £trangeres of Paris, had entered the country.
During most of his reign the K'ang Hsi Emperor was tolerant of and even
friendly to the missionaries, especially the Jesuits. During his minority, in
1664, there was a severe persecution, but when he assumed the reigns
of government he had it discontinued. He was greatly interested by the
scholarly Jesuits in his capital, notably by Verbiest and some of the French
members of the Society. Under them he studied European sciences, mathe
matics, and music. He employed them in astronomical and literary pur
suits. He entrusted to them the mapping of the Empire. He used them in
negotiations with the Russians. He assisted them in erecting a church in
Peking and in rebuilding one in Hangchow. In 1692 he issued what in effect
was an edict of toleration, protecting existing church buildings and per
mitting freedom of worship. By 1705 there were probably more than two
hundred thousand Chinese Christians, among them a few men of prom
inence.

However, a prolonged dispute — the so-called Rites Controversy — arose
among the missionaries. This had to do chiefly with the term to be used
for the translation of the word God — whether the familiar Tien, so frequent
in Chinese literature, could be so employed — and with questions concern
ing the participation by Christians in the customary Chinese rites in honor
of ancestors and Confucius. If the word Tien could be used, and if these
rites could be tolerated by the Church, Christianity could be made to
seem less inimical to Chinese institutions. If, on the other hand, the Church
conscientiously felt that they must be forbidden to Christians, the faith
would appear an enemy to traditional Chinese beliefs and practices and
a menace to such fundamental bases of society and the state as the family
and Confucianism. Most of the Jesuits favored toleration, but many mem
bers of other missionary organizations vigorously opposed it. The con
troversy lasted for a little over a century — from about 1628 until the final
papal decision, in 1742. Much of the ecclesiastical Roman Catholic world
entered into the discussion. Jealousies between orders, rivalries among
European nations, the Portuguese claim to the right to control the Church
in the Far East, and the rising tide of feeling in Europe against the Jesuits
complicated the debate. The Pope finally decided against toleration and
sent to China two successive embassies in the attempt to gain the acqui
escence not only of the Jesuits but especially of the Emperor.

Before either legate arrived, the Emperor had expressed his conviction
on the points at issue. This was for toleration and so was diametrically

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 255

opposed to Rome. Both papal legates irritated him, notably the first. He
held that no foreigner, even though he be Pope, should attempt to enforce
decrees counter to the imperial will, particularly when these would prove
disturbing to basic Chinese customs. Accordingly, he gave missionaries
the choice of abiding by his decision in the controversy or leaving the
country. Since Rome did not issue its final edict until 1742, long after the
death of the K'ang Hsi Emperor, some of the missionaries managed to
reconcile their consciences with compliance. The K'ang Hsi Emperor did
not allow the controversy to terminate his friendship for the Jesuits and
instituted no drastic persecution. He was, however, firm in insisting upon
his jurisdiction over both foreign priests and Chinese Christians and in his
later years displayed more animosity toward Christianity than in his prime.
The K'ang Hsi Emperor was not only vigorous in maintaining his
authority within China and in protecting and expanding his frontiers:
he also actively promoted the material welfare of his subjects and en
couraged literature. He spent much of his time on the road and saw for
himself what was happening outside the walls of his palace. He attempted,
unsuccessfully, to end the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women.
He endeavored to lighten taxes and to encourage honesty and efficiency
in the bureaucracy. He strove to insure a good currency. He instituted
public works, especially for the control of "China's Sorrow," the Yellow
River, whose floods for centuries had been a recurrent menace to the
North China plain. He subsidized scholarship, financing new editions of
the Classics and of rare books and having great compilations produced and
published. Among the latter were a famous dictionary, a huge classified
collection of literary phrases, an encyclopedia, and a rhyming dictionary.
He himself was a student of the Classics, collected a library, and had many
Chinese works translated into the Manchu tongue. He was the author of
sixteen short moral maxims, which in later reigns were expanded by com
mentaries, and with these, as the Sacred Edict (Sheng Yu), were officially
taught to the populace. The great imperial porcelain works at Ching-te
Chen were devastated during the insurrection of Wu San-kuei, but the
K'ang Hsi Emperor had them restored, and their products during his
reign were famous for beauty and prodigious in quantity.

THE YUNG CHENG EMPEROR (1723-1735)

In his last days the K'ang Hsi Emperor had been disturbed
by bitter rivalries over the succession, for he had many sons, and no rule
of primogeniture existed. The successful competitor is best known to pos
terity under the title of his reign period, Yung Cheng. In his forties, when
his father's death placed him in power, he had only a little over twelve years
more of life. He was by no means a genius, but he was ambitious and a

256 VOLUME I

hard worker. He reformed the finances and reduced corruption among
officials. He was an interested student of religion, especially of Ch'an
Buddhism. He wrote a number of books.

In internal administration the Yung Cheng Emperor was more fearful
of sedition than his father had been. He had a kind of secret service for
ferreting out treason. He treated several of his brothers with great harsh
ness, perhaps to prevent them from rebelling, but possibly to satisfy old
grudges. While continuing to employ the Jesuits in Peking, the Yung Cheng
Emperor instituted a much more severe persecution of Christianity than
had been known since his father's minority. He centralized administration
more and more in the crown.

In foreign affairs the Yung Cheng Emperor had to face hostilities in the
west. An uprising in the Kokonor region was followed by a fresh war
with the Eleuths. These chronic enemies of his father were for a time
successful and made threatening raids eastward. Eventually, however, the
imperial forces inflicted defeats on them. The peace that was patched
up left the Eleuths unsubdued, and their final reduction was not achieved
until the next reign. Russian envoys continued to come to China, and
in 1727 an additional treaty was signed, usually known by the name
of Kiakhta, which further delimited the frontier between the two empires,
regulated trade, and arranged for a kind of permanent semiecclesiastical,
semidiplomatic mission in Peking.

THE CH'IEN LUNG EMPEROR (1736-1796)

The Yung Cheng Emperor died in his fifties and was suc
ceeded by a son, then in his twenty-fifth year, who is usually denominated
by the title of his reign period, Ch'ien Lung. The Ch'ien Lung Emperor
was to live until an extreme old age, and while he abdicated in 1796, in
his eighty-fifth year, after he had ruled for six decades (the Chinese cycle),
he continued to dominate the government until his death in 1799. Like
his grandfather, the K'ang Hsi Emperor, he displayed marked ability.
He was hard-working and energetic, and was fond of the chase and
outdoor life. He traveled extensively through his domains, and ambitious
and diligent as a scholar, poet, painter, and calligrapher, he was a patron
of arts and literature. In personal ability he appears to have been fully the
equal of the two most famous monarchs of the Europe of his day, Catherine
of Russia and Frederick of Prussia, and in the wealth and population
of his realm he surpassed all other contemporary rulers. In his reign
the Manchu regime reached the pinnacle of its power and entered on
its decline.

Under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor the Chinese Empire was rounded
out to its natural boundaries and attained the greatest extent in its history.

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 257

The Eleuths were finally eliminated. A dispute over the succession to the
Eleuth throne gave the Ch'ien Lung Emperor his opportunity. One of the
worsted leaders, Amursana, sought refuge with him and was cordially
received. In 1755 Amursana, aided by the Emperor's armies, was installed
in Kuldja. He was not, however, allowed to rule in a fully independent
fashion, for an imperial resident was placed in his capital to watch him,
and the Ch'ien Lung Emperor proposed to reorganize the land in a way
pleasing to himself. Amursana, ill content, soon revolted (1755), the
Chinese garrison in Kuldja was massacred, and the first forces dis
patched to put down the outbreak were unsuccessful. Unrest developed
among some of the Khalkhas, and for a time it looked as though much
of Mongolia might throw off the Ch'ing yoke. However, a Manchu general,
Chao-hui, soon turned the fortunes of battle, Amursana was driven into
Siberia, and the Eleuth power was completely broken (1757).

The conquest of the Eleuths was quickly followed by that of the
Tarim basin. There, in Kashgar and Yarkand, two brothers, Moslems,
scions of a princely family, set themselves up in opposition to the Ch'ing.
Chao-hui boldly entered upon a campaign against them, but was sur
rounded and had to stand a desperate siege until reinforcements could
reach him. When these arrived, Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, the
chief towns in the western part of the valley, fell to the Ch'ing arms
(1759) and the defeated forces were pursued into the Pamir. While
the suzerainty of the Empire was not carried so far westward as in the
days of the Han and the T'ang, the area occupied to the north and west
of China proper was much more extensive than under either. Manchu
valor had revived the ancient martial glory of the realm. The recently
conquered territory was organized into Sinkiang (the "New Dominion").
Into parts of it were moved, by imperial authority, to hold it for the
Ch'ing, Manchu colonists and Chinese from Kansu and Shensi.

The Ch'ien Lung Emperor also met difficulties in Tibet. In 1750 an
uprising in Lhasa killed most of the Chinese and Manchu residents. The
Ch'ien Lung Emperor promptly (1751 ) dispatched an army which restored
his rule, and then proceeded to strengthen his control. The Dalai Lama was
confirmed in his title of temporal ruler of Tibet, but the two ambans —
or representatives of Peking — were to supervise his political acts and
were given the preponderance in determining the succession.

Before many years, a fresh power, the Gurkhas, arose in Nepal,
on the southern borders of Tibet. They encroached on the frontier and in
1791 pillaged the seat of the Panchen Lama. The Ch'ien Lung Emperor
thereupon sent an army, under a Manchu commander, which made the
difficult march across the high Tibetan plateau, drove back the Gurkhas
(1792), penetrated Nepal, and forced it to recognize the suzerainty of
Peking.

258

VOLUME I

From his father the Ch'ien Lung Emperor inherited a conflict with
the non-Chinese peoples in the South and Southwest. Here, in Kwangsi,
Hunan, Kweichow, Yunnan, and Szechwan, numerous aborigines lived
under their own chieftains and observed their own customs. At the instance
of a vigorous viceroy, the Yung Cheng Emperor had inaugurated a policy
of extending more fully over them the imperial administrative system—
in part as a protection for the Chinese settlers who were pushing into
the lands occupied by the tribes — and met with serious resistance. Fight
ing was especially severe and prolonged in the western part of Szechwan,
where the rugged nature of the country greatly assisted defense. The
imperial forces were eventually successful, but not until the reign was
two-thirds over.

Given an aggressive administration in China, conflict with Burma
was almost inevitable, for the boundary between the two states was inde
terminate, and the rude tribesmen on the frontier, who were guilty of
depredations on travelers and on their more civilized neighbors on both
sides of the border, might at any time become a source of friction.
There was war between China and Burma from 1765 into December, 1769.
The Burmese invaded Yunnan, and two Chinese expeditions into Burma
followed. Neither side was overwhelmingly victorious, and the Ch'ien
Lung Emperor had to be content with the recognition of his suzerainty
— decidedly vague — by the court at Ava and the periodical dispatch
of presents (regarded at least by the Ch'ing as tribute) to Peking.

The Ch'ien Lung Emperor intervened in the affairs of Annam. That
region, which ever since the time of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti had been now in
and now out of the Empire, under the latter part of the Ming had enjoyed
one of its periods of independence. On the final collapse of the last of
the Ming, Kuei Wang, Annam had become slightly embroiled with the
Manchus. Under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor civil strife in Annam gave
the imperial forces an excuse for taking sides actively in the politics of
the country. As a result, the rulers of Annam received investiture from
Peking and paid what the Ch'ing held to be "tribute."

In his dealings with Europeans, the Ch'ien Lung Emperor was fully
as insistent upon his authority as his grandfather had been. An embassy
from Great Britain, headed by the Earl of Macartney, arrived in Peking in
1793. The boats and carts assigned to convey it to the capital bore flags
with the inscription: "Ambassador bearing tribute from the country of
England," and while the Earl conducted himself with dignity, he was
unable to obtain the commercial concessions which had been hoped from
the venture. A Dutch embassy in 1795 was treated with less consideration,
and also as from a tributary state. It, too, was unsuccessful in achiev
ing its objectives. Treaties were signed with Russia in 1768 and 1792
supplementary to the earlier ones, defining the procedure in extraditing

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 259

and punishing criminals and further regulating trade, but no concessions of
any importance were made to that power.

In his administration of the internal affairs of his realm, the Ch'ien
Lung Emperor took vigorous measures to maintain his rule against sedi
tion, real or potential. By a strict censorship he sought to discover and
suppress all literature directed against the Ch'ing. Occasionally he had
to face revolts. At least twice these were led by secret societies, once by
the Pai-lien Chiao, or White Lotus Sect, and another time by the Pa Kua,
or Eight Trigrams. We hear, too, of a Moslem uprising in the region of
Kokonor, of a rebellion in Formosa, and of others in several of the more
central portions of the Empire. It is significant that most of these occurred
in the later years of the reign, when, with advancing age, the Emperor's
vigor was beginning to abate.

In his treatment of Roman Catholic missionaries, the Ch'ien Lung
Emperor was no more lenient than his father and grandfather had been.
He continued to employ them in his capital: to assist in the astronomical
bureau, to execute paintings in European style, and to erect structures
of European design in his summer palace to the west of Peking, among
other projects. Missionaries, too, were scattered widely through the prov
inces. In theory, however, their religious activities were forbidden. While
in practice these were often winked at, usually they had to be carried
on without ostentation, and occasionally severe persecutions were insti
tuted. Missions suffered from additional causes. The Jesuits, the Roman
Catholic body which had sent more missionaries to China than had any
other, were being expelled by leading European states, and in 1773 the
Pope dissolved the Society. Although the Jesuits already in China were
at liberty to remain as seculars, and although, about ten years later, the
Lazarists accepted the responsibility for carrying on the vacant work,
the shock was severe. Moreover, the decline of missionary zeal in Europe,
due to the skeptical "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century and the
French Revolution and the ensuing wars which kept Europe in turmoil
from 1789 to 1815, led to a diminution of support from the Occident.
The Church slowly lost ground.

Like his grandfather, the Ch'ien Lung Emperor was interested in
learning. He himself was a voluminous writer: of poetry, of notes on
current topics, and of prefaces to books. He had new editions made of
important works, and "encyclopedias" were compiled and printed. Neither
his court nor that of his grandfather equaled that of Ming Huang of the
T'ang or that of some of the Sung Emperors in the brilliance of the men
of art and letters attached to it. It displayed little of the sparkle of real
genius. There was, however, much of laborious ability.

The eighteenth century witnessed a rapid increase in wealth and pop
ulation. Additional land was brought under cultivation and Chinese pushed

260 VOLUME I

into southern Manchuria and into eastern Inner Mongolia, In several prov
inces — notably Kiangsi and Hunan, and highlands elsewhere — forests were
cut down and crops were planted. Much use was made of maize and the
sweet potato — plants of American origin. In time, because of improper
methods of tillage, much of the upland was badly eroded and could no
longer be cultivated. Heavy rains swept down from the denuded hills,
and floods were augmented. But cities grew in size, and the total number
of inhabitants rose rapidly — quite likely, although the census figures are
not trustworthy, to heights never before approached either in China or
in any other empire. By the end of the Ch'ien Lung period the population
was probably near the three hundred million mark.

With all this prosperity and outward show of power, by the later
Ch'ien Lung years the Ch'ing had passed its zenith. Although, until a few
months before his death, the Emperor's health continued to be remarkably
good for a man of his advanced years, toward the end much of the real
power was in the hands of a trusted favorite, Ho Shen, a Manchu of
humble origin. Ho Shen became the Emperor's chief minister. He amassed
a fortune which would be considered huge even in the present wealthy
Occident his son was married to an imperial princess, and his proteges
held high office. Corruption began to be rampant in the bureaucracy.
Rebellions broke out.

THE CHIA CH'ING EMPEROR (1796-1820)

No overwhelming disaster came immediately. The Ch'ien
Lung Emperor handed on his throne peacefully to a son, the title of whose
reign was Chia Ch'ing. Soon after his father's death, the Chia Ch'ing
Emperor asserted himself against Ho Shen. He confiscated the latter's
fortune and permitted him to commit suicide (in commutation of sentence
of death by execution). The revolts were suppressed,

In ability the Chia Ch'ing Emperor was far from being the equal
of his father and great-grandfather. He attempted to reduce the inherited
extravagance by economies at court and applied himself to the business
of government with diligence and energy. Yet he was compromising and
far from popular. The downfall of Ho Shen by no means ended the cor
ruption in officialdom. Rebellions continued to break out— ominous indica
tions that the government was neither so firm nor so efficient as formerly.
A mutiny disturbed the army; for some years pirates infested the south
coasts; an attempt to assassinate the Emperor barely failed of success;
and an antidynastic secret society engineered an uprising during which some
of the plotters forced their way into the imperial palace during the
Emperor's absence and were foiled, in part through the courage of one
of the Chia Ch'ing Emperor's sons, the later Tao Kuang Emperor.

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 261

The Chia Ch'ing Emperor abated none of the attitude of his prede
cessors toward foreigners. He was, indeed, even more arrogant and
unyielding. A Russian embassy was turned back, in 1806, before it
reached Peking, because the Czar's envoy refused to perform the kotow
when he should be received by the Emperor. This kotow, or prostration,
became to Europeans a symbol of that recognition of Chinese suzerainty to
which they would not agree and long remained a bone of contention. A
British embassy, led by Lord Amherst, arrived in 1816, seeking better
trade conditions, but it was treated with much less courtesy than had
been that led by Lord Macartney. After much disagreement over the
method of reception it was dismissed without an audience, and with a
haughty mandate which clearly indicated that the Emperor regarded the
King of England as the prince of a tributary state.

THE BEGINNING OF THE TAG KUANG REIGN

In 1820 the death of the Chia Ch'ing Emperor brought to
the throne, under the reign title of Tao Kuang, the prince who had shown
such courage when rebels invaded the palace. The Tao Kuang Emperor
proved to be little if any better ruler than his father: luxury and the
environment of the palace were softening the fiber of the once hardy
Manchus. He is said to have sought to promote economy in the expendi
tures of his court, but he was restive under the criticisms of the official
censors — one of the useful ways which the Chinese administrative system
provided for bringing public opinion to bear on the throne — and found
means of curbing them. He, too, suffered from rebellions. None of them
proved sufficiently serious to check the prosperity inherited from the first
century and a half of the Ch'ing. Outwardly, in 1839, the Empire was
still imposing. It was wealthy, and its population was probably increasing.
It was unsound at the top, however, and disaster was imminent. When, in
the first war with Great Britain, 1839-1842, China met the most sig
nificant crisis not only of the reign but of many centuries, it was in the
hands of a ruling house whose best days were in the past. It is no wonder
that the Chinese blundered and in the ensuing decades, by one misstep
after another, stumbled, ill-prepared, into the greatest revolution of their
history.

CULTURE UNDER THE GREAT CH'ING EMPERORS: ART

Chinese cultural achievements under the K'ang Hsi and
Ch'ien Lung Emperors were considerable. In art there was little departure
from the traditions received from the Ming. The imposing palaces and
temples in Peking were maintained with but few alterations or additions.

262

VOLUME I

Paintings continued to be produced in great abundance, and many of them
showed technical skill, refinement, and taste. Few, if any, however, dis
played outstanding genius. Flowers, birds, animals, and plants were exquis
itely portrayed, but the landscapes were distinctly inferior to those of the
Sung. There was much copying of old masterpieces. Beautiful works of
lacquer appeared, and in carving wood, ivory, and the semiprecious stones,
the handicraftsmen showed elaborate diligence and cunning.

It was in porcelain that the period has its chief claim to artistic
distinction. At the great potteries at Ching-te Chen the technique and com
mand of material were perfect, and the product is justly famous. Even in
this field, however, there was very little of creative genius. The patterns
and colors — both polychrome and monochrome — of preceding dynasties
were extensively followed and the innovations made do not arouse much
admiration. Before the Ch'ien Lung period was half over, decline was well
on the way. In addition to the Ching-te Chen potteries, many private ones
were maintained, but with rare exceptions their products were inferior
to those of the government works.

CULTURE UNDER THE GREAT CH'lNG EMPERORS: LITERATURE

As we have suggested, the literary output under the Ch'ing
was enormous. Vast collections and works of reference were issued by
imperial command. While, in the very nature of the case, even at their
best these were the product of diligence and scholarly competence rather
than of genius, they are not to be despised and are evidence of the high
regard in which learning was held. The civil service examinations were
firmly maintained as the chief road to official preferment and social dis
tinction, and not only did they give prestige to scholarship, but, as
well, the exacting preparation for them continued to recruit a numerous
educated class which appreciated good literature.

Most of the writing done under the Ch'ing was of mediocre or inferior
quality. The output of the printers was voluminous, but much of it was
paid for out of government funds by officials who in this way sought
prestige. However, some of the literature produced was so distinctive
that it is clear that originality was still to be found among the Chinese.
Excellent poetry was composed. Novels continued to appear, among them
what are probably the greatest and most original ever written in China.
The best known and most popular of them all, the Hung Lou Meng usually
translated as "The Dream of the Red Chamber," was the work of Ts'ao
Hsueh-ch'm (or Ts'ao Chan). Another novel, probably dating from about
1825, under the guise of travels in imaginary countries, advocated far-
reaching reforms in the position of women— espousing the education of
girls and denouncing foot-binding, the inequality of the sexes, and the

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 263

determination of marriage by fortunetelling. There were, indeed, many
novels attacking officialdom and accepted social usages.

Fresh developments also took place in the theatre, although these did
not always make for improvement. Additional plays were composed,
many of them based on popular novels, and new — and often more raucous
— forms of music were popular.

CULTURE UNDER THE GREAT CH'iNG EMPERORS: PHILOSOPHY

In philosophy the first century or so of the dynasty was
noteworthy. There was much more of inquiry and creative thought under
the Ch'ing than under the other great foreign dynasty, the Yuan.

The impulse that gave rise to it was the conquest of the country by
the Manchus. Scholars were impelled to seek the reason for the weakness
which had permitted so small a people to overrun the Empire. Among
the pioneers were Huang Tsung-hsi (1609-1692) and Wang Fu-chih
(1627-1679). One of the most distinguished thinkers was Ku T'ing-lin,
also known as Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682). Ku actively opposed the Manchu
conquest and in later years, when he had become outstanding as a
scholar and was repeatedly urged to accept public office, persisted
in his resolution never to serve under the hated foreigner. He believed
that part of the ineptitude of the Ming had been due to the absorption of
the intellectuals in fruitless discussions of the quality of human nature
and of Heaven's decree. He sought a cure for the nation's ills in turning
from such debates to the cultivation of character. Another independent
thinker was Yen Yiian (1635-1704). Stoical, despising mere book-
learning, and given to practical activity, he published little, and it was
not until long afterward that his writings gained much recognition. He
declared that the paralysis which had allowed his country to fall a prey
to the Manchus arose from the concentration of the scholar on his books
and on meditation, and that the remedy lay in hard labor at practical
tasks, directed in part toward improving economic conditions. Both Ku
and Yen represented a reaction against the dominant philosophy of the
school of Chu Hsi.

Another phase of the rebellion against the Sung philosophers was
an attempt to get back of their commentaries to the original Classics. The
protestants depended largely on the studies of the Classics made by the
scholars of the Han dynasty, as being nearer in time to the revered books
and hence presumably more accurate than were the Sung authors.
Hence their movement is generally known as that of the Han Hsueh, or
Han Learning. Much energy was spent on philology, in the effort to
reconstruct the ancient pronunciation of the characters of the Classics.
Ku Yen-wu was the author of the book which laid the cornerstone of

264 VOLUME I

that science, and other scholars followed in his steps. The members
of the school sought for early manuscripts, editions, and quotations, to
determine what the original texts of the Classics had been. They studied
epigraphy, philology, phonology, and historical geography. They devel
oped a method of historical criticism which is clearly independent of but
is surprisingly like that evolved in the Occident in recent times. Yen Jo-chii
(1636-1704), for example, shook the scholarly world with a book (Shang
Shu Ku Wen Shu Cheng) which demonstrated that the so-called "Ancient
Text" (or ''Ancient Script") of the Classic of History was a late forgery.
A few in the Sung, Yuan, and Ming had suspected the spurious nature
of this text, but none had gone so thoroughly into the subject as did Yen.
Yen devoted a lifetime to the task and his arguments were conclusive,
but his work was not published until 1745, nearly a generation after his
death, and his findings were not accepted by the great majority of the
scholars of the time. A younger contemporary of Yen, Yao Chi-heng
(1647-1715?), attempted to prove that many books attributed to ancient
times are unauthentic. Hu Wei (1633-1714) showed that the diagrams
which some of the Sung philosophers used to illustrate and reinforce their
arguments were not from remote antiquity, as the latter had claimed, but
originated with a Taoist priest in the tenth century. Ts'ui Shu (1740-
1816) put in the larger part of his life casting doubt on what were usually
believed to be dependable facts and documents — such as the historicity of
the Emperors whom Confucius and his school held up as models, the tradi
tional authorship of the Chou L/, the concluding chapters of the Lun Yu}
and the Bamboo Books. Many another name might be given of those
who contributed to this school. Chang Hsiieh-ch'eng (1738-1801), while
not precisely of this school and professing to adhere to Chu Hsi, was
tolerant of Wang Yang-ming. Tai Chen (1724-1777), the outstanding
philosopher of the dynasty, marked the culmination of the intellectual
renaissance. He rejected the dualism of the Sung for rationalistic, mate
rialistic monism.

To the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century there
was much of able scholarship. With the loss of vigor which the dynasty
suffered after 1800, and with the foreign wars and internal rebellions
which shook the Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century, this
activity declined. One of its greatest exponents and patrons, Yuan Yuan,
who sought to organize research, died in 1849, the year after the outbreak
of the most serious of these uprisings, that of the T'ai P'ing. The Han
Hsueh was not forgotten, however, and contributed to the intellectual
revolution which came in the last years of the nineteenth and in the
twentieth century.

The Han Hsueh is significant not only for its combination of originality
with reverence for the past, but also for the evidence which it affords

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 265

of the decline of Buddhism as an effective force in the intellectual life
of the Empire. In the Tang and the centuries immediately preceding the
Tang, most of the creative thought of China was absorbed in interpreting
and developing Buddhist philosophy. Under the Sung, Buddhism, while
producing few thinkers of any consequence, was still strong enough to
mold Confucianism. Even under the Ming, Wang Yang-ming showed
the effect of Buddhist environment. Now, under the Ch'ing, the Han
Hsueh was attempting to purge Confucianism of the Buddhist and Taoist
elements which the Sung thinkers had brought into it. From one point
of view, the Han Hsueh was evidence of a further recession of the tide
of Buddhism and the re-emergence above its waters of pre-Buddhist Con
fucianism. Buddhism was still powerful. Thousands of monks and nuns
were in its cloisters and it remained one of the most prominent factors
in the folklore, the art, the customs, and the religious life of the Empire.
Under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor an attempt was made to reconcile
Buddhism and Confucianism. Tibetan Buddhism was fairly prominent,
through the Ch'ing rule of that land and the desire to keep the friend
ship of the Dalai Lama. On the whole, however, Buddhism was decay
ing.

Other trends of thought were represented, including that which kept
up the tradition of Wang Yang-ming. The Han Hsueh was far from being
universally accepted and had its critics. The dominant Sung school was
itself divided into at least three branches. The T'ung Ch'eng school
fought the archaic and artificial literary style (p'ien t'i) by which sentences
were composed in pairs, and strove to popularize the writings of T'ang
and Sung masters and even older writers.

Confucianism as interpreted by Chu Hsi and his followers remained
the orthodox philosophy of the state and was enforced through the civil
service examinations. The Confucian cult was maintained much as it
had been under the later rulers of the Ming. Every imperial political
subdivision had a hall in which were tablets to the sage and his dis
tinguished followers and in which sacrifices were officially offered at
stated intervals. New names, too, were added to this imperial hall of
fame.

THE ECONOMY UNDER THE GREAT CH'ING EMPERORS

In the first hundred years or so of the Ch'ing, as we have
said, China was as prosperous as any other large country. Thanks partly
to the internal order after the suppression of the rebellion of Wu San-
kuei and, as we have suggested to the new food plants derived from the
Americas, population mounted to higher dimensions than at any earlier
time.

266 VOLUME I

Chinese sailors and merchants continued to go by ship to the South
and East. During the early Ch'ing much of the copper needed for coinage
was from Japan. Later, mines in Yunnan became the chief source.

The government monopoly of salt, long a source of revenue, was
largely in the hands of a group of wealthy merchants in Yangchow.

INTERCOURSE WITH THE OCCIDENT

Mention has repeatedly been made of the growing pressure
from the Occident. Roman Catholic missionaries penetrated every prov
ince, bringing with them their religion, and the scholars among them
residing in Peking introduced the court and the educated classes to the
science and art of the West. In 1807 the first Protestant missionary,
Robert Morrison, landed at Canton, and others followed. Merchants —
Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, a few representatives of other Euro
pean states, and, last of all, Americans — made their way to Macao and
Canton. The Russians maintained an overland trade. Upon all these the
Ch'ing authorities kept a strict hand. Roman Catholic missionaries were
closely watched: repeated persecutions prevented their flocks from increas
ing much beyond the two hundred thousand mark and were slowly stamp
ing them out. Protestant missionaries were confined to Canton, to Macao,
and to overseas Chinese in places like Batavia, Singapore, Malacca, and
Bangkok. Commerce was closely regulated. While some smuggling was
done, most of the maritime trade was carried on at one port, Canton,
and there, during much of the period, it was conducted through an official
guild of Chinese merchants, the Co--hong. Foreign merchants in Canton
were restricted to a narrow strip on the riverbank, the famous "Factories,"
and might with Portuguese permission find more breathing space at the
near-by Macao. The Occident, growing in wealth, power, and com
mercial activity, would not permanently brook such constraint, and trou
ble loomed ahead. For the time being, however, Westerners had perforce
to submit to the conditions imposed by the government in whose land
they were guests.

In spite of all these restrictions, the impact of the Occident was already
bearing fruit in China. The Christians included very few men of social or
political prominence, especially in later years, but they were to be found
in practically every province. Western science, especially mathematics
and astronomy, was being studied by Chinese scholars. Cannon of the
kind then in use in the West — some of them cast by Jesuits at the com
mand of Manchus and Chinese — played a part in internal and external
warfare. The Western style of painting was having its influence upon
some of the Chinese artists. It is possible that the efforts of Chinese

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 267

scholars to devise a phonetic system for writing the language — of which
there were at least two — were due to contact with Western alphabets.

More marked than the influence of the Occident upon China was that
of Chinese culture upon Europe. The Roman Catholic missionaries trans
lated portions of Chinese literature and wrote extensively on the coun
try. Their works were widely read. Since their reports were, on the whole,
appreciative of Chinese culture, the result in Europe was admiration for the
Middle Kingdom. For a time in the eighteenth century, things Chinese
became a fad. Never before had China had so much effect upon lands
so distant from her borders. Rococo art reflected a knowledge of Chinese
forms. Gardens, pagodas, and pavilions in Chinese style were constructed
for the noble and the wealthy. Many plants were introduced from China,
some of them later widely cultivated and extensively developed. Tea
roses, azaleas, greenhouse primroses, chrysanthemums, mountain peonies,
and China asters were among the flowers introduced into Europe from
China in the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the early part of the nine
teenth century. Chinese sweet oranges were taken by the Portuguese to
Europe and Brazil and spread throughout much of tropical and sub
tropical North and South America. Sedan chairs were fashionable. Lacquer,
incense, tea, Chinese colors, and the Chinese style of painting were popular,
the earliest wall papers appeared in imitation of Chinese designs, and
true porcelain was for the first time produced in Europe. The deism so
widespread in intellectual circles was reinforced by the knowledge of Con
fucian philosophy that came to the West, for the two systems had much
in common. Here, said the deists, was "natural religion" actually in opera
tion. To the "liberals" who led in the "Enlightenment" in the Europe of
the eighteenth century, China was a kind of Utopia where their principles
were practiced.

The admiration of Europeans for China was in marked contrast to
the disdain with which that country and its culture were shortly to be
viewed. The powerful realm of the K'ang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung Emperors
compelled a respect which the feebleness of the later rulers could not retain.
Moreover, in the nineteenth century, information in the West about China
came chiefly not from missionaries, in intimate contact with the best of
Chinese society, as many of the early Roman Catholics had been. It was
derived, rather, from merchants who were irritated beyond measure by
the restrictions on their trade and who saw chiefly the seamy side of
Chinese life. Then, too, the rapid increase of wealth and physical well-
being in the Occident in the nineteenth century contributed to disdain for
non-Europeans, including the Chinese.

The continued influence of China upon Japan must be noted. Several of
the Ming scholars, unwilling to live under Manchu rule, with the coming
of the Ch'ing dynasty took refuge in the Shogun's domains. Here they

268 VOLUME I

made a marked impression upon art and literature. For a time Japan
experienced a strengthening of the influence of the Confucian school.
Although politically independent and making her own adaptations of what
she received, she remained within the borders of China's cultural empire.

SUMMARY

The first hundred and fifty years of the Ch'ing dynasty were
among the most glorious in the history of China. With the exception of
the Yuan, the area ruled from China had never before been so extensive.
Internal order had never been better maintained over so long a period, and
as a result, prosperity was widespread and the population multiplied far
beyond all previous totals. China dealt firmly with the foreigners in its
midst, and its culture was admired and copied in Europe. Artistic and
intellectual life flourished.

With all this vigor and activity, however, in originality the China of
the Ch'ing did not begin to equal that of the Chou, or even the Han, the
T'ang, and the Sung. The best that the intellectual life of the K'ang Hsi
and Ch'ien Lung periods had to show for itself was the Han Learning,
and that was directing its energy not toward giving birth to new ideas,
but toward discovering what the forefathers had thought and done during
the great creative centuries before the Han and the Ch'in. This compara
tive sterility of the Ch'ing was a prolongation of that of the Yuan and
Ming. For nearly six centuries China had been stirred by no great creative
movement. Such innovating ability as was displayed affected merely the
minority. It seems probable that without some powerful shock from the
outside the Chinese would have continued to repeat, with variations,
the ideas of previous centuries. It is impossible to predict infallibly what
would have happened under a different set of circumstances, but it seems
likely that without such a stimulus Chinese culture had reached the end
of its development. However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the
clash came. Under it the old institutional and thought forms crumbled
and chaos resulted. It is still too early to predict with assurance whether
the shock will not prove to have been too great — whether the Chinese
genius will not be so overwhelmed that it can never again make fresh
and outstanding contributions. In some such contact with other civiliza
tions, however, appears to have lain the only hope of anything new from
the Middle Kingdom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The dynastic history corresponding to those for the previous ruling houses ,
is Ch'ing Shih Kao, or Draft History of the Ch'ing Dynasty, in one hundred
and thirty-one volumes. It is the product of a historiographical bureau estab-

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 269

lished early in the Republic for the express purpose of compiling it and was
the work of pundits trained under the old regime. The arrangement of ma-_
terial follows, with minor exceptions, that of the Ming History. The quality
of the work is questioned, among other things because the authors made little
if any use of foreign sources in the account of the relations between China and
Occidental peoples. The biographical material from the Ch'ing Shih Kao has
been brought together in a separate work of eighty volumes. See also J. K.
Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, "On the Transmission of Ch'ing Documents,"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 12-46, Vol. 4, pp. 12-46;
J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, "On the Types and Uses of Ch'ing Documents,"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 5, pp. 1-71, and Knight Biggerstaff,
"Some Notes on the Tung-hua Lu and the Shih-lu," Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies, Vol. 4, pp. 101-115. E. Hauer has done an important piece of
translating in Huang-Ts'ing K'ai-kuo Fang-Iiieh, die Grundung des Mand-
schurischen Kaiserreiches ubersetzt und erkldrt (Berlin and Leipzig, 1926) :
the original work was compiled by official order in the latter part of the
eighteenth century and deals with the beginnings of the dynasty.

Indispensable for the history of the Ch'ing era is A. Hummel, Eminent
Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (Washington, 2 vols., 1943, 1944). It is made
up of biographies prepared by a number of authors.

Of general histories of China covering the period, there are de Mailla,
Histoire Generale de la Chine (13 vols., Paris, 1777-1785), which extends
through the early portion of the dynasty and part of which has the value of
being written by an eyewitness — for the author was a missionary in China;
H. Cordier, Histoire Generale de la Chine (4 vols., Paris, 1920-1921), chiefly
valuable here for its summary of relations with Westerners; L. Wieger, Textes
Historiques (2 vols., Hochienfu, 1903, 1904).

On studies of specific phases of the dynasty, see E. Morgan, "Times and
Manners in the Age of the Emperor K'ang Hsi," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 69, pp. 23-45; M. Eder, "Der
Untergang des Haiises Cheng. Nach einem Fang-liieh-Entwurf 1679-1684,"
Monumenta Serica, Vol. 5, pp. 263-315; Wang Shih-ch'u, translated by L.
Mao, "Meine Erinnerungen an das Zehn-Tage-Massaker in Yang-dschou,"
Sirica, Vol. 13, pp. 265-283; J. S. M. Ward and W. G. Stirling, The Hung
Society, or the Society of Heaven and Earth (London, Baskerville Press, 3 vols.,
1925-1926). On the rebellion of Wu San-kuei, an important study is E.
Haenisch, "Buckstiicke aus der Geschichte Chinas unter der Mandschu-
Dynastie. II. Der Aufstand des Wu San-huei, aus dem Shengwu-chi ubersetzt,"
Toung Pao, 1913, pp. 1-123; Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China: Imperial
Control in the Nineteenth Century (University of Washington Press, 1960, pp.
xiv, 783).

On population and new food plants, see Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Popu
lation of China, 1368-1953 (Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 143-153.

On the form of government, see Pao Chao Hsieh, The Government of
China (1644-1911) (Baltimore, 1925). On the salt monopoly, see Ping-ti Ho,
"The Salt-Merchants of Yang-chou," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.
17, pp. 130-168. See also H. C. Hinton, "The Grain Tribute System of the
Ch'ing Dynasty," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 11, pp. 339-354; W.
Franke, "Patents for Hereditary Ranks and Honorary Titles during the Ch'ing
Dynasty," Monumenta Serica, Vol. 7, pp. 38-67. The code of the dynasty, the
Ta Ch'ing Lu Li, has been translated by G. Boulais in his Manuel du Code
Chinois (Varietes Sinologiques, No. 55, Shanghai, 2 vols., 1923-1924). On the

270 VOLUME I

civil service examinations and education as maintained under the dynasty, see
£tienne Zi, Pratique des Examens Litteraires en Chine (Varietes Sinologiques,
No. 5, Shanghai, 1894), and E. Biot, Essai sur I'Histoire de Instruction
Publique en Chine (Paris, Benjamin Pourat, 1847), pp. 491-550; H. W. Wil-
helm, "The Po-hsueh Hung-ju Examination of 1679," Journal of the American
Oriental Society, Vol. 71, pp. 60-66.

On Ho-shen and the Ch'ing Lung Emperor, see D. S. Nivison, "Ho-shen
and His Accusers: Ideology and Political Behavior in the Eighteenth Century,"
in D. S. Nivison and A. W. Wright, Confucianism in Action (Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1959), pp. 209-243.

On the foreign conquests of the period and relations between China and its
Asiatic neighbors, there are J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Teng, "On the Ch'ing
Tributary System," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 135-246;
W. W. Rockhill, "The Dalai Lamas of Lhasa and Their Relations with the
Manchu Emperors of China, 1644-1908," Toung Pao, 1910, pp. 1-104;
W. W. Rockhill, China's Intercourse with Korea, from the XVth Century to
1895 (London, 1905); P. Pelliot, "Les Conquetes de 1'Empereur de la Chine,"
Toung Pao, 1920, pp. 183-274; C. Imbault-Huart, Recueil de Documents sur
FAsie Centrale (Paris, 1881); C. Imbault-Huart (translator), "Histoire de la
Conquete de la Birmanie par les Chinois," Journal Asiatique, 1878, 7th series,
Vol. 11, pp. 135-178; C. Imbault-Huart (translator), "Histoire de la Con
quete du Nepal par les Chinois," Journal Asiatique, 1878, 7th series, Vol. 12,
pp. 348-377; Maurice Courant, UAsie Centrale aux XVIIe et XVllle Siecles:
Empire Kalmouk or Empire Mantchou? (Paris, 1912); E. Haenisch, "Der
Chinesische Feldzug in Hi im Jahre 1755 (mit zeitgenossischen franzosischen
Kupferstichen)," Ostasiat. Zeitschrift, 1918, pp. 57-86; Lepage, "Soumission
des Tribus Musulmanes du Turkestan par la Chine, 1757-1759," Mission
d'Ollone, Recherches sur les Musulmanes Chinois, Paris, 1911, pp. 321-355;
J. F. Baddeley, Russia, Mongolia, China (2 vols., London, 1919); E. Haenisch,
"Die Eroberung des Goldstromlandes in Osttibet," Asia Major, Vol. 10, pp.
262-313; E. Haenisch, "Zwei Kaiserliche Erlasse vom Ausgang der Regierung
Kienlung, die Gorkha betreffend," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 3,
pp. 17-39; W. Fuchs, Galdanica, Miszellen zum Kriege Kanghsis gegen Galdan,
Monuments Serica, Vol. 9, pp. 174-198; W. Fuchs, "Die Entwurfe der
Schlachtenkupfer der Kienlung-und Taokuang-Zeit," Monumenta Sinica, Vol.
9, pp. 101-122; Luciano Petech, China and Tibet in the Early 18th Century
(Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1950); Eichhorn, "Kolonialkampfe der Chinesen in
Turkestan Wahrend der Epoche Ch'ien-Iung," Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenansldndischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 96, pp. 261-325; J. Hall, "Notes on
the Early Ch'ing Copper Trade with Japan," Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 12, pp. 444-461.

On relations with the Occident, K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian
Missions in China (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1929), pp. 102-227, gives
a summarized account of the Roman Catholic and Russian missions, and the
footnotes contain references to the chief sources and secondary works. An
excellent summary is A. H. Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin. The
Jesuits at the Court of China (University of California Press, 1942). On a
brief period see B. H. Willeke, Imperial Government and Catholic Missions in
China during the Years 1784-1785 (St. Bonaventure, N. Y., The Franciscan
Institute, 1948, pp. xiii, 226). See also on one of the Jesuits, H. Josson and L.
Willaert, Correspondence de Ferdinand Verbiest (Brussels, 1938). A good

The Ch'ing Dynasty: Its Heyday and the Beginning of its Decline 271

book on the intercourse of China with the Occident, chiefly in the nineteenth
century, is H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire.
In the first volume, The Period of Conflict, 2834-1860 (New York, 1910),
pages 41-117 deal with the years covered by this chapter. A useful summary
is found in G. F. Hudson, Europe and China: a Survey of Their Relations
from the Earliest Times to 1800 (London, 1931). On contacts with the
Spaniards, see W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939). On the
Portuguese see C. R. Boxer, Fidalgos in the Far East, 1550-1770 (The Hague,
Martinus Nijhoff, 1948). On intercourse with Great Britain, see H. B. Morse,
The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834 (5
vols., Cambridge and Oxford, 1926, 1929); E. H. Pritchard, "The Kotow in
the Macartney Embassy to China in 1795," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 2,
pp. 163-203; E. H. Pritchard, The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese
Relations (Pullman, 1936, pp. 99-442); G. Staunton, An Authentic Account
of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (2
vols., London, 1797); I. C. Y. Hsu, "The Secret Mission of the Lord Amherst
on the Coast of China 1832," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17, pp.
231-253; and S. Camman, Trade Through the Himalayas. The Early British
Attempts to Open Tibet (Princeton University Press, 1951, pp. x, 156). On
intercourse with the United States, see K. S. Latourette, The History of Early
Relations between the United States and China, 1784-1844 (New Haven,
1917, pp. 271).

On relations with Russia, see W. Fuchs, "Der russisch-chinesische-Vertrag
von Nertschinsk vom Jahre 1689. Eine textkrititsche Betrachtung," Monumenta
Serica, Vol. 4, pp. 546-593; J. F. Baddeley, Russia, Mongolia, China, being
Some Record of the Relations between them from the Beginning of the XVllth
Century to the Death of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, 1602-1676 (2 vols.,
London, 1919).

On the effect of China upon Europe, see A. Reichwein, China and Europe:
Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century (translated by
J. C. Powell, New York, 1925); H. Cordier, La Chine en France au XVllle
Siecle (Paris, 1910); P. Martino, UOrient dans la Litterature Frangaise au
XVHe et au XVllle Siecles (Paris, 1906); V. Pinot, Documents Inedits Relatifs
a la Connaissance de la Chine en France de 1685 a 1740 (1931); V. Pinot, La
Chine et la Formation de lf Esprit Philosophique en France 1640-1740) (1932) ;
E. Bretschneider, Early European Researches into the Flora of China (Shang
hai, 1881); E. Bretschneider, History of European Botanical Discoveries in
China (London, 1898); William W. Appleton, A Cycle of Cathay: the Chinese
Vogue in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1951, pp. xii, 182); Ssli-yu Teng, "Chinese In
fluence on the Western Examination System," Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 7, pp. 267-312.

On art, see R. L. Hobson, The Later Ceramic Wares of China (London,
1925); F. Hirth, "Scraps from a Collector's Notebook: Being Notes on Some
Chinese Painters of the Present Dynasty," Toung Pao, 1905).

On the literature of the period, especially philosophy, the Han Learning,
the novels, and the poetry, see Hu Shih in The China Year Book, 1924-5, pp.
633-637 (Tientsin, 1924); A. W. Hummel (translator), The Autobiography
of a Chinese Historian (Leyden, 1931); W. T. de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and
Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (Columbia University Press,
1960), pp. 582-629; W. T. de Bary, "Chinese Despotism and the Confucian

272 VOLUME I

Ideal in a Seventeenth-Century View," in J. K. Fairbank, Chinese Thought and
Institutions (The University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 163-203; D. S.
Nivison, "The Problem of 'Knowledge' and 'Action' in Chinese Thought since
Wang Yang-Ming," in A. F. Wright, Studies in Chinese Thought (The Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 112-145, especially pp. 121-134; Fung
Yu-Ian, A History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk Bodde (Vol. II,
Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 630-672; M. Freeman, "The Ch'ing
Dynasty Criticism of Sung Politico-Philosophy," Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1928, pp. 78-110; M. Freeman, "Yen Hsi
Chai, a 17th Century Philosopher," ibid., 1926, pp. 70-91; R. Wilhelm, "Intel
lectual Movements in Modern China," The Chinese Social and Political
Science Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, Apr. 1924, pp. 110-124; Hu Shih, "A Chinese
Declaration of the Rights of Women," ibid., Vol. 8, No. 2, Apr. 1924, pp.
100-109; Tsao Hsueh-chin and Kao Ngoh, Dream of the Red Chamber Trans
lated and Adapted from the Chinese by Chi-chen Wang (London, 1929);
C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, translator, San Kuo, or the Romance of the Three King
doms (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 2 vols., 1925); Monkey, translation by
Arthur Waley of Hsi Yu Chi (New York, John Day, 1943); All Men are
Brothers, translation by Pearl S. Buck of Shui-hu Chuan (New York, Grove
Press, 2 vols., 1957); Richard Irwin, The Evolution of the Chinese Novel,
Shui-hu-chuan (Harvard University Press, 1952); Dream of the Red Chamber,
translation by C. C. Wang of Hung Lou Meng\ H. A. Giles, Strange Stories
from a Chinese Studio (2 vols., London, 1880) : the translation of a collection,
Liao Chai-chi /, by P'u Sung-ling; Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei, Eighteenth
Century Chinese Poet (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1956, pp. 227). See
also R. A. Miller, "Some Japanese Influences on Chinese Classical Scholarship
of the Ch'ing Period," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 72, pp.
56-67; Carsun Chang, The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, Vol II
New York, 1962.

On the censorship of literature, see the excellent study by L. C. Goodrich,
The Literary Inquisition of Ch'ien-Lung (Baltimore, 1935).

An account which goes on into the nineteenth century is C. B. Malone,
History of the Peking Summer Palaces under the Ch'ing Dynasty (Urbana,
1934).

On further bibliography, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibliography
(University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 30-32.

CHAPTER TEN

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE
IMPACT OF THE OCCIDENT:
L The Empire Is Shaken by Wars with Western
European Powers and the Resulting Treaties
and by Internal Rebellions (A.D. 1839-1860)

INTRODUCTORY

We now come to the period of the greatest revolution in
Chinese institutions and culture of which we have record. What changes
may have been wrought in the dim ages before the Chou Dynasty we do
not know. We do know that not during the centuries whose main features
we are able to discern with some degree of assurance had such a thorough
going shattering of the structure of the nation's life been seen. Eras of
transition there had been. Of these the chief were what accompanied the
early years of the Chou; the turmoil toward the end of the Chou, out of
which emerged the philosophies, notably Confucianism, Taoism, and
Legalism, that were to shape the patterns of Chinese life and thought and
the imperial structure of the Ch'in and the Han; then the nearly four
centuries of division and invasion, with the accompanying influx of Bud
dhism, that followed the downfall of the Han; next the era that began in
the later years of the T'ang with the revival and reshaping of Confucianism
and the emergence of a society, ideals, and political structure that, with
modifications, were to persist to the close of the nineteenth century. In
none of these periods, however, had the overturn of the inheritance from
the past been so nearly complete as in the twentieth century.

Up to the nineteenth century, the current of Chinese history had moved
Dn without such traumatic disturbances as had punctuated that of the
Dccident. One dynasty succeeded another, each founded by a successful
warrior, and all, after a shorter or longer period, declining, their close
signalized by rebellions and civil chaos, and frequently by invasions from

273

274 VOLUME i

the North. Under every major dynasty Chinese civilization experienced
alterations, often very marked. As we have repeatedly seen, Chinese history
does not fall into a dynastic pattern. It was not fully independent of dynastic
developments and changes, but several cultural eras did not conform to
dynastic sequence. However, no break occurred as sharp as that between
the Persian and post-Alexandrian Hellenistic sequence in western Asia, or
as the one between the Roman Empire and medieval Europe. No cultural
or political invasion from without had as nearly overwhelmed the native
inheritance as had several which the Occident had known.

The events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were, therefore,
entirely without precedent in China's history. Heretofore the most danger
ous invaders had come from the north, west, and northeast, by way of the
land. Now they were arriving by the sea. The ocean had been spanned.
On the north, too, a menace still loomed — Russia. The Empire was beset
from both sides. Up to now, cultural invasion had not been a sequel of the
political domination of aliens. Now both were combined. Previously, former
invaders and conquerors had adopted from China most of what civilization
they possessed. Although they mastered all or part of the country, many
alien rulers regarded themselves as Chinese monarchs and preserved native
institutions. Ideas had come in from abroad — more than have sometimes
been recognized — but the structure of Chinese life was basically very little
altered by them. The major cultural importation had been Buddhism, and
that had entered chiefly through peaceful contacts with the outer world.
Now came peoples possessed of a high civilization very different from that
of China. Far from being disposed to adopt the latter, they regarded it as
backward and semibarbarous. The admiration for the Middle Kingdom
which had been strong in Europe in the eighteenth century was preserved
only by a few savants, and by them chiefly for China's past. The attitude
toward contemporary China was almost entirely a compound of irritation,
condescension, and contempt.

The conflict was one of civilizations as well as of governments and
peoples. In each of the main phases of life — economic, political, intellectual,
social, and religious — Chinese and Western culture displayed striking and
fundamental differences. In the close interplay of nineteenth and twentieth
century life, one or the other structure had to give way. In the eighteenth
century it had seemed for a time that Europe might be partially Sinicized
rather than China Europeanized. As the nineteenth century progressed it
became obvious that the opposite would take place. The effect on China
was accentuated by the fact that the culture of the West was itself experi
encing rapid changes which threatened its traditional bases and even its
existence. Here was an Occident being enriched by the industrial processes
that had begun to appear in the eighteenth century and were to be ex
tensively developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The West

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 275

had discovered new ways of utilizing man's physical environment In conse
quence, its economic, social, moral, intellectual, and political life was being
revolutionized. Moved by their desire for markets and raw materials and
by the passion for power, and armed with the new appliances, Western
peoples were mastering much of the globe. Wherever they went — whether
to Africa, India, the South Seas, the Americas, Japan, or China — changes
followed.

In China, in the clash of civilizations the institutions of two thousand
years crumbled. The political and economic organization, which had proved
fairly adequate for the old conditions, was quite unfitted to cope with the
invasion. The Chinese looked upon the intruders as barbarians and long
resisted them. However, in time, defeated in war again and again, their
independence compromised, their chief cities forced to house foreign
communities, and their land traversed by merchants and missionaries con
veying novel ideas, the Chinese began adopting the culture of the alien.
They did so partly in self-defense — in the attempt to defeat the conqueror
with his own weapons — and partly because they were convinced of the
superiority of much that the Westerner had to offer. Whatever the motive,
the result was change affecting profoundly every aspect of the nation's life.

The story of the period has been told again and again, often in much
detail. Histories of China by Westerners have usually devoted half or more
of their space to the years after 1839. It would be superfluous, therefore,
to repeat extensively the narrative of the past century and a quarter. If,
however, an account of China's past is to be well-rounded, these moment
ous decades must be included; and because of their significance, especially
for present-day China, we must go into them somewhat more fully than
we have into any preceding era. We must always remember that we are
still too near the events to view them in their true perspective. We must,
however, make the effort so to see them, because upon the success with
which we do so depends the accuracy of our understanding of the current
situation. Time, too, may prove us to have been judges as competent as
those who come after us.

The years between 1839 and 1964 are divided by events into four
main periods. First were slightly over two decades (1839-1860) during
which in two wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) with Occidental powers
China was defeated and forced to permit the Westerner to reside in several
important cities and to travel freely elsewhere, and to grant him a certain
degree of exemption from the jurisdiction of Chinese laws and courts. The
treaties then exacted from Peking were the main framework of the legal
basis for the Western penetration of China. During the uneasy truce
(1842-1856) that separated the two wars a rebellion broke out (1848),
which traced its history to contacts with the West and which devastated
some of the Empire's fairest provinces and threatened to unseat the

276 VOLUME I

Manchus, Other uprisings also menaced the Ch'ing. The year 1860 ended
with the dynasty in a parlous condition: the nation was saddled with treaties
that compromised its independence, and rebellions were rampant.

There followed, in the second place, slightly more than three decades
(1861-1893) when the dynasty and the Empire appeared to have re
covered. The rebellions were suppressed and internal order was restored.
In spite of recurring friction with Western governments and occasional
further concessions to them, major humiliations were avoided and some
show of dignity was maintained. However, while outwardly the structure of
Chinese life was little altered, influences from abroad were undermining it.

Then came, in the third place, beginning with 1894, a period when the
framework of Chinese civilization began to crumble. A disastrous war with
Japan (1894-1895) was the signal, and was quickly succeeded by the
threatened partition of the country among the powers (1895-1899). A
vain effort to oust the alien ( 1900) ended in humiliating prostration before
him. In the revolutionary attempts at adjustment which followed, the
Manchus were swept aside (1912) and a republic was essayed. During the
ensuing civil strife the nation declined more and more toward political
chaos. At the same time startling changes came in every phase of the
people's life: in the family and social structure, in religion, in intellectual
activities, and in economic organization. Fresh integration seemed about to
be achieved. Then, after 1931 and especially after 1937, events were
complicated by the progressive conquest of much of the country by Japan.

A fourth period began in 1945 with the defeat of Japan. The existing
regime, that of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, was exhausted by the
long resistance to the invader. After the expulsion of the Japanese it
proved unable to reconstruct the country. The Communists, espousing an
ideology of Occidental origin, took possession of the mainland (1949) and
carried through a drastic reorganization which eliminated much of such
of the older culture as had survived the earlier changes. Under the protec
tion of the United States the Kuomintang continued on Formosa (Taiwan)
the government which it claimed to be the only legitimate one of China.
It represented the pre-Communist stage of the revolution. China was
caught in the global struggle between Communism and the "free world."

THE FIRST WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN (1839-1842)

As we have seen, the pressure of the West on China was due
to the renewed expansion of European peoples, caused by what is usually
termed the Industrial Revolution. Great Britain, the Occidental power in
which that revolution originated, was the chief of the maritime commercial
nations, and dissatisfied with the conditions under which the Chinese per
mitted trade, was the first to seek to coerce the Chinese into granting

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 277

better terms. The British were accustomed to intercourse between nations
on the basis of equality. To them the Chinese procedure, grounded in the
conviction that all other peoples were tributary to the Emperor, was in
tolerable. Chinese tonnage dues, taxes on imports and exports, other fees
on commerce, and trade regulations seemed galling and arbitrary. Chinese
judicial processes were regarded as high-handed and unjust: the legal
procedures of the two nations differed, the Chinese theory of group re
sponsibility clashed with the British concept of individual responsibility,
the Chinese authorities employed torture as part of the judicial process, and
the innocent were often not given a fair hearing. Had the British been ready
to abide by a basic principle of that international law by which they pro
fessed to be guided — the sovereignty of each nation — they might well have
reminded themselves that they had no treaty rights in the country, were
there, on sufferance, and if they did not like such terms as the Chinese
gave them, had no options but to ask peaceably for modifications or to
withdraw. That, however, was not the temper of Europeans toward non-
Europeans in the nineteenth century. Criticism of the ensuing war was not
lacking in Great Britain and America, but it was on the ground that opium
was being forced on China. Few challenged the right of an Occidental
power to exact better conditions for what was deemed legitimate trade.

On both sides there was colossal ignorance of the other. High Chinese
and Manchu officials believed the English to be "foreign devils." British
contempt and irritation were extreme. Each regarded the other as un
civilized.

As has just been said, the issue was complicated by the traffic in opium.
Opium had long been in use in China. As a temporary escape from the
monotony and tensions of life, it had much the same appeal as alcoholic
beverages have made to some other peoples. Partly because of its deleterious
moral and physical effects, and partly because its rapid increase reversed
the favorable balance of trade and led to the export of silver, the Chinese
court renewed long-standing prohibitions against the importation of the
drug. These were violated — through the connivance and venality of Chinese
officials — until late in 1838, when Peking, taking alarm, in a spasm for
enforcement, appointed Lin Tze-hsii as imperial commissioner to stamp out
the traffic. Lin arrived at his post in 1839 and acted with vigor. He ordered
that all the contraband drug in foreign hands be surrendered and that
foreign merchants give their formal promise no longer to import it. To win
acceptance of his demands he virtually imprisoned the entire foreign com
munity in Canton in its own quarters. Slightly more than twenty thousand
chests of the drug were, accordingly, handed over and destroyed, and
some of the foreigners gave the required bond. The British, aggrieved,
withdrew — for a time to Macao, and soon to the island of Hong Kong,
then almost uninhabited but commanding an excellent harbor not far from

278 VOLUME I

Canton. Further friction followed, and in November, 1839, an armed clash
occurred between British and Chinese warships at Hong Kong.

The war thus begun was interrupted from time to time by negotiations.
It was almost entirely confined to naval attacks by the British upon Chinese
ports from Canton north to the Yangtze. After the capture (July, 1842) of
Chinkiang, where the Grand Canal crosses the Yangtze, had cut an im
portant line of communication between Peking and the South, and an assault
on Nanking had been ordered, the Chinese came to terms.

THE TREATIES OF 1842-1844

The resulting treaty of Nanking (August 29, 1842), which
the Tao Kuang Emperor reluctantly allowed to be signed, had as its main
provisions (1) the opening of five ports — Canton, Amoy, Foochow,
Ningpo, and Shanghai — to the residence and trade of British subjects; (2)
the cession of the island of Hong Kong to Great Britain — for a naval and
commercial base; (3) intercourse between British and Chinese officials
on the footing of equality; (4) the establishment and publication by the
Chinese of a "fair and regular" tariff on exports and imports, to take the
place of the dues which the British claimed were subject to arbitrary change
and the venality of Chinese officials; (5) the abolishment of the Co-hong;
and (6) the payment by China of an indemnity as recompense for the
opium destroyed by Lin, for the debts owed by the Co-hong to British
merchants, and for British war expenses. This was followed (1843) by a
supplementary treaty which contained a tariff schedule, further regulations
for trade, a clause which promised most-favored-nation treatment, and the
beginnings of extraterritoriality.

Other Western powers whose citizens had commerce with China
watched the war and its outcome with interest. Some of them soon re
quested concessions similar to those granted to the British. The British had
asked no exclusive privileges for themselves, unless the cession of Hong
Kong be called such, and although at first they were far from cordial to
the idea, offered no great opposition to the extension to other nations of
the terms of commercial and official intercourse that had been won by
them. The United States sent a diplomatic mission which in 1 844 obtained
a treaty opening the same five ports to Americans, regulating trade, and
elaborating extraterritoriality — defining it in criminal cases and extending
it in part to civil ones. In October, 1844, the French obtained a similar
treaty. In December, 1844, they brought about the issue of an imperial
edict which granted permission to erect Roman Catholic churches in the
ports and to Chinese to accept Roman Catholicism. In 1846 they secured
a second edict that confirmed the toleration of Roman Catholicism and
promised the restoration to the Catholics of some of the churches built

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 279

under the K'ang Hsi Emperor which had been confiscated in the persecu
tions of the past century or more. A decree of 1845 extended to Protestants
the privileges of the edict of 1844. In 1845 Belgians were given the right
to trade and in 1847 Sweden and Norway obtained a treaty. In 1851 a
convention with Russia further regulated trade between that country and
China.

These treaties and edicts provided the legal basis of much of the foreign
penetration which the next ninety years were to witness. The opening of the
five cities for the trade and residence of foreigners served as a precedent
for designating others for the same purpose — "treaty ports," as they came
to be called. Until 1929 the tariff continued to be fixed by agreement with
foreign powers. It became customary to demand an indemnity of China
after the latter had been defeated in war. Extraterritoriality was established
and for three-quarters of a century was to be the general practice. By it,
foreigners, when they were defendants in any criminal action against
Chinese, were to be tried under their own laws and by their own authorities;
in civil cases with Chinese they might invoke the aid of their consuls; and
in controversies among themselves they were not to be subject to Chinese
laws or courts. When it was devised, the system probably helped to reduce
the friction between foreigners and Chinese, but it was a decided infringe
ment upon what in the Occident were considered the prerogatives of a
sovereign state.

BETWEEN THE WARS (1842-1855)

Under the new treaties the pressure of the West upon China
perceptibly increased. On Hong Kong was developed a thriving city, Vic
toria. Foreign merchants and missionaries settled there and in the five open
ports. The Jesuits re-entered China (1840), several Roman Catholic and
Protestant organizations sent representatives to begin work, and bodies,
both Roman Catholic and Protestant, which had been in China before
1839 reinforced their staffs. Trade was stimulated by the growth of steam
navigation. The settlement of the west coast of North America, especially
California, from the older portions of the United States proceeded apace
during the forties and fifties and led to more commerce across the Pacific.
The emigration of Chinese laborers sprang up: to the mines of California,
to Peru, and to the plantations of Cuba and British Guiana. Through these
wanderers overseas, alien influences were to flow back into China. In
Shanghai, which rapidly became an important center of foreign trade, the
Westerners acquired lands outside the city wall. There three settlements
arose: French, British, and American (the last two later — 1863 — amal
gamated as the International Settlement), and the foundations were laid
of the status that in after years was to be one of nearly complete inde-

280 VOLUME I

pendence of Chinese control. The foreign commerce of Amoy, Ningpo,
and Foochow did not become as important as that of Shanghai, and the
foreign settlements at these ports did not attain the dimensions of those
at the latter city. Portugal in effect assumed full sovereignty over Macao,
although China did not formally recognize the act until 1887.

The peace that was sealed by the treaties was little more than a truce.
Neither side was satisfied. From the Chinese standpoint too much had been
granted, and from the foreign standpoint not enough. Friction inevitably
followed. Of the five treaty ports, Canton continued to have the largest
number of foreign residents. These were still confined to the old narrow
"factory" district along the river front, and the Cantonese offered deter
mined opposition to any extension of the area. British attempts to obtain
better conditions were balked. Rioting, murders, and bitterness punctuate
the annals of these years. Trouble, although not so marked, occurred at
the other ports. The smuggling of opium continued. Much of the emigration
of Chinese took the form of "contract labor," and recruiting for it was
often by violence and fraud. For a time foreign ships, especially Portuguese,
undertook the "convoying" of Chinese merchant craft along the coast,
ostensibly as a protection against pirates, but in reality a thinly veiled form
of blackmail.

The American and French treaties of 1844 made provision for their
revision at the end of twelve years. Under the most-favored-nation clause
of her supplementary treaty of 1843, Great Britain claimed that the one of
1842 should come up for review in 1854 and enumerated to the Chinese
added regulations for intercourse and fresh privileges to foreigners which
she deemed desirable. Among them were access to more cities, the legaliza
tion of the opium trade, and the residence of Western envoys in Peking.
These demands were supported by the United States and France. It may be
noted, lest the alien seem entirely intent on his own gains, even at the price
of debauching the Chinese, that some who favored provision for the
importation of opium did so on the ground that, since the drug was coming
into the country anyway by smuggling, control could be exercised and a
revenue derived for the Government if the traffic was regularized. In 1856
the American representative by independent action endeavored to gain a
revision, then due, of the treaty of 1844. For the moment all these attempts
ended in failure.

THE WAR OF 1856-1860

War broke out over a comparatively minor incident. In
October, 1856, a craft, the lorcha Arrow — owned by Chinese, and with a
Chinese crew, but registered at Hong Kong, having a British captain, and
flying the British flag — while at Canton was boarded by Chinese officers.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 281

Most of its crew were arrested on the charge that they had been engaged
in a recent act of piracy, and the British flag was hauled down. The British
declared that British sovereignty had been violated and their flag insulted.
The Chinese declined to give the satisfaction demanded.

This particular clash, apparently so trivial, might have been settled
peaceably had it not been that by disposition and conviction both the
British consul, Harry Parkes, and the viceroy in Canton, Yeh Ming-shen,
were uncompromising. By the end of the month the British naval forces
commenced hostilities. They captured the forts that commanded the ap
proaches to Canton and bombarded the viceroy's yamen (official head
quarters). The Chinese retaliated by what in effect was a declaration of
war. The British ministry sustained the action of the British authorities in
China, was defeated on the issue in the House of Commons, but dissolving
Parliament, appealed to the country, won an endorsement, and went on
with hostilities.

France co-operated. France and Great Britain had been allied in the
war which was just closing in the Crimea, and France had been given a
casus belli in the execution (early in 1856), by the Chinese authorities in
Kwangsi, of a French missionary, Chapdelaine. Great Britain suggested that
the United States also join. This Washington declined to do, although late
in 1856 an American force had obtained an apology for an indignity to
the American flag by dismantling the offending forts (below Canton). The
United States, however, had its representative on hand to ask for a revision
of the treaty of 1 844 when the French and British were forcing from the
Chinese the revision of their corresponding documents. Russia, with the
Crimean War so recently closed, could not collaborate, but was eager to
take advantage of the situation to gain what she could.

Owing to a war with Persia and to the Sepoy Mutiny in India (1857),
Great Britain was delayed in pressing hostilities. Late in 1857, however, a
sufficient British and French force had gathered in Chinese waters, Canton
was taken, and the obdurate viceroy, Yeh, was sent a prisoner to Calcutta.
Great Britain, France, the United States, and Russia now dispatched de
mands to Peking. The reply proved unsatisfactory and the allied fleets
proceeded north, where they could bring more direct pressure on the
capital. The Taku forts, commanding the approach to Tientsin, were cap
tured by the British and the French. With Peking thus threatened, the
Emperor yielded, and treaties (usually called the Treaties of Tientsin) were
negotiated and signed (1858), not only with Great Britain and France but
also with Russia and the United States.

Before these new agreements could become effective, they had to be
ratified by their respective governments and the ratifications exchanged.
The Russian, French, and British documents provided that ratifications
should be exchanged at Peking. This the Russian minister accomplished

282 VOLUME I

without difficulty. When, however, in 1859 the British, French, and Ameri
can ministers arrived off Tientsin for this purpose, more trouble ensued.
The American minister went to Peking and effected the exchange, although
not without some humiliation, but the British and French ministers insisted
on going through Tientsin, instead of by the route selected by the Chinese.
They were opposed, attempted to force a passage, and were repulsed
(1859). In 1860 the British and the French returned with reinforcements,
captured the Taku forts and Tientsin, and moved on Peking. In retaliation
for the seizure of a party that had been sent forward under a flag of truce
and the death of several of its members, when Peking was captured the
Summer Palace was deliberately destroyed.

THE TREATIES OF TIENTSIN (1858) AND PEKING (1860)

The treaties of Tientsin (1858) and the supplementary con
ventions, including the ones signed at Peking in 1860, effected important
modifications in the status of Westerners in China and made possible a
much more extensive penetration of the Empire by the Occident than had
those of 1842 and 1844. Many of the details need not concern us here,
but some of the provisions had major consequences. (1) New ports were
opened. Ten were designated by the treaties of Tientsin: Newchwang in
Manchuria, Tengchow (for which Chefoo was substituted in 1862) in
Shantung, four on the Yangtze, including Chinkiang and Hankow (not all
were really opened at once, and one, Nanking, not until 1899), one on
Hainan (not opened until 1876), two on Formosa, and Ch'ao-chow
(actually its port, Swatow) on the south coast. Tientsin itself was added in
1860. These ports, particularly those in the North and on the Yangtze,
put vast new sections in direct touch with Westerners. Several of these cities
were already major centers of population. Some others, through the im
pulse given by foreign trade, rapidly rose in importance. Occidentals there
fore were concentrated in entrepots from which trade routes radiated into
large areas of the country — with fateful consequences for existing Chinese
ideas and institutions. (2) The merchantmen of the powers were given
permission to use the Yangtze River. (3) Peking, although not technically
made an open port, was to see the hated alien living within its walls, for
the treaties specified that ministers or ambassadors, with their entourages,
were to be allowed to reside there. They were, moreover, to be received
as representatives of independent nations on a footing of equality with
China. (4) Foreigners, when armed with proper passports, were to be
permitted to travel anywhere in the interior. This accorded the Westerner
the privilege of going wherever he wished and so furthered the extension
of Occidental ideas beyond the limits of the ports. (5) To Christians, both
alien and Chinese, was given the privilege of propagating Christianity, and
both were guaranteed toleration in the practice of their faith. This pro-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 283

vision in part removed Chinese Christians from the jurisdiction of Chinese
officials, for any alleged persecution could be referred by the missionaries
to a consul or minister for presentation to the imperial authorities. It led to
abuses, because not infrequently Chinese professed conversion to obtain
the assistance of the missionary and the consul in lawsuits. Even without
such abuses, the "toleration clauses" made possible the percolation of
Christianity through the Empire and so in part threatened the disintegra
tion of existing Chinese institutions. (6) The French convention of 1860
gave further sanction to the promise made in the imperial edict of 1846
that the Chinese Government would restore to Roman Catholics the re
ligious and benevolent establishments confiscated during the persecutions
of the preceding century and a half. The Chinese text, which the Chinese
later claimed was not authoritative, assured to French missionaries the
privilege of renting and purchasing land in all the provinces and erecting
buildings thereon. It was, therefore, long a source of irritation. The further
(Berthemy) convention of 1865 continued its provisions, but subject to
restrictions which proved unsatisfactory to the Roman Catholics. An addi
tional Franco-Chinese agreement of 1895 was designed to remove some of
the causes of the missionaries' complaints. The net result of the mooted
sections was to assist Roman Catholic missionaries in spreading their faith
outside the treaty ports. The privilege of "renting and leasing in perpetuity"
property outside the ports was not formally granted by treaty to Protestant
missionaries until 1903, but in practice it was often conceded to them.
A few other provisions can briefly be mentioned: (7) an elaboration of
the regulations for extraterritoriality, (8) the cession to Great Britain of a
bit of the mainland opposite Hong Kong, (9) the payment of indemnities,
and (10), in a new tariff drawn up in 1858 in pursuance of the treaties
of Tientsin, the legalization of the opium traffic by the placing of a duty
on the drug.

By force of arms, as in 1839-1842, Westerners had obtained additional
privileges in China. Through the concessions granted them in the treaties
that concluded these two wars, supported on occasion by the continued
show of force, they were able to permeate a reluctant China with their
commerce and ideas and so to bring about in Chinese culture a revolution
much more thoroughgoing than any one at the time, either Chinese or
foreign, dreamed possible.

TERRITORIAL AGGRESSIONS

As yet the aggressive Westerner had taken little of the terri
tory of China. Here and there, however, he was nibbling at it. As we have
seen, the island of Hong Kong and a small bit of the adjacent mainland
(Kowloon) had been ceded to Great Britain, and Portugal had asserted
an as yet unadmitted sovereignty over the peninsula of Macao, where she

284 VOLUME I

had so long been a tenant-at-will. China's manifest weakness and the
growth of the activities of Occidentals in East Asia led to some other en
croachments.

By the treaties between China and Russia in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the boundary between the two empires was so fixed
that China was recognized as owning much of the land north of the Amur
(in Chinese, the Heilungchiang) . Under the later Manchus, less vigorous
than their predecessors, little attention was paid to this distant and sparsely
settled area. The Russians continued to push into Siberia, and shortly after
the Anglo-Chinese war of 1839-1842, sent expeditions and colonists down
the Amur River. In 1858 China, defeated by the French and English and
disturbed by internal rebellions, by the Treaty of Aigun ceded to Russia
everything that it owned north of the Amur and agreed to the joint oc
cupancy by the two empires of the territory east of the Ussuri River. In
1860, by a new treaty, this joint occupancy was ended, and the land east
of the Ussuri was ceded to Russia. Russia now possessed all the seacoast
of Asia north of Korea.

At the time this loss probably did not appear to the Chinese as par
ticularly important, for Manchuria had a comparatively small population
and the settlement of the region by Chinese was very slight and in sections
not directly affected by the cession. As a step in the Russian expansion
toward the Pacific, however, and toward further encroachments on China,
it was of great significance.

While Russia was taking territory from the Empire in the extreme
North, in the extreme South France was pursuing a policy which was
eventually to lead to the loss by China of its tributary territory in Vietnam.
In response to the diplomacy of a missionary bishop, the French, in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, had assisted in the restoration of a
king of Cochin China to his throne and in the conquest, by this same ruler,
of Tongking. In the eighteen forties and fifties, France intervened on behalf
of persecuted French Roman Catholic missionaries and their flocks. In
1858 Spain and France joined in further naval and military operations.
The Spaniards found a cause for war in the execution of a Spanish mis
sionary bishop. In 1862 a treaty was signed which granted religious free
dom to Roman Catholics, opened three ports to French and Spanish
merchants, and ceded to France three provinces in Cochin China.

INTERNAL DISORDER

The weakness of China against her foes from the Occident
was both increased by and in turn facilitated the rise and progress of serious
domestic rebellions.

The chief of these was due in part to the influx of new religious ideas
through Christian missionaries from the West. The figure around whom it

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 285

centered, Hung Hsiu-ch'iian, was a native of Kwangtung. In his twenties,
while in Canton as a candidate for the civil service examinations, he appears
— if we may trust the narrative of a cousin and intimate friend — to have
been gven books which contained a summary of the teachings of Protestant
missionaries. Some time afterward, frustrated by repeated failures in the
examinations, he was attacked by a severe illness in the course of which,
in visions, he was taken to a large and luminous place where he was
cleansed, given a new heart, and commissioned by an old man to extermi
nate the demons who were leading mankind away from his — the old man's
— service. Several years later, in 1843, Hung seems to have had his
attention called to the books which had been given him in Canton. In
perusing these he believed that he found the key to his visions — that the
old man was God, the demons idols, and that he was under obligation to
restore the worship of God. He inaugurated a movement, at first entirely
religious, which had in it many of the outward features of Protestant
Christianity.

The sect which arose out of Hung's teaching, "the Worshippers of
Shang TF (a Protestant term for God), became especially strong in
Kwangsi, and developed at first without much direct leadership from Hung.
Into it entered many elements of Chinese provenance: the cult was a bizarre
syncretism of misunderstood Christianity and native beliefs. In time, by
just what process is not entirely clear, "the Worshippers of Shang TF
became a political as well as a religious movement. They sought to over
throw the Manchus and establish in their place a new dynasty, to be
called T'ai P'ing, or Great Peace, with Hung as its monarch. Hostilities
began in 1848 but did not prove especially serious until 1850 and 1851.
In 1852 the rebels moved northward into Hunan by the familiar route
of the Hsiang River, taking several towns. Early in 1853 they captured
Wuchang and in March of that year Nanking fell to their arms. Nanking
became their capital.

In a certain sense the T'ai P'ings were a revolutionary group, the first
wave, largely unintelligent, of that movement which sought to save China
by reshaping it on lines learned from the West and which in the twentieth
century was to work momentous changes. In their immediate effects they
were largely destructive. For example, they killed many Buddhist monks
and destroyed monasteries.

From another angle the rebellion was a social and economic revolt — an
uprising of peasants, rural proletariat, and hand workers against landlords,
rich peasants, and merchants. Serious efforts were made at land reform,
the reduction of taxes on the peasantry, improving the status of women,
combatting bribery and opium, ending torture in legal proceedings, im
proving the calendar, and promoting colloquial literature. The ultimate
suppression of the T'ai P'ings was due to the support which the conservative
elements of society gave to the imperial government. The influence of

286

VOLUME I

Christianity was only a minor factor in bringing about the movement.
Although to the last the leaders professed adherence to a strange compound
of Christianity and Chinese beliefs and practices, what impelled the bulk
of the rank and file was discontent with existing conditions, the love of
adventure, and the desire for plunder. Religious fanaticism was only one
of the ingredients. To understand the T'ai P'ings one must recall the
economic pressure and the secret societies that had been a recurring
feature in Chinese society, the oppression and incompetence that charac
terized much of the local government in the years of the decay of the
Ch'ing, the chronic jealousy of and hostility to the Manchus, and the tra
ditional trend toward revolt whenever a dynasty showed signs of weakness.
One must remember, too, the tendency of some Chinese rebellions, since
at least the last years of the Han, to. take on the guise of religious sects.

Had Hung displayed a genius for organization or political leadership,
the T'ai P'ings might well have overthrown the Manchus, for the latter,
suffering from the humiliating defeat at the hands of Great Britain and
harassed by other uprisings, were lamentably weak. However, he proved
to be singularly lacking in the needed kind of ability, and after one raid
which carried them almost to Tientsin, the T'ai P'ings never seriously
threatened the Manchus' possession of the North. Their wholesale destruc-
tiveness antagonized the influential classes and made impossible the winning
of the assent of the nation to their rule. The Ch'ing dynasty was so weak
that the T'ai P'ings, aided by able generals who came to the fore in 1858
and by the tapping of new territory and hence new resources (ca. 1860),
managed to hold Nanking for more than a decade and to devastate some of
the fairest sections of the Yangtze Valley. Not until 1865, as we shall see in
the next chapter, was Peking able to overthrow them and then only because
of Chinese and foreign assistance.

The T'ai P'ings constituted only one of a number of revolts of these
troubled years. About 1856 there broke out in Yunnan an uprising among
the large Moslem population, owing to a clash between themselves and
their non-Moslem neighbors. The non-Chinese tribes of the region took
the opportunity to harass the Chinese population, against whom they had
many grievances. Numerous other rebel bands in various parts of the
country, among them the Nienfei, were widely spread, particularly in the
North. In the Northwest the Moslems were restless. What had happened
many times before was happening again. As the ruling house became weak,
revolt raised its head.

THE TAO KUANG AND HSIEN FENG EMPERORS

Had the Ch'ing dynasty possessed such leaders as the K'ang
Hsi and Ch'ien Lung Emperors, the disasters which the nation suffered at

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 287

the hands of foreigners and rebels might not have overtaken it. The growth
of population and the consequent economic pressure, which were a basic
cause of the internal unrest, could not have been completely countered by a
strong administration. However, the K'ang Hsi or the Ch'ien Lung Emperor
would- have handled the situation with more vigor than did their incompe
tent descendants.

As it was, the Ch'ing was in that period of decline which appears to
be the inevitable fate of all ruling families. Such was the Chinese system
of government, where so much depended on the monarch, that both the
dynasty and the Empire, with mediocrity or worse at the helm, stumbled
into defeat and almost into disintegration. The Emperor whose reign period
bore the name of Tao Kuang had been unable to save his realm from
defeat at the hands of Great Britain in 1839-1842. He died in 1850 and
was succeeded by a son who is usually known by the title of his reign
period, Hsien Feng. The Hsien Feng Emperor proved even less competent
than his predecessor and in his last days, disheartened, gave himself over
to excesses. In 1860 he fled from Peking on the approach of the French
and British armies and took refuge at Jehol, an imperial country seat
north of Peking. Here, in 1861, he died, still a young man, leaving his
throne to a five-year-old son. Defeated by foreign powers and menaced
by internal rebellions, the Ch'ing seemed to be facing a dark future, and the
Empire, under their nerveless leadership, to be stumbling into chaos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The dynastic history is the Ch'ing Shih Kao, or Draft History of the
Ch'ing.

Of great value is A. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period
(Washington, 2 vols., 1943, 1944).

The best comprehensive account of diplomatic relations and wars with
Westerners during the period is H. B. Morse, The International Relations of
the Chinese Empire. The Period of Conflict, 1834-1860 (London, Longmans,
Green & Co., 1910, pp. xxxvii, 727). Another excellent account, by one who
was an eyewitness of part of what he narrates, is in S. Wells Williams, The
Middle Kingdom, Vol. 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1882, pp. xxii,
775). Useful also is H. F. MacNair, Modern Chinese History — Selected Read
ings (Shanghai, 1923). A view by a modem Western-educated Chinese is in
M-C. J. Bau, The Foreign Relations of China (New York, 1921). See also Li
Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 1840-1925, translated by Ssu-yu
Teng and J. Ingalls (New York, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1956), pp. 1-94; W. T.
de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and B. Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New
York, Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 663-704.

American relations through the first treaty of the United States with China
are recounted in K. S. Latourette, The History of Early Relations between the
United States and China, 1784-1844 (New Haven, Connecticut Academy of
Arts and Sciences, 1917, pp. 209). American relations throughout the period

288 VOLUME I

are covered in T. Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York, The Mac-
millan Co., 1922, pp. xvi, 725). See also E. Swisher, China's Management of
the American Barbarians. A Study of Sino-American Relations, 1841-1861
(New Haven, Far Eastern Association, 1953); E. Griffin, Clippers and Con
suls: American Consular and Commercial Relations with Eastern Asia, 1845-
1860 (Ann Arbor, 1938); Kwang-ching Liu, Americans and Chinese: A His
torical Essay and Bibliography (Harvard University Press, 1963).

Descriptions of the status and the life of the foreigner in China shortly be
fore the first Chino-British war are C. T. Downing, The Stranger in China, or
the Fan Qui's Visit to the Celestial Empire in 1836-7 (2 vols., Philadelphia,
1838), W. C. Hunter, The Fan Kwae at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844
(London, 1882), W. C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London, 1885), and G.
Nye, The Morning of My Life in China (Canton, 1873).

Accounts of special phases of relations between China and the West are
Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (New York, The Mac-
millan Co., 1959, pp. 257), translations of Chinese documents and narratives;
D. E. Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (Yale University Press,
1934, pp. ix, 399); C. L. Baron de Bazancourt, Les Expeditions de Chine et
de Cochin-Chine d'apres les Documents Officiels (2 vols., Paris, 1861-1862);
G. Fox, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates, 1832-1869 (London, 1940);
H. Cordier, I' Expedition de Chine du 1857-1858 (Paris, 1905); H. Cordier,
^'Expedition de Chine de 1860 (Paris, 1906); L. Oliphant, The Mission of
Lord Elgin to China and Japan (2 vols., London, 1860); Huang Yen-yu
"Viceroy Yeh Ming-ch'en and the Canton Episode (1856-1861)," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 1-36; J. K. Fairbank, Trade and
Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854
(Harvard University Press, 2 vols., 1953); Chu Shih-chia, "Tao-kuang to
President Tyler," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 7, pp. 169-173;
J. K. Fairbank, "Synarchy under the Treaties," in J. K. Fairbank, editor,
Chinese Thought and Institutions (The University of Chicago Press, 1957),
pp. 204-231; Ssu-yu Teng, J. K. Fairbank, et a!., China's Response to the
West: a Documentary Survey, 1839-1923 (Harvard University Press, 1954,
pp. xi, 296); the same authors, Research Guide to China's Response to the
West: a Documentary Survey, 1839-1923 (Harvard University Press, 1954,
pp. 84); M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 2800-42
(Cambridge University Press, 1951, pp. xii, 358); Ssu-yii Teng, Chang Hsi
and the^ Treaty of Nanking (University of Chicago Press, 1944, pp. vii, 191),
translation of the diary of a participant in the negotiations; W. C. Costin,
Great Britain and China, 1833-1860 (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1937, pp.
vi, 362). On Russia in Manchuria, see Shushi Hsu, China and Her Political
Entity (New York, 1926). Treaties are in G. E. P. Hertslet, China Treaties
(third edition, 2 vols., London, 1908), and in a briefer collection by W. F.
Mayers, Treaties between the Empire of China and Foreign Powers (fifth
edition, Shanghai, 1906).

On Christian missions see K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions
in China (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1929, pp. xii, 936), and the
sources quoted in the footnotes of Chapters 14 and 15 of that work.

The best account of the T'ai Ping Rebellion in a Western language is
W. J. Hail, Ts&ng Kuo-fan and the Taiping Rebellion (Yale University Press,
1927, pp. xvii, 422). Excellent also is G. E. Taylor, "The Taiping Rebellion:
Its Economic Background and Social Theory," The Chinese Social and Political

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 289

Science Review, Jan. 1933, Vol. 16, pp. 545-614. Among other accounts in
Western languages are W. Oehler, Die Taiping-Bewegung (Giitersloh, 1923);
T. T. Meadows, The Chinese and Their Rebellions (London, 1856); and E. P.
Boardman, Christian Influence upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion,
1851-1864 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1952, pp. xi, 188). The account
of the visions of Hung Hsiu-ch'iian on which most later narratives are based
is T, Hamberg, The Visions of Hung-Siu-Tshuen (Hong Kong, 1854), which
was derived from Hung Jen, a cousin and intimate friend of the rebel chief.
See also P. M. Yap, "The Mental Illness of Hung Hsiu-Ch'uan, Leader of the
Taiping Rebellion," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 13, pp. 287-304; J.
Chester Cheng, Chinese Sources for the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864 (Oxford
University Press, 1963).

On another of the rebellions, see S. T. Chiang, The Nien Rebellion (Uni
versity of Washington Press, 1954, pp. xvi, 159); S. Y. Teng, The Nien Army
and Their Guerilla Warfare (The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1960, pp. 254).

Hue, Recollections of a Journey Through Tartary, Thibet and China dur
ing the Years 1844, 1845, and 1846 (New York, 1852) contains a description
of internal conditions in those years as this missionary traveler saw them.

On additional bibliography, see C. 0. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibliography
(University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 33-37.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE
IMPACT OF THE OCCIDENT:
II. Partial Recovery from the Shocks of the
Preceding Two Decades: The Restoration of
Internal Order but the Slow Permeation of the
Empire by Occidental Trade and Ideas and the
Failure to Accommodate the Old to the
New (A.D. 1861-1893)

In 1861 it looked as though the Ch'ing dynasty might have
very little longer to live. A child was on the throne, dissensions in the
court were rife, the Empire had been defeated and its capital taken by
foreign foes, and rebellions were wasting some of the fairest provinces.
Not since the revolts in the early years oi the K'ang Hsi Emperor, and
perhaps not even then, had the Manchus' tenure of power been so pre
carious. From this impending doom the dynasty was saved temporarily
by a combination of circumstances, and its demise postponed for half
a century.

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER, TZ'O HSI

New leadership emerging from the Manchus gave fresh
vigor to the Ch'ing. The mother of the heir of the Hsien Feng Emperor
proved to be one of those remarkable women who at irregular intervals
had forced themselves into the virtual rulership of the Empire. She is

290

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 291

usually best known either as the Empress Dowager, by an official desig
nation Tz'u Hsi, or by a nickname popular among her entourage and
in the North, the Old Buddha. A member of the Yehonala clan of
the Manchus, and of an excellent family, she was chosen as a secondary
wife of the Hsien Feng Emperor and had the good fortune to win his
affection by her beauty and charm and by bearing him his heir. Upon
the death of her spouse, by vigorous action and the assistance of a life
long friend and trusted adviser, Jung-lu, and of Prince Kung, a brother of
the Hsien Feng Emperor, she got the better of a conspiracy and had herself
and the Empress appointed co-regents. Much more able and aggressive than
the other regent, she dominated the court. He son, usually known by
the title of his reign, T'ung Chih, proved active but dissolute, and died in
1875, not long after fully assuming the administration (1872). There
upon his mother, in a decidedly high-handed manner, placed on the
throne a child who is known by the title of his reign period, Kuang Hsu.
Tz'u Hsi not only held the reins while the Kuang Hsu Emperor was a
minor, but was the real power after he attained his majority. Upon the
death of the Kuang Hsu Emperor, in 1908, by designation of this same
masterful woman, now aged, another minor was installed on the throne,
but the old Empress survived the Kuang Hsii Emperor by only a few
hours. More vigorous as a ruler than any of the Emperors since the
Ch'ien Lung reign period, Tz'u Hsi was superstitious, was guilty of
many major errors, was often subject to indecision, and never fully compre
hended the significance of the new age into which the Middle Kingdom was
being pushed by the Occident. She was ambitious, loved power and money,
possessed great physical vitality, had shrewd insight into the strength and
the weaknesses of men in high places, and used tact and skill in attaining
her ends. She knew a good deal about Chinese literature and was a
calligrapher of more than average ability.

THE SUPPRESSION OF REBELLIONS BY THE AID OF CHINESE LEADERSHIP

The dynasty would have collapsed had it not been for
loyal Chinese. It was to Chinese, chief among them a scholar-statesman
from the province of Hunan, Tseng Kuo-fan (1811-1872), that the
Empire mainly owed the suppression of the T'ai P'ing Rebellion, Tseng,
although by training not a military man, and handicapped both by the
jealousy of other officials and by an imperial administrative and military
system that made it difficult to construct and finance an army strong
enough to put down so formidable an outbreak, organized a force that,
by what were often halting and blundering steps, crushed the revolt. Nan
king, the T'ai P'ing citadel, was captured in 1864, and Hung Hsiu-

292 VOLUME I

ch'tian committed suicide a few weeks before its fall. The year 1865 saw the
last effective forces dispersed.

Tseng was assisted by able lieutenants, among them one who became
the leading Chinese statesman of the close of the century, Li Hung-chang
(1823-1901). Foreigners also had a part. Many Westerners were at first
disposed to view the rebels hopefully, partly because the profession of
a religion which seemed a form of Christianity appeared to promise more
tolerance of Occidentals than that shown by the Manchus. As time passed,
the T'ai P'ings were seen to be more fanatical than the Ch'ing and fully
as haughty, and their activities in the lower part of the Yangtze Valley
threatened the safety and trade of Westerners. After peace had been made
with the Ch'ing (1860), the powers became decidedly unfriendly to the
uprising, and foreign forces helped to free the region around Shanghai
from the rebels. Under Frederick T. Ward, an adventurer born at Salem,
Massachusetts, at the outset against the opposition of the American and
British authorities but eventually with their tacit approval, a contingent
was organized, at first foreign and later Chinese with foreign officers, which
won the sobriquet, "the Ever Victorious Army." After Ward's death
in action, and after several experiments in commanders, a British officer,
Charles George Gordon, was placed in charge, and the force gave able
assistance to the Ch'ing armies until the end of the rebellion was in sight.

One of the many unfortunate results of the T'ai P'ing Rebellion was
the severe blow it gave to learning. The Yangtze delta, long a center of
wealth and culture, was laid waste. Most of the best libraries were burned,
and many Shu Yuan, retreats for scholarly pursuits, were destroyed.

Another outcome of the rebellion, eventually more weakening to the
traditional structures of China, was in contributions to the ultimate col
lapse of that order. When the radical reform movement gained control
in the twentieth century, it owed much to the efforts of Chinese who
had gone overseas. Some of the zeal of the emigrants is traceable to
T'ai P'ings who, escaping after the collapse of their cause, kept alive
abroad the desire for change. Sun Yat-sen, the archrevolutionist of the first
quarter of the twentieth century, seems in his youth to have had close
contact with groups of T'ai P'ing origin.

It was due chiefly to Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang, and other Chinese
that the Nienfei, who remained formidable after the T'ai P'ings had been
suppressed, were dispersed (1867).

The Moslem, or Panthay, Rebellion, in Yiinnan, had its stronghold
at Talifu and as its head Tu Wen-hsiu. For years it held out, but in 1873
it, too, was crushed, and chiefly by forces under Chinese rather than
Manchu leadership.

It was also principally due to Chinese generalship that the Northwest
and the far west were restored to the Ch'ing. In the widespread unrest

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 293

in the Empire, many of the Moslems in Shensi and Kansu rebelled, and
about 1864 much of Sinkiang had become virtually independent, under
a number of different leaders. It looked as though the work of the great
Ch'ing Emperors in this vast region was to be undone.

The reconquest of the West was almost entirely the work of Tso Tsung-
t'ang (1812-1885), a fellow provincial and former lieutenant of Tseng
Kuo-fan. He had a prominent part in the suppression of the Tai P'ings and
of the Nienfei. Before 1870 he had pacified Shensi. Slowly but fairly
steadily he fought his way westward. Suchow in Kansu fell in 1873 after
a siege of almost three years. Far from the central provinces and forced
to find his own supplies, in more than one season Tso set his army to
planting and reaping a crop for its subsistence. In 1887 Yakub Beg, his
chief opponent, was removed by death — whether by violence or disease
seems uncertain — and by the early part of 1878 Kashgar, Yarkand, and
Khotan had surrendered. Tso's achievements are comparable to those of
the great commanders who carried the Chinese arms into that region under
the Han and the T'ang.

Just as the last of the great rebellions was being suppressed, flood
and drought brought distress: floods in five of the southern provinces in
1876, and drought in 1877 and 1878 in the North, especially in Shansi and
Shensi. Millions died of the ensuing famine, but by this time the dynasty
had so far regained its strength that the load placed on the treasury by
relief funds and loss of taxes did not prove more than a temporary embar
rassment.

EFFORTS AT RECONSTRUCTION

Chinese statesmen not only rallied to the support of the
threatened dynasty by suppressing rebellions: they also sought to rebuild
the weakened political and economic structure of the Empire. They revived
the examination system, fought corruption, endeavored to recruit men of
high character for official posts, restored education, re-established the
local governments, furthered relief of the widespread suffering, promoted
public health, attempted to restore state revenues, and repaired the Grand
Canal as a means of bringing to the capital the grain which was impor
tant to the government. Their efforts were reinforced by the industry of
millions of the common folk, who poured into the fertile lands depopulated
by the rebels.

For over a decade Tseng Kuo-fan was the most influential statesman
in the Empire. A man of integrity, one of the best products of Confu
cianism, he was devoted to the Sung interpretation of that philosophy
and promoted its revival. He sought to introduce such of Occidental meth
ods and machines as, in his judgment, would help the Empire without

294 VOLUME I

disturbing its culture. After his death (1872) no other of his stature
appeared.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

The life of the Ch'ing dynasty was prolonged not only by
the suppression of internal rebellion and the reconstruction of the political
and economic structure but also by the absence of crises in the Empire's
relations with Occidental powers as grave as those of 1839-1842 and
1856-1860. While not entirely satisfactory to Westerners, the treaties
that came as the result of these wars at least promised the removal of most
of the chief complaints the aliens had against their former status in China.
Neither the officials nor the populace were yet prepared to be cordial to
foreigners, and friction was often acute over the attempt of Westerners
to obtain what had been pledged them. The Westerner, too, was still
aggressive. He often wished greater privileges than those already his,
and on more than one occasion encroached on the territory of the Empire.
However, for several years after 1860 Western powers, and especially
Great Britain and the United States, conducted their relations with China
on the basis of the belief that their interests would be best served by
supporting the dignity and authority of the imperial government in order
to strengthen it in the suppression of internal disorder. Now that China
had granted terms which made possible the growth and fairly peaceable
conduct of foreign trade, those powers whose primary concern was com
merce, notably Great Britain, decided that this would be best conserved
through a united and orderly China, and that the most promising out
look was under the Ch'ing dynasty. Between 1861 and 1895 China
suffered no such humiliation at the hands of the Occident as she expe
rienced just before and after these years. For much of the time (1861-
1881, 1894-1898) foreign affairs were conducted by Prince Kung (1833-
1898) . He proved unusually skilled in adapting himself and his government
to the new conditions. The main events of these years in the relations with
Western governments can be rather briefly sketched.

One early development was the collection of the customs duties under
the supervision of foreigners. In 1853, during the T'ai P'ing revolt, a
group of rebels (not T'ai P'ings) took advantage of the general disorder
to occupy the walled city of Shanghai, and the imperial machinery in
that port for the collection of duties on foreign imports and exports broke
down. After brief and unsatisfactory attempts to find a substitute, by an
arrangement between the consuls and the local taofai the Chinese
appointed (1854) foreign nominees of the consuls to supervise the pay
ment of the customs. The system worked well, and by an Anglo-Chinese
agreement of November, 1858; its extension to other ports was made

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 295

possible. When the conventions of Peking (1860) charged against the
customs the indemnities then assessed on China, a further organization
of the service became necessary and a foreign Inspector General was
appointed by Peking. In 1863 a remarkable Irishman, Robert Hart, came
into this office. Under his direction the Imperial Maritime Customs, as it
came to be called, had an extraordinary growth. Its chief posts were held by
foreigners of several nationalities, with the British outnumbering those
of any other citizenship. In a government honeycombed with corruption,
the service was honest. Under it not only were the duties collected, but
in addition, the coast and some of the main navigable rivers were provided
with lighthouses and buoys, and an imperial post of a Western type was
begun. The service was national in scope and was controlled from Peking.
This centralization rendered it largely independent of the provincial organ
ization and so ran contrary to the existing practice of committing to the
provincial officials all tasks possible.

The treaties of 1858 provided for the residence of foreign ministers
in Peking. To deal with them and with foreign affairs, a new central body
was created (1861), the Tsungli Yamen. The necessity forced upon the
government by the powers of handling foreign affairs directly through the
capital rather than indirectly through the local authorities, as in many
instances had formerly been the practice, tended, as did the customs
service, to alter the principle on which the administration had been con
ducted.

For many years the problem of the reception of the representatives
of the powers by the Emperor remained troublesome. The treaties of
Tientsin specified that foreign envoys, when accorded audience with the
Emperor, should be treated as coming from independent nations of equal
dignity with China. This the Chinese found a bitter pill. While the Tung
Chih Emperor remained a minor, the question was not urgent, but when,
in 1872, he attained his majority, the envoys demanded an audience. After
much hesitation and long negotiation this was granted, but the ceremony
was carried out with a subtle suggestion that the Empire still thought of
itself as outranking other nations. Not until 1894, after the Kuang Hsu
Emperor had reached his majority, was an audience given which satis
fied the diplomatic body.

The Empire was very slow to send representatives to Western cap
itals. The first attempt was anomalous. In 1861 Anson Burlingame arrived
in China as American minister. By his affability and sympathy and his
policy of supporting the imperial government rather than causing it
embarrassment, he won the confidence of the Tsungli Yamen. When, in
1867, he was on the eve of resigning, the Chinese authorities suggested
that he serve as the envoy of Peking to the treaty powers of the West.
In this capacity, with an extensive retinue, he visited the United States

296 VOLUME i

(1868), representing China in public addresses in glowing, optimistic
terms. There he negotiated a treaty on the basis of equality, providing,
among other things, for the territorial integrity of China, for the free
immigration of Chinese laborers into the United States, for reciprocal
rights of residence and travel, and for freedom from interference in the
development of China. In London he obtained from the British Govern
ment a declaration that it would not apply unfriendly pressure inconsistent
with the independence and safety of China, and that it desired to deal
directly with the central rather than with the local authorities. The Amer
ican and British Governments, it will be noted, were simply giving further
form to a policy which was already theirs. The mission was well received
in Paris and Berlin, but in neither capital did it obtain either treaty or
declaration. In St. Petersburg Burlingame contracted pneumonia and
died. Deprived of its moving spirit, the mission returned to China by way of
Brussels and Rome, but without additional achievement.

The Burlingame mission paved the way for resident legations in the
capitals of the West. The first of these was opened in London in 1877,
and in that and the following two years others were established on the
Continent of Europe and at Washington.

The decades between 1860 and 1894 were not completely without
friction between China and the West, Of this there was always an under
current, and occasionally it broke out into serious disturbance.

The British treaty of Tientsin provided that either party might demand
a revision at the end of ten years. In the late sixties, accordingly, there
was much discussion, in both British and Chinese circles, of possible
changes in the document. While the only immediate outcome was a con
vention (1869) that was never ratified, what was in effect a partial revision
was made by the Chefoo Convention, in 1876. This latter was precipi
tated by an attack, on the borders between Burma and Yunnan, upon a
British exploring expedition and the murder there of Mr. Margary, of
the British consular service. The British held the Chinese authorities
responsible and made the incident the occasion not only for the demand
of an indemnity and the safeguarding of the trade across the Bunnese-
Yiinnan frontier, but also for the settlement of some of the outstanding
differences between the two governments and for gaining concessions, such
as the opening of new ports to trade, which had no connection with the
original episode.

Chinese emigration was a source of irritation. The Chinese were uti
lizing the new facilities for trade and navigation to spread beyond the
borders of the Empire. Some of the emigration was in the form of a con
tract labor that was little better than slavery, but by 1880 most of the
abuses had been prohibited by agreements between China and the powers
or by unilateral actions of the powers. Emigration to the United States

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 297

aroused much opposition in the Pacific Coast states, particularly in Cali
fornia, where Chinese came into competition with native American white
labor. After much unpleasantness, including anti-Chinese riots, the United
States, partially with the consent of China, suspended the further admis
sion of Chinese laborers. Eventually, after 1900, without the consent
of China, she prohibited it entirely.

Here and there several of the powers encroached on China's territory
and on her vassal states. In the South, France extended her protectorate
over Cambodia (1863), annexed three more provinces of Annam (1867),
and (1874) obtained from Annam extraterritoriality for all Europeans,
the opening of the Red River to navigation, and of more ports to com
merce. In 1883 and 1884, due to French pressure, Annam accepted a
protectorate by Paris. China, disturbed by these attacks on a vassal state
and by an arrangement that would end her suzerainty, protested. Hostili
ties followed, although of a somewhat desultory nature and with China
helpless before the high-handed French. In 1885 the difficulty was ended
by Chinese recognition of the French protectorate of Annam and freedom
of trade between Tongking and the adjoining Chinese provinces, but with
out the indemnity which the French had demanded.

In 1886 Great Britain annexed that part of Burma which she had not
previously seized. In that same year China formally agreed to the change,
but with the provision that the decennial Burmese "tribute" mission was
still to be sent to Peking.

In 1887 China acquiesced in what was really an accomplished fact
and ceded Macao to Portugal, but with the provision that it should never
be alienated without her consent.

During the rebellions in the far west of the Empire, Russia, to safe
guard her trade across that region, occupied much of Ili, with the promise
that she would restore it to China when the latter was able to maintain
order there. When Tso Tsung-t'ang had suppressed the insurgents and
China asked Russia to withdraw, a treaty was negotiated which gave
to Russia the better part of Hi, an indemnity, and extensive trading privi
leges in the West. This agreement Peking would not ratify and war seemed
imminent. However, a compromise was effected by which most of Ili was
returned to China and a larger indemnity was promised Russia.

CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES

One of the most persistent sources of irritation between
China and the powers was the Christian missionary. The treaties of Tientsin,
which opened up the interior of China to foreign travel and guaranteed
protection to the foreigner and his converts, synchronized with a rapid
growth of missionary interest and activity among both the Roman Catholics

298 VOLUME I

and the Protestants of the "Occident. The wealth brought by the indus
trialization of the West and the attendant commerce fupished the means,
and the revival in Roman Catholicism after the Napoleonic wars and
in Protestantism by the movements following the Evangelical awaken
ings of the eighteenth century provided the religious incentive, for a pro
nounced expansion in the efforts of these two great groups of Christians
to spread their faith throughout the world. It is not strange, therefore, that
the years after 1860 saw the penetration of every province of China by
Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

New Roman Catholic orders and congregations entered the country
and those already represented added to their staffs. By 1897 there were a
little over half a million Roman Catholics in the country, as against about
two hundred thousand at the beginning of the century, and the mis
sionaries numbered a little more than seven hundred fifty.

Protestants, who before 1860 were confined almost entirely to the
five open ports and Hong Kong, had an even more phenomenal growth.
Many societies now for the first time sent representatives to China. By
1895 one of them, the China Inland Mission, which was organized by
J. Hudson Taylor for the purpose of taking the Christian message to
parts of the Empire unreached by Protestants, had over six hundred
missionaries at work. In 1893 there were about fifty-five thousand Chinese
communicants in Protestant churches, most of them in the coast prov
inces, and in 1889 missionaries numbered nearly thirteen hundred, not
quite half of them men, representing forty-one different societies. These
figures were an increase from about fifty-seven hundred communicants
in 1869 and from about one hundred eighty-nine missionaries in 1864.

In addition to spreading a knowledge of the Christian Gospel by the
printed and oral word, Protestant missions were chiefly responsible for
introducing Western medicine to China. They also had a large part in
inaugurating education of an Occidental type, and in preparing and circu
lating literature which familiarized Chinese with Western ideas.

With merchants and diplomats, and often in advance of them, mis
sionaries were pioneers of the infiltration of China with Western ideas.
Although some were unpleasantly aggressive, and a few were bigoted
and intolerant, they had sincerely at heart what they believed to be the
best interests of the Chinese, usually worked with a high and selfless
devotion, and helped to put the Chinese in touch with the spiritual, moral,
and intellectual forces of the Occident much more than did merchants or
diplomats.

When all is said for the missionary that can be said — and it is
much more than is usually realized — it must also be recognized that,
especially during the three and a half decades after 1860, he was often
the source of great annoyance to the Chinese populace and to official-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 299

dom. His teaching, intolerant of the customary honors to ancestors, seemed
to threaten the Chinese family. Religious practices which formed an
integral part of guild, community, and political life were anathema to him.
Christians, therefore, appeared to their neighbors recreant to moral, social,
economic, and political obligations and to be attacking the foundations
of society and civilization. Few, if any, foresaw that within the next few
decades these were to crumble anyway, and that the missionary would
prove of help in the work of replacing them. Moreover, the missionaries'
activities were often misunderstood, and the most absurd rumors about
them were widely believed — for example, that in Christian orphanages
and hospitals the eyes and other organs of children were extracted for
medicinal and photographic purposes. Missionaries, too, in their efforts
to rent or buy property in the interior frequently aroused opposition. Some
Chinese of the baser sort professed conversion to obtain the protection
of the toleration clauses in the treaties, and others made a similar profes
sion to win the assistance of the missionary or his Chinese colleagues
in lawsuits and feuds. Most Roman Catholic missionaries were from the
continent of Europe and for years the majority of them were French.
Until toward the close of the century France exercised a protectorate
over all of them and used it as a means of heightening her influence in
China. The great majority of Protestant missionaries were either British
or Americans. Neither Great Britain nor the United States used them
for ulterior purposes, and the British Government was sometimes reluctant
to enforce their treaty rights, for fear that trade would be injured. Both
governments, however, often felt that they must act to maintain the treaty
rights of their missionary citizens', and in doing so repeatedly clashed
with the Chinese authorities.

The persecutions, riots, and disturbances that arose out of the work
of the missionaries are too numerous to catalogue here. The most serious
between 1860 and 1894 were the so-called Tientsin massacre (1870),
in which a mob destroyed a Roman Catholic orphanage and the adjoin
ing church and killed the French consul and several other French men
and women, including ten sisters and one priest, and widespread riots
in the Yangtze Valley in 1890 and 1891, in which Protestants were the
chief sufferers.

Chinese officialdom sought to obtain new agreements that would
limit the activity of the missionaries and establish a more effective con
trol over Chineses Christians. To this the powers would not agree, and
the status of missionaries and Chinese Christians remained as it had
been fixed by the Treaties of Tientsin and the French Convention of
Peking (1860), with a slight modification of the latter by the Berthemy
Convention (1865).

300 VOLUME I

FOREIGN TRADE

During these years of the restoration of the domestic author
ity of the Ch'ing and of comparative quiet in China's international rela
tions, the infiltration of the Empire by the culture of the Occident was
proceeding not only through the activities of Christian missionaries but
also through a growth in commerce. The opening of the Suez Canal in
1870, with its more direct route from Europe, and the increased use
of steam in navigation, augmented the commercial pressure on China.
Foreign vessels developed a profitable carrying trade along the coast and
on the Yangtze. But the total value of imports and exports rose with
surprising slowness. Between 1865, when the close of the T'ai Ping
Rebellion allowed trade to come back toward normal, and 1885, it
increased only about a fifth. After 1885 it grew more rapidly, nearly dou
bling by 1894. Cotton led as the major article of import, with opium
second. Tea and silk remained the chief exports, but by 1893 were suffering
from competition with other Eastern lands — in the case of tea, chiefly
India, Ceylon, and Java, and in the case of silk, Japan and the Levant.
In the seventies the American share in the carrying trade, which had
been very large, sharply declined. The British were still predominant in
the ocean-borne commerce and therefore also in the foreign commu
nities in the treaty ports.

In the treaty ports that loomed most prominently in foreign trade,
the merchants and some of the missionaries generally resided in special
"concessions" — British at Newchwang, Tientsin, Hankow, Kiukiang, Chin-
kiang, and Canton, and French in Tientsin and Canton — in which the usual
arrangement was for the ground to be leased in perpetuity to the for
eign government and then sublet to individuals. These resembled but were
not identical in form with the older settlements in Shanghai. In all of
them foreigners lived a life largely apart from the Chinese. Most mer
chants did not know the Chinese language, although to this there were
notable exceptions. They were protected by extraterritoriality. Only in
business did those in commercial pursuits have contacts with the Chinese,
and then more often than not through an interpreter and "pidgin Eng
lish." Of the foreigners, the missionaries were the ones who usually
touched Chinese life intimately at the most angles. Under these circum
stances, the permeation of the Empire by foreign culture was slower
than it might otherwise have been.

BEGINNINGS OF MODIFICATIONS IN CHINESE CULTURE

In spite of the presence of the foreigner, until the late
eighteen nineties the institutions and thought of China were almost entirely

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 301

unaffected by contact with the Occident. When compared with the total
of the domestic trade, foreign commerce was very small and of little
importance. Economically, the Empire was still practically self-sufficing.
Of the imports, only opium made a perceptible impression on any large
proportion of the population. Most of the Westerners were concentrated
in a few treaty ports and numbered merely a few thousand. Christians
were too few and too scattered to alter the mores of their fellow country
men. The economic, social, intellectual, and political structure of the nation
was predominantly as it had been a century before.

Some exceptions there were — foreshadowings of change. The T'ai
P'ing revolt had shaken orthodox scholarship by devastating its chief
stronghold, the Yangtze Valley. Chinese organized (1873) the China
Merchants Steam Navigation Company, which came to have a large share
in coastal and river transportation. The first railway in China — running
out of Shanghai — was built by foreigners, then bought by the Chinese, and
its rails and rolling stock shipped to Formosa and allowed to rust. It
is only fair to add that this apparently reactionary procedure seems to
have been adopted chiefly because the Chinese objected to the extension
of foreign-owned property outside the ports. By 1894 the beginnings of
a system of railroads had been constructed by the Chinese in the North.
In the early eighties a telegraph line was built, under contract from the
government, between Shanghai, Tientsin, and Peking. There was a slight
development of coal mines by modern methods. The introduction of West-
era appliances might have proceeded more rapidly had the Chinese not
been fearful, because of the probable international complications, of
admitting foreign capital, either directly or by loans.

Some attempts were made to arm the country against the West with
Occidental devices: arsenals, a few modem war craft, and troops drilled
and equipped after the European fashion.

In Peking and Canton the government established schools for the train
ing of men for the diplomatic service. Yung Wing, who had received his
intitial education in things Western in a school maintained by Protestant
missionaries and had had a college course in the United States, promoted the
introduction of Western machinery and was responsible for inducing the
government to send to the United States, in the seventies, over one hun
dred youths to study in the scho9ls there. The government abruptly termi
nated the mission before all of the group had completed their training,
but the experiment was a foreshadowing of the great student migration
of the twentieth century.

However, no fundamental changes were made in the structure inherited
from the past. A few innovations and adaptations were instituted, but,
able as many were, few if any of the statesmen were aware that the age
into which the Empire was being hurtled would necessitate drastic and

302 VOLUME I

basic reconsideration of the foundations of the existing civilization. No
tinkering with details or improvement in morals would suffice.

SUMMARY

For nearly a generation after the first armed conflicts with
the Occident, most Chinese who thought about the matter at all — as the
vast majority did not — believed that the Empire would be able to hold the
foreigner at arm's length and go. on without altering its life. Internal order
was restored and the country resumed its ordinary pursuits almost exactly
as it had before the interruption of foreign wars and internal rebellions.
However, the seeming security was illusory. The cumulative effects of
Western influences would sometime become apparent. Christian mission
aries and their converts, foreign ships and sailors, Western merchants
with their Chinese connections, buildings in the ports in Occidental style,
imports of machinery and machine-made goods, returning Chinese travelers,
of whom there were a few, letters from Chinese overseas, telegraphs,
foreign banks, and translations of Western books — all were making impres
sions with which conservatism would sometime have to reckon. Within
a few years a small neighbor, who had heeded the writing on the wall,
delivered a blow that was to lead to the collapse of exclusiveness and
that was followed by changes which were the more overwhelming because
they had so long been resisted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As for the preceding chapter, the dynastic history for the period is the
Ch'ing Shih Kao.

On the domestic history of the period, and especially of the court, see
J. O. P. Bland and E. Backhouse, China under the Empress Dowager (Phila
delphia, 1912) and the Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha (New York, 1928),
the latter by a Manchu lady who was an attendant of Tz'u Hsi. See also W. L.
Bales, Tso Tsung-t'ang (Shanghai, 1937), and Chu Wen-djang, "Tso Tsung-
t'ang's Role in the Recovery of Sinkiang," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese
Studies, Sept., 1958. On the T'ai P'ing Rebellion, see W. J. Hail, Tseng Kuo-
fan and the Taiping Rebellion (Yale University Press, 1927), C. E. Taylor,
4The Taiping Rebellion: Its Economic Background and Social Theory," The
Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Vol. XVI, pp. 545-614, and So
Kwan-wai, E. P. Boardman, and Ch'iu P'ing, "Hung Jen-kan: Taiping Prime
Minister, 1859-1864," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 20, pp. 262-
294; J. Chester Cheng, Chinese Sources for the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864
(Oxford University Press, 1963).

On the Nien revolt see S. T. Chiang, the Nien Rebellion (The University
of Washington Press, 1954, pp. xvi, 159); S. Y. Teng, The Nien Army and
Their Guerilla Warfare (The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1960, pp. 254). On
changes resulting from the rebellions and foreign wars, see Kung-chuan Hsiao,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 303

Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (The University
Press, 1960, pp. xiv, 783).

Indispensable are A. W. Hummel, editor, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing
Period (Washington, Government Printing Office, 2 vols., 1943, 1944) and
Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: the T'ung-Chih
Restoration, 1862-1874 (Stanford University Press, 1957, pp. x, 426).

See also K. Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China
(Cornell University Press, 1961, pp. 288); Kwang-ching Liu, "Steamship
Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century China," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.
18, pp. 435-455, and W. T. de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, B. Watson, Sources of
Chinese Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 705-
722; J. R. Levenson, "History and Value: the Tensions in Intellectual Choice
in Modern China," in A. K Wright, editor, Studies in Chinese Thought (Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 146-194; Albert Feuerwerker, China's
Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-hui (1845-1916) and Mandarin Enter
prise (Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. xii, 311, xxxii); Ellsworth C.
Carlson, The Kaiping Mines (1877-1912) (Harvard University Press, 1951,
pp. 174); Ssu-yii Teng and John K. Fairbank, et al., China's Response to the
West, 1839-1923 (Harvard University Press, 2 Vols., 1954); P. Huard and
Ming Wong, "Le Developpement de la Technologie dans la Chine du XIXe
Siecle," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale (Vol. VII No. 1, 1962, pp. 68-85).

On foreign relations, the standard longer general works are H. B. Morse,
International Relations of the Chinese Empire. The Period of Submission,
1861-1893 (London, 1913), and H. Cordier, Histoire des Relations de la
Chine avec les Puissances Occidentales, 1860-1900 (3 vols., Paris, 1901, 1902).
H. F. MacNair, Modern Chinese History — Selected Readings (Shanghai, 1923)
is useful. See also S. T. Wang, The Margary Affair and the Chefoo Agreement
(New York, 1940); Mary C. Wright, "The Adaptability of Ch'ing Diplomacy,"
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 363-381, on the 1860Y, T.
Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York, 1922); F. W. Williams,
Anson Burlingame and the First Chinese Mission to Foreign Powers (New
York, 1912); E. V. G. Kiernan, British Diplomacy in China, 1880-1885 (New
York, 1939); H. F. MacNair, The Chinese Abroad. Their Position and Pro
tection (Shanghai, 1924); M. F. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York,
1909); and P. H. Clyde, United States Policy Toward China: Diplomatic and
Public Documents, 1839-1939 (Duke University Press, 1940, pp. xv, 321).
Foreign treaties are in G. E. P. Hertslet, China Treaties (third edition, 2 vols.,
London, 1908) and in the shorter collection by W. F. Mayers, Treaties be
tween the Empire of China and Foreign Powers (fifth edition, Shanghai, 1906).
See also G. B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (New York, Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1958, pp. xii, 322).

On the customs service see S. F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs
(Belfast, Wm. Mullan & Son, 1950, pp. xvi, 949).

On Christian missions, see K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian
Missions in China (New York, 1929). The extensive footnotes in that work
give information about other material.

On Yung Wing and his mission, see Yung Wing, My Life in China and
America (New York, 1909). On the students whom he brought to America,
see T. E. La Fargue, China's First Hundred (Pullman, Wash., 1942). See also
W. Hung, "Huang Tsun-hsien's Poem "The Closure of the Educational Mission
in America'," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 18, pp. 50-73.

VOLUME I

304

On foreign trade, see C. F. Remer, The Foreign Trade of China (Shanghai,
1926) Sd^he Quarterly, Annual, Decennial, and Speaal reports of the

Chinese Maritime Customs. ...in * isnn JQI? CShano

See, also, R. S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1912 (Shang-

^of additional bibliography, see C. 0. Hucker China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 33-3 /.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE
IMPACT OF THE OCCIDENT:
III. The Crumbling of the Structure of the Old
Culture and the Foreshadowings of the New
(A.D. 1894-1945)

RELATIONS WITH JAPAN, 1871-1893

The decades of comparative quiet and security which fol
lowed the foreign wars and rebellions of the middle of the nineteenth
century were rudely terminated by a contest with a near neighbor, Japan.
The defeat which the Empire then suffered was followed by the renewed
aggression of Western powers and by internal changes which proved
momentous.

During the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the early part of the
nineteenth century, Japan had been even more nearly closed against inter
course with the Occident than had China. In 1853, shortly after the first
war between China and Great Britain, an American expedition led by
Commodore Perry entered the Bay of Yedo, and the opening of Japan
to more extensive contact with the Occident followed. Much more quickly
than the Chinese, leaders among the Japanese saw the necessity of adjust
ing their country to intercourse with the Occident. By 1894 they had
made remarkable strides toward the reorganization of the entire structure
of the life of the nation. Among those who rapidly rose to leadership were
men who early sensed the fact that the entire world was about to be
dominated by the Occident and that, whether a people liked it or not, if
it was to retain its political independence it must adopt the appliances
and methods which had given the West its power. Politically, the dual
form of government and feudalism were abolished, a constitution modeled
partly after that of Prussia was adopted, and an army and a navy of
Western type were created. Intellectually, a school system like that of

305

306 VOLUME I

Europe and America was constructed, and much of the literature of the
West was put into Japanese. In economic life, the beginning was made
of an industrialization which continued to proceed apace, with factories,
railroads, and a merchant marine of steam craft. More quickly than any
other non-Occidental people, the Japanese adapted themselves to the new
day and achieved admission to the family of Western nations.

The greater success with which the Japanese accepted the Occident
did not prove them superior in ability to the Chinese. China was so much
larger that her task was more difficult. The Japanese, too, had the tra
dition of learning from foreigners: they had adopted and adapted Chinese
civilization, and most important movements in thought and culture in China
had had repercussions in Japan. On the other hand, except for Buddhism,
the Chinese had consciously learned little from any one: they regarded
themselves as teachers, not pupils. Japan, regimented under the Tokugawa
Shoguns, was more easily directed by those in favor of Westernization once
they had obtained control than was China, for the latter was not by tra
dition so closely co-ordinated. In Japan, moreover, was the tradition
that the Emperor reigned but did not govern and that the imperial
house was too sacrosanct to be disturbed. The institution of the Emperor
formed a center of unity, and the government could be altered without
abolishing it. In China much more in practice depended on the Emperor,
and if he proved incompetent, rebellion against him might be justified.
Dynasties had changed many times. When, in 1911-1912, in conformity
to this tradition the Ch'ing passed the way of its predecessors, the unity
and peace of the nation were shaken to their foundations.

Several years before 1894 the new Japan had begun to clash with
China. In 1871 a treaty between the two countries was signed on a recip
rocal basis, without some of the concessions, so galling to the Chinese,
contained in the current treaties with Western powers. About the same time,
however, trouble arose over the Liu Ch'iu (Ryu Kyu) Islands, which
paid tribute to China and were also claimed by the Japanese. In 1871
some inhabitants of the islands were killed by aborigines on Formosa
(Taiwan). The Japanese raised the question of China's responsibility,
and upon a disclaimer by that country, in 1874 sent a punitive force
which occupied part of Formosa. This act endangered peace, but the
matter was amicably adjusted by the withdrawal of the Japanese forces
and the payment by China of compensation to Japan for lives lost and
roads and buildings constructed. In the process China tacitly renounced
suzerainty over the Liu Ch'ius.

More serious friction arose over Korea, Here China claimed suzerainty,
acknowledged by annual tribute-bearing embassies from Seoul to Peking
and by the Chinese investiture of each new Korean ruler. The relation
ship was of that somewhat nebulous kind subsisting between China and

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 307

several of her neighbors, but was stronger in the case of Korea than of
some others. For centuries Japan also had been interested in Korea.
Japanese armies had operated in the peninsula, and from 1671 to 1811
occasional missions were sent by Korea to Japan.

Korea was slower than either China or Japan to open her doors to
the West. The Japanese obtained a treaty with Seoul in 1876 (on the
explicit basis of the independence of Korea), and this was followed, in
the 1880's, by treaties between Korea and several Occidental powers. In
Seoul struggles between the court cliques were complicated by the oppo
sition of antiforeign, conservative elements to the new intercourse with
the outside world. In one of these the Japanese legation was attacked
(1882) and both Japan and China sent forces to restore order. In the
ensuing settlement Japan declined to accept Chinese mediation. In the
main, the conservatives among the Koreans looked to China for support
and the liberals to Japan. In 1884, in a palace upheaval, the king sought
refuge with the Japanese guard; the latter occupied the palace, and an
attack was made on the Japanese, in which Chinese troops stationed in
Seoul joined. In the negotiations which followed, China and Japan each
agreed (1885) to withdraw its troops from Korea, not to send them into
the country to suppress disorder without notifying the other, and to remove
them, if so dispatched, as soon as quiet was re-established.

Peking, urged on by Li Hung-chang, was determined not to renounce
its suzerainty over the peninsula. A customs service was organized for
Korea, theoretically independent of, but practically partially subordinate
to, the similar service in China. Yuan Shih-k'ai, later President of China
but then a protege of Li Hung-chang and in Korea on military duty since
1880, was for a number of years kept at Seoul as Chinese resident.

WAR WITH JAPAN, 1894-1895

Participation of Japan and China in Korean affairs at last
brought on war between the two countries. A rebellion of a secret society,
the Tong Haks, led the Korean monarch, on the advice of Yuan Shih-
k'ai, to ask for Chinese assistance. This was sent, and the Japanese, not
to be checkmated, also dispatched troops. In the meantime the Koreajq
forces had dispersed the rebels, but the Chinese and Japanese remained,
watching each other. Tokyo proposed that Japan and China join in pro
moting reforms in the decadent and inept Korean Government. This
Peking declined to do. In the negotiations it continued to claim suzerainty
over Korea, a relationship which Japan refused to recognize. The Japanese
took forcible possession of the palace and the monarch's person, and a
decree was issued abrogating the Korean treaty with China and calling
upon the Japanese to expel the Chinese troops. This was soon followed

308 VOLUME i

by the outbreak of war between China and Japan. The struggle was brief
and full of humiliation for China. Although its forces often put up a
courageous resistance, largely because of corruption in the administration
and inefficiency in the use of even such modern naval and military equip
ment as it possessed, China was defeated on sea and land, and the forti
fied posts of Port Arthur in Manchuria and Weihaiwei in Shantung,
although armed after the European manner, were captured.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), which terminated the war, was
also humiliating. China was constrained to acknowledge the independence
of Korea (thereby renouncing the traditional suzerainty), to cede to
Japan Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula (on
which Port Arthur was situated), to pay an indemnity, to open four more
ports, and to give to Japan the privileges of the most-favored-nation
pending the negotiation of a new commercial treaty between the two
countries. This treaty of commerce, when drafted, gave Japanese extra
territorial privileges in China and continued the most-favored-nation status.
Japan had thus driven China from Korea, annexed important territory,
and acquired for its nationals in China the privileges enjoyed by Westerners
— at the time when it was seeking to rid itself of the extraterritoriality
granted to Westerners in its own domains.

RENEWAL OF EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN CHINA

The defeat of China at the hands of Japan was the signal
for a renewal of European aggression in China. The closing decades of
the nineteenth century found European powers engaged in a scramble
for such of the world as had not already been 'parceled out among
Western peoples. Western European countries were being more and more
industrialized, were increasing in wealth, and wished to control "backward"
peoples, both as a matter of prestige and for markets, raw materials, and
an outlet for surplus capital. They partitioned most of Africa and extended
their possessions in Asia. They now proceeded to encroach upon a palpably
impotent China in a manner which threatened the speedy dismemberment
of that Empire. To recount all the intricacies and details of the negotiations
and even the resulting treaties and conventions would unduly prolong
these pages. However, the main outlines of what was done must be
sketched.

First of all, Japan was made to disgorge part of the territory ceded by
China. The ink was scarcely dry on the Treaty of Shimonoseki when France,
Russia, and Germany lodged protests with Tokyo against its possession
of the Liaotung Peninsula. They alleged that it would be a menace to the
capital of China, render illusory the independence of Korea, and make
precarious the peace of East Asia. The powers were, of course, moved by
no regard for China: their interests in both Europe and East Asia were

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 309

involved. Japan was in no position to defy the powers. Tokyo renounced
its claim to the Liaotung Peninsula in return for an additional indemnity
from China.

To pay the indemnity to Japan, China had recourse to foreign financiers.
The privilege of advancing the first portion of the loan— made on the
security of the maritime customs and with the possibility of demanding
additional guarantees in the form of political or other concessions — was
won by Russia, who was to have the assistance of French bankers. To
offset the Franco-Russian combination, Great Britain and Germany in
sisted that China also borrow from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation — a British institution — and the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank.
This China did in 1896 and 1898, giving as security not only the customs
revenue but also the salt tax and likin in part of the Yangtze Valley.

In June, 1895, Franco-Chinese conventions were signed in which China
consented to a modification of the frontier between itself and Annam.
Territory was thus given to the latter (in effect to France), some of it land
which the year before China had earmarked for France by promising not
to cede it to any other nation. By these conventions China also opened
three new treaty ports on the Sino-Annamese frontier, agreed that in the
event of the exploitation of mines in Yunnan, Kwangsi, and Kwangtung,
French manufacturers and engineers would be given prior rights of assist
ing, and made provision for some railway building in the region.

This was a threat to British interests in Burma, Southwest China, and
the Yangtze Valley. Great Britain sought safeguards in an understanding
with France in January, 1896. By an agreement with China in February,
1897, she obtained a "rectification" of the frontier between China and the
British possessions on the south, the opening of the West River and ports
on it to commerce, the promise not to cede certain portions of the frontier
without British consent, the assurance that railways in Yiinnan when built
would connect with British roads in Burma, and additional trading
privileges.

Worse for China was to follow. In 1 895 Germany asked Peking for a
coaling station, but was refused. Berlin did not give up the project, and in
1896 fixed its eyes on Kiaochow Bay, an excellent harbor on the southern
coast of Shantung, on which Russia also had designs. The opportune
murder in Shantung of two German Roman Catholic missionaries (Novem
ber, 1897) gave the desired pretext. Kiaochow was seized by German ships,
B, heavy indemnity was exacted, and in March, 1898, Germany obtained a
ninety-nine-year lease to Kiaochow Bay with about two hundred square
miles of the adjacent territory, the right to build fortifications, the privilege
of constructing two railways in the province, and the promise that if China
ever needed foreign assistance in Shantung, in capital, persons, or material,
it would be asked first of Germans.

A few days later Russia obtained a twenty-five-year lease on Talienwan

310 VOLUME I

(more commonly known to foreigners as Dalny and, later, as Dairen) and
Port Arthur — on the tip of that Liaotung Peninsula so recently retrieved
from Japan— with the privilege of erecting fortifications and naval depots
and building a railway to connect the territory with the main line across
Manchuria (for which, as we shall see in a moment, provision had been
made in 1896), A glance at the map will show that this gave Russia a
strangle hold on Manchuria and put her in a position to control the sea
approaches to the North,

Great Britain was opposed to any alienation of Chinese territory, for
that threatened to close the open door to its trade — its chief interest in
China, The Russian lease of Port Arthur, however, made the British eager
for a counterweight to a naval station dominating so much of the North,
With the consent of Japan, whose troops were still occupying it pending
the payment of the last of the indemnity promised in 1895, and with formal
assurance to Berlin that they would not build a railway into the interior
and so compete with German interests, the British acquired (1898) a lease
to Weihaiwei "for as long a period as Port Arthur shall remain in the
possession of Russia," In the saitie year Great Britain obtained a ninety-
nine-year lease to such of the peninsula of Kowloon, opposite Hong Kong,
as had not been ceded it in 1860,

In the spring of 1898, France was given a ninety-nine-year lease to the
Bay of Kwangchow, in southwestern Kwangtung.

Thus within a few weeks the leading European powers had acquired
leaseholds on the coast of China that might be followed by partition.

Other steps were taken which looked in the same direction. In 1897
France had wrested from China a promise that the latter would never
cede the Island of Hainan to any third power. In February, 1898, Great
Britain obtained assurance from China that the latter would not alienate
to any other power any territory in the provinces adjoining the Yangtze,
and in April of that year France was given a similar assurance for the
provinces bordering on her possessions in Southwest Asia. When, also in
April, 1898, Japan asked for such a promise for Fukien (opposite For
mosa), she was told that China would not alienate any part of that province
to any power.

Still another form which foreign aggression and competition assumed
was the demand for concessions to build railways. Such concessions, of
course, would make a convenient basis for a claim to the territory they
traversed, in case, as seemed very possible, China was to go the way of so
much of the non-Occidental earth and be partitioned. Late in 1896, Russia
obtained a secret alliance with China against Japan with the provision for
the construction of a railroad across Manchuria. This line, to be known as
the Chinese Eastern, was to be a subsidiary of the Russo-Chinese Bank and
was, in effect, a continuation of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It would not

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 3 1 1

only save distance as against the all-Russian route on the north bank of the
Amur, but would, as well, give Russia a grip on Manchuria. Special
privileges were accorded the road which increased this hold. China also
promised to seek only from Russian banks the loans it might require for
the construction of certain trunk lines it contemplated building north of
the Great Wall. Li Hung-chang, who negotiated the agreement, was hoping
to play Russia off against Japan and so to save something for China.

In addition to the concessions granted the Russians in Manchuria and
the Germans in Shantung, the British obtained the predominant financial
position in the Peking-Mukden line. In June, 1898, a contract was signed
with the Belgians for a loan on the proposed road from Peking to Hankow.
The Belgians had French and Russian support and the backing of French
capital. Americans acquired, in 1898, the concession for a line from Han
kow to Canton, but some years later, after the Belgians had bought a
controlling interest in the American company, the grant was repurchased
by the Chinese. In 1899 a concession was made to British and German
interests for a railway — which Americans thought had been secured to
them the preceding year — between Tientsin and the Yangtze, the Germans
to finance and build the northern and the British the southern portion. In
1896, 1897, 1898, and 1899, France obtained concessions for railways
in the South, the most important of which was for one from Tongking
into Yunnan. In 1898 the British won concessions, or signed preliminary
agreements for them, for roads from Shanghai to Nanking and from
Shanghai to Hangchow. In 1898 and 1899 agreements were made with an
Anglo-Italian company for mines and railways in Shansi and Honan, with
the Russo-Chinese Bank (and later transferred to a French syndicate) for
a railway to connect the capital of Shansi with the Peking-Hankow line,
and with a Franco-Belgian syndicate for a road paralleling the Yellow
River. Great Britain attempted to keep the Yangtze Valley clear for her
own railway projects by an agreement with Germany (1898) for reciprocal
respect for each other's spheres, and with Russia (1899), whereby Great
Britain was not to encroach with railways north of the Great Wall, or Russia
in the Yangtze Valley.

There were also grants of concessions similar to those that Great
Britain had enjoyed in several of the ports. Most of those made at this
time were in Hankow, which appeared about to become a great railway
center.

The British attempted to assure the continuation of their predominance
in the administration of the customs by a promise from Peking (1898) that
so long as their trade remained greater than that of any other nation, the
Inspector General would be of British nationality. The French endeavored,
with scant success, to obtain the confirmation of a similar control over the
postal service.

312

VOLUME I

AMERICA AND THE OPEN DOOR POLICY

In 1898 and 1899, then, the scramble for portions of what
seemed to be a disintegrating empire was both active and sordid. The
Chinese Government, unable to defend itself by force, found its chief re
course in delay. Occasionally it scored a victory — as when, in 1899, it
declined to give Italy a naval station on the coast of Chekiang. Too often,
however, it was helpless. Russia appeared to be about to seize full control
of Manchuria and Mongolia, Germany of Shantung, France of much of the
South and Southwest, and possibly, Great Britain of the Yangtze Valley.

Within the next few years, three major efforts were made to save the
Empire from its impending doom. One of these was by foreigners, the
other two by Chinese.

The one by foreigners was what is usually known as the "open door
policy." Its purpose was to keep all of China accessible to the trade, and
so far as possible, to the other economic activities of citizens of all nations
— to insure equality of treatment to all, in all of the Empire. It was not
especially altruistic, for the powers who were its leading advocates had
their own interests chiefly in mind. However, it had as an obvious corollary
the preservation of the territorial integrity of China. In its broadest sense
the policy was not new. Great Britain had not attempted to restrict to
itself the privileges accorded it in 1842. The most-favored-nation clauses
in several of the treaties between China and Western powers were a dis
tinct attempt in that direction. Repeatedly in their intercourse with China
— as in 1858 — several of the major powers had acted co-operatively,

As we have suggested, the British viewed with alarm the leasing of
territories and the creation of spheres of influence, for these threatened to
obstruct the free course of their commerce — their chief interest in China.
They reluctantly entered the struggle to obtain what special privileges they
could, but repeatedly their spokesmen declared themselves for the open
door, and their government made several attempts to preserve it.

The best-remembered action at this time in favor of the open door was
by the United States, Americans were as yet too engrossed in the develop
ment of the resources of their own broad land to take as active an interest
in economic openings in China as did some other peoples. They had, how
ever, some commerce, and as we have seen, had taken part in the struggle
for railway concessions. la 1898, moreover, the United States acquired
the Philippines and Hawaii Now, in 1899, Secretary of State John Hay
attempted to safeguard the open door by obtaining the assent of the powers
to certain specific promises; that there should be no interference with any
vested interest in any "sphere of interest" or leased territory, that the
Chinese tariff should apply to all merchandise in such regions and be
collected by the Chinese Government, and that harbor dues and railroad

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 313

charges in these "spheres" should be equal to all. Notes embodying these
proposals were sent to Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, and
Japan, and a favorable reply was given by all, although evasively by
Russia. The Hay notes were in part a surrender of full equality of oppor
tunity, for they admitted the existence of "spheres of interest." However,
they may have helped to avert the partition of China.

THE REFORM MOVEMENT

One of the two major efforts by Chinese to save the Empire
from disintegration was by those who wished to effect changes in China,
largely after Western patterns. The reformers were numerous and of
varying degrees of radicalism. After the war with Japan many Chinese
became convinced that they must adopt some of the Western devices which
had enabled their enemy, whom they had thought of as much less strong
than they, so easily to defeat them. Reform societies were organized, a
few with influential members. The powerful viceroy, Chang Chih-tung, for
a time sponsored one of them. In a book called Learn (largely a compila
tion of essays by various authors), while stressing loyalty to Confucianism
and the dynasty, he advocated the adoption of some of the new methods
from the West, lest the Empire lose its independence as several other
states had done. The writings and personal counsel of Protestant mission
aries, notably Timothy Richard, stimulated and helped guide the movement.
More radical by far than Chang Chih-tung was a young man best
known later as Sun Yat-sen or Sun Wen. He was born in the year 1866,
in a village about forty miles from Canton, the son of a tenant farmer,
and when he was about thirteen years of age, at the suggestion and expense
of an older brother who had migrated to Hawaii, he was sent to Honolulu
to receive a Western education. In Honolulu, in 1879, he was placed by
his brother in a school conducted by an Anglican bishop, and was there for
about three years. He became convinced of the truth of Christianity, and
his brother, alarmed, had him recalled to China. Sun, returning to his
native village, but by no means cured of his new convictions, disfigured the
images in the local temple. For this sacrilege he had to flee to Canton. There
he was befriended by an American Protestant missionary physician. Before
long he again began studying— this time in Hong Kong and also chiefly,
although not entirely, with Protestant missionaries. Here he was baptized,
and here, in 1892, he received a medical diploma. He began practicing in
Macao, and there organized a reform society most of whose membership
was made up of men trained in Protestant mission schools. The Portuguese
Government soon ordered him out, probably because he was competing
with Portuguese physicians. He went to Canton and petitioned Peking
to start agricultural schools. This request was not granted, and he joined

314 VOLUME I

in organizing a revolt against the Manchus. The plot was discovered, some
of Sun's friends were captured and executed, but he himself escaped to
Hong Kong (1895) and then to Japan. Sun now became a wanderer
among the Chinese overseas, seeking to enlist their support in the over
throw of the dynasty and the foundation of a republic.

A reformer, rather than a revolutionist as was Sun Yat-sen, and more
immediately prominent than the latter, was K'ang Yu-wei. K'ang, also a
native of Kwangtung, was born in 1858. His training was purely Chinese.
He had, however, imbibed the traditions of the Han Learning and criti
cized vigorously the historicity of several of the older classical writings.
He maintained that many of the Classics venerated by the orthodox scholars
were forgeries made by Wang Mang and his chief minister to sanction their
social and political program. He would thus attack the conservatism of
his times and prove that Confucius, far from being a conserver of the values
of the past, was a creative ethical leader and statesman, to whom reformers
could turn for inspiration and guidance. He thereby sought to show that
in Confucius support could be found for his own radical views. He made
of Confucius a religious reformer and helped to inspire a later attempt
at a new Confucian cult. He worked out a social and political philosophy
that was largely his own. His program included the eventual erasing of
national boundaries, the .popular election of officials, and the abolition
of the family, with the rearing of children and the care of the aged in public
institutions. He professed to base his philosophy upon a passage in the
Li Chi, and he would have the ancient books read as guides to solving
present problems. It must be added that K'ang did not seek to carry out
at once all his program. As immediate steps he advocated much less drastic
measures.

Under pressure from the reformers — of whom the three mentioned
above were only among the more prominent — between the peace of
Shimonoseki and the summer of 1898 a number of innovations were under
taken or projected by the provincial and national governments and by
private initiative. Schools teaching Western subjects were founded and
railways planned.

The reformers found a champion in the Kuang Hsti Emperor. Not
physically robust or forceful, brought up in the seclusion of the palace,
with the masterful Tz'u Hsi always keeping a vigilant eye upon him, the
Kuang Hsu Emperor had neither the vigor of personality nor the direct
contact with the outside world to enable him to be the kind of leader which
the dynasty and the Empire needed. However, he was intelligent, studious,
felt that something must be done, and read eagerly some of the literature of
the time, including the books of K'ang Yu-wei. In the summer of 1898,
with K'ang as a confidant and adviser, he instituted what were later known
as the hundred days of reform. During June, July, August, and September
of that year, edict after edict was issued introducing changes.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 315

Compared with the sweeping innovations of a few years later, none of
the decrees advocated anything especially radical. Contrasted with the
official conservation of the time, however, they were startling. Among them
were decrees ordering a modification of the civil service and military
examinations, the establishment of a system of schools including an im
perial university for the study of the new as well as the old learning, the
founding of an official bureau of translation, the encouragement of railway
building, military and naval reform, the opening to Manchus of professions
other than office-holding, and the abolition of many sinecure posts.

The decrees aroused a storm of opposition from those who by convic
tion or interest were wedded to the old order and from some who, while
willing to see change, believed the Emperor to be acting too precipitately.

THE ATTEMPT AT SALVATION BY REACTION:

THE COUP D'ETAT OF 1898 AND THE BOXER UPRISING

The conservative elements looked to the Empress Dowager
for support and leadership. In September, 1898, Tz'u Hsi took charge of the
government. She had kept closely in touch with the developing situation
and at first had allowed the Emperor to go his own way. However, she
distrusted his measures and became both alarmed and annoyed by the
rapidity and — to her — lack of wisdom with which he was veering toward
the left.

Conflict between the two was^ inevitable, for heretofore the Old Buddha
had kept the Kuang Hsu Emperor in leading strings, and independence
of action on his part must lead to a trial of strength. The Emperor moved
first, secretly ordering the death of Jung-lu, her loyal supporter and
trusted adviser. Yuan Shih-k'ai, to whom the Emperor committed the
execution, revealed the plan to Jung-lu and the latter at once went to the
Empress Dowager. Tz'u Hsi acted promptly. She had the Emperor seized
(September 22, 1898), and although she permitted him to live and to
retain the title, she kept him a prisoner in a portion of his own palace and
in his name once more assumed the regency. Several of the reformers
were arrested and executed, and others, including K'ang Yu-wei, escaped
a like fate only by fleeing the country. Many of the edicts of the hundred
days were countermanded. A second Chinese attempt to save the country
— by conservatism — was in full swing.

The reaction culminated in an outbreak, usually known as the Boxer
Rebellion, which, ultimately with the sanction of the Empress Dowager,
sought to oust the alien and his ways from the Empire.

That an antiforeign upheaval of some kind came was not surprising.
Irritation against the "foreign devils" was widespread. The defeat by
Japan, the seizure of ports by European powers, the granting of railway
concessions and the beginning of railway construction, fear of the partition

316 VOLUME I

of the Empire, and bitter feeling against missionaries and their converts
contributed to it. Famine added to the unrest. After 1897 sporadic out
breaks against the foreigner were frequent.

The Northeast was the scene of most of the violence. Here was the
court, now given over to reaction. Here were some particularly anti-
foreign officials, Antiforeign groups arose. They were sometimes known
as the I Ho T'uan and were also termed the I Ho Ch'iian, or "Righteous
Harmony Fists." From this latter designation and from the gymnastic
exercises that were practiced came the Western name Boxers. The groups
early adopted such slogans as "Protect the country, destroy the foreigner,"
and "Protect the Ch'ing (dynasty), destroy the foreigner." Into their
membership pressed many rowdies. They were also associated with some
of the secret societies which abounded in China. As had long been cus
tomary in such popular organizations, charms and occult practices were
employed which the users believed would render them invulnerable to
enemy weapons.

It was in 1899 that the Boxers began seriously to annoy Westerners. In
Shantung, where the antiforeign Yii Hsien was Governor, they persecuted
Christians and killed an English missionary. Yii Hsien, under pressure from
the powers replaced by Yuan Shih-k'ai, was welcomed at court as a hero
and was appointed Governor of Shansi. By June, 1900, the situation in
Chihli (Hopei) had become acute. Christians were being massacred and
aliens were in danger. To safeguard the latter, and especially the legations
in Peking, on June 10 an international body of troops left Tientsin. It
was attacked, however, and with difficulty made its way back. To protect
the foreign community in Tientsin, now in danger, the Taku forts, com
manding the river approach from the sea, were stormed by parties made up
of six nationalities (June 17). This was interpreted by the Boxers and the
court as a declaration of war. In retaliation, the Tientsin concessions were
attacked and the diplomatic body ordered to leave Peking within twenty-
four hours. On the morning of June 20 the German Minister was killed
while on his way to the Tsungli Yamen, and that afternoon foreigners
and Chinese Christians were placed in a state of siege in their refuges: the
Roman Catholic cathedral and the legation quarter. The powers assembled
at Tientsin an allied relief expedition, but not until the middle of August
did it fight its way through to Peking and effect the release of the be
leaguered.

In the meantime, the storm brought distress outside as well as inside
the capital. Throughout the Empire aliens were in danger, especially mis
sionaries, for by the nature of their calling the latter were more frequently
beyond the shelter of the treaty ports than were merchants. Most foreigners
in the interior found it advisable either to go to the ports or to leave the
country. Except in the Northeast, very little loss of life occurred. In

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 317

Chihli (Hopei), Shansi, Manchuria, and Mongolia, however, the toll was
heavy. Here more than two hundred foreign missionaries and several
thousand Chinese Christians were killed. In Shansi the truculent Yii Hsien
was particularly rabid against the strangers and their converts, and per
sonally assisted in the execution of a Roman Catholic bishop.

That the loss of life was no greater was due in large part to the Chinese
and Manchus themselves. At the court were those, among them Jung-lu,
who recognized the folly of the war, and their moderating counsels were
not without effect — even during the siege of the legations, In local com
munities many Chinese, both private citizens and officials, risked their lives
to save foreigners. On June 20 the admirals off Tientsin declared that they
were using force merely against the Boxers and those who opposed them in
their attempt to rescue their fellow countrymen at Peking. This meant
that the powers did not consider themselves at war with China but as
merely helping to suppress an internal upheaval which threatened the lives
of their nationals. The viceroys at Nanking aad Wuchang and several of
the governors took steps to preserve order within their jurisdictions. Li
Hung-chang, now viceroy at Canton, attempted to obtain the assurance
of the powers that they did not consider a state of war to exist. When the
inevitable diplomatic settlement should be made* it would be of advantage
to China if she could claim that as a nation she had not fought. Certainly
the loss of life and the consequent penalties were very much less than if
all Chinese officialdom had supported the war party*

Even though only a small minority actively attempted to oust the alien,
in the autumn of 1900 the situation for China was humiliating, Peking was
in the hands of the powers and had been plundered by their troops. The
court had fled precipitately and igominiously to Hsianfu. Contingents of
foreign soldiers went through much of ChihU (Hopei), relieving mission
aries who had been standing siege at isolated points and wreaking ven
geance for the indignities shown to their nationals during the preceding
months. The Russians had taken possession of much of Manchuria.

THE POST-BOXER SETTLEMENT

The diplomatic settlement which officially adjusted the Boxer
outbreak was arrived at in 1901 after prolonged negotiations and much
wrangling among the powers. The terms were drastic, but not so much
so as some of the powers had wished. The American Government exercised
a moderating influence on the side of the territorial integrity of the Empire
and of an indemnity within China's capacity to pay, and an Anglo-German
agreement, to which France, the United States, Italy, Austria, and Japan
acceded in whole or in part, attempted to prevent the acquisition of terri
tory or the violation of the open door.

VOLUME I

The terms of the Protocol, as it is called, can be briefly summarized as

follows: (1) an apology for the murder of the German Minister and the

erection of a memorial monument; (2) the punishment (by the Chinese

Government rather than the powers— a device which helped to save some

prestige to China) of some of the officials chiefly responsible for the

attacks on foreigners; (3) the suspension for five years of the official

examinations in towns where foreigners had been mistreated; (4) an

apology for the murder of the chancellor of the Japanese legation; (5) the

erection by the Chinese Government of expiatory monuments in desecrated

foreign cemeteries; (6) the prohibition by China for two years or more

of the importation of arms and ammunition; (7) the payment by China

of an indemnity of 450,000,000 haikuan taels— in United States currency

$333,000,000— with interest at four per cent, in thirty-nine annual in

stallments, ending with 1940, to be secured by the maritime customs, the

salt tax, and the native customs, and to be distributed among thirteen

of the powers, Russia receiving the largest share, and Germany, France,

Great Britain, Japan, the United States, Italy, Belgium, Austria-Hungary,

the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden Mowing with amounts pro

gressively smaller in the order named; (8) the reservation to foreigners

and the defense by the powers of the legation quarter in Peking; (9) the

razing of the Taku forts, thus to permit free communication between

Peking and the sea; (10) the maintenance of free communication between

Peking and the sea by right of occupation by the powers of certain speci

fied points; (11) the publication of edicts designed to discourage further

antiforeign outbreaks; (12) the amendment of existing treaties of commerce

and navigation (a provision carried out in 1902 and 1903 with the United

States, Great Britain, and Japan, but without revolutionary additions to

earlier documents); (13) the improvement of the river channels leading

to Tientsin and Shanghai; and (14) the reconstruction of the Tsungli

Yamen into a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Wai Wu Pu) which should be

accorded precedence over all the other ministries of state, thus giving added

dignity to intercourse with foreign powers.

By the Protocol, as the price of the mad action of Tz'u Hsi and some
of her officials, China was saddled with a large addition to her debt, the
legations in Peking took on the guise of armed fortresses, and other
humiliations were endured. For more than two decades thereafter, many
aliens, consciously or unconsciously, took the arrogant attitude of those
living in a conquered country, and the Chinese seldom dared openly show
resentment. Any antiforeign movements were promptly and vigorously dealt
with. The Ch'ing dynasty was badly shaken. It had shown itself incompetent
to lead in the necessary reorganization, either when headed by the reform
ing Kuang Hsu Emperor or by the reactionary Tz'u Hsi. The Empire
lacked the leadership at the top which the times so urgently demanded.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 319

Still, although in fact a foreign-occupied country, China retained the
semblance of independence and territorial integrity. The partition which
had been threatened in 1898 and for which the events of 1900 might have
been given as a pretext was not accomplished. China emerged from the
Boxer year less weakened than some observers would have deemed pos
sible.

THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR (1904-1905) AND ITS IMMEDIATE
AFTERMATH IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS (1905-1910)

Although China emerged from the Boxer madness with
its territory nominally intact, its possession of one great region, Manchuria,
was seriously threatened. A war between Russia and Japan soon followed
in which Manchuria was the chief battlefield and which ended with Japan
as well as Russia firmly entrenched in the land of virgin resources.

Russia, while professing friendship for China, was reluctant to with
draw from the occupation of the Three Eastern Provinces which it had
effected during the Boxer uprising. Again and again it delayed the evacu
ation of the region beyond the time promised and seemed bent on perma
nent possession.

To these Russian ambitions Great Britain, Japan, and the United
States offered opposition. The United States was unwilling to go to war
to enforce its policy, and Great Britain, embarrassed by the struggle with
the Boers in South Africa, could scarcely do so. It was left to Japan
to act. Reinforced by an alliance with Great Britain (1902) in which each
party undertook to come to the other's aid in case more than one power
were to attack the other in defense of its interests in East Asia, and after
repeated attempts to reach a settlement by negotiation, Japan suddenly
struck (February, 1904). Its primary concern was for Korea, where Russia
was also aggressive, but most of the fighting was in Manchuria. China
declared its neutrality. The major neutral Western powers suggested to the
belligerents that they localize the area of warfare. This they agreed to do,
although Russia maintained that all Manchuria must be included in the
zone. As the war progressed, the United States, fearing that in the nego
tiations of peace between Japan and Russia neutral powers might make
demands for Chinese territory, obtained from the chief of them the assur
ance of their adherence to the policy of the integrity of China and the
open door.

In the war, Russia was badly defeated. In the peace treaty (of Ports
mouth, September 5, 1905), the terms which vitally concerned China
were the recognition by Russia of Japan's paramount political, military,
and economic interests in Korea; the transfer to Japan of the Russian rights
in the Liaotung Peninsula and in the railways of South Manchuria; the

320 VOLUME I

withdrawal by Russia and Japan of their troops from Manchuria, but the
retention there of guards for the railways; the promise of Japan and
Russia that they would not obstruct any measures common to all countries
which China might take for the development of the commerce and industry
of Manchuria, and that the railways in Manchuria would be used purely
for commercial and industrial, and — except in the Liaotung Peninsula
— not for strategic purposes; and the declaration by Russia that it did
not possess in Manchuria "any territorial advantages or preferential
or exclusive concessions in impairment of Chinese sovereignty or incon
sistent with the principle of equal opportunity." China soon signed a
treaty with Japan assenting to such terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth
as dealt with matters within her territory, and in a secret agreement granted
to Japan additional advantages in Manchuria.

The Russo-Japanese War greatly increased Japan's tangible interests
in China. Not only did the island empire succeed to Russia's holdings in
South Manchuria,, but its augmented influence in Korea, followed shortly,
in 1910, by the annexation of that country, brought it to the very borders
of China. Increasingly Japan was a major factor in Chinese affairs.

Instead of settling the Manchurian question, the war complicated it.
The Three Eastern Provinces continued to be a storm center in China's
international relations. Japan, having obtained a foothold there at great
cost in blood and treasure, was fully as jealous of its position as Russia
had been. It rapidly developed its holdings, and complaints were not long
in forthcoming that the principle of the open door was being violated.
British and Americans were especially outspoken in their criticisms. The
Japanese blocked all the various projects by British and Americans for the
construction of railways in Manchuria. The British Government did little,
at least partly because of the Anglo- Japanese Alliance, which was revised
and renewed in 1905 and again in 1911. The United States, which after
1905 was moving away from its earlier policy of warm friendship for
Japan, was left as the chief hope of official opposition from the West to
the extension of Japanese control. The Root-Takahira notes of 1908 seemed
for a time amicably to settle Japanese-American differences over Man
churia, but these were revived in 1909 by the proposal of the American
Secretary of State, Knox, that the Russian and Japanese railways in Man
churia be neutralized through their purchase, by China, by means of an
international loan. The effect of the Knox plan was to drive the Russians
and Japanese to an agreement (1910) to maintain the status quo.

China, too, attempted by various measures to retain and strengthen
her hold in Manchuria. Peking reorganized the admission of the three
provinces, planned railways, and attempted to enlist foreign capital

International friction over Manchuria remained a prominent feature
of China's international relations. The region was a chronic storm center.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 321

REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL CHANGES: INTERNAL POLITICS, 1901-1931

The humiliation of the Boxer uprising and its aftermath,
and the helplessness of China while Russia and a Westernized Japan fought
on her soil, at last convinced even the most conservative that the only
way to avoid national ruin was reorganization and the adoption of at least
some of the processes of the Occident. Some entered upon these changes
with reluctance. Others were enthusiastic. After 1900, however, the struc
ture of China's older culture crumbled. The changes affected every realm
of the nation's life: political, economic, intellectual, religious, and social.

In domestic politics the opening decades of the twentieth century, and
particularly the years after 1911, presented a kaleidoscopic picture. In
general, until 1926 the record was one of the progressive collapse of
central and local government and an increase in civil strife, banditry,
and anarchy. The descensus Averni was not cpnstant: at times it appeared
to have been halted and recovery even seemed to have begun. Until the
year 1926, however, each attempt at stabilization proved abortive and
was followed by renewed and often intensified disorder.

In general, the causes for the disastrous record were six: the pressure
of the Occident and Japan, the collapse of the Ch'ing dynasty, the necessity
of making radical alterations in the political structure of the country, cor
ruption, economic distress, and internal dissensions.

The pressure of the Occident and Japan took many reforms, but it
always increased rather than abated. It made inevitable profound changes
in all phases of China's culture, including the government.

The collapse of the Ch'ing dynasty deprived China of its best chance
of going through the inescapable transformation without chaos. Although
the structure of the Chinese state left a great deal to local initiative, much
depended on the Emperor. We have seen that, again and again through
the centuries, when that office was incompetently filled rebellions wasted
the land. When weakness at the top was too marked, the dynasty was
overthrown and a period of civil strife followed. This strife usually lasted
for several decades, and once, after the downfall of the Han, for several
centuries. Military chieftains fought each other for the control of the
Empire, often taking dynastic names and establishing ephemeral states,
until one conquered all the others and succeeded in uniting the Empire
under his sway and in passing the throne on to other members of his
family. Had the Ch'ing survived, this rivalry might have been avoided
or controlled. By the end of the nineteenth century that ruling house had
proved utterly incompetent to meet the challenge and its disappearance
could not long be delayed. With the downfall of the Ch'ing, the traditional
struggle between military leaders began again.

This time, however, the civil strife which had always been the inter-

322 VOLUME I

hide between dynasties was complicated by attempts at basic innovations
in the form of government. Heretofore, after Ch'in Shih Huang Ti and the
Han had devised machinery for ruling the Empire, each dynasty had been
content to adopt, with modifications, the framework inherited from its
predecessor. Even foreign conquerors had done this. When the Ch'ing
fell, this was no longer possible. The new problems thrust upon the state
by the coming of the West and the new ideas from abroad made imperative
a reconstruction more revolutionary even than that of Ch'in Shih Huang
Ti. No people has the political genius to work out a new system of govern
ment without experimentation and the attendant mistakes. Certainly new
political machinery cannot be evolved for so large a mass as four hun
dred millions, most of whom are quite unprepared for the change, without
costly failures. When, as in China, the attempt to devise a new type of
government was complicated by strife between self-seeking military chief
tains, the result could only be temporary chaos.

The breakdown of government was furthered by widespread corrup
tion. Much of this existed under the Ch'ing, notably in the declining years
of the dynasty. It bred a popular distrust of officialdom. When traditional
controls were removed, the selfish use of political power for private profit
was accentuated. This fostered rebellion and still greater lack of confi
dence in government.

Anarchy was accentuated by economic factors. Under the excellent
government of the great Emperors of the Ch'ing, prosperity was marked
and population mounted. The disorders of the nineteenth century brought
about no widespread economic breakdown, except temporarily in the third
quarter of the century. The civil strife of the twentieth century, however, so
consumed the scanty surplus of food in many regions and so disrupted
economic life over wide areas that millions were brought into dire poverty.
To this was added, after 1931 and especially after 1937, the miseries
of foreign invasion. Many, deprived of their ordinary livelihood, took to
banditry or swelled the ill-disciplined cohorts of the warlords. The armies
and the hordes of bandits increased the distress; still others were driven
to depredations on their neighbors; and a vicious circle was created which
made the establishment of order increasingly more difficult.

Moreover, China's troubles were complicated by the ever-changing
combinations, intrigues, and clashes between the many social, economic,
and political groups which were part of the structure that the new China
inherited, in more or less modified form, from the old. Guilds, clans,
secret societies, and political cliques were involved. Secret societies,
indeed, played a much larger part than all but a few well-informed for
eigners realized. Many of the political and military leaders belonged to
them, and their affiliations often determined or modified political events.
Chinese politics were exceedingly complex, with many currents and cross
currents, and were confusing in the extreme.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 323

Only the main outline of the story need here be given. As we have
repeatedly seen, the Ch'ing dynasty had been in decline since the close
of the eighteenth century, and its demise had been postponed only by
the loyalty of some able Chinese. By 1901 its sands had nearly run out. The
Boxer fiasco further discredited it. The Kuang Hsu Emperor was virtually a
prisoner. The father of the heir apparent was one of the most ardent sup
porters of the Boxers, and the heir apparent himself an uncouth roue.
The new heir apparent appointed after 1900 was an infant. Tzu Hsi,
while able and vigorous, was aging, had little or no comprehension of
the world into which the Empire was being rushed, was bound to tra
dition, and was utterly unable to give the needed leadership.

After 1900 the Ch'ing attempted to reorganize the government to
meet the demands of the new day. Important changes were effected in
the administrative system, from the central boards in Peking to the
bureaucracy in the provinces. A beginning was made of a new code of
laws. The old civil service examinations were discontinued, and a sys
tem of tests was introduced for aspirants for public office, based upon
Western as well as Chinese subjects. Fiscal reform was projected. Army
reorganization was planned, and a part of it was carried out, especially
by Yuan Shih-k'ai, in the North. A commission sent to the United States
and Europe studied the forms of government in use there, a constitution
was promised, and steps were taken looking toward the introduction of
representation based upon popular election. Provincial assemblies and a
National Assembly were convoked, the former in 1909 and the latter in
1910,

Given competent leadership, the dynasty might have made the needed
adjustments. As it was, the new wine proved too potent for the old wine
skins. On November 15, 1908, the Empress Dowager died, presumably
preceded by only a few hours by the Kuang Hsu Emperor. With the
passing of Tz'u Hsi went the last outstanding figure in the imperial house.
The infant heir apparent came to the throne (under the reign name of
Hsiian T'ung) and the regent did not have the force of character required by
the times. Under these circumstances, the dynasty was easily upset.

The revolution that overthrew the Ch'ing broke out in Hankow
and Wuchang in October, 1911, the 10th being the day that was later
celebrated. There had been unrest in the Yangtze Valley, particularly in
Szechwan, over a foreign loan to finance railways in South, Central, and
West China and an accompanying greater centralization of railway admin
istration under Peking. By the end of September, 1911, active revolt had
arisen in Szechwan. A fortuitous incident in Hankow brought about the
premature inception of a more widespread outbreak. Troops in Wuchang,
mutinying, forced their commander, Li Yuan-hung, to lead them in the
new movement; a republic was declared, and the strategic cities Wuchang,
Hanyang, and Hankow quickly fell to the rebels. So unexpected had been

324

VOLUME I

the uprising in the Wuhan center that it surprised even the most ardent
anti-imperialists.

Peking called to its assistance Yuan Shih-k'ai. Yuan had been dis
missed soon after the beginning of the new reign, probably because of
his betrayal of the regent's brother, the Kuang Hsu Emperor, in 1898.
As the creator of the strongest army in the country, he appeared indis
pensable. He responded somewhat deliberately to the frantic summons
for help and came only on his own terms. Had he acted promptly, he
might possibly have suppressed the revolt. As it was, he dallied, and
although Hankow was retaken by the end of October, the interval had
been sufficiently long to enable the revolution to gain headway. In
October and November, city after city and province after province threw
off the Manchu yoke, and in them independent governments were set
up. The only fighting of any importance was in the Wuhan cities (Wuchang,
Hankow, and Hanyang) and Nanking. In several places Manchu garrisons,
helpless, were massacred. Concessions by Peking availed nothing. Before
the end of the year, a national council representing the revolutionists
assembled at Nanking and (December 28) elected as President of the Repub
lic Sun Yat-sen. Sun had been in Europe at the inception of the outbreak,
but recently, amid great acclaim, had returned to China.

Before Sun's arrival, negotiations had begun between Yuan and the
revolutionists. Wise heads on both sides strove to save the country
from further debilitating civil strife. Yuan succeeded, partly by threats,
in convincing the court of the import of the writing on the wall, and on
February 12, 1912, edicts were issued from Peking, in the name of the
young Emperor, by which the Ch'ing accepted its fate. The Hsiian T'ung
Emperor abdicated and Yuan was instructed to organize a republic. The
Emperor, so the republicans agreed, was to retain his title for life, was
to receive a large annuity, and was to keep his private property and the
use of a palace. The tomb of the Kuang Hsu Emperor was to be com
pleted at public expense. Manchus, Moslems, Mongols, and Tibetans
were promised equality with the Chinese and were secured in their titles
and their property. Within a few days, further to insure peace, Sun with
drew from the presidency, and the republican body at Nanking elected
Yuan in his stead. Li Yuan-hung, who had become a popular hero by
his part in the outbreak of the revolution, was elected vice-president. The
Ch'ing dynasty, with a minimum of bloodshed, had passed the way of its
predecessors. The nation, outwardly united, had embarked on a perilous
experiment with republican forms.

So perished, with scarcely a struggle, a monarchial institution which
in theory had had its beginnings in prehistoric times, which had been
given a definitive form by Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, and which had been
modified by the Emperors of the Han and of later dynasties. With it

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 325

inevitably went much of that elaborate bureaucracy and many of those
political theories which were among the greatest achievements of the
Chinese; disorders could scarcely be avoided.

The abandonment of the monarchy and the attempt to transform
China into a republic seemed the height of folly. The Chinese were
scrapping political institutions with whose operation they were familiar
and were seeking to adopt a form of government with which they were
quite inexperienced. However, this offered some, perhaps the best, hope
of avoiding prolonged civil war and possible foreign intervention. The
Ch'ing dynasty could, at best, have been kept alive but a little longer.
Yuan Shih-k'ai, the most powerful military figure in the country, and hence
possessed of the best chance of founding a new dynasty, would probably
not have been peacefully accepted as Emperor by the nation and cer
tainly not by the revolutionists. There was a bare possibility that under
the name of a republic the nation might develop in orderly fashion the
political institutions required by the new day.

At first it looked as though this hope might be realized. Rapidly,
however, the machinery inherited from the old regime disintegrated. The
new was slow in being constructed. Within a decade and a half only
the barest shadow of a national government remained and the country was
racked by fighting.

The administration of Yuan Shih-k'ai began fairly auspiciously. Yiian
controlled the strongest army, and outwardly had the support of the
republicans and the former adherents of the Manchus. He succeeded in
keeping the capital at Peking, near the center of his strength. The foreign
powers accepted him.

Almost immediately, however, Yiian's troubles began. The provi
sional constitution which the body at Nanking adopted in March, 1912,
and to which he was supposed to conform, placed the president under
the control of Parliament and gave him little real power. He was to have
about the functions of the president of France under the Third Republic.
Parliament, when elected, was dominated by the radicals who had brought
about the revolution and who had been organized into the Kuomintang.
A decisive clash between Yiian and the radicals came in the spring and
summer of 1913. Against the opposition of the Kuomintang, Yuan com
pleted a large loan made by banking groups of five countries: Great
Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan. This both gave him the
sinews of war and assured him the moral support of these powers. When
he replaced with his own men several of the military commanders in the
Yangtze Valley and the South, his critics, with the endorsement of Sun
Yat-sen, broke out into open rebellion and declared a "punitive expedi
tion" against him, Yiian easily suppressed the outbreak and Sun fled to
Japan. Yiian followed up his advantage by obtaining the adoption of the

326 VOLUME I

sections of the "permanent" constitution which had to do with the selection
of president. He secured his own election to that office, unseated soon
afterward (November, 1913) the Kuomintang members of Parliament,
and then (January, 1914) dismissed the remnant of Parliament.

Thus rid of the elements which had inaugurated the revolution of
1911, for more than a year Yuan preserved the outward form of a repub
lic, but with changes in its structure that made it clearly submissive to
himself. In 1915, after going through the motions of a carefully directed
"referendum," he declared the monarchy restored with himself as Emperor.
Opposition proved stronger than he had anticipated. Japan, supported
by Great Britain, Russia, and France, counseled delay. In December,
1915, rebellion broke out in distant Yunnan and quickly spread to
adjoining provinces. Yuan first postponed his formal enthronement, and
then, as the rebellion spread, canceled the monarchy. The insurgents
were not content to leave him in power on any terms. Broken by chagrin
and ill health and with his prestige gone, Yuan died of disease (June
6, 1916) before his enemies could remove him.

The vice-president, Li Yuan-hung, had not consented to Yiian's
restoration of the monarchy and had been elected president of the oppo
sition government which Yiian's opponents had set up in Canton. With
Yuan gone, the entire country recognized him as president. Although
well-intentioned, Li was not strong enough for the difficult post, and
the calm which followed his accession was deceptive. He pleased the
radicals by restoring the constitution of 1912 and recalling the Parlia
ment which Yuan had dismissed. Feng Kuo-chang, a prominent military
figure in the Yangtze Valley, was elected vice-president. Tuan Ch'i-jui, a
henchman and appointee of Yuan Shih-k'ai, and commanding the support
of the military machine which the latter had built, continued as premier.
The major factions were thus represented in the government, but it
required a leader with more than Li's ability to keep them working
harmoniously.

In the spring of 1917 the inevitable dissension broke out, over the
question of China's entry into the World War. In March China broke
off relations with Germany, Tuan wished her to take the next logical
step, but Parliament refused to join in a declaration of war while he was
premier. The President acceded and dismissed Tuan (May 23). Tuan
withdrew to Tientsin and here a group of military leaders representing the
faction which had formerly backed Yuan Shih-k'ai declared the inde
pendence of several provinces, most of them in the North. Li Yuan-hung,
faced with this opposition and without adequate military support, called in
as mediator Chang Hsiin, a picturesque chieftain who had adhered to the
Manchus in the revolution of 1911 and was now military governor of
Anhui and in command of a force astride the Tientsin-Pukow railway.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 327

Following the counsel of Chang Hsiin, the President dismissed Parlia
ment (June 13th). On July first, after bringing his troops to Peking,
Chang Hsiin electrified the world by declaring the restoration of the
Ch'ing dynasty — an act probably due to his sense of the traditional Con
fucian obligation owed by a minister to his prince. The generals assembled
at Tientsin, however, were not minded to tolerate any such turn of events
and marched on Peking. Before the middle of July Peking had been taken,
Chang Hsiin had sought sanctuary in the Dutch legation, the boy Emperor
had again retired, and the Republic had been officially restored.

Li Yuan-hung refused to resume the presidency, for he had lost
enormously in prestige and had no powerful friends at hand to support
him. Feng Kuo-chang, as vice-president, automatically came into the
presidency, and Tuan Ch'i-jui resumed the premiership. The northern
military group was now in control. The following year (August, 1918),
a body assembled by it, and known, because it was dominated by the
military chiefs, or Tuchiins, as the "Tuchiins' Parliament," passed over
Feng for the presidency — because he was from another clique than that
of Tuan — and elected to the office a scholar and ex-official of the old
regime, Hsu Shih-ch'ang. Tuan's group, now organized into what was
called the Anfu Club, was supreme.

In the meantime, members of the radical Parliament of 1913, once
dismissed by Yiian Shih-k'ai and now again by Li Yuan-hung, assembled in
Shanghai and Canton, and set up, with Canton as the usual headquarters,
a government which they declared to be the only legitimate one, for
they held the constitution of 1912, under which they had been elected,
still to be binding. The Canton regime did not have nearly the power
of its rival at Peking and often its hold on life was tenuous. However,
much of the South acquiesced in a nominal allegiance to it. The country,
accordingly, was divided. In 1921 Sun Yat-sen was elected president of the
southern government and maintained himself precariously at Canton.

The government at Peking became progressively weaker. In the sum
mer of 1920, Chang Tso-lin, the master of Manchuria, and two other
generals, Ts'ao Kun and Ts'ao's most powerful lieutenant, Wu P'ei-fu,
joined in a successful effort to drive Tuan Chl-jui and the Anfu clique
out of Peking. Hsu Shih-ch'ang, a somewhat pathetic figure, was left with
only the shadow of power. In 1922 Wu P'ei-fu and Chang Tso-lin went
to war with each other. Chang was defeated and withdrew his troops to
Manchuria. Wu, victorious, sought to bring the nation together by ousting
Hsu from the presidency and calling back into power Li Yuan-hung
and the Parliament of 1913, under whom the country had last been united.
The effort proved disappointing. From the outset both Sun Yat-sen and
Chang Tso-lin were hostile, and other powerful commanders were unrecon
ciled. The following year (1923) a rising military figure and subordinate

328 VOLUME I

of Wu P'ei-fu, Feng Yii-hsiang, who had already gained distinction by his
conversion to Protestant Christianity and his vigorous attempts to propa
gate his new faith among his troops, helped to make Li Yuan-hung regard
his position as untenable. Li, disheartened, once more withdrew to the
quiet security of a foreign concession in Tientsin. Soon afterward (Sep
tember, 1923), Wu's technical superior, Ts'ao Kun, by the use of heavy
bribes, was elected to the presidency by what remained of the Parlia
ment of 1913. The twelfth anniversary of the Revolution of 1911 was
celebrated by the promulgation of what was optimistically called "the
permanent" constitution,

By this time the recurrence of civil war had become almost as regular
an annual event as the return of spring, and in 1924 the major generals
were once more moving against one another. This year Chang Tso-lin
was victorious, owing chiefly to the sudden defection of Feng Yu-hsiang
from Wu P'ei-fu. Ts'ao Kun was deprived of his office and imprisoned,
and Feng and Chang placed Tuan Ch'i-jui at the head of the Peking
Government. Tuan, however, did not have the title of president, but was
denominated what may be translated as "provisional chief executive/'
Moreover, he had under him only the skeleton of a national government.
In 1925 the inevitable falling-out between Feng and Chang resulted in
the withdrawal of the latter, thanks to the disloyalty of some subordinates.
The following year (1926), however, Wu P'ei-fu and Chang Tso-lin
ignored their differences for the moment and joined in driving Feng Yii-
hsiang's forces out of Peking and into the Northwest. A few weeks after
ward, Tuan Ch'i-jui retired to the convenient haven of Tientsin. Not even
a "provisional chief executive" was left in the capital. A rapidly shifting
cabinet kept up, with the consent of the warlords, the form of govern
ment with which the powers, in default of anything better, were willing
to deal, under the- fiction that it was the legal representative of China.

While what remained of a government at Peking went through the
motions of speaking for the country, all semblance of actual national politi
cal unity was rapidly disappearing. In fact the country was divided among
many warring chieftains, most of whom rose to power rapidly and as
quickly disappeared, and the boundaries of whose spheres of influence
were constantly shifting.

Throughout the country the continuous strife was producing increas
ing war weariness. The spirit of nationalism, reinforced - by the impetus
given it almost everywhere in the world by World War I, was growing,
particularly among the younger intellectuals. As we shall see in a moment,
this nationalistic sentiment was directed in part against the special privi
leges of foreigners. It also wished to unify China internally. Now, in the
spring and summer of 1926, there came rapidly into prominence a move
ment which seemed to offer hope to these aspirations and which soon

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 329

attracted to itself, either actively or passively, most of the progressive
and radical elements in the country and was looked to expectantly by all
who longed for an early end of China's woes.

Sun Yat-sen was very successful as a propagandist. He also possessed
idealism, in striking contrast to the crass self-seeking of most of the
military chiefs of the day. An omnivorous reader in both Western and
Chinese literature, he was a student of society — a social philosopher —
and dreamed of a new Utopia. Of his many interesting suggestions for
the reorganization of the country, some were bizarre and impracticable,
but others had in them a hint of genius. Sun had a gift of attracting others
to himself, and no one else quite so much caught the imagination of the
younger elements in China. As an inspirer of revolution he was extraordi
narily able. As an administrator he was a distinct failure. Under his
leadership the Kuomintang and the government of which he was the
head made little progress toward mastering the country. On March 12,
1925, he died in Peking while on a mission to the North to confer with
Feng Yti-hsiang and Chang Tso-lin.

Sun's death was of almost as much service to his cause and his party
as his life had been. Not long before his end, in 1923, he called to his
assistance as advisers Russians of the Communist school — because, so he
declared, in his struggle to overthrow the Peking Government he had
sought help in vain from the United States, Great Britain, and Japan.
The chief of these Russians was Michael Borodin, a vigorous and astute
revolutionary who had been educated in -the United States and who
had had experience in Chicago, Mexico, and Turkey. Under the tutelage of
these counselors the organization of the Kuomintang was made to conform
in large degree to that of the Russian Communist Party. Sun Yat-sen (a la
Lenin) was canonized as the national hero, and weekly memorial services
before his picture were encouraged. He left behind him a last will and
testament directed to. the nation and several books outlining his program.
These were now adopted as infallible guides for the party and the nation.
The will was regularly read in public with great solemnity, and one of the
books, the San Min Chu I, or the Three People's Principles, became the
party's manual. These three principles — government by the people and
for the people, a sufficient livelihood for all, and freedom from the con
trol of foreign nations — were broadcast as popular slogans. Propaganda
was highly developed and very skillfully employed. The attempt was made
to adapt Communism to Chinese conditions. Unions of laborers and peas
ants were organized against the propertied classes. Agitation was directed
in large part against the "capitalistic" and "imperialistic" powers of the
Occident. But Sun Yat-sen had come to oppose Russian Communism
and had rejected the orthodox Marxian theory of the class war. The
Kuomintang had more than one element.

330 VOLUME I

In the summer of 1926 the armies of the Kuomintang — or Nationalist
Party, as the title was loosely translated — began a northward advance. Their
young general, Chiang Kai-shek (or Chiang Chieh-shih), proved an
able leader, and propaganda helped to smooth their way. Here at last
seemed to be salvation from the interminable civil wars, the heartless
selfishness of the militarists, and the economic distress of the past few
years. Little well-organized opposition existed short of the North. The
progress of the Nationalist armies was almost an uninterrupted triumph.
By the early spring of 1927 the Yangtze had been reached, Wu P'ei-fu
and the general in command in the Shanghai area (Sun Ch'iian-fang)
had been eliminated, and such centers as Wuchang, Hankow, and Shang
hai had come into the possession of the Nationalists. It was freely predicted
that the autumn would see Chiang in Peking.

Victory was delayed by dissensions within the party. The Communist
wing of the Kuomintang gained in power as the tide of victory mounted.
In central China, and especially in Hunan, radicalism was in the saddle.
Through the party organization and the newly formed unions of laborers
and peasants, "capitalists" and "imperialists" were denounced, many of
the wealthy were dispossessed, particularly of their lands, and some of them
were murdered. The headquarters of the government, established at
Hankow, was dominated by the left wing. Communism was strengthened by
returned Chinese students from Russia. The Soviet Government had set
up in Moscow, especially for them (1925), a university named after Sun
Yat-sen, which by the end of 1927 had an enrollment of about six
hundred, mostly from Hunan and Kwangtung. The more moderate elements
in the party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, looked with alarm upon the growing
left wing, realizing that before long it would alienate the more substantial
portions of the population. The Communists were out not only to destroy
religion, including Christianity, but Confucian morality, and. much of the
nation was scandalized. Then, too, many believed that the Russians were
interested in China merely as a cat's-paw against the capitalistic powers
of the West.

The issue began to come to a head after the capture of Nanking in
March, 1927, when radicals roughly handled foreigners and killed some of
them. The right and left wings were soon openly at outs with each other
and the progress northward came to a pause. The moderates organized a
government at Nanking, in opposition to the one at Hankow. Before the
end of 1927 public opinion had turned overwhelmingly against Com
munism; the moderates, led by Chiang Kai-shek, were in control; non-
Communist members of the left wing had broken with the Communists;
the government in the Wuhan cities had come to an end; the Soviet
advisers were on their way to Russia; many of the radicals had been
executed and others, among them the widow of Sun Yat-sen, were in exile;

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 331

and the Nationalists had closed the Russian consulates. The government
which the right wing set up at Nanking was distinctly anti-Communist in
tone and depended for its finances upon the bankers of Shanghai.

At the head of the Nanking Government was Chiang Kai-shek. In 1927
his position was strengthened by his marriage to Miss Soong, a sister of
Madame Sun Yat-sen. Since T. V. Soong, a brother of Madame Chiang,
was Minister of Finance and another sister was the wife of H. H. K'ung,
the Minister of Industry, Labor, and Commerce, people began to speak of
the "Soong dynasty." The Communist elements were outlawed and were no
longer vocal in the national councils of the party.

In the spring and summer of 1928 the Nationalist advance once more
began. In co-operation with the forces of Feng Yu-hsiang and of Yen
Hsi-shan — the latter the "model governor" of Shansi, where he had held
office since 1912 — Chiang Kai-shek's forces moved northward. In June
the Nationalist armies entered Peking. They renamed it Peip'ing, "Northern
Peace." While retreating to his capital, Mukden, their most formidable
opponent, Chang Tso-lin, was killed by a bomb. His son and successor,
Chang Hstieh-liang, made his peace with the Nationalists and nominally
accepted a prominent place in their organization.

Theoretically the country was now united. Certainly the main military
figures gave outward support to the Nationalists. At Nanking an adminis
tration had been set up on the outline suggested by Sun Yat-sen, with
Chiang Kai-shek as its ranking officer. It was still a one-party government,
dominated by the Kuomintang, but more than any other of the many
attempts under the Republic, it sought to combine the machinery of the
Occident with the best of the devices of the older China. In several of the
chief posts were able men, most of them formerly students in the Occident.
The outlook appeared more hopeful than for many years. Nanking throbbed
with life as it had not since the times of the T'ai P'ings, new government
buildings were erected, and on Purple Mountain, overlooking the city, was
built an imposing tomb, to which, with great pomp, were brought the
remains of Sun Yat-sen.

In itself the Kuomintang helped to give unity to the country. Its
organization was almost nation-wide. Its many units, the Tangpu (the name
usually given to the executive committee of the local precinct or sub-
precinct organization), had much influence in local affairs and headed up
in the National Congress of the party. This was represented, in the long
interims between meetings, by the Central Executive Committee. The
Central Executive Committee, in turn, controlled the national government
In many respects the political situation at the beginning of 1929 was more
encouraging than at any time since the revolution of 1911.

However, the nation's troubles were far from an end. Much of the coun
try was overrun with bandits, some of whom were made more ruthless by

332 VOLUME I

the profession of Communist principles. Famine was taking a toll of
millions of lives in the Northwest. In only a few provinces was Nanking's
authority effective enough to bring taxes into the national treasury. In
1929 a serious rift appeared in the Kuomintang. The major military figures
could not long live in harmony. In the spring and summer of 1930 Yen
Hsi-shan and Feng Yii-hsiang joined in opposing Chiang Kai-shek,

By the autumn of 1930 the latter had won and the Nationalist Govern
ment at Nanking had gained a breathing space. Feng Yii-hsiang was in
semiretirement, Yen Hsi-shan had withdrawn first to the security of
mountainous Shansi and then had sought sanctuary in Tientsin, and Chang
Hsiieh-liang, although he had advanced his forces south of the Great Wall
and had occupied much of Hopei (as the province of Chihli had been
renamed by the Nationalists), professed to be on friendly terms with
Nanking.

In spite of official disapproval by Nanking and Mukden, and of
vigorous anti-Communist reactions in many places, Communism remained
strong. Russian agents were still at work and numbers of the students were
becoming Communists. From 1930 to 1933, indeed, large sections of the
country, especially in Kiangsi, Anhui, Northern Fukien, and Hupeh, were
in the hands of those who called themselves Communists. Campaigns waged
against Communists by Chiang Kai-shek and his associates in 1930 and
1931 were interrupted by dissensions within government ranks and by the
Sino-Japanese crisis of 1931 (of which more in a moment).

The most serious rift in the ranks of the Nationalist Party in 1931 was
the protest against the rule of Chiang Kai-shek by a number of leaders of
varied political background. In the spring these malcontents gathered at
Canton and there set up a government which claimed to represent the
Kuomintang but which repudiated Chiang Kai-shek. The Manchurian crisis
of the autumn tended to encourage negotiations. The collapse of Chang
Hsiieh-liang before the Japanese in the autumn of 1931 weakened Chiang,
for the former had been a strong supporter of the latter's government. In
December, 1931, to pacify his opponents and the many vociferous students
who had flocked to Nanking and were clamoring against him for his failure
to take more vigorous action against Japan, Chiang Kai-shek resigned the
titular headship of the civil regime. However, he remained the dominant
military figure in the Nanking Government and as such was still the most
powerful man in the nation.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS, 1911-1919: FURTHER HUMILIATION

While the downfall of the Manchus, the subsequent struggles
between rival aspirants for power, and the attempts to devise new govern
mental machinery were distracting the country, momentous changes were

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 333

taking place in China's relations with other nations. For about eight years
China descended still farther into the valley of humiliation. Then began
one of the strangest spectacles of the time. China, although distraught by
civil strife and utterly impotent to obtain her will by armed force, began
to make headway against the powers and to cancel the privileges which,
for more than three-quarters of a century, she had been progressively con
ceding to aliens. This was halted only by the events in Manchuria which
began in 1931.

First came the further humiliation. Both Great Britain and Russia took
advantage of the internal weakness of China which followed the Boxer
year to extend their spheres of influence — the former into Tibet and the
latter into Mongolia. In 1904 the British, alarmed by Russian machinations
in Tibet and moved by a desire for commerce, dispatched an armed expedi
tion which fought its way to Lhasa and obtained a convention which pro
vided for trade and forbade the Tibetans to grant concessions without the
consent of Britain. In 1906 China, as Tibet's overlord, confirmed the
agreement, with safeguards against further aggression by the British. In
1907 an Anglo-Russian agreement recognized Chinese suzerainty in Tibet
and promised that neither power would seek concessions in the country.
China had begun by force to strengthen its position in Tibet. After the
establishment of the Republic it still attempted to do so and insisted upon
regarding Tibet as an integral part of its domains. By the end of 1912,
however, Chinese troops were driven out of all but the edges of the land,
and Tibet became practically independent. Efforts were made, at British
instance, to settle Anglo-Sino-Tibetan relations by negotiations, but with
results to which the Chinese would not consent. In 1914 Great Britain and
Tibet reached an agreement whereby, among other provisions, inner Tibet
that portion of the country which adjoined India — was to be autono
mous, although nominally still under Chinese suzerainty.

In the last years of the Ch'ing, China had pursued an aggressive policy
in Mongolia. For years Chinese settlers had been pushing the frontier of
cultivated land ever northward of the Great Wall into Inner Mongolia.
Just before their downfall, much to the annoyance of the natives, the
Manchus were seeking to increase their authority in Outer Mongolia. The
revolution of 1911, accordingly, was welcomed by the Mongols as an
opportunity to throw off the Manchu yoke. Late in 1911, Outer Mongolia
declared its independence, and the Hutukhtu of Urga, the ranking ecclesias
tic of the Lamaistic sect of Buddhism of that region, was invested with
the headship of the state. In 1912 Russia recognized the autonomy of
Outer Mongolia in return for an extension of Russian privileges in the
area. The following year China, in an agreement with Russia, assented
to the new status in return for the Russian acknowledgment of Chinese
suzerainty in the country. In 1915 a tripartite agreement between the

334

VOLUME I

interested parties confirmed this relationship. The Russian claim to a
voice in Mongolian affairs was, therefore, acknowledged by Peking.

The loan made to Yuan Shih-k'ai in 1913 by an international group
of bankers, which had much to do with the break between the radicals
and himself, increased the grip of foreign financiers on China— chiefly by
pledging the salt tax to pay the debt and placing the collection of the tax
under foreign administration. The co-operative feature of the loan helped
to allay friction among the powers, but so strongly did President Wilson
feel China's independence to be compromised that he withdrew the support
of his government from the American participants, and the latter did not
join in the final arrangements.

The outbreak of the European war in 1914 brought fresh difficulties to
the harassed young Republic, With so much of the world in turmoil, it
could not hope to remain unaffected. Serious complications came early.
On August 15, 1914, Japan presented an ultimatum to Germany, advising
the latter government to withdraw its armed vessels from Japanese and
Chinese waters and to turn over to Japan the leased territory of Kiaochow
"with a view to the eventual restoration of the same to China." No reply
was vouchsafed by Berlin and on August 23 Japan declared war.

This action of Japan was natural in view of the Anglo-Japanese Al
liance, a Franco-Japanese entente dating from 1907, and an entente and
treaties with Russia. Events proved, however, that it was not out of loyalty
to treaty commitments that Japan entered the war. Its interest in China
was growing. Japan's population was rapidly increasing, and since the
pre-emption by the white races of the best of the unoccupied sections of
the world denied it the possibility of relief by extensive emigration, the one
recourse for a livelihood for the added millions was the continued develop
ment of industry and commerce. If these were to prosper, Japan must
have both markets and a convenient source of raw materials, including
iron and coal — for nature had endowed it with but little of the one and
insufficient supplies of the other. China was at once both an adjacent
undeveloped market of great possibilities and an available storehouse
of raw materials. It is not surprising, therefore, that Japan regarded the
maintenance of easy access to China as essential to its very life and was
fearful of the closing of the door to China by greedy Western powers. Now,
with most of the Occident engrossed in deadly struggle, was its great
opportunity to make secure its position in its huge neighbor.

The Japanese promptly followed their declaration of war on Germany
by an attack on Kiaochow, the leasehold of the latter power in Shantung.
In this their forces were assisted by a small British contingent, but the
enterprise was primarily theirs. The campaign was conducted with scant
regard for China's neutrality. Territory, railways, and telegraph lines out
side the leased area were seized, and individual Chinese were treated

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 335

cavalierly. When, in November, 1914, Tsingtao, the city which dominated
the Kiaochow region, surrendered, Japan appeared to have every intention
of remaining in possession, not only of that port, but also of much of
Shantung.

In January, 1915, Japan followed up its activities in Shantung by
what became notorious as the Twenty-one Demands. At the outset made
secretly, they soon were known to the world. They were in five groups.
The first had to do with Shantung. Here China was to assent to any agree
ment which Japan might make with Germany for the disposition of the
latter's possessions in the province, to promise not to alienate any part of
the coast to a third power, to open additional cities to foreign trade, and to
grant to Japan certain railway privileges. The second group stipulated that
in South Manchuria the Japanese leaseholds — on Port Arthur and Dairen
(Dalny) and the railways — were to be extended to ninety-nine years, that
anywhere in South Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia Japanese might
reside, travel, engage in business, lease and own land, and open mines,
and that in these regions no official advisers were to be employed without
the consent of Japan. The third provided that the Hanyehp'ing Company,
an iron mining and smelting operation in Central China, was to become
a Sino-Japanese enterprise and that it could not be sold without Japan's
consent. The fourth group sought to bind China not to cede or lease to a
third power any harbor, bay, or island along its coast. The fifth, the most
far-reaching of all, demanded that China employ Japanese as advisers,
share with Japanese the administration of the police departments in im
portant places, purchase from Japan half or more of its munitions or
establish a Sino-Japanese arsenal, grant certain railway concessions in the
Yangtze Valley, and give to Japanese the privileges of religious propaganda
and of buying land in the interior for schools, hospitals, and churches —
and that Japan be consulted before foreign loans were contracted for
mines, railways, and harbor works in Fukien.

When these demands became known, a storm of protest swept over
China, In the United States, too, criticism was freely expressed, and shortly
after China had yielded to Japan's ultimatum and agreed to comply with
Japan's modified requests, the American Government notified both Tokyo
and Peking that it would not recognize any agreement impairing American
rights in China or the political or territorial integrity of China or the open
door. However, China could not hope to support its position by armed
force, the United States would not do so, and possible opposition from
Great Britain, France, and Russia was estopped by the necessity of retaining
Japan's support in the European war. China did demur, however, and only
after months of negotiation and a sharp ultimatum was Japan able to obtain
a settlement. Even then Tokyo had to be content with only part of what
it had asked. China acceded to the first three groups with important modi-

336 VOLUME I

fications in its favor; group four was met by a presidential mandate which
directed that no portion of China's coast should be leased or ceded to any
power; and the fifth group was reserved for further consideration, except
that Peking stated that it had not permitted foreign nations to establish
on the coast of Fukien dockyards, coaling stations for military use, or
naval bases, and that it had no intention of borrowing foreign capital to set
up such establishments. Japan had won only a partial victory, and at the
price of the bitter hatred of the Chinese.

Although it had obviously bungled, Japan did not give up its purpose to
strengthen its hold on China. In February and March, 1917, it obtained
secret assurances from Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy that at
the peace conference these powers would support its claims to the former
German holdings in Shantung.

In 1917, China entered the war against the Central Powers. It broke
off relations with Germany in March, and in August declared war. Because
of its domestic weakness, China could take no active part in the struggle.
It seized the German and Austrian vessels interned in its ports and chartered
some of them for the service of the Allies. It permitted what had already
begun: the recruiting of Chinese laborers for noncombatant service in
England, France, Africa, and Mesopotamia.

To China formal entry into the war brought both advantages and dis
advantages. China canceled the portions of the Boxer indemnity due its
enemies and obtained the suspension for five years of payments on that
indemnity due the Allies, with the exception of most of those owed to
Russia and some portions required for supporting educational projects
initiated by the return of the indemnity due the United States. It took over
the German concessions hi Tientsin and Hankow and the Austro-Hungarian
concessions in Tientsin. China also obtained a seat at the peace conference,
with the hearing of its grievances assured. On the other hand, Japan's in
fluence in China was augmented. Although American authorities sought
to minimize their significance by the Lansing-Ishii notes (November,
1917), the one great foreign opponent of Japan's aggressions in China,
the United States, by recognizing that Japan, because of "territorial
propinquity," had "special interests in China," appeared to have acceded
to Japan's claims. A "war participation board" with a Japanese adviser,
an "arms contract," and extensive loans by Japan to Peking on the security
of railways, mines, forests, telegraphs, taxes, and bonds seemed ominous,
In 1918 the two countries entered into agreements for military and naval
co-operation. Such "co-operation" would mean more Japanese control.

For a time it looked as though Japan might substitute herself for
Russia in northern Manchuria. With the Russian revolution of 1917 and
the temporary chaos before the new Socialist Soviet Republic eliminated
opposing elements, eastern Siberia fell into disorder. There was interven-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 337

tion (1918) in eastern Siberia by Japan, the United States, and some of the
European Allies. Japan, with the largest body of troops, sought control
of the Chinese Eastern Railway and might have obtained it had it not been
for the appointment in 1919, largely at the insistence of the United States,
of an inter- Allied railway commission (in which Japan, Great Britain,
France, Italy, China, and the United States were represented) to operate
the road. This inter- Allied control lasted into 1922. In 1920, before it was
withdrawn, China asserted itself and for a time had the upper hand in
administering the line.

The end of the war and the peace conference at Paris gave China an
opportunity to state its case to the world. This it did through an able
delegation representing not only Peking but also the government at Canton.
The conference listened, but in the Treaty of Versailles confirmed Japan
in the possession of the former German properties in Shantung. China
declined to sign and concluded a separate treaty with Germany. The
peace settlements, however, marked some gains. China's late enemies lost
their extraterritorial privileges, their special concessions, and their share
in the unpaid portion of the Boxer indemnity. By signing the general treaty
with Austria — in which the objectionable clauses about Shantung were not
included — China acquired membership in the League of Nations, a channel
for the further presentation of its position. Japan, moreover, promised
eventually to restore Chinese sovereignty in Shantung.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS, 1920-1931:
CHINA PARTLY WINS EMANCIPATION

World War I marked a significant turning point in China's
relations with foreign powers. From now until the autumn of 1931 China
made progress toward regaining the privileges which for nearly three-
quarters of a century it had been conceding to aliens. The West was too
weakened and divided to impose its will on non-European peoples as
forcibly as formerly. Occidental writers were soon talking about "the rising
tide of color," "the revolt of Asia," and "the twilight of the white races,"
and instanced movements in Negro Africa, Egypt, Turkey, India, and
China, in support of their analysis. Liberals in Europe and America talked
approvingly of the "self-determination" of subject peoples and objected
to the use of arms to restrain "national" desires. A war-weary Occident
was inclined to prefer peaceful adjustments to gunboat diplomacy. The
wave of western European political aggression was receding. The fact
that some Western powers had been deprived of their special privileges
in China furnished a precedent for demands that the others surrender theirs.
The war had greatly stimulated nationalism the world over, and China
proved one of the most fertile soils for its growth.

338 VOLUME I

Chinese nationalism employed with great effect an old Chinese weapon,
the boycott. Often used by Chinese in local disputes among themselves
and from time to time against foreigners, it was now organized on a nation
wide scale. The telegraph and postal service, covering all China like a
network, and the rapid growth of daily newspapers helped to make con
current action possible. Students were eager agitators. The populace was
appealed to by slogans, vivid posters, and fiery speeches. The Chinese,
powerless in armed conflict with Japan and the West, had developed in
the boycott an instrument which proved as potent in attaining their ends
as have been some successful wars.

The rising Chinese nationalism fulminated against the Shantung award
of the Treaty of Versailles. Students led in the denunciation. Two cabinet
officers regarded as particularly pro-Japanese were forced to resign, and a
nation-wide boycott against Japanese goods attacked the enemy at a
peculiarly vulnerable point — its commerce.

Insistent nationalism was chiefly responsible for the transfer to China
by Japan of the former disputed property in Shantung and for simultaneous
progress toward the abolition of foreign control in China. In the winter of
1921-1922, at the invitation of the United States, a conference was held in
Washington on the limitation of armaments and on Pacific and Far Eastern
questions. Competition in the construction of navies and naval bases, and
friction in the Pacific, seemed to threaten another war, and this the con
ference sought to forestall Great Britain, France, Japan, China, Italy, the
United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal were represented.
Once more China urged its claims on the nations. Most of the treaties and
agreements which emerged from the gathering affected it, some of them
profoundly. Several of them marked another step in the relaxation of
foreign domination. The "Four Power Treaty" between' Great Britain, the
United States, France, and Japan, reinforcing for ten years the status quo
in the Pacific, tended to stabilize conditions in that area and to insure
China an opportunity to work out its salvation untroubled by a general
war in that region. In a "Nine Power Treaty" all participants in the con
ference agreed to respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the terri
torial and administrative integrity of China, to give China free opportunity
to develop and maintain a stable and effective government, to use their
influence to preserve the open door (described as "the principle of equal
opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations throughout the
territory of China"), to refrain from taking advantage of conditions in
China to seek special privileges that would abridge the rights of subjects
or citizens of friendly states, and to respect China's rights as a neutral in
any war to which it was not a party. The nine powers agreed to a re
vision, by a commission, of the duties on imports into China. They also
promised to appoint a commission to study extraterritoriality, with a view

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 339

to assisting China in effecting legislative and judicial reforms which would
make possible its relinquishment. Those having postal agencies in China
agreed to discontinue them not later than January 1, 1923. The powers
declared it to be their purpose to withdraw their armed forces as soon as
China assured the protection of the lives and property of foreigners within
its borders. Resolutions were adopted concerning foreign radio stations in
China, the unification of Chinese railways, the reduction of Chinese military
forces, the Chinese Eastern Railway, and the notification of all of the
powers of the treaties and agreements which each had with China. Finally,
the conference gave Japan and China the opportunity to come to an
understanding about Shantung. Japan proved conciliatory and promised
to return the former German holdings in the province. However, it re
tained a share in some of the mines and large commercial interests and
landholdings in Tsingtao and insisted upon lending to China the sum
needed for the redemption of the railways, with the provision that during
the term of the loan the roads were to have a Japanese traffic manager.
The Twenty-one Demands and the treaties of 1915 still rankled in Chinese
breasts, and Japan, while refusing to re-examine them, declared, although
not by formal agreement, that it would abandon all claims to preference
in loans for railway building in South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, to
priority in the appointment of advisers and instructors in South Manchuria,
and to the reservation made in 1915 that the fifth group of the demands
should be postponed for further discussion. At the conference, moreover,
Great Britain promised to restore Weihaiwei to China, and complied, in
October, 1930. China did not obtain all that it asked of the conference, but
made marked headway toward doing so.

In still another direction — in its relations with Russia — China registered
some gains in its struggle to free itself from partial foreign domination. The
Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the Czarist regime and by
the end of the year replaced it with Communist control, could not but
alter Sino-Russian relations. For a time collapse and civil strife in Siberia
made impossible any aggressive Russian action. In 1919 the Peking au
thorities took advantage of the situation to renew Chinese control in Outer
Mongolia. For more than a year Chinese troops and diplomacy succeeded
in re-establishing Chinese authority at Urga. Early in 1921, however, Baron
Ungern, a picturesque anti-Communist Russian, captured the city and
brought Chinese rule to an end. In the summer of 1921, he in turn was
driven out by Soviet troops, and a government was set up which was
friendly to Moscow. While, by a treaty of May 31, 1924, Soviet Russia
recognized Outer Mongolia as "an integral part of the Republic of China,"
it regarded that region as autonomous and entitled to freedom from Chinese
interference in its foreign affairs, and opened direct relations with it The
influence of China became negligible and that of Soviet Russia dominant.

340 VOLUME I

In some other phases of its relations with Russia China had better
success. For a time after the Russian Revolution, the Czarist diplomatic
and consular staffs continued to function in China, supported by the Boxer
indemnity. Many adherents of the old regime — "White Russians" — took
refuge in China. In August, 1920, China suspended Boxer indemnity pay
ments to Russians; the following month it withdrew its recognition of the
Czarist officials within its borders; and before long the Russian post offices
in China were closed. In 1919 the Soviets issued a manifesto offering to
negotiate with China on the basis of the renunciation of all special privileges
of Russia and Russians in China, the cancellation of further payments on
the Boxer indemnity, the restoration to China, without compensation, of the
Chinese Eastern Railway and the mines and forests acquired by the Czar's
government from China, and the return of territory seized by the former
regime. Much of what Moscow proposed to give up it no longer possessed,
and its surrender of extraterritoriality would injure chiefly the Russian
"Whites" — on whom the Soviet were quite happy to inflict suffering.

When it came to actual negotiations, Soviet Russia proved unwilling
to fulfill some of its promises, particularly those concerning the Chinese
Eastern Railway. On May 31, 1924, an agreement was signed which
annulled all treaties between the Czarist Government and China and
relinquished Russian extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction, the Rus
sian portion of the Boxer indemnity, and special Russian concessions in
China. But, while consenting to the principle of the eventual restoration of
the Chinese Eastern Railway to China, the agreement provided that the
Chinese must buy back the line, that the amount and conditions of repur
chase and of the provisional management should be determined by confer
ence between the two governments, and that in the meantime the road
should be operated under the terms of the original contract of 1896. In the
case of the Boxer indemnity, the Russian share was not to be canceled
unconditionally but was to be set aside for education among the Chinese and
was to be administered by a commission of three — two appointed by China
and one by Russia — no action of which could be taken without a unani
mous vote. Russia, therefore, held a veto in the use of the funds.

On September 20, 1924, Russia entered into an agreement with "The
Autonomous Government of the Three Eastern Provinces" — meaning
Chang Tso-lin — which attempted a settlement of the question of the Chinese
Eastern Railway. It was much like that of May, although it differed in some
important respects. The Russia of the Soviets was no more minded to
relinquish its control over the road than had been the Russia of the Czars.

Joint management of the Chinese Eastern Railway by Russians and
Chinese was marked by repeated friction. This was increased by the anti-
Communist, anti-Russian reaction in China in 1927, especially since Chang
Tso-lin was particularly bitter against Communism. In July, 1929, the

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 341

dissension culminated in the seizure of the road by the Chinese and the
dismissal and arrest of the Soviet officials. For several months a virtual
state of war between China and Russia existed along the Siberian-
Manchurian frontier. Before January, 1930, a Russian invasion forced
the Chinese to restore the status quo in the operation of the railway, but
negotiations looking toward a permanent settlement dragged on for months,
unsatisfactorily and inconclusively.

Toward the end of 1932, Russian relations with China became less
unfriendly. China, looking for support against Japan in Manchuria and
impatient with the failure of the League of Nations to restrain the Nippo
nese, was willing to bid for Russian support. Accordingly, Nanking and
Moscow resumed cordial diplomatic relations.

Against other privileges of Westerners China made continued gains.
Several more of the major powers remitted the unpaid portions of the
Boxer indemnity due them. Never was the remission unconditional. The
released funds were allocated to specific purposes, most of them for the
benefit of the Chinese. Progress was made by the Chinese in regaining
control of the portions of their cities administered by aliens. The German
concessions at Hankow and Tientsin and the Austro-Hungarian concession
at Tientsin were restored to China as a result of the World War. The
Russian concessions fell into its hai^ds some time after the collapse of
the Czarist regime. Persistent pressure, by boycott, agitation, and force,
brought about increased Chinese participation in some and the return of still
others. This pressure first became spectacular after an incident on May 30,

1925. A strike in Shanghai led to a demonstration in the International
Settlement by students and other sympathizers with the workers. The police
arrested some of the agitators, and in the disturbances which ensued, goaded
to self-defense by the attacks of Communists who wished to provoke them
to violence, fired into the crowd. Resentment against foreign privileges
was already acute and the shooting of May 30 precipitated an antiforeign,
and especially an anti-British, explosion. A boycott was organized which
lasted for months and cost British merchants millions of dollars. On June
23, 1925, an armed clash occurred between the Chinese and the defenders
of Shameen, the foreign settlement in Canton. In August and September,

1926, a fight between British and Chinese forces over an" attack on British
shipping at Wanhsien, on the upper Yangtze, further strained the relations
between the two countries. When, in 1926 and 1927, the Nationalists
moved northward into the Yangtze Valley, there was widespread propa
ganda against "imperialism," particularly as represented by the British.
Foreigners, especially British and Americans, were harassed. The British
concessions at Hankow and Kiukiang were seized by the Nationalists,
and only large forces of foreign marines kept the radicals from annexing
the settlements at Shanghai. Under the circumstances, foreigners felt it

342 VOLUME I

necessary to yield to some of the demands. The Shanghai Mixed Court, by
which Chinese defendants were tried, and which had been taken over by
the consular body in 1911, was restored to Chinese control on January 1st,
1927. Chinese were admitted to membership in the councils of the French
Concession and the International Settlement in Shanghai, the British Con
cession in Tientsin, and the International Settlement (Kulangsu) at Amoy.
The British concessions at Hankow, Kiukiang, Chinkiang, and Amoy were
returned to the Chinese, the first two in 1927, the third in 1929, and the
fourth (not Kulangsu but a small area in the city) in 1930. In 1929
Belgium agreed to return her concession in Tientsin. Several concessions
remained in the hands of the powers, however, and in 1930 Japan declined
to accede to China's suggestion that she restore the one held by her in
Hankow.

The Chinese regained the right to fix their import and export duties.
In 1928 and early in 1929, practically all the powers, with the exception of
Japan, entered into agreements with China consenting to tariff autonomy.
Japan signed such an agreement in May, 1930, and ratifications of a
similar Sino-Dutch treaty were exchanged in November of that year. The
Customs Administration, while still largely under the direction of foreigners
— as it had been for two generations — and maintained much on the old
lines, was more and more under direct Chinese control.

In the abolition of extraterritoriality China, while making considerable
progress, was not so successful. The commission promised by the Washing
ton Conference was appointed and visited China, reporting in 1926. It
believed that the situation did not yet justify the extinction of extraterri
toriality, but offered suggestions looking toward the gradual attainment of
the goal. China made various attempts to hasten the desired end. New
treaties based on "equality" and specifically providing for tariff autonomy
and the jurisdiction of local courts and laws over their respective na
tionals were signed with a number of countries (1919-1930). Several of
the treaties by which extraterritoriality had been granted provided for
their termination in whole or in part at fixed dates or after certain periods
of notice. In 1926 the Chinese Government took advantage of these clauses
to declare the treaties at an end at the specified dates, and to say that new
treaties would be negotiated only on the basis of equality and reciprocity.
In July, 1928, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a declaration
to the effect that all "unequal treaties . . . which have already expired
shall ipso facto be abrogated and new treaties shall be concluded" and
that the Nationalist Government would immediately take steps to terminate
those "unequal treaties which have not yet expired and conclude new
treaties."

Most of the powers against whom specific steps had been taken pro
tested the legality of the action, denying that the wording of the treaties

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 343

gave China the right which it claimed. Mexico alone acceded. With the
others prolonged negotiations followed. By 1928, of the approximately
130,000 foreigners (excluding Koreans) living in China, 75,000, or over
half, were without extraterritorial status.

Against Great Britain, Japan, France, and the United States — who
controlled China's relations by way of the sea — China made little progress.
These powers were, to be sure, conciliatory, and Great Britain especially
offered (January 27, 1927) to make important modifications in the
privileges of its subjects in China. They persisted, however, in conserving
the main structure of extraterritoriality. New treaties with the Netherlands,
Norway, and Sweden, moreover, while assenting to the resumption by
China of tariff autonomy, contained no provision for the end of the
obnoxious status of aliens. Brazil and Peru retained their extraterritorial
privileges, although a new treaty with Peru was in process of negotiation.
To a Chinese note of April, 1929, to the powers, stating that before Jan
uary 1, 1930, the new civil and commercial codes would be ready for
promulgation and that China desired to have restrictions on its jurisdic-
tional sovereignty removed at the earliest possible moment, Great Britain,
France, and the United States replied that the time was not ripe — that
China had not sufficiently re-established order and reorganized its courts
and laws to be able to insure protection and justice to foreigners. In De
cember, 1929, Nanking announced, by unilateral action, the termination of
extraterritoriality, to take effect on January 1, 1930, but by ordering the
appropriate branches of the Government to frame regulations to make
this operative, it postponed the actual assumption of jurisdiction over the
foreigners involved. On May 4, 1931, Nanking issued a mandate announc
ing the completion of these regulations and declaring that they would go
into effect on January 1, 1932. The Japanese attack on China in the
autumn of 1931, and domestic political troubles, prevented the Chinese
from carrying out their purpose at the announced time.

The powers were less inclined than in earlier years to impose their will
on China by gunboats and marines. In South Manchuria, where it was
strongly intrenched, Japan at first was not unconciliatory. It permitted the
Chinese to construct railway lines. Some of these, to be sure, were
financed by Japanese funds and were feeders to the (Japanese) South
Manchuria Railway. Others of them, it believed, offered competition to
Japanese roads and contravened an agreement of 1905 (not contained in
any formal treaty) which Tokyo held forbade such construction. China did
not have the mailed fist shaken under its nose so much as formerly.

By 1931 Manchuria seemed to have become clearly Chinese, at least
in population. Russia still had an effective voice in the management of the
Chinese Eastern Railway, and Japan retained the South Manchuria Rail
way, with its railway zone and with important mines. In Dairen (Dalny)

344 VOLUME I

on the leased territory on the Liaotung Peninsula, Japan had developed a
great modern city as the chief port of the Three Eastern Provinces. It had
huge and increasing investments in the region which it could not willingly
allow to be jeopardized. All Manchuria remained a potential seat of grave
international friction. In actual occupancy, however, the Chinese were
more and more claiming it as their own. Until the twentieth century
Manchuria had remained largely undeveloped, although Chinese were
settling extensively in the southernmost of the three provinces. During the
twentieth century the Chinese poured in by the millions. Especially under
the Republic, when much of North China was troubled by civil war and
famine, and Manchuria was relatively prosperous and orderly, the migration
swelled. By 1930, the greatest movement of population on the planet was
that into the Three Eastern Provinces. Under these circumstances, the de
mands of a nationalistic China for increased control were greatly
strengthened.

The Chinese attitude toward aliens was changing. For many years, and
especially after 1900, foreigners had acted as though they were living in a
conquered and subject country, many of them with open contempt for
the Chinese. The Chinese had writhed under an attitude so galling to a
people who traditionally regarded outsiders as barbarians, but they had
had, perforce, to tolerate it. They now discovered that the powers had
become halfhearted in defending the treaty rights of their citizens. Par
ticularly in the interior the foreigner did not enjoy the prestige and security
which once were his. The Chinese authorities were often powerless to pro
tect aliens against bandits and Communists.

In spite of the gain which the Chinese had made toward abolishing
special foreign privileges, by 1931 these were far from having disappeared.
Several of the powers, among them the majority of those having the chief
commercial and territorial stakes in China — Great Britain, the United
States, Japan, and France — retained most of what they had once possessed.
Many alien residents still viewed the Chinese with disdain. Foreign gun
boats continued to patrol the coast and the Yangtze River. The legations,
reluctant to move to Nanking, were ensconced in their semifortress in
Peip'ing. China had made amazing inroads on the structure of alien control
and privilege, but much of it remained.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS: RENEWED JAPANESE AGGRESSION:
INITIAL STAGES, 1931-1937

In 1931 new and startling developments occurred which soon
altered the entire situation in East Asia. They were preliminary stages of
what culminated in the second world war of the twentieth century. So
far as China was concerned, the slightly less than six years from Sep-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 345

tember, 1931, to July, 1937, embraced the initial section of the renewed
struggle with Japan. The second portion was from July, 1937, to Decem
ber, 1941, and the third section, which began in the last-named month,
ended in August, 1945, with the defeat of Japan.

In September, 1931, Japan, for several years conciliatory and friendly,
suddenly reversed its policy and began waging what in effect was an
undeclared war on China. The Japanese had become increasingly restive
over the Chinese encroachments on what they believed to be their rights
in Manchuria. Japan was crowded and its population was rapidly growing
with no chance of an outlet through emigration. The country suffered
acutely in the world-wide depression which began in 1929. To many
Japanese Manchuria seemed their "life line," and their control of that
region the one hope of escaping a national collapse. A growing group
of military men and superpatriots were impatient with the halfway meas
ures of the politicians and diplomats. Chinese nationalists, on the other
hand, were more and more resentful of Japan's special position in Man
churia. Chang Hsiieh-liang's government was not always considerate of
Japanese interests and was frequently extremely annoying to the Japanese
authorities.

In the summer of 1931 a conflict occurred between Chinese and
Koreans over an irrigation ditch, but with no casualties. Koreans, over
crowded at home, had moved into the adjacent portions of Manchuria
by the hundreds of thousands. For the most part they remained Japanese
subjects. In Korea, public opinion was inflamed by the disorders in Man
churia, and anti-Chinese riots broke out. In June a Japanese army officer
and several companions were shot by Chinese soldiers in an interior station
in Manchuria, and the Japanese maintained that the Chinese authorities
were not sufficiently active in punishing the offenders.

On the night of September 18-19 Japanese troops seized Mukden.
This action was followed, in the next few weeks, by the occupation of
other strategic centers in Manchuria, including several in North Man
churia, in what had been regarded as the Russian sphere of interest.
Chang Hsiieh-liang, most of whose forces were south of the Great Wall,
had headquarters in Peip'ing and with manifestly waning prestige. With
the collapse of Chang's regime in the Three Eastern Provinces, tempo
rary local governing committees of Chinese were set up, with assistance
and often under pressure from the Japanese. Early in 1932 a Manchuria-
wide government, officially known as Manchoukuo, was organized, ostensi
bly by Chinese and Mongols, but manifestly with Japanese assistance and
reinforced by Japanese troops and many Japanese advisers. On February
18, 1932, Manchoukuo declared its independence of China. P'u-i, the
last Emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty, who, it will be recalled, had ruled
from 1908 to 1912 under the reign title of Hsxian Tung, was asked to be

346 VOLUME I

the head or regent. He accepted and was inaugurated in his new capital,
Ch'angch'un (soon renamed Hsinching, the "New Capital"), on March
9, 1932. Later in the year Japan officially recognized the regime and nego
tiated with it a defensive alliance.

The new government, upheld by Japanese bayonets, had an uneasy
course. Much of Manchuria was overrun by irregular troops, by bandits,
and by volunteer corps which received aid from the Chinese south of the
Great Wall. But by 1933 Japan seemed to have pacified the region.

Early in January, 1933, Manchoukuoan-Japanese forces began the
invasion of the province of Jehol, which Japan claimed to be part of
Manchoukuo. Within a few weeks the Chinese defense crumbled and the
occupation was completed. In April, 1933, the Japanese, alleging the
necessity of protecting the recently won boundaries against Chinese aggres
sion, moved south of the Great Wall.

In the meantime, in China proper a vigorous boycott was organized
which seriously cut into Japanese trade. Friction occurred, notably in
Shanghai. The Japanese peremptorily demanded the dissolution of the
Shanghai boycott associations. Although the Chinese municipal authorities
eventually expressed a willingness to comply, Japanese marines, supported
by the fleet, occupied by force Chapei, a densely populated section of the
city (beginning January 28, 1932). In the fighting which followed, a
large section of the city was laid waste. Chinese troops offered an unex
pectedly stout resistance and were dislodged only after a month of heavy
fighting. Hostilities ceased early in March, 1932; partly through the
machinery of the League of Nations a working peace was restored; and
the Japanese began to evacuate the occupied areas.

The rest of the world was deeply concerned. Although officially war
was not declared between China and Japan and technically the two nations
were at peace, in actual fact war was in progress. Both governments were
members of the League of Nations, both had signed the Pact of Paris
renouncing war "as an instrument of national policy," and Japan had bound
herself by the Nine Power Treaty of 1922 "to respect the sovereignty,
the independence, and the territorial and administrative integrity of China."
The situation gave the peace machinery of the world its most severe
test since the close of World War I.

Promptly after the incident of September 18, 1931, China appealed
to the League of Nations. Although not a member of that body, the Amer
ican Government early expressed to Japan and China the hope that both
would refrain from further hostilities. Space forbids a recounting of all
the diplomatic steps taken in and out of the League of Nations to bring
about a peaceful settlement. The United States and the League worked in
fairly close conjunction. On January 8, 1932, the United States notified
both China and Japan that it would not recognize any agreements between

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 347

Japan and China which would "impair the treaty rights of the United
States or its citizens in China, including those which relate to the sov
ereignty, independence, territorial and administrative integrity of the Repub
lic of China" or "any situation, treaty, or agreement which may be brought
about contrary to the covenants and obligations of the Pact of Paris."
From the name of the American Secretary of State who devised and sent
the note, the policy thus expressed became known as the Stimson Doctrine.
It was in the tradition of American Far Eastern policy and marked a step
toward the more active participation of the United States in the effort
to save China from Japan.

The League of Nations found the problem extremely knotty. Smaller
member nations vigorously denounced Japanese action, for if it were
allowed to go unrebuked and unchecked, their own safety would be
threatened. The large member powers were more guarded. Both Japan
and China agreed to the appointment by the League of an international
commission of inquiry. This commission, headed by the Earl of Lytton,
proceeded to East Asia. In the autumn of 1932 it reported to the League,
giving an account of events and suggesting a method of settlement which
it felt would safeguard the interests of both contestants. The report satis
fied neither China nor Japan, but the Japanese were the more outspoken
in their disapproval.

On February 24, 1933, the Assembly of the League, acting under
Article XV of its Covenant, adopted findings which condemned Japan,
and recommended a method of settlement by negotiation between Japan
and China in close co-operation with a committee on which the League,
the United States, and Russia were to be represented. Japan dissented
and on March 27, 1933, served notice on Geneva of its intention to with
draw from membership in the League.

By the summer of 1933 it was clear that at least for the time being
Japan was the victor. On May 31, 1933, China and Japan signed a truce
by which Chinese troops were to be withdrawn from an area between
Peip'ing and the Great Wall, and the Japanese were to retire north of
that barrier. This truce was in effect a treaty of peace by which Nanking
tacitly acquiesced in Japan's position in Manchuria. In Manchuria Japanese
were building railways which would reduce the importance of the Chinese
Eastern and were negotiating with the Russians for the purchase of that
line. Except for bandits, armed opposition to the new regime of Man-
choukuo had been crushed.

The Japanese feared Russia as the most probable menace to their
plans. In December, 1932, diplomatic relations between China and Russia,
which had suffered from the conflicts of 1927 and 1929, were re-estab
lished, and this Japan viewed with suspicion as an incipient combination
against her. To be sure, the Chinese Eastern Railway was removed as a

VOLUME I

bone of contention. In March, 1935, after long negotiations, Russia sold
to Japan her holdings in the line. Yet friction was frequent on the bor
ders between Japanese-controlled Manchuria on the one hand and the
Russian East Asian provinces and Russia-aligned Outer Mongolia on the
other. Russia made it clear that any encroachment on Outer Mongolia
would not be tolerated. Armed clashes were frequent in the second
half of the 1930's, and in 1938 serious fighting occurred near the corner
where Manchuria, Siberia, and Korea met. In November, 1936, Japan and
Germany entered into an anti-Comintern pact, clearly aimed at Russia, and
in August, 1937, China and Russia signed a nonaggression pact, quite
obviously as a warning to Japan.

After 1933 Japan continued to strengthen its hold on Manchuria
and to develop the resources of the region in its own interest. It gave
the area a unified and fairly stable currency, tied to the yen. It greatly
curtailed the use of opium, long a severe scourge. It gave to Manchoukuo
a monarchical form of government. On March 1, 1934, P'u-i, hitherto the
regent of the new state, became officially Emperor under the reign title
of Kang Te. The new order was to be based upon Confucianism. Yet the
resounding designation of the ostensible ruler and the nominal independ
ence of Manchoukuo were not permitted to shake Japanese domination.
Japanese were in key official positions either openly or as "advisers."
Japanese rapidly extended the railway system, partly for strategic reasons
and partly to exploit the resources of the puppet state. The endeavor
was made to knit Manchoukuo into the economic fabric of the Japanese
Empire. In general, to Manchoukou was allocated the role of supplying
raw materials for the industries of Japan and of providing foreign exchange
for the Japanese bloc. Coal, oil shale, iron ore, and timber were to be
contributions to Japan, and the sale of the soya bean and its derivatives,
oil and bean cake, for which the chief market had been in Germany,
was to aid in enhancing the imperial supply of foreign exchange. Iron
works were developed, notably at Anshan. Japanese poured in, chiefly as
business men, officials, and soldiers. After a pause, the immigration of
Chinese from the south of the wall was resumed. In 1936 Manchoukuo
was said to have a population of nearly thirty-four millions, which was
being augmented at the rate of over eight hundred thousand a year.

After 1933 the Japanese army continued to edge forward in Inner
Mongolia and in the northeastern provinces of China proper. In Inner
Mongolia the Japanese endeavored to take advantage of the long struggle
between Chinese and Mongols. The Chinese were chiefly farmers, seeking
to push farther the cultivated land at the expense of the grazing grounds
of the pastoral Mongols. Climatically the region was marginal. Not always
was the rainfall sufficient to mature planted crops. Yet the Chinese pres
sure of population was so great that many took the risk. The Mongols

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 349

were, quite naturally, antagonistic. The Japanese professed to side with
the latter. However, the Mongol leaders did not always willingly co
operate. By 1937 the Japanese were in control of most of Chahar, the
province which lay immediately to the west of Jehol. Presumably they
would press on westward into Suiyiian. In 1933, by an arrangement
known as the Tangku Truce, the Chinese and Japanese agreed to with
draw their troops from an area in the northeast of the province of Hopei,
thus demilitarizing a zone next to Manchoukuo. This would prevent
effective Chinese efforts to regain Manchoukuo, and marked a Japanese
step southward of the Great Wall. In 1935 the Japanese constrained the
Chinese to remove one of their armies from Hopei, to dissolve units
of the Kuomintang in the region, and to undertake to suppress anti-
Japanese activities. In 1935 there were rumors that Japan was planning
the organization of an "autonomous" government, independent of Nan
king and presumably under Japanese control, which would embrace Hopei,
Shansi, Shantung, Chahar, and Suiyuan. Nanking sought to forestall the
move by setting up in the eastern part of Hopei a regime which, while still
affiliated with it, would be less objectionable to the Japanese.

Japan was serving warning on the rest of the world that it would
not brook outside interference in China. In 1933 it proposed the close
political and economic collaboration, through a formal protocol, of itself,
China, and Manchoukuo, but since this meant in practice Japanese con
trol, Nanking would not give its consent. In 1934 a spokesman for Tokyo's
foreign office declared that the Japanese would oppose "any attempt on the
part of China to avail herself of the influence of any other country in
order to resist Japan" and would include in this category "detailing mil
itary and naval instructors or military advisers to China" and loans uto
provide funds for political uses." Japan was seeking to make China a
protectorate.

The Chinese were striving to put the country in readiness for the
heightened struggle which must come with Japan. Chinese students, in
their youthful ardor, organized against Japanese encroachments. Older
heads, apprehensive of provoking the extremists in Japan, endeavored to
restrain the hotheads but labored assiduously to make such prepara
tions as they could for a war which might be postponed but which, short
of a miracle, could not be avoided without abject submission. The building
of roads for automobiles was pushed. The railroad from Wuchang to
Canton was completed, thus giving through rail communication between
Peking and Canton except for the unbridged Yangtze. Several other rail
ways were constructed. Industrialization proceeded. The beginnings of an
air force were initiated.

In 1936 an uneasy peace was patched up between the Kuomintang and
the Communists. This came in the course of a long and exhausting strug-

350

VOLUME I

gle which obviously was weakening the country in its resistance to Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek, the most powerful figure in the Kuomintang, was pushing
for the unification of the country. His most obdurate opponents were the
Communists. For some time their chief center had been in Kiangsi. There
they sought to establish a separate administration. The armies of Chiang
Kai-shek pressed them so hard that late in 1934 the Reds evacuated their
strongholds in that part of the country. By a series of forced marches they
made their way, at a heavy cost in life, by what was called "the Long
March," over a route of possibly six thousand miles, much of it across
incredibly difficult mountain terrain, to the Northwest. In territory in
Shensi and in the northeastern portion of Kansu, a strong Communist
enclave was developed. The capital was eventually at Yenan, west of the
Yellow River, about a hundred miles south of the Great Wall. Chiang Kai-
shek endeavored to have his troops attack the Communists there and
eliminate them. He entrusted the task to Chang Hsiieh-liang, who had
headquarters at Hsianfu. Some of the Communists began fraternizing
with Chang's troops and urged that the weakening civil strife be suspended
and a common front presented against Japan. When Chiang Kai-shek went
to Hsianfu to inspect the progress of the anti-Communist campaign, he was
taken captive by Chang Hsiieh-liang (December, 1936). His life was in
imminent danger, but late in the month he was released. The war against
the Communists was called off, and in theory harmony was established
and co-operation against the Japanese menace undertaken. Yet the ostensi
ble peace was little better than an armed truce.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS: RENEWED JAPANESE AGGRESSION:
THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION IS ACTIVELY PUSHED IN CHINA

PROPER, 1937-1941

While the Chinese were moving, somewhat haltingly, toward
unity and were making progress toward the defense of their country, events
in Japan were leading to a more active extension of Japanese arms in
China. Many Japanese were discontented with conditions in their home
land. They were feeling the pinch of economic pressure and were impatient
with the Diet, the political parties, and the capitalists, for to these they
attributed the nation's woes. They wished more control by the military
and more vigorous action on the continent. Through a series of assassina
tions of high officials, the most spectacular of which were in February,
1936, they strove to purge the government of the elements to which they
were opposed. Increasingly the control of the army and navy was passing
into the hands of extremists, fanatical militarists who dreamed of the
expansion of the empire, the expulsion of Western influence from China,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 35 1

and the knitting of all East Asia, later enlarged to "Greater East Asia,"
into a "Co-prosperity Sphere" in whose benefits all its members would
share — but in which Japan would hold the hegemony. The chauvinists
did not immediately gain full control, but eventually they became domi
nant.

In July, 1937, the Japanese army took a step which precipitated a
momentous and titanic struggle. On the night of July 7, a clash occurred
on the edge of Peip'ing between Chinese troops and Japanese who were
executing training maneuvers in a section where they had no treaty right
to be. Although locally the Chinese were disposed to be conciliatory and
to withdraw their troops, punish the responsible officers^ and suppress
anti-Japanese activities, the Japanese army rushed reinforcements into
Hopei. Late in the month it took Peip'ing. It expanded its operations in
Hopei, Chahar, Suiyiian, and Shansi. In the last-named province it
encountered formidable resistance from the Communists, now (August,
1937) in theory incorporated into the national forces as the Eighth Route
Army. Yet, apart from the Communist obstacle, it appeared to be having
its own way.

The war could not be confined to the North. Apparently the Japanese
had underestimated the degree to which the spirit of nationalism had
permeated the country. No longer, as during the Anglo-Chinese wars of the
preceding century or even as recently as the suppression of the Boxers,
could foreign troops operate in one section while the rest of the land kept
peaceably about its normal pursuits. In several parts of the country
Chinese mobs attacked Japanese. Fighting broke out in and near Shanghai.
The central government was clear that the hour for final decision had
struck and that the Japanese must be resisted to the full extent of the
nation's strength. The best troops and the air force, pitifully small, were
thrown into the defense of Shanghai and its neighborhood. The immediate
outcome was not long in doubt. The Japanese, with much better and more
extensive mechanical equipment, the full command of the sea, and the
industrial basis at home for a long struggle, poured in such forces as
were required. The Chinese lacked the industries requisite for a modern
war, had few well-trained officers, and possessed only a weak air force
and no navy. In November, 1937, the Chinese retreat from Shanghai began.
Early in December of that year Nanking, evacuated by the national gov
ernment, fell a victim to the advancing Japanese troops amid scenes of
wholesale rape and the slaughter of helpless prisoners and civilians, which
shocked the civilized world. The Chinese moved their capital to Hankow
and then, after a few months, to Chungking. Chungking, at the upper end
of the difficult gorges of the Yangtze, was comparatively secure from
attack except from the air.

Within a few months after July, 1937, the Japanese were in com-

352 VOLUME I

mand of most of the railways, of a large proportion of the lower reaches
of the chief navigable rivers, and of several of the main riverine and coastal
ports. They were in a position to begin the slow strangulation of China
should the latter not acquiesce in their program.

Yet Chinese resistance continued. Thousands of Chinese, including
a very large proportion of the student and more substantial classes, moved
west to "free" China. There refugee universities set up temporary plants.
With striking resolution and with no little skill, machinery was taken west
to continue the manufacture of equipment for the maintenance of the
struggle. Industrial co-operatives were organized to further both democ
racy and the production of needed goods. Behind the Japanese lines in
"occupied" China, guerrillas harassed the enemy. Neither the Nationalist
Government, controlled by the Kuomintang and with Chiang Kai-shek as
its leading figure, nor the Communists showed signs of yielding. They were
unable to drive the Japanese out. To their surprise, the Japanese found
themselves confronted with a long war.

In pursuance of their plan to win the "co-operation" of the Chinese,
the Japanese set up a regime which they hoped would comply with their
wishes. They professed to be fighting to liberate the Chinese from Com
munism and those associated with Chiang Kai-shek. In December, 1937,
they set up at Peip'ing what was termed the Provisional Government of the
Republic of China, with elderly, anti-Kuomintang Chinese in charge.
Eventually they induced a" former intimate of Sun Yat-sen, Wang Ch'ing-
wei, to head a regime which they trusted would be something more than
provisional. On March 30, 1940, the "return" of the "national government"
to Nanking was staged amid great pomp. The government of which
Wang Chjing-wei was now the titular chief executive was hailed by the
Japanese as the legitimate one for the entire country and as representing
the real Kuomintang and the heir of the Sun Yat-sen tradition. With
it Tokyo entered into treaty relations with a promise for reciprocal respect
for each other's territories and sovereignty and for co-operation against
Communism and in economic, political, and cultural measures. The new
Nanking government gave formal recognition to Manchoukuo and was
in turn recognized by the then associates of Japan, Germany and Italy,
and their satellites. It was obviously as much a puppet as was Man
choukuo. Wang Ch'ing-wei never possessed real power and died in 1944.

Japan went about the organization of the portions of China proper
which it occupied in such fashion as to take advantage of their resources.
Mines, railways, telephones, telegraphs, factories, banks, dockyards, and
shipping were taken over by Japanese companies, or if the Chinese shared
the ownership, the control was in Japanese hands. Japan also reconsti
tuted the schools of "occupied" China in such a way that they would sup
port its aims. Japanese was substituted for English as the second language
taught and textbooks were revised to make them friendly to Japan.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 353

Among the dark phases of the Japanese occupation were the rapid
extension of the sale and use of narcotics, dissensions and corruption
among Japanese officialdom, and ruthless treatment of the Chinese.

The Japanese slowly tightened the noose of blockade around the unoc
cupied portions of China. They had full command of the sea and of most
of the main ports. Supplies still reached "free" China through the blockade.
They also went in by way of Hong Kong, for that was in British hands, and
by the railway from French Indo-China to Kunming, formerly Yiinnanfu,
the leading city of the province of Yiinnan. Moreover, with a prodigal
expenditure of human labor a track traversible by automobiles was built
from the China side of the border to connect with roads and railways in
Burma. This was what became famous as the "Burma Road." It was
more a symbol and an aid to morale than of assistance in goods trans
ported, for it was narrow, in places tortuous, and traversed high divides
and deep canyons. Yet it gave connection with Rangoon and so with
the outer world, and some freight began to move over it. The Japanese
made progress in plugging these holes. In the summer of 1940 the fall
of France before German arms, the defeat of the British at Dunkerque, and
the threatened German invasion of the British Isles gave Japan the oppor
tunity to bring pressure on the two powers. Through agreement with the
Vichy regime in France, Japan sent troops into Indo-China and ended
the shipment of supplies into "free" China by road and railway from
the ports in that region. In July, 1940, the British authorities, most
reluctantly, felt constrained to suspend for three months the shipment
of goods to China by way of the Burma Road.

For the time being, Japan had nothing to fear from Russia. In a pact
of April, 1941, framed when Moscow was co-operating with the Axis
powers, the two governments entered into a nonaggression agreement.
The German invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941 directed all the
energies of the Soviets to the European theatre. This meant that Russia
was unwilling to enter into a war with Japan and thus to face foes on two
fronts. Japan, accordingly, had no serious threat from that quarter. More
over, Russia, while maintaining correct diplomatic relations with Chung
king, could not be expected to give the latter much help in the form
of munitions. Distances for transport across Sinkiang were great, and
even had they been shorter, Russia had need for all the war supplies
which it could muster, and in addition, would not risk antagonizing Japan
to the point of hostilities.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS: THE JAPANESE INVASION BECOMES
PART OF WORLD WAR II DECEMBER, 1941-AUGUST, 1945

On December 7, 1941 (December 8, by Chinese time), by
dramatic and sudden Japanese moves, the Sino-Japanese conflict was

354 VOLUME I

broadened and became an integral part of the vast world struggle then
in progress. The British Empire, the Netherlands, and the United States
became involved in war with Japan and, therefore, were actively on the
side of China. This brought to the assistance of China the resources of
these powers, in the aggregate enormous, and spelled ultimate defeat for
Japan,

The events of December 7-8, 1941, while bursting like a bomb upon
a startled world, were a climax of a long trend. As we have seen, the
League of Nations and the United States had been critical of Japan's
adventure in China since its inception in September, 1931. Commencing
with the momentous Hay note of 1899, the open door in China had
increasingly become one of the major concerns of the foreign policy of
the United States. After its victory over Russia in 1905 Japan had been
the growing threat to the realization of that policy. By various means, some
of which have been noted in the preceding pages of this chapter, the
United States had endeavored to check Japan. On the renewed advance
of Japan into China in 1937, the League of Nations and the United States
had made clear their disfavor. Public and governmental opinion in the
United States progressively hardened against Japan. Washington long
contented itself with lodging protests against Japanese violations of Amer
ican property and persons in China. Even a Japanese attack in the Yangtze
upon the American gunboat Panay in December, 1937, did not bring the
United States into the war. However, by successive steps short of war the
United States strove to restrain Japan. It strengthened its fleet and its
Hawaiian defense. In July, 1939, it denounced its commercial treaty with
Japan and within the next two years took measures to restrict exports to
Japan of iron, steel scrap, and petroleum products, commodities essen
tial to Japan's armed forces. The United States gave financial aid to China.
Negotiations between Japan and the United States made it increasingly
clear that neither power would accede to the other's proposals for adjust
ing the difficulties. The United States was unalterably opposed to Japan's
program in China, and Japan was adamant. Japan, in a formal note,
terminated the discussion on the very day that its forces assailed Pearl
Harbor, seized the International Settlement in Shanghai, and bombed
Singapore and centers in the Philippines.

The early effect of the Japanese attack upon the United States, the
British Empire, and the Netherlands Indies was to render the position of
China more perilous. The British were fighting in Europe with their backs
to the wall and could not even successfully defend their own possessions
in East Asia. The huge resources of the United States could not be
immediately mobilized and made effective in prosecuting the war. The
United States gave priority to winning the fight against Germany and
Italy. In the Pacific, distances were vast and Japan had the advantage
of the command of most of the littoral of the east coast of Asia.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 355

Japan promptly followed up the advantage acquired by its initial moves.
On Christmas Day, 1941, Hong Kong capitulated. Thus another impor
tant hole in the cordon that was being tightened around China was stopped.
Before the middle of the summer of 1942 Japan had taken the Philippines
and Guam, thus cutting off American outposts in the western Pacific,
had captured Singapore, had overwhelmed the Dutch power in the East
Indies, and had expelled the British from Burma. By the conquest of
Burma Japan closed ingress to "free" China by the Burma Road, thereby
locking another of the few remaining doors of communication between the
fighting Chinese and their friends in the outer world. Japan had all but
succeeded in expelling the Westerner from China. Of the Occidental
enclaves of a few years earlier, only Portuguese Macao remained, and
that on sufferance.

uFree" China showed the effects of the long strain. On the land front
a stalemate seemed to have set in. From 1940 to the middle of 1944 the
Japanese made few important gains in the interior, but the Chinese could
not muster enough power to expel them from positions already acquired.
Inflation appeared, both in "free" and "occupied" China. By the middle
of 1945 prices were more than fifteen hundred times what they had been
five years earlier. Dissensions within the Chinese ranks were not healed.
In moving west the national government found itself in part dependent
on the landed interests in Szechwan, as it had earlier been oh the bankers,
merchants, and manufacturers in the Shanghai area. This tended to make
it conservative and to deepen the gulf between itself and the Communists,
for the latter wished to dispossess the wealthy landowners. Some of the
warlords survived and had to be pacified by subsidies. Chiang Kai-shek
was compelled, if even a semblance of national unity was to be preserved,
to attempt to hold together very diverse groups. Within officialdom
corruption and inefficiency were rife. The rift between the Kuomin-
tang and the Communists was unhealed. Each maintained its own govern
ment and armies, the one centering at Chungking and the other at Yenan.
Although the Communists had a representative at Chungking and the
latter had the recognition of all the powers but those in the Axis and the
adhesion of more of "free" China than did Yenan, no love was lost
between the two regimes, and Chungking was keeping some of its best
troops on the border to watch its rival. While in general in 1944 "free"
China was more nearly united under Chungking than it had ever been
under Nanking, transportation by automobile was breaking down, and
with its weakening, internal ties were threatened, Nor did "free" China
have the kind of industry essential for the waging of mechanized war.

Slowly their associates in the struggle, chiefly the United States, began
to bring in aid to the beleaguered Chinese. Air communication was devel
oped with India. The route was one of the most difficult in the world,
over the high and tangled mountains between Assam and Yunnan, and

356

VOLUME I

chronically imperiled by Japanese air attacks. Yet, before three years
had elapsed after Pearl Harbor, freight was being brought in by the air
in larger amounts than had ever been transported over the Burma Road.
Before the end of 1944 American air forces in "free" China were mounting,
bases for them were built and in operation, and not only were Japanese
ships, troops, and installations in China proper being bombed, but Japanese
war plants in Manchuria and the Japanese islands were also being hit.
Chinese planes, provided by the United States, were in action against the
Japanese. British, Chinese, and American forces based on India forced
the Japanese out of the north of Burma. Early in 1945 they were so far
successful that road communications between China and Assam were
opened through a new highway, the Ledo Road, built over difficult terrain
and connecting in Yunnan with the Chinese roads. A pipe line, for the
conveying of petroleum and petroleum products, was under construction
from Assam to China. Moreover, in the Pacific the Americans were push
ing back the Japanese. In May and June, 1942, the American navy inflicted
severe defeats upon the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Coral Sea
and the Battle of Midway. That summer American forces won a foot
hold on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. By the end of 1944 they
had acquired springboards in the Gilbert, Marshall, and Mariana groups,
they had recaptured Guam, and they had effected landings in the Philip
pines and in the process had dealt severe blows to the Japanese navy. In
February, 1945, they retook Manila. Before the end of 1944 the Japanese
were expelled from the Aleutians. By the middle of 1945 American
island-based and carrier-basesd planes had bombed important centers
in Japan, the Kuriles, the Bonin and Volcano groups, and Formosa.
Strategic footholds had been acquired on Iwo Jima (in the Volcano
Islands) and on Okinawa (one of the Liu Ch'iu Islands). Moreover,
American and British submarines took heavy toll on Japanese shipping,
thus making more difficult the utilization by Japan of its overseas empire
and the maintenance of its armies of occupation.

Yet, as the Allied and especially the American tide advanced against
them, the Japanese strove persistently and with considerable success to
push farther into "free" China. In 1944 and the fore part of 1945 they
took most of such of the railways as had remained in Chinese hands.
In doing so, they all but established through rail communication between
Manchuria and Canton, largely cutting off from Chungking the parts of
China east of that line. They also captured some of the air bases from
which American and Chinese planes had been operating. They seized
Foochow, one of the few seaports remaining in Chinese hands. The out
come of the titanic struggle seemed to be resolving itself into a race
between, on the one hand, China's associates, chiefly British and Amer
icans, pressing in through the ring of Japan's defenses and bringing succor

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 357

to the "free" China which had been bearing the long strain of war, and
the Japanese army on the other hand, in the drive to move on into
China, dispersing the Chinese armies, and entrenching itself ever more
deeply.

In spite of the advance of Japan on its soil, the exhaustion of pro
longed war, the dissensions within its borders, and the rapidly mounting
inflation, even after 1937 China was making progress in a number of direc
tions. In their segment of the country the Communists were increas
ing in strength, building up their organization and their army. They
maintained elaborate and, in general, effective resistance to the Japanese.
In the areas, much larger in extent and population, that were controlled
by the Kuomintang through the Chungking regime, progress was also
being achieved. Much criticism was directed against the Kuomintang, and
the party itself contained factions. Secret societies and dissident groups
more or less openly flaunted the authority of the government. Yet Chiang
Kai-shek retained his leadership. If anything, it was strengthened. He
visited India. He shared in a conference in Cairo, in 1943, with Prime
Minister Churchill of Great Britain and President Roosevelt of the United
States. Concentration camps were maintained for those deemed dangerous
politically, yet through the People's Political Council (first constituted
in 1938) an organ was provided for an expression of public opinion.
In the earlier days of the removal of the center of government to Szechwan,
before inflation and war weariness had become acute, a thrill of adventure
was apparent in the West. Migrants from the coast brought to the interior
Western influences, and the permeation of Occidental culture in that region
was stimulated. Improvements were made in local governments, the
enrollments in schools mounted, the opium poppy was suppressed, indus
trial co-operatives were organized, natural resources were surveyed,
efforts were put forth to bring into the Chinese cultural circle the non-
Chinese peoples on the Tibetan borders, and the influence of the central
government in Sinkiang was strengthened.

Advance was registered in freeing the land from the restrictions and
inequalities imposed by the treaties and conventions of the nineteenth and
the fore part of the twentieth century. In "occupied" China Japan went
through the motions of turning over to Chinese administration several
of the foreign concessions in the ports. These included Japanese conces
sions in five cities, British concessions in Canton and Tientsin, and the
famous and wealthy International Settlement in Shanghai. Steps were taken
to restore Chinese authority in the several French concessions and in
the Italian concession in Tientsin. In 1943 Japan accorded to Nanking the
right to tax its subjects and their property. All these measures were trans
fers of nominal authority to a puppet government that was controlled by
Japanese, and so were more apparent than real. However, when Japan had

358 VOLUME i

been expelled, Occidental powers would find difficulty in re-establishing
their special privileges in the areas affected. In 1943 Great Britain and
the United States negotiated new treaties with China in which they sur
rendered the extraterritoriality which had long been a source of friction.
That same year the United States repealed the exclusion acts against
the Chinese, placed that people on the quota basis with European immi
grants, and permitted the naturalization of Chinese. For China the
war was far from being without compensating features.

In August, 1945, Japan was brought to its knees. For months the
Americans had been tightening the cordon around the islands. The
Japanese navy had been decimated, and leading cities, including especially
Tokyo, had been bombed and then devastated by the ensuing fires. On
August 6 the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima with
startling effect. Two days later they let loose another bomb, on Naga
saki. On that day, August 8, in the pursuance of an agreement reached
at Yalta in February, 1945, between Russia, Great Britain, and the United
States, Russia declared war on Japan and rapidly moved its forces into
Manchuria. On August 14 Japan's capitulation was announced and on Sep
tember 2 (September 1 by United States time) the documents effecting
the surrender were formally signed on an American battleship in the
Bay of Tokyo. Even before that day the Japanese armies were being
evacuated from the soil of China.

Now followed a new stage in the long history of China. It was
marked by an acceleration of the revolution brought by the impact of
the Occident, and by momentous changes in the life of its peoples.

CHANGES OTHER THAN POLITICAL, 1894-1945: INTRODUCTORY

The developments in China's internal politics and interna
tional relations between 1894 and 1945 were startling. At the same time,
as though these were not enough for any one people to face, a revolution
was being wrought in other phases of the nation's life. Under the impact
of the Occident all the main features of the structure of Chinese culture
were being altered, some of them drastically. The pace was accelerated
by the struggle with Japan in the 1930's and 1940's. In less than a genera
tion the Chinese had moved into a different world: economic, religious,
intellectual, and social. To ignore the changes would be to miss parts of
the picture which may prove the most significant. Since we are to recur to
them in later chapters, at this point they can be summarized much more
succinctly than have the political events.

The revolution was accentuated by the fact that during these years,
especially after 1914, Occidental culture was suffering from profound

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 359

disturbances. China was in contact with a West which itself was being
basically modified and much of whose life was in process of disintegration.

CHANGES IN ECONOMIC LIFE, 1894-1945

The West was most aggressive in the realms of politics, eco
nomics, and religion. Naturally, therefore, not only in government but also
in the economic and religious phases of China's life these five decades
witnessed striking innovations.

It was chiefly for better facilities for commerce that the Occident had
forced on China the treaties of 1842-1844 and 1858-1860. Commerce
was the main interest of the power which long held the leading place in
China's maritime relations — Great Britain. In its broadest sense, commerce
was also the major concern of Japan. China, with its huge population — the
largest of any nation — and its traditions of hard work and canny trading,
was presumably the greatest potential market in the world.

In spite of all these factors, the increase in foreign commerce, while
marked, was not phenomenal. China's total foreign trade for 1913 was
more than twice the value of that of 1899, and that of 1899 had been
a record, being two-thirds greater than that of 1894 and nearly three times
that of 1884. World War I saw a decline followed by a slight growth, the
figures for 1918 being about six per cent greater than those for 1913.
After the war came a sharp increase: the totals for 1921 were almost
fifty per cent larger than those for 1918, and for 1929 more than twice
those for 192 1.1 The totals for 1929 were more than seven times those for
1894. With the world-wide financial depression which began in 1929, the
increase practically ceased, and in 1932, as might have been expected,
particularly in view of political and Sino-Japanese developments, a decline
of about one-third was registered. After 1937 the increasing Japanese
blockade worked further diminution until imports to "free" China dwindled
almost to the vanishing point. A very little went by air. Some trade was
carried on across the borders between the "free" and the "occupied"
sections. Japan all but monopolized the commerce of the territories she

held.

Even the pre-1929 gains were not as large as might first appear. The
totals compared were in a currency subject to wide fluctuations. In terms
of gold dollars the peak of foreign trade was reached in 1920. These years
were ones of rapid growth in international trade the world over. Conse
quently, while in 1896-1898 China's foreign trade was 1.5 per cent of

*In figures, the average annual total foreign trade for 1911-1915 was 923,900
haikuan taels, for 1916-1920 1,182,501 haikuan taels, for 1921-1925 1,707,595
haikuan taels, and for 1926-1930 2,154,522 haikuan taels.

360 VOLUME I

that of the world, in 1911-1913 it had risen only to 1.7 per cent and in
1921 only to 1.9 per cent of that total. Japan, with a sixth or a seventh of
the population of China, had about the same proportion of the world's
commerce. India, with a population probably about a fourth smaller and
with a per capita wealth possibly no greater and perhaps less, had twice as
large a proportion. Economically, China was still self-contained. Her time-
honored self-sufficiency, her defective systems of internal transportation,
and her civil strife combined to make her relatively unresponsive to external
commercial pressure. Her poverty and the chaotic state of her currency
were additional obstacles to the realization of her commercial possibilities.
As a market for other nations she was comparatively undeveloped.

In the half century from 1894 to 1945 the nature of China's exports
and imports and the proportions of her trade shared by foreign countries
altered considerably. In 1894 cotton led the list of imports in value, with
opium second. Tea and silk, although suffering from the competition of
other countries, were the chief exports. In China's overseas trade the
British predominated.

By 1945, among the registered imports, opium had disappeared. A
phenomenally successful campaign carried on against it toward the close
of the Ch'ing, and the consent of Great Britain, eliminated it from lawful
trade. However, under the disorder that eventually came in under the
Republic the domestic production rose markedly, for military chieftains
found it a convenient source of revenue, and some of them practically
compelled the cultivation of the poppy. Opium was imported in large
quantities, but surreptitiously and partly in the form of concentrated
derivatives, such as morphine and heroin. In sections controlled by the
Japanese after 1937, the sale of opium products mounted in striking fashion.
Cotton remained an important item, but its relative prominence decreased.
With the rise of cotton mills in China, cotton yarn and cloth declined among
the imports. In 1913 cotton goods formed almost a third of the imports and
in 1931 and 1932 less than ten per cent. More and more the list of
imports became varied, and included hundreds of items, many of which, in
total value, were significant. Among the products which loomed large were
kerosene (almost trebled in quantity between 1900 and 1929, used ex
tensively for lighting purposes, and sold through a nation-wide network
of agencies by such huge foreign concerns as the Standard Oil Company
and the Asiatic Petroleum Company), foodstuffs, tobacco (much of it
cigarettes, the consumption of which had become nation-wide under an
efficient and persistent campaign of advertising), and metal goods, includ
ing especially machinery. The civil wars of later years led to the importa
tion of large quantities of arms and ammunition.

In the main, imports were made up of manufactured goods, products
of the factories of Japan and the Occident. The growing prominence of

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 361

machinery on the list, however, was evidence that factories were being built
and that China was beginning to produce goods by the new methods. Raw
cotton, principally of long-staple varieties, was being imported for use in
the mills. Significant, too, was the prominence of flour and wheat, for it
showed that China was depending on other countries to help it meet the
ever-present problem of the pressure of population upon subsistence. Sugar
and rice were also among the imports. Some plants of foreign origin were
introduced, among them new kinds of cotton and of drought-resistant
grains. By 1937 China was arriving at the position of being an importer
instead of an exporter of food and raw cotton and an exporter rather
than an importer of manufactured goods.

Tea did not disappear from among the exports, but by 1927 it was only
about three per cent of the whole. Silk remained the largest single item,
but it was only about a fifth or a sixth of the total. It suffered greatly in
competition with Japan. In both America and Europe, however, the best
quality of Chinese silk was in demand for the finest fabrics. Such items
came to the fore as vegetable oils (from the soy bean, the peanut, sesamum
seed, a tree whose oils were used in varnishes, and the castor bean — an
export which grew rapidly before and during World War I and which
waned afterward), bean cake, dried vegetables, eggs (in great quantities),
furs, hair, coal, raw cotton, cotton goods and thread, timber, antimony,
and some cereals. The exports were still chiefly of raw materials, the
product of field and mine, but here and there were manufacturers, an
indication that the industrial age was arriving. Cotton goods increased from
less than one per cent of China's tot^l exports in 1913 to about ten per
cent in 1932. This seemed to mean that China was less and less a market
for the products of the mills of Lancashire and Japan and more and more
a competitor in foreign markets. Some of the exports showed the effect of
the rapid development of Manchuria, with its soy beans, its coal, and its
timber. One form of export, which in total market value did not bulk large
but from which large economic and aesthetic consequences might follow,
was seeds and plants. One American botanist, for example, introduced
from China to the gardens of Europe and America over a thousand new
plants and sent abroad seeds of more than fifteen hundred different species.
A French missionary is said to have sent home specimens of at least four
thousand species from Yunnan alone. The Department of Agriculture of
the United States Government had agents in China searching for plants
which might prove of value in America.

The machinery by which foreign trade was handled was altered. The
old style comprador who served as an intermediary between Chinese and
foreigners was disappearing. More and more foreign manufacturers -had
their own agents who dealt directly with Chinese merchants. More Chinese
firms were appearing in the importing trade and tended to deal with foreign

362 VOLUME i

countries without the aid of intermediaries. Chinese banks were entering
into competition with foreign banks. The marked decline in the proportion
of trade which passed through Hong Kong— from 28.7 per cent in 1913
to 16.8 per cent in 1929, 15.6 per cent in 1931, and 8.7 per cent in 1932—
seemed to indicate that this British-controlled port of middlemen was being
supplanted by direct dealing between Chinese merchants and foreign lands.
Great Britain continued to lead European countries in the total amount
of its trade with China. As late as 1927 it had more than twice that of any
other nation of Europe. In direct commerce with China Japan surpassed
it. However, the anti-Japanese boycott which began in 1931 as the result
of Tokyo's Manchurian adventure, in 1932 gave the British Empire a
larger proportion. Before 1930 the United States passed Great Britain and
in 1932 surpassed Japan. In 1913 the British Empire had 18.7 per cent
of China's foreign trade, Japan 19.4 per cent, and the United States 7.5
per cent. In 1929 the percentages were 15.1, 26.8, and 16.8 respectively.
In 1932 they were 20.6, 18.4, and 21.6 respectively. The British per
centages included all the Empire, comprising not only the United Kingdom,
but Canada, Australia, India, and the Straits Settlements as well. Those
for the British Isles were much less— in 1913, 17 and in 1929 only 8.5.
The British retained their old position of leadership in China's sea-borne
commerce. Until the spread of Sino-Japanese hostilities in the 1930's, they
had more tonnage entering and clearing from Chinese ports — approxi
mately a third of the whole — than any other people, although by 1930
the Japanese almost equaled them. In 1930 they probably still had as
much capital invested in China as did any other nation. In that year, as
nearly as could be determined — although the figures are very doubtful — the
investments in China of the major foreign countries were, in round
numbers: Great Britain about one and a quarter billion gold dollars (if
Hong Kong was included), Japan about the same (of which about a
billion dollars was in Manchuria), Russia between two hundred and four
hundred millions (largely in the Chinese Eastern Railway, subsequently
sold to Japan), the United States probably between two hundred and two
hundred and fifty millions (of which between fifty and eighty millions were
in philanthropic enterprises, such as missions), France two hundred mil
lions, and Germany one hundred millions. Of Western nations, the United
States, next to Great Britain, had the largest financial stake in China. More
over, in spite of the keen competition of Canton and the declining impor
tance of the foreign middleman, Hong Kong, a British possession, continued
a great distributing center for the China trade. In the later years of the
period, it will be recalled, except during and after 1932, about a sixth
of the exports and imports of China were listed as passing through that
port. The trade of China with all parts of the British Empire, including
Hong Kong, was, therefore, decidedly in excess of that of Japan. Until 1942,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 363

outside of Manchuria, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
remained the leading foreign bank, and British influence, although badly
shaken, continued to be strong in the administration of the customs service.
Shanghai, too, where until the 1940's the British remained more prominent
than any other foreign people, continued to be the chief port of entry for
foreign goods. However, in the total commerce of Great Britain, China
was not so important as in that of Japan or the United States. In 1929
China accounted for more than a fourth of Japan's foreign trade, for about
three and a half per cent of that of the United States, and for only about
one and a half per cent of that of the United Kingdom.

Even before its conquests in the 1930's and 1940's, Japan loomed
prominently in China's economic life, and China was similarly very im
portant to Japan. In 1927, 91 per cent of the iron ore produced in China
was from properties under Sino-Japanese control, and most of it was con
sumed in Japan — which, as we have seen, lacked extensive iron deposits
of its own. In January, 1930, Japanese owned and operated in China cotton
mills having 39 per cent of the spindles of the entire country.

The fifty years which followed 1894 witnessed great changes in the
internal transportation system of China. The twenty years after 1894 were
ones of railway building, for they saw the construction of two roads con
necting Peking with the Yangtze Valley, of trunk lines in Manchuria, and
of several shorter roads in various parts of the country. However, before
the entire country could be equipped with railways, World War I and in
creasing civil strife intervened. Foreign capital was reluctant to enter and
little domestic capital could be obtained. The major part of the country,
therefore, and even most of China proper remained entirely unequipped.
Sinkiang, Mongolia, and Tibet were without a single mile, vast Szechwan
was equally free from the iron horse, and south of the Yangtze, only a few
hundred miles had been constructed. After 1914, most of the new railway
building was in Manchuria. By 1930 over a third of the total mileage was
there. With the increase of civil war, especially after 1925, existing lines,
except in Manchuria, fell into alarming disrepair. Their use by rival armies
all but ruined the rolling stock and jeopardized the maintenance of the
roadbeds. Their receipts were often appropriated for military or other
nonrailway purposes; frequently their equipment was not paid for; and
interest on bonds was repeatedly allowed to become overdue.

After the Kuomintang came into control, railway building was resumed
in China proper. By the year 1942 the line between Canton and Wuchang
was completed and various other roads, notably in Hunan, Kiangsi, Anhui,
Kwangsi, and Chekiang, had been constructed.

What the railway failed to provide was supplied in part by the auto
mobile. Especially in the decade before 1937, this new type of conveyance
came into widespread use. Thousands of miles of road were built, hundreds

364 VOLUME i

of them being even in such relatively backward provinces as Kwangsi,
Kansu, and Kweichow. After the retreat to the West in 1938 the construc
tion of roads was pushed in Yunnan and Szechwan. Much of the con
struction was by military leaders for the operations of their armies, but
a large proportion was for peaceful purposes. Motor omnibuses plied
between many of the leading cities. In numbers of cities new, broad streets
were driven through, even in congested districts, and here and there ancient
city walls were torn down and replaced by broad thoroughfares. These
made possible the use of automobiles in centers where the old narrow
streets would have prevented it. However, most of the automobiles were in
the ports, especially Shanghai, and the vast majority of the city streets
were left as before, impassable or inconvenient for motor cars. Moreover,
most of the new highways had dirt surfaces. Very few would support
traffic in heavy trucks. The automobile was still employed almost ex
clusively for passengers and not for freight. Except for the infrequent
railways, the latter was, perforce, transported as formerly: by boat, on the
backs of men and animals, or by cumbersome carts. Late in the 1930's and
in the 1940's the exigencies of war increased the use of trucks for freight.
Between 1941 and 1945, because of the Japanese blockade, new cars
could not be brought in and other fuels had increasingly to be substituted
for gasoline.

Marked development was registered in steam navigation, most of it
on the coastal waters and the Yangtze and its tributaries. Though Chinese
companies were growing, most of the larger steamers were foreign-owned.
Long before 1937 the "fire wheel boat" had penetrated even into Szechwan,
and craft with especially powerful engines plied the dangerous gorges
which were the main outlet from that great inland province. Bicycles were
introduced and in some sections became numerous. By the 1930's the
airplane had become an established feature of Chinese transportation.
Regular air service was maintained for mail and passengers between several
of the principal cities. Airplanes penetrated some of the more remote
provinces. After 1937 the conflict with Japan speeded up the use of
planes.

In production, the factory and Western machinery were being intro
duced. Long before 1937, in such cities as Shanghai, Canton, Hankow, and
Tientsin, and in numbers of smaller centers, factories were in operation.
The chief output of the new power-driven machinery was cotton goods.
China ranked third among the cotton-growing countries of the world: it was
surpassed only by the United States and India. With the vast supply of
cheap labor, and with coal available, the manufacture of cotton by modern
Western processes mounted. By 1928 about a quarter of a million Chinese
were employed in cotton mills. In 1929 China had one hundred and twenty
cotton mills, nearly two-thirds of them the property of Chinese, forty-four
of Japanese, and three of British citizens. Measured by numbers of

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 365

spindles, the Japanese owned about two-thirds as much of the enterprise
as the Chinese, and the British a little less than a tenth as much. Approxi
mately half of the cotton manufacturing was in Shanghai.

Although cotton yarn and cloth were the chief products of the new
processes, factories were erected for a variety of other goods. Steam
filatures appeared in a number of cities. Flour mills, mills for pressing oil
from the soy bean, match factories, saw mills, and sugar refineries were
among the kinds of plants equipped with modern machinery.

However, the industrial revolution had barely begun. By 1930 only
about one per cent of the population was connected with large-scale in
dustry. Internal unrest made foreign capital reluctant to enter the country,
and the Chinese themselves did not yet possess the quantities of fluid
capital or the type of banking system essential for the financing of an ex
tensive industrialization. The returns elsewhere for the meager supply of
such capital as existed were so great that such long-term investments as
factories were not favored. Technical skill was scanty, transportation
facilities were usually inadequate, and taxes and official interference were
often disastrous. Nor had the Chinese yet succeeded in operating many
of the stock companies by which the industrialization of the Occident had
been made possible. Time-honored loyalties required that, regardless of
the interests of stockholders, directors create posts for members of their
families. This militated against the efficiency of the Western device. The
bulk of the manufactures of China were, therefore, still produced by the
customary handicraft methods organized in small units by guilds. After
1937 the Japanese invasion led to a migration of modern industry to the
West. Machinery was moved and set up in new sites in "free" China.

Rifts in the old organization of the industrial life of the country began
to appear. In many places, especially in the chief cities, the guilds were
weakening, particularly in occupations in which the new methods had
been introduced. Labor unions were formed, notably among workers on the
railways and in the new industries. Before 1926 they had begun to be
important, and the Kuoinintang, in its northward movement of that and
the following year, actively encouraged their organization. Unions of
peasants were also initiated by the Kuomintang. The unionizing of workmen
and peasants was due chiefly to the radical, Russian-advised elements in
the Kuomintang. When, in 1927, the latter were discredited and suppressed,
the unions formed by them suffered reverses and many of them disap
peared. By 1937 they were, on the whole, few and weak. Long before
1937, chambers of commerce became familiar features of the business
structure of many of the cities. They were an easy evolution from the
guild system or were formed by federations of existing guilds.

The currency became worse confounded. To the copper cash, the many
kinds of taels, and the foreign-coined dollars of the monetary system in
existence before 1894 were added Chinese-minted dollars of several

366 VOLUME I

varieties, a subsidiary coinage of silver and copper (much debased), and
floods of paper issued by banks, governments, and generals. Plans for
improvement were elaborated, but while the Nanking Government showed
self-constraint in the issue of paper currency, on the whole, attempts at
reform proved illusory. The situation was complicated by the use of silver
as a medium in large transactions in a world where the normal standard
was gold. Foreign exchange fluctuated widely and foreign and domestic
commerce suffered. Chinese founded many banks on Western models and
competed with the foreign banks which played so large a part in the
finances of the country.

Prices were mounting. This was due partly to the general rise, before
1929, the world over, and partly to the fact that, having entered into the
economic life of the world, China could not preserve permanently a scale
decidedly lower than that of other nations. The prolonged civil strife
operated in the same direction. Wages rose, and as a rule probably about
kept pace with the heightening cost of living — although accurate figures
for the nation as a whole were lacking. In the larger centers, and especially
in the new industries, the tendency appears to have been to shorten the
hours of labor rather than to increase the standard of living. Late in the
1930's and in the 1940's the Japanese invasion was followed by skyrocket
ing inflation, and in both "free" and "occupied" China prices rose to
fantastic heights. This applied both to commodities and to labor.

Severe famines occurred in portions of the country, especially the
North, Famines were no novel phenomenon. Drought, flood, and a lack of
adequate means of conveyance to transport food to the afflicted sections
were not new. Civil strife aggravated the dearth, for fighting used up
surpluses of grain and the breakdown of government weakened some of
the usual agencies for administrating relief. It must be noted, however, that
by 1937 Chinese organizations, both state and private, showed an increased
willingness and ability to cope with such domestic distress.

Evidences of what alterations might be expected in the physical environ
ment of the nation were seen in some of the cities. For example, in Amoy,
once called the dirtiest port in China, by the 1930's broad, concrete-paved,
electric-lighted streets took the place of the narrow, crooked, rough ones of
other years, four- and five-story ferro-concrete buildings were erected, a
modern sewage system and a supply of running water were installed, parks
and recreation centers replaced slums, and the surrounding hillsides were
cleared of graves in order to be terraced for future residences for the living.

CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS LIFE, 1894-1945

The years after 1895 witnessed marked changes in the re
ligious life of the country. These were in part due to the total impact of

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 367

the Occident — political, economic, and intellectual — and in part to Chris
tian missionaries.

To the first cause must be ascribed the weakening of Confucianism.
Even before the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty, the abolishment (1905) of the
traditional system of civil service examinations shook to its foundations the
form of education on which the perpetuation of Confucianism largely de
pended. Other innovations in education brought in new subjects of study
and ended the concentration on the old learning. The substitution, in 1912,
of the Republic for the Empire, dealt Confucianism another blow. The
form of government was swept aside with which Confucianism had been
almost inextricably associated. Some of the religious ceremonies maintained
by the state disappeared, notably those which had been performed by the
Emperor, and many others gradually lapsed. Confucius himself was un
acceptable to numbers of the new student class, for he had supported
monarchical institutions and his name was identified with the now discred
ited conservatism and the discarded system of education. With the growth in
popularity of Western science and other studies from the Occident, interest
in the Classics waned.

Confucianism did not succumb without a struggle. Attempts were
made to show that it was not incompatible with the new order and to
have the Republic adopt it as the official cult. Here and there for some
years officials and associations of scholars maintained the customary
rites in honor of Confucius and his disciples. Study of the Classics was
embodied in the new curricula. A philosophy which had become part of the
very bone and sinew of the nation could not at once disappear. In the
China of the 1940's Confucianism was still an important influence. It had,
however, suffered greatly.

To the general impact of the Occident were to be ascribed a wide
spread loss of interest in and an antagonism to religion. In many coun
tries the twentieth century witnessed a decline in religion. To thousands
the great increase of knowledge of his physical environment which man
had achieved through scientific methods had made religion intellectually
untenable. To even larger numbers, absorption in the pursuit of physical
comforts made possible by this new knowledge rendered religion unim
portant and irrelevant — or even an enemy. This skepticism and pre
occupation with material concerns found in China peculiarly fertile ground,
for much of the traditional philosophy tended to make China's scholars
agnostic. One of the most prominent of the younger thinkers declared
that China's educated class had outgrown religion earlier than any other
large group in the history of mankind. The militant antireligious convic
tions of Russian Communism were especially influential In 1922 an
organized antireligious movement came to birth, and the radical elements
in the Kuomintang were vigorous in their antireligious activities, especially

368 VOLUME I

during the days of their power in 1926 and 1927. Most of the agitation
was focused against Christianity, for the latter was palpably foreign in
its origin and in much of its leadership, and it was associated with the
"capitalistic" nations for which Communism had so strong an aversion.
Some of it, however, was directed against other forms of religion. More
than one temple was converted into a school, and the Taoist "Pope"
was forced to flee from his accustomed residence.

Here and there the religious spirit showed signs of a fresh awakening.
In some sections a reform movement galvanized the somnolent Buddhism
into activity. For a time, especially before 1922, ephemeral syncretic sects,
such as the Tao Yuan, interested small minorities. For a few years after
1926 it looked as though Sun Yat-sen would become the center of a new
state cult. A weekly ceremony in his honor was required in all schools, and
his tomb near Nanking became a kind of shrine. Yet by the 1940's
enthusiasm for this innovation had waned.

Most of the earnest and aggressive new life in religion entered
through Christianity. After 1895 and until about 1925, Christianity had a
phenomenal expansion. The persecutions of the Boxer year proved only
a temporary check: in the long run, through the added zest which came
to the Church from the heroism of the martyrs, they probably stimulated
the spread of the faith.

The reasons for this growth were to be found partly in China and
partly in the Occident. Conditions in China were favorable. The old
structure of Chinese life was crumbling, and with it went much of the
resistance it offered to Christianity. Things Western were popular. In
many places the Christian missionary was the only resident Westerner. As
a representative of the Occident, therefore, he was given a hearing and
was often influential. Repeatedly the altruistic services of the missionary
won respect for the Christian message. Numbers of thoughtful Chinese,
eagerly seeking means of extricating the nation from its confusion and
weakness, and taught by their Confucian rearing that the salvation of
the state and society depended ultimately upon the moral character of
the individual, wondered whether the needed dynamic might not be found
in the Christian Gospel. Never since the period of disunion between
the Han and the T'ang had conditions in China been so favorable for the
acceptance of a foreign faith, and at no time in the more than twelve
centuries since it first reached China had Christianity there been con
fronted with so great an opportunity.

The situation in the Occident was propitious. Europe and America,
the regions from which missionaries came, were increasing rapidly in
wealth, and so had the means for expanding their religious enterprises. In
Protestantism the years were ones of growing enthusiasm for foreign
missions. The magnitude of the opportunity in China stirred the churches

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 369

and optimism was seen for the outlook both for China in general and for
missions in particular. Even World War I, accompanied and followed
though it was by momentous changes, did not at once work a reduction
in the total support from the Occident. To be sure, Protestants in Great
Britain had difficulty in maintaining their missions at their prewar level,
and German Protestant mission societies were impoverished. Support from
Protestants in the United States, however, more than made up for the
deficiency. The War was quickly followed by huge campaigns in the Ameri
can Protestant churches for added funds and personnel for foreign missions,
in the attempt to make permanently effective the idealism with which much
of America had entered that struggle. The result was extensive reinforce
ments for the staffs of American missions.

The interest of American Protestants in China, both before and after
World War I, led to an increase in their proportionate share in missions
in that country. In 1889 the numbers of British and American Protes
tant missionaries in China were about equal, and together they accounted
for more than nine-tenths of the missionary body. In 1929 Americans
made up approximately three-fifths of the total foreign staff of Protestant
missions in China.

Roman Catholics augmented their efforts in China, both before and
after World War I. French missions declined relatively from the predomi
nance which they once held, particularly after the separation of Church and
State in France in 1905 and the actions of the French Government against
Catholic schools. However, the increase from other nationalities more than
compensated for the difference. In Roman Catholic circles World War I
was followed by an enhanced interest in foreign missions. Especially
among American Catholics, concern for foreign missions, once negligible,
rapidly mounted, and much of it centered on China.

The figures of this grawth of Christian missions were impressive. In
1889 the roll of Protestant missionaries in China contained about thirteen
hundred names. In 1905 the number had risen to almost thirty-five hun
dred, in 1910 to more than five thousand, and in 1936 to slightly more
than six thousand. Because of furloughs and health leaves, the number
actually at work in China at any one time was probably about one-fifth or
one-sixth less than each of these figures. In 1890 not quite six hundred
fifty foreign Roman Catholic priests were in China. In 1896 or 1897 the
number was a little more than seven hundred fifty, in 1901 more than
a thousand, in 1912 nearly fifteen hundred, and in 1926 over seventeen
hundred. In 1926 the total foreign staff— bishops, priests, lay brothers,
and sisters — was slightly over three thousand, and in 1933 about forty-
four hundred.

The number of Chinese Christians rose even more markedly. In
1889 Protestant communicants numbered about thirty-seven thousand,

370 VOLUME i

in 1898 about eighty thousand, in 1904 about one hundred and thirty
thousand, in 1914 a little over a quarter of a million, in 1922 slightly over
four hundred thousand, and in 1932 about four hundred fifty thousand.
In 1936 the total Protestant community, reckoning baptized Christians
and those under instruction, was over seven hundred thousand. In 1896
there were about half a million (baptized) Roman Catholics in China, in
1901 the number was estimated as being over seven hundred thousand, in
1907 about nine hundred thousand, in 1912 a little short of a million and a
half, in 1918 a little under two millions, in 1924 a little under two and a
quarter millions, in 1929 a little less than two and a half millions, and in
1941 slightly above three and a quarter millions. In no other non-
Occidental country — with the exception of the Philippines and India —
were there so many Roman Catholics. There were as well, in the 1930's,
over one hundred thousand Russian Orthodox, most of them non-Chinese.

The activities of the missionaries, particularly of Protestant mission
aries, were multifarious. Protestants, seeing the Chinese hunger for Western
types of education, opened many schools, stressing especially secondary
and higher education. They founded and maintained some of the best
educational institutions in the country. They gave much attention to
hospitals and to education in Western medicine. The Western style medical
and nursing professions owed to them their inception and most of their
development. Protestants organized Young Men's and Young Women's
Christian Associations, schools for the blind, and leper asylums. They
promoted education in public health, helped in relieving famine, and
aided the study of agricultural problems and methods. From the impulses
derived from Protestants came a valiant Chinese effort to teach the masses
to read. Protestants prepared and distributed an extensive religious litera
ture: in 1924, for instance, they circulated nearly ten million copies of
portions of the Bible. 'They presented the Christian message to millions,
partly through the printed page, partly in personal conversations, and partly
by means of public meetings. Although divided, as is the nature of Protes
tantism, into scores of denominations, they made extensive progress toward
co-operation and union.

Protestant missions and the Protestant Christian community were hav
ing an influence quite out of proportion to their numerical strength. Some
of the nation's leading educators either were Protestant Christians or had
studied in Protestant schools. The Commercial Press, in the 1920's the
largest publishing bouse in the country and an influential purveyor of
the new knowledge, was founded by men trained in a Protestant mission
press. Several of the nation's outstanding political leaders were baptized
Protestant Christians-among them Sun Yat-sen, Feng Yii-hsiang, Chiang
Kai-shek, and some of the heads of ministries of the Nanking Govern
ment.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 371

Roman Catholics were not so diverse in their activities. Compared
with Protestants, they had little medical work, nor did they place such
emphasis upon schools for educating the general public. They did not
attempt to influence from so many angles the life of the country as a
whole. They concentrated, rather, upon building Christian communities.
To this end they brought thousands into catechetical schools, often paying
the expenses of those in attendance. They expended much energy upon
baptizing infants in danger of death, and as a corollary, maintained scores
of orphanages for the care of destitute children and for rearing in the
Catholic faith those waifs who survived infancy. Most of the education
provided by Roman Catholics was of a religious nature — giving to the
laity the rudiments of the faith and preparing a Chinese clergy. Prospective
priests were required to undergo a prolonged and exacting training.

Roman Catholics continued to be much more numerous than Protes
tants — although until 1925 the proportionate rate of increase of the latter
was greater — but Roman Catholicism made less impression upon the
life of the country at large.

Upon the masses of the nation the direct effect of Christianity, whether
Protestant or Roman Catholic, was still negligible. Professing Chris
tians totaled less than one per cent of the population, and the great majority
of the Chinese were probably only barely aware, if at all, of the existence
of the faith.

Beginning about 1925, Christianity, and especially Protestantism, suf
fered grave reverses. The antireligious movement, which became largely
and often explicitly anti-Christian, began in 1922, was revived in 1924,
and was intensified as a result of the Shanghai incident of May 30,
1925. In 1926 and 1927 the left wing of the Kuomintang, encouraged by
Russian Communists, was vigorously anti-Christian. Christianity was
accused, among other things, of being "imperialistic" and "capitalistic,"
and since the rage of the nationalists was just then directed chiefly
against Great Britain, and a considerable number of Protestant mission
aries were British, Protestantism suffered more than Roman Catholicism.
In 1926 and especially in 1927, at the height of the activity of the left
wing of the Kuomintang, a great exodus of Protestant missionaries occurred.
When, in the summer of 1927, the conservative reaction set in, mission
aries began to return.

Christian schools became the target of many nationalists, on the
ground that they existed for religious propaganda rather than educa
tion, and that they were part of the cultural invasion of the imperialistic
powers. Since Protestants had devoted a larger proportion of their efforts
toward maintaining schools than had Roman Catholics, they suffered
more from this phase of the attack.

Added to the specifically anti-Christian agitation was the danger from

VOLUME I

the widespread banditry. Missionaries, being foreign and supposedly rich,
were believed to be valuable for ransom. Scores of them were captured
and many lost their lives.

While in the Occident support for Roman Catholic missions was
increasing, in the mid-1920's support in the United States for Protestant
missions fell off. For a variety of reasons, beginning about 1924 a marked
decline in giving cut the incomes of most of the major American Protes
tant mission boards. The incomes of Protestant missionary societies in
the rest of the world remained about stationary, and so did not make
up for the loss in American contributions. The world-wide financial depres
sion that began in 1929 brought further losses in gifts. This meant that
while Protestant missions were under heavy fire in China, their support
from the Occident was suffering. The combination proved serious. Accurate
figures are lacking, but it is certain that the growth of Protestantism in
numbers of communicants decidedly slowed after 1924 and in many
places experienced an actual decline. Nor did the Roman Catholic com
munity show as large a rate of increase as in the immediately preceding

years.

In some respects the persecutions and trials of the years after 1924
stimulated Christianity to deeper rootage in Chinese soil It became unmis
takably obvious that if the faith was to survive in the intensely national
istic China of the day it must become more Chinese in sympathy and
leadership. Rome took pains to show itself friendly to Chinese patriotism.
After the Shanghai incident of May 30, 1925, group after group of Protes
tant missionaries and board after board came out in favor of removing
from the treaties the clauses guaranteeing toleration for missionaries and
Christianity, and some expressed themselves as opposed to extraterritoriality
and foreign control of the tariff. Partly because of the nationalistic wave,
Protestants rapidly put Chinese into positions of leadership. They elected
several Chinese bishops, named Chinese as heads of their colleges and
universities, and in many other ways sought to transfer control to them.
Roman Catholics redoubled their efforts to train a Chinese clergy, and in
1926, at Rome, the Pope consecrated six Chinese priests to the episco
pate — the first since the sole previous appointment in the seventeenth
century. Within the next four years five more Chinese were raised to the
episcopate, and by 1940 at least nineteen ecclesiastical divisions were
administered by Chinese. In its financial support and in its liturgy and
creeds the Church was still largely foreign, but it was less exotic than it had
been a decade before.

The Japanese invasion had mixed effects upon Christianity. In Man
churia after 1931 some check was placed on the activities of mission
aries and churches. After 1937, as the Japanese moved farther into China,
many missionaries were forced to leave. After 1941 British and Ameri-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 373

cans in "occupied" China were interned. Thousands of Christians joined in
the exodus to the West. There, especially among Protestants, they strength
ened the Christian cause. Christians, both Chinese and foreign, by their
ministry to the sufferers from war, won much respect from non-Christians.
Yet missionary staffs were being depleted. World War II and transporta
tion difficulties put obstacles in the way of reinforcements. From some
countries funds were cut off. Christianity was under a new handicap.

CHANGES IN INTELLECTUAL LIFE, 1894-1945

Fully as great as the changes in government and in the eco
nomic and religious life of the country were those in education, literature,
and language. Between 1895 and 1945 the mental life of China was in
greater flux than at any time since the Chou.

In 1895, in spite of a few foreshadowings of change, China's intellectual
life was still shaped almost entirely by the civil service examinations.
Through these led the road to power and social recognition, and all formal
education was determined by their requirements. As we shall see in a
later chapter, the system had its virtues as well as its defects. Success in
it demanded, however, so exclusive a devotion to Chinese classical studies
and to the acquisition of skill in writing in a highly artificial literary style
that few of those passing through it had leisure, and scarcely more of
its products had interest for venturing into other fields of learning. China's
literati were all but impervious to what their fellows in the West were
thinking and achieving.

After 1895, and particularly after 1900, conditions rapidly changed.
Schools with curricula combining Western and Chinese subjects were
established in increasing numbers. The abolition, in 1905, of the old
civil service examinations brought to an end the structure by which much
of Chinese thought had been molded. The government planned a school
system in which the old and the new learning would be combined. It had
as its ideal compulsory primary education for all, with higher primary
and secondary schools and universities.

Enormous difficulties confronted the realization of such a plan —
among them the training of the thousands of teachers required, political
influence in appointments to faculties and corruption in administration,
the cost of equipment, and the expense of maintenance and salaries in
a country heavily burdened by the exactions of military leaders. Progress
was slow. Promising universities arose and attracted students, only to dis
integrate after a few years with a change in leadership and the fluctuations
of politics. The disorganization was particularly great in the years 1926-
1928 when the Nationalist Government was fighting to establish itself.
In 1923 about six and a half million pupils were enrolled in government

374

VOLUME I

schools of all grades (a substantial increase over any preceding year
for which figures are available); about half a million were in schools
maintained by Christian missions, Protestant and Roman Catholic; and
an unknown number, perhaps three or three and a half millions, were
in private schools of the old type. Figures for 1931 showed thirty-four
universities and colleges with 17,285 students, sixteen technical institu
tions with 2,168 students, and about thirteen hundred secondary schools
with 234,811 students. Many cities extended their primary schools, espe
cially after 1928. In 1929-1930 primary schools enrolled over eight mil
lion eight hundred thousand children. True to their traditions, the Chinese
had a passion for education and showed an almost pathetic confidence in
it as a means of national salvation. Private initiative supplemented that of
the government.

The quality of the new education often left much to be desired.
Many teachers were badly prepared and owed their positions to family
or political influence. In numbers of instances the physical equipment
of the schools was inadequate. Students were restive under discipline,
whether moral or intellectual, often insisted upon a deciding voice in the
management of the institution, and at times demanded that all be given
credit for the work of a course, regardless of their competence. The
faculty, for fear of losing their positions, usually yielded. Fortunately there
were exceptions. Some schools consistently maintained high standards.

Many Chinese sought the new learning either in Japan or in its sources
in the West. After 1900 their numbers swelled to one of the greatest
student migrations in history. Most ambitious youths were dissatisfied
until they had studied abroad. For some years they flocked to Japan by
the thousands. A large proportion of the prominent military men were
trained there. From time to time the stream to that country dwindled, partly
because of the recurrent strong feeling against Japan after 1915. America
was the host of other thousands, hundreds of whom were financed by the
remitted portions of the Boxer indemnity due to the United States. This
fund, moreover, was drawn upon to establish just outside of Peking a
higher school, Tsing Hua, largely after American models. For years the
United States had more Chinese students than did any European country.
English was by far the most widely used of the European languages and
was much sought. Immediately following World War I, France made a
strong bid for Chinese students, offering many inducements. In 1930,
of the 1,484 applying to the Ministry of Education for passports to study
abroad, 55.6 per cent were expecting to go to Japan, 18 per cent to the
United States, and 11.6 per cent to France. Hundreds were in other Euro
pean countries, notably Great Britain and Germany, and for a short time
before the anti-Communist reaction of 1927, in Russia.

The "returned students" played a notable part in the new China, and

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 375

more and more came into control, especially in politics and education.
In 1929, for example, of the employees of the National Government at
Nanking, nearly six per cent had studied in the United States, nearly four
per cent in Europe, and nearly seven per cent in Japan. A still larger
proportion of the higher offices at Nanking was filled by them.

The Japanese invasion of the 1930's and 1940's worked marked
changes. In Manchuria it discouraged higher education and made the
schools subserve the regime. Many universities in China proper moved
to new sites in the West, beyond the Japanese zone. In "occupied" China
Japan reorganized the curricula of the schools to suit her purposes. In
"free" China the numbers of students in all grades rapidly mounted. Yet
inflation, undernourishment of teachers and students, and lack of proper
buildings, libraries, and laboratories wrought grave hardship.

Chinese students, both those trained abroad and those whose educa
tion had been entirely in China, were inclined to take an active interest
in public affairs. In this they perpetuated the tradition of the older educa
tion, for that had been designed to prepare men for the service of society
through the state. Particularly after 1911, students gave much attention
to political agitation. The "Student Movement," at times organized on
more than a local scale, was often a factor to be reckoned with. For
example, students were prominent in effecting the various boycotts against
Japan and Great Britain. The Student Movement was particularly strong
in middle (secondary) schools. The youths of that age were susceptible
to mob psychology and were easily swayed by older leaders, often from the
outside, who found it to their advantage to organize them. Students were
engrossed in the campaign of the Kuomintang in 1926 and 1927, and as
is the nature of impetuous youth, gravitated toward the left. Many became
zealous propagandists- of Communism. Several of the Communist leaders
had studied in France, Germany, and Russia. When, in 1927, the anti-
Communist reaction set in, numbers were executed for their radicalism.
The authorities now frowned on student activities and admonished the
youth to concentrate on their books. For a time the Student Movement
subsided. In 1931 it revived and had an active part in agitating for direct
action against Japan and in bringing about a change of government in
Nanking. In "free" China in the 1930's and 1940's it largely ceased. The
Kuomintang was unfriendly and organized a "youth corps" to reinforce
its own power. Many students were so pressed by the physical struggle for
existence that they were apathetic. In Communist China youth was strongly
indoctrinated with the ideals of the dominant party.

Inefficiency there was in much of the new education, and energy was
often diverted from intellectual pursuits to political agitation. Yet there
was activity in scholarship. Western and Chinese philosophers were
examined. Some had their advocates and all were freely criticized. Ancient

376 VOLUME I

Chinese thinkers, such as Mo Ti, long looked at askance by the orthodox,
were enthusiastically rediscovered. Reprints were issued of many books
proscribed by the Ch'ing. China's history came in for fearless restudy.
Both the critical procedure developed in the Ch'ing dynasty by the scholars
connected with the Han Learning, and the methods of Western historians,
were applied to the records of China's past — to the discrediting of much
that had been currently accepted, particularly concerning the pre-Con-
fucian period.

Books multiplied, and publishing houses arose as their purveyors.
Translations of hundreds of Western works were printed. Experiments
were made in fresh types of literature. New journals appeared, many of
them inconsequential and most of them ephemeral, but some of them
influential and all of them sympathetic of the variety and freedom of
thought and the desire for literary self-expression which characterized
the young educated class. One of the most famous of the journals was
the Hsin Ch'ing Nien Tsa Chih ("The New Youth Magazine"), begun
in 1916 and first edited by one of the outstanding writers of the period,
Ch'en Tu-hsiu.

Other printed channels of the new ideas were the textbooks for the
schools; the newspapers, which sprang up like mushrooms and most of
which were of very poor quality and used largely for political, personal,
and partisan propaganda; and the placard, with vivid pictures and telling
phrases, developed largely for propaganda.

Moving pictures from the Occident (especially the United States)
invaded the land and achieved popularity. Although looked upon primarily
as a form of amusement, they depicted (even if in distorted and bizarre
fashion) the life of the West and could not fail to be a potent means of
education. As a rule their quality, both morally and aesthetically, was
atrocious. The Western ones were often discards and the increasing
numbers of Chinese films were fully as bad.

Among the most influential scholars of the time was Liang Ch'i-ch'ao,
who first came into prominence in the reform movement of 1898 as a
pupil of K'ang Yu-wei. Although he was more of a popularizer than an
exact and careful thinker, his writings were widely read. Younger than he
but also having an enormous effect upon the thoughtful youth of his time
was Hu Shih (1891-1962). Of a scholarly family and trained in the
older learning, he had a brilliant career as a student in the United States,
and returning to China, wrote and lectured voluminously and ably.

In the general disintegration and modification of the intellectual con
tainers of the past, the language itself could not hope to escape. Hun
dreds of fresh terms described the new objects and ideas. Some of them
were imported from Japan, where for more than a generation Chinese
characters in new combinations had been used to name the machines
and to express the concepts entering from the West. Others were coined

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 377

in China. Various attempts were made to substitute for the cumbersome
though beautiful written characters a simpler and purely phonetic system,
but none achieved wide success. Quite otherwise was the outcome of a
movement to adopt as a medium for scholarship and serious writing a
dignified form of the Mandarin — the vernacular most widely spoken —
rather than the old literary style, remote from the tongue of every day.
The vernacular had often been employed in centuries past for such purposes
as the writing of novels, but the new movement to utilize the pai hua,
or "plain speech" of the people, for literary purposes is usually dated
from a manifesto of Hu Shih, on January 1, 1917. Hu Shih had the courage
of his convictions and employed the pai hua in his own writing. Others
followed, and in spite of some criticism from the conservatives, the pai
hua quickly became the medium of the younger and some of the older
writers and was polished into a worthy literary vehicle. The revolution was
fully as great as the substitution in Eurppe, some centuries earlier, of the
vernaculars for Latin as the language for scholarship. Along with the
use of the pai hua went the effort to have all the country adopt one
dialect of the spoken language, a form of the Mandarin, as the kuo yu,
or national speech. This was taught in the schools, including non-Mandarin
districts (it was made compulsory in 1920), and gained rapid headway.
Especially in the provinces along the southern coast, where Mandarin
had once been as little understood as though it were a foreign tongue,
by 1937 student audiences were easily able to follow addresses in it.

Much of this fresh intellectual life was styled the "New Tide," "Renais
sance," "New Thought," or "New Culture" movement. The '"New Tide"
had many angles. It included the use of the pai hua, experiments in novel
types of literature, the examination of China's past, discussions of philos
ophy, and in general the many intellectual currents which joined in the
stream that was the new China. It strongly emphasized what it believed
to be the value of the scientific approach and made much of the social
science, psychology, and education. It also had a political aspect, the
reinforcement of nationalism. It was individualistic and incorporated a
revolt against the past. It was given impetus by the prolonged visits to
China, for extensive lecture tours, of outstanding Western thinkers, notably
John Dewey and Bertrand Russell.

The "New Tide" had no headquarters. For some years, under its
chancellor (1917-1923), Ts'ai Yiian-p'ei — a Hanlin under the old regime
and later a student in Germany and France — the National University at
Peking was its most active center. A number of brilliant men, such as
Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Hu Shih, served on the faculty, and intellectually the
University was the most stimulating institution in the country. Misfortune
overtook it, however, the more prominent members of its staff resigned,
and the leadership of the movement scattered.

The "New Tide," technically so called, is said to have begun in 1916

378 VOLUME I

and to have reached its height between 1920 and 1923. It was essentially
the proclamation of fresh ideas. When, as was soon the case, these found
wide acceptance and controversy died down, the reason for its existence
passed. As a phase of the coming of novel currents of thought it ceased to
be. However, much of the general intellectual activity of which it was
an expression continued.

What the outcome of all this intellectual ferment would be no one
could accurately predict. For the time, scholars of the new type, both young
and old, were chiefly animated question marks. Much of their skepticism
was purely destructive. The old Confucian orthodoxy had passed. Many
schools of thought, as in the Chou, were competing for the mastery. In the
realm of mind, as in that of politics, chaos was the order of the day. Some
there were, however, who were groping toward the building of a substi
tute for what had been swept aside.

CHANGES IN SOCIAL LIFE, MORALS, AND CUSTOMS, 1894-1945

The revolution in political forms and ideals, the innovations
in economics and religion, and the intellectual unrest could not fail to be
accompanied by great changes in social organization, morals, and customs.
The telephone, the moving picture, the widespread use of electric lights
in cities (which made another type of night life possible), the factory, the
railway, the automobile, the newspaper — all joined, as in the Occident,
to revolutionize society. The innovations were chiefly in the ports, and
here were by no means universal. Even as late as 1945 vast areas were
but slightly affected. Yet the changes had begun and were prominent in the
centers from which they would be most likely to spread through the rest
of the nation.

Many of the old forms of etiquette were passing and were being suc
ceeded by others, often less elaborate and more brusque. Sometimes, in
the transition, a lamentable lack was shown of any of those manners which
ease the intercourse between individuals and groups, and in which the
Chinese had been traditionally skilled.

Old styles of dress were also going. Even before the revolution of
1911, the queue, the form of wearing the hair imposed by the Manchus,
had begun to disappear somewhat furtively. With the revolution came a
wholesale cutting of queues — although that appendage persisted and in
the 1930's was seen even in such a modern city as Shanghai. By the
1930's the coiffure of bobbed hair had been widely adopted among
women and girls. Many abandoned Chinese garb for Western costumes.
While, with the increase of nationalism, especially after 1925, for
a time a decided reaction occurred in favor of the traditional garb, Occi
dental styles were in part retained and later increased again in use. This
was particularly true in the uniforms of soldiers and of school children

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 379

and older students and in the dress of those who had frequent intercourse
with the foreigner in business and diplomacy.

The relations between the sexes were shifting. Freedom of social
intercourse between boys and girls, and men and women, once looked
upon with abhorrence after childhood years and tolerated only with women
of doubtful morals, now became frequent and respectable. Women were
given more liberty. Sometimes they participated in politics and were
employed in government posts. In the radical movement of 1926-1927
even Amazon corps were heard of.

Youth paid less deference to age. More and more young people
insisted upon making their choice of their life mates without the inter
ference or even the advice of parents.

Here and there the large family was breaking up. Instead of mem
bers of several generations living in patriarchal groups in one compound,
as had often been the custom, in the case of such new groups as laborers
in the factories and graduates of secondary and high schools it was not
unusual for each married couple to have its individual home. In some
circles concubinage was regarded with less tolerance than formerly.

Never before in the recorded history of China had the gap in customs
and outlook between generations been so wide and deep.

These changes, like so many of the others, did not come simultaneously
throughout the length and breadth of the nation, nor were they to be
found everywhere in equal degree. They were more in evidence in the cities,
particularly along the coast and where were the largest numbers of for
eigners. The westward movement of population to "free" China in the
1930's and 1940's spread them in hitherto remote and slightly altered
areas. In the 1940's the presence of thousands of American troops accel
erated them. Rural districts were the least affected, and in many places
life was but little modified. Practically everywhere, however, some depart
ure from the past was seen. The old China was going, never to return.

SUMMARY

The years following 1894 witnessed the most startling and
revolutionary changes in China's history. Foreigners threatened the nation's
independence. Although it was not subjugated to an alien political yoke
nearly as fully as it had repeatedly been in earlier centuries, and by the
1930's had made decided progress toward the recovery of such portions
of its independence as had been sacrificed, in almost every other phase of its
life the country yielded to the Occident. It was frequently said that China
was experiencing in one generation a transition as varied and momentous
as that through which Europe had passed in the Renaissance, the Protestant
Reformation, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.
The political framework under which the nation had been living for

380 VOLUME I

more than two thousand years— and to which it owed its unity— was
swept aside, and experiments were being made with Western types of
government. Nothing which could confidently be called stable had emerged.
Administratively the land was divided, and repeated civil strife and banditry
were impoverishing it.

On the other hand, in some respects the country was more nearly a
conscious unit than ever before. Nationalism — reinforced by the new
educational system, the telegraph, the Customs Service, the post office,
and to a less extent by the railway, the steamship, the automobile, and
the airplane — was welding China together and was as effective in produc
ing cultural uniformity as was the old administrative system.

These new institutions and appliances, with others, bade fair also to
transform the economic life of the people.

Religiously the practices and beliefs of the masses were little altered,
but the observances maintained by the state were discontinued or fell
into neglect, and the Confucian theory by which social relationships had
long been ordered was either discredited or on the way toward desuetude.
Christianity made notable gains, and Buddhism experienced something of a
revival, but the majority of the educated were moving toward a religious
skepticism which at times became militant.

Intellectually the younger educated men and women had passed almost
completely out of one world and into another and were dominated by
an enthusiasm for science — of a Western type.

Socially old customs were going, here and there the family was show
ing signs of disintegration, the relations between the sexes were being
revolutionized, and former moral standards were actively challenged.

The nation had struck its tents and was on the march.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books and articles on one or another phase of events, movements, and
problems of the China of these years are numbered by the thousands. The
attempt to select the most useful and significant of them is both necessary and
fallible.

With the Ch'ing Shih Kao, or draft history of the Ch'ing, the long line of
dynastic histories comes to an end, and no single work in Chinese carries, in
so authoritative a manner, the story beyond the beginning of 1912.

Ssu-yii Teng, J. K. Fairbank et al, China's Response to the West. A Docu
mentary Survey, 1839-1923 and the same authors' Research Guide for China's
Response to the West 1839-1923 (both Harvard University Press, 1954, pp.
xi, 296, 84) are useful.

The monumental H. B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese
Empire (3 vols., London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1910-1918), brings the
story to the end of the Ch'ing. H. B. Morse and H. F. MacNair, Far Eastern
Relations (second edition, Boston, 1931) carries the story into 1927 but lacks

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 381

the extensive footnotes which are part of the value of the larger work by
Morse. An enormous amount of material on practically all phases of current
life and events is contained in the successive issues of The China Year Book
(edited by H. T. Montague Bell and H. G. W. Woodhead, 1912-1921, and by
H. G. W. Woodhead, 1922 et seq.; published London 1912-1920, Tientsin
1921-1930, Shanghai 1931-1939). Semiofficial is The Chinese Year Book,
1935-36 (Shanghai, 1935). Fully official is China Handbook, 1937-1943
(New York, 1943). See a comprehensive account in C. N, Li, The Political
History of China, 1840-1928, translated by S. Y. Teng and J, D. Ingalls (New
York, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1956, pp. xii, 545).

A periodical useful for its news and giving a strongly British point of view
is The North China Daily News (in its weekly form The North China Herald)
(Shanghai, 1850-1941).

Pertinent documents for diplomatic history are in Chinese Maritime
Customs, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States
(second edition, 2 vols., Shanghai, 1917), J. V. A. MacMurray's great work,
Treaties and Agreements with and concerning China, 1894-1919 (2 vols., New
York, 1921), and a continuation of the latter, Treaties and Agreements with
and concerning China, 1919-1929 (Washington, 1929). W. W. Willoughby,
Foreign Rights and Interests in China (revised edition,J2 vols., Baltimore, 1927)
is a standard treatise in its field.

On events through the death of the Empress Dowager, see J. O. P, Bland
and E. Backhouse, China under the Empress Dowager (London, 1912), the
Princess Der Ling, Old Buddha (New York, 1928), and the Princess Der Ling,
Two Years in the Forbidden City (New York, 1914). On attempts at reform
preceding the fall of the Manchus, there is a book by M. E. Cameron, The
Reform Movement in China, 1898-1912 (Stanford University Press, 1931).

On foreign aggression between 1894 and 1900, an excellent specialized
study, based upon careful research, and arguing that Great Britain, rather than
the United States, was chiefly responsible for the maintenance of the open door
during these years, is P. Joseph, Foreign Diplomacy in China, 1894-1900 (Lon
don, 1928). Covering practically the same ground, also very carefully done,
is R. S. McCordock, British Far-Eastern Policy, 1894-1900 (New York,
1931). Other accounts are Lord Beresford, The Break-up of China (New
York and London, 1899) and A. R. Colquhoun, China in Transforma
tion (New York, 1912). Good accounts of the share of the United States in
these events are in T. Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (New York, 1922);
A. L. P. Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 1896-1906 (New York,
1928); and P. A. Varg, Open Door Diplomat: The Life of W. W. Rockhill
(University of Illinois Press, 1952, pp. ix, 14L). See also The Memoirs of
Count Witte (translated and edited by A. Yarmolinsky, Garden City, 1921);
and C. S. Campbell, Jr., Special Business Interests and the Open Door Policy
(Yale University Press, 1951, pp. v, 88).

On the Boxer outbreak, some of the best works, amid the great flood of
books on the events of that year, are A. H. Smith, China in Convulsion (2
vols., New York, 1901); W. A. P. Martin, The Siege in Peking. China against
the World (New York, 1900); Putnam Weale (B. Lenox Simpson), Indiscreet
Letters from Peking (London, 1906) (all three by eye-witnesses of much that
they narrate); G. N. Steiger, China and the Occident: the Origin and Develop
ment of the Boxer Movement (Yale University Press, 1927); J. J. L. Duyven-
dak (translator), The Diary of His Excellency Ching-shan. Being a Chinese

382 VOLUME I

Account of the Boxer Troubles (Leyden, 1924); J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Ching-
shan's Diary— A Mystification" Toung Pao, Vol. 33, pp. 268 et seq,\ W.
Lewisohn, "Some Critical Notes on the so-called 'Diary of His Excellency
Ching-shanV' Monumenta Serica, Vol. 2, fasc. 1, pp. 191-202; Report of
William W. Rockhill, Late Commissioner to China, with Accompanying Docu
ments (57th Congress, Senate Doc. 67, Washington, 1901); Wu Yung, The
Flight of An Empress, translated by Ida Pruitt (Yale University Press, 1936);
C. C Tan, The Boxer Catastrophe (New York, Columbia University Press,
1955, pp. ix, 276); Victor Purcell, The Boxer Uprising. A Background Study
(Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. xiv, 348, with an informative discus
sion of the controversial diary of Ching-shan.

On the Russo-Japanese War are K. Asakawa, The Russo-Japanese Conflict
(Boston, 1904), scholarly, emphasizing the Japanese side of the struggle; T.
Dennett, Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War (Garden City, 1925), very
well done; E. J. Dillon, The Eclipse of Russia (New York, 1918), giving some
thing of the views of Count Witte; A. M. Pooley (editor), The Secret Memoirs
of Count Tadasu Hayashi (New York, 1915), by a leading Japanese statesman,
especially important on the events centering around the formation of the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

An unusually stimulating description of conditions in China, chiefly social,
on the eve of the revolution of 1911, is in E. A. Ross, The Changing Chinese
(New York, 1911). The author, a noted American sociologist, gives here his
impressions from several months of travel in China.

On all phases of China's history beginning after 1911, Pacific Affairs
(Honolulu, New York, Vancouver, B.C., successively, 1928 ff.) often con
tains important articles on China. Another excellent periodical, valuable par
ticularly for documents on foreign and domestic politics, is The Chinese Social
and Political Science Review (Peking, 1917-1939).

On internal history, chiefly political, on the beginnings and early years of
the Republic, are Paul Monroe, China: A Nation in Evolution (New York,
1928), covering all phases of China's life, by an American educator who had
repeatedly visited China and who had known many of her leading men; A, N.
Holcombe, The Chinese Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), by a professor
of government at Harvard, who spent several months in China and who wrote
chiefly but not entirely on developments after 1925; and S. K. Hornbeck, China
To-day: Political (Boston, 1927), a succinct summary by a competent scholar.
Particularly valuable is the series by L. Wieger, Chine Moderne, published by
the Jesuit Mission Press at Hsien Hsien (Hopei) at somewhat irregular intervals,
beginning with 1921. It contains French translations and summaries of an im
mense variety of Chinese writings. Also useful, in varying degrees, on China's
internal history are S. F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, Wm.
Mullan & Son, 1950), pp. 639-866; George E. Sokolsky, The Tinder Box of
Asia (Garden City, 1932), by a journalist, and covering the Manchurian affair
of 1931-1932 as well as China's internal affairs; R. F. Johnston, Twilight in
the Forbidden City (New York, 1934), an intimate but biased account by an
English tutor of P'u-i; H. F. MacNair, China in Revolution. An Analysis of
Politics and Militarism under the Republic (Chicago, 1931), which covers in
brief survey the story from 1911 to 1931; Jerome Ch'en, Yuan Shih-k'ai, 1859-
1916; Brutus Assumes the Purple (Stanford University Press, 1961, pp. 290);
Chiin-tu Hsiieh, Huang Hsing and the Chinese Revolution (Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1961, pp. xi, 260); F. W. Houn, Central Government in China,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 383

1912-1928 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957, pp. ix, 246); E. V. Dingle,
China's Revolution: 1911-1912 (Shanghai, 1912), by one who was in China
at the time; Anna Louise Strong, China's Millions (New York, 1928), an
account, by a sympathetic eye-witness, of the radical Kuomintang activities in
Central China in 1927; H. R. Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution
(revised edition, Stanford University Press, 1951, pp. xv, 382), on events
1925-1921; H. A. Van Dorn, Twenty Years of the Chinese Republic (New
York, 1932), very sympathetic with the Chinese and covering intellectual,
religious, social, and economic, as well as political developments; three books
giving the viewpoint of the left wing of the Kuomintang, the first of them a
history of the party: T'ang Leang-li, Wang Ching-wei, A Political Biography
(Tientsin, 1931), Wang Ching-wei, The Chinese Revolution, Essays and
Documents (Tientsin, 1931), and Hu Shih and Lin Yu-tang, China's Own
Critics, A Selection of Essays (Tientsin, 1931); Sun Yat-sen, San Min Chu 1.
The Three Principles of the People, translated by F. W. Price, edited by L. T.
Chen (Shanghai, 1927), the standard translation into English of the most
widely influential of Dr. Sun's books; S. C. Leng and N. D. Palmer, Sun
Yat-sen and Communism (New York, Frederick A. Prager, 1960, pp. viii, 234);
the best biography of Sun Yat-sen, L. Sharman, Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its
Meaning, a Critical Biography (New York, The John Day Co., 1934, pp. xvii,
418) ; H. M. Vinacke, Modern Constitutional Development in China (Princeton,
1920); M. T. Z. Tyau, Two Years of Nationalistic China (Shanghai, 1930),
largely an account, sympathetic, of the organization of the Kuomintang and the
Nationalist Government at Nanking, in 1930; P. M. A. Linebarger, Govern
ment in Republican China (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1938, pp. xv,
203); D. G. Gillin, "Portrait of a Warlord: Yen Shi-shan in Shansi Province,
1911-1930," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 289-306; E. Snow,
Red Star Over China (New York, 1938); B. I. Schwartz, Chinese Communism
and the Rise of Mao (Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 258); C. and W.
Band, Two Years with the Chinese Communists (Yale University Press, 1948,
pp. xii, 347) ; H. Forman, Report from Red China (New York, Henry Holt and
Co., 1945, pp. iv, 250); B. Compton, translator, Mao's China: Party Reform
Documents, 1942-44 (University of Washington Press, 1952, pp. lii, 278); G.
Stein, The Challenge of Red China (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1945,
pp. x, 490); T. H. White and A. Jacoby, Thunder out of China (New York,
William Sloane Associates, 1946, pp. xvii, 431); T. L. Hsiao, Power Relations
within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930-1934 (New York, Paragon
Book Gallery, 1961) ; R. L. Powell, The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895-
1912 (Princeton University Press, 1955, pp. 396); F. F. Liu, A Military History
of Modern China, 1924-1949 (Princeton University Press, 1956, pp. xii, 312).
On the underground resistance to Japan, beginning in 1937, see Loo Pin-fei, It
is Dark Underground (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946, pp. 200), an
account by a student participant.

On the internal political history of China after 1937, see three excellent
studies, each approaching the scene from a somewhat different angle: P. M.
Linebarger, The China of Chiang Kai-shek: a Political Study (Boston, 1941);
L. K. Rosinger, China's Wartime Politics, 1937-1944 (Princeton, 1944); and
D. H. Rowe, China among the Powers (New York, 1945).

No really good biography of Chiang Kai-shek has yet been written. A
conventional one, favorable to him, is H. H. Chang, Chiang Kai-shek, Asia's
Man of Destiny (Garden City, 1944). More objective is R. Berkov, Strong Man

384 VOLUME I

of China (Boston, 1938). Translations of some of his writings are Chiang
Kai-shek, All We Are and All We Have (New York, 1943) and Chiang Kai-
shek, Resistance and Reconstruction (New York, 1943). Selections from the
writings of his colorful wife are in May-ling Soong Chiang, This Is Our China
(New York, 1940).

On the foreign settlements in Shanghai there are C. B. Maybon and J.
Fredet, Histoire de la Concession Francaise de Changhai (Paris, 1929); G.
Lanning and L. Couling, The History of Shanghai (Shanghai, 1902); F. L. H.
Pott, A Short History of Shanghai (Shanghai, 1928); R. H. Barnett, Economic
Shanghai: Hostage to Politics, 1937-1941 (New York, 1943); and A. M.
Kotenev, Shanghai. Its Mixed Court and Council (Shanghai, 1925). The re
port of Mr. Justice Feetham to the Shanghai Municipal Council made in 1931
is a notable document. A summary, by Feetham, of Vol. 1 is in The China Year
Book, 1931-2, pp. 45-86.

On the foreign relations of China after 1905-1945, the following are among
the most useful: C. Vevier, The United States and China, 1906-1913: A Study
of Finance and Diplomacy (Rutgers University Press, 1955, pp, ix, 229); T. E.
La Fargue, China and the World War (Stanford, 1937); J. G. Reid, The
Manchu Abdication and the Powers, 1908-1912 (Berkeley, 1935); F. V.
Field, American Participation in the China Consortiums (Chicago, 1931); H.
Croly, Willard Straight (New York, 1924), the biography of a young American
who attempted to maintain the open door in Manchuria and had much to do
with negotiating international loans for China; P. S. Reinsch, An American
Diplomat in China (Garden City, 1922), a narrative of events by the American
Minister to China during the World War; R. H. Fifield, Woodrow Wilson and
the Far East: The Diplomacy of the Shantung Question (New York, Crowell,
1952, pp. xv, 383); T. Y. Li, Woodrow Wilson's China Policy, 1913-1917
(University of Kansas City Press, 1952, pp. 268); R. W. Curry, Woodrow
Wilson and Far Eastern Policy, 1913-1921 (New York, Bookman Associates,
1957, pp. 411); R. L. Buell, The Washington Conference (New York, 1922),
the best general report of that gathering; W. W. Willoughby, China at the
Conference (Baltimore, 1922), a fuller account of the actions of the Washing
ton Conference which affected China; Report of Commission on Extraterritori
ality in China (Washington, 1926), the official findings of the international
commission promised at the Washington Conference; H. K. Norton, China
and the Powers (New York, 1927), excellent; V. A. Yakhontoff, Russia and
the Soviet Union in the Far East (New York, 1931), a history of the inter
national situation in East Asia with a bias in favor of Soviet Russia; Louis
Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs. A History of Relations between the
Soviet Union and the Rest of the World (New York, 1930), informed and
moderately favorable to Russia; Wong Ching-wai, China and the Nations
(New York, 1927), setting forth the foreign policies of the radicals of the
Kuomintang; T. F. Millard, The End of Extraterritoriality in China (Shanghai,
1931), siding with the Chinese and valuable for its many documents and ap
pendices; W. R. Fishel, The End of Extraterritoriality in China (University of
California Press, 1952, pp. xi, 318); Robert T. Pollard, China's Foreign Re
lations 1917-1931 (New York, 1933), a carefully written survey of these
years. See also the important book, A. W. Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy
of the United States (New York, 1938); H. L. Stimson, The Far Eastern
Crisis (New York, 1936); Sara R. Smith, The Manchurian Crisis, 1931-1932
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1948, pp. 281), a critical account of

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 385

Stimson; P. H. Clyde, United States Policy Toward China. Diplomatic and
Public Documents, 1839-1939 (Durham, 1940); R. T. Pollard, China's Foreign
Relations, 1917-1931 (New York, 1933); W. Levi, Modern China's Foreign
Policy (University of Minnesota Press, 1953, pp. 399); P. Fleming, Bayonets
to Lhasa (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1961, pp. 319), about the expedition
of 1904; A. S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924 (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1954, pp. x, 300); A. S. Whiting and Cheng
Shih-ts'ai, Sinkiang, Pawn or Pivot (Michigan State University Press, 1958, pp.
xxii, 314); C. Brandt, Stalin's Failure in China, 1924-1927 (Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1958, pp. xv, 226); C. M. Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How,
editors, Documents on Communism, Nationalism and Soviet Advisers in China,
1918-1927: Papers Seized in the 1927 Peking Raid (New York, Columbia Uni
versity Press, 1956, pp. xviii, 617) ; P. S. H. Tang, Russian and Soviet Policy in
Manchuria and Outer Mongolia, 1911-1931 (Duke University Press, pp. xx,
494); C. B. McLane, Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists, 1931-1946
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1958); G. E. Taylor, The Struggle for
North China (New York, 1940); H. S. Quigley, Far Eastern War, 1937-1941
(Boston, 1942); I. S. Friedman, British Relations with China, 1931-1939 (New
York, 1940); D. Borg, American Policy and the Chinese Revolution (New
York, The Macmillan Co., 1947, pp. x, 439).

On Manchuria, among others, there are C. W. Young, Japan's Jurisdiction
and International Legal Position in Manchuria (3 vols., Baltimore, 1931);
P. H. Clyde, International Rivalries in Manchuria (Columbus, 1926), an
historical survey; Shuhsi Hsu, China and Her Political Entity (New York,
1926), a scholarly study, with a pro-Chinese bias, of China's foreign relations
with reference to Korea, Manchuria, and Mongolia; Owen Lattimore, Man
churia, Cradle of Conflict (New York, 1932), a thoughtful and independent
description and analysis by one who traveled extensively in Manchuria. The
report of the Lytton Commission appointed by the League of Nations is
singularly fair. It is in League of Nations. Appeal by the Chinese Government.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry (Series of League of Nations Publica
tions, VII. Political. 1932. VII, 12). The story of the League of Nations'
relation to the Sino-Japanese dispute into the spring of 1932 is in Felix Morley,
The Society of Nations (Washington, 1932). The Japanese case is officially
presented in two large volumes, The Present Condition of China. Document A
(July, 1932) and Relations of Japan with Manchuria and Mongolia. Docu
ment B (July, 1932). The Chinese case is in V. K. Wellington Koo, Memo
randa Presented to the Lytton Commission (2 vols., New York, 1932). Some
Chinese fiction portraying the resistance to the Japanese is translated in Tien
Chun, Village in August (New York, 1942). See also F. C. Jones, Manchuria
since 1931 (Oxford University Press, 1949, pp. vii, 256); Akira Iriye, "Chang
Hsiieh-Liang and the Japanese," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 20, pp.
33-44.

On economic history and conditions, some excellent books are A. Feuer-
werker, China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai and the Mandarin
Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. xii, 311, x, xxii); E. C.
Carlson, The Kaiping Mines (1877-1912) (Harvard University Press, 1951,
pp. 174); L. P. Van Slyke, "Liang Sou-ming and the Rural Reconstruction
Movement," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 18, pp. 457-474; C. F. Remer,
The Foreign Trade of China (Shanghai, 1926), a careful historical survey of
China's foreign commerce in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Julean

386

VOLUME I

Arnold, China, A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington, 1926),
by a commercial attache of the American legation in China; R. H. Tawney,
Land and Labour in China (1932), by a distinguished British expert; T. P.
Meng and S. D. Gamble, "Prices, Wages and the Standard of Living at Peking,
1900-1924," Special Supplement to The Chinese Social and Political Science
Review, July, 1926. Two excellent books dealing with economic conditions,
especially in foreign trade, are Edith E. Ware, Business and Politics in the Far
East (Yale University Press, 1932) and Grover Clark, Economic Rivalries in
China (Yale University Press, 1932). An even more inclusive book is J. B.
Condliffe, China To-day. Economic (Boston, 1932). See also C. F. Remer,
Foreign Investments in China (New York, 1933); Chang Kia-ngau, China's
Struggle for Railway Development (New York, 1943); H. Freyn, Free China's
New Deal (New York, 1943); Kuo-heng Shih, China Enters the Machine Age.
A Study of Chinese War Industry (Harvard University Press, 1944); E. M.
Hinder, Life and Labour in Shanghai (New York, 1944); Y. K. Cheng,
Foreign Trade and Industrial Development in China: An Historical and Inte
grated Analysis Through 1948 (University Press of Washington, D. C., 1956,
pp. xi, 278) ; G. C. Allen and A. G. Donnithorne, Western Enterprise in Far
Eastern Economic Development: China and Japan (London, George Allen &
Unwin, 1954, pp. 292).

Some of the new religious movements in China are described by L. Hodous
in The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai, 1922), pp. 27-31. K. S.
Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York, 1929), the
standard book on its subject, brings the story down into 1927. Important
reference books and periodicals for Protestant missions are The Christian
Occupation of China, edited by M. T. Stauffer (Shanghai, 1922); The Chinese
Recorder (a monthly, covering all Protestant missions, and published at
Foochow, 1867-1872, and at Shanghai, 1874-1941); The China Mission Year
Book (with occasional gaps, published yearly at Shanghai, 1910-1939, and
beginning with 1926 called The China Christian Year Book). On Roman
Catholic missions see J. M. Planchet, Les Missions de Chine et du Japon
(published about every other year, 15 vols., 1916-1940); Cardinal Celso
Costantini, Reforme des Missions au XXe Siecle, translated and adapted from
the Italian by Jean Bruls (Paris, Casterman, 1960), pp. 280.

On intellectual movements, including those leading to 1898 and the
Renaissance, see K. C. Hsiao, "Weng Tung-no and 'the Reform Movement
of 1898," Tsing Hua Journal of Asiatic Studies, New Series, Apr., 1957, pp.
111-244; Paul Monroe, A Report on Education in China (New York, 1922);
R. S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1912 (Shanghai, 1933);
Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago, 1934); P. W. Kuo, The Chinese
System of Public Education (New York, 1914); T. C. Wang, The Youth
Movement of China (New York, 1928); C. H. Peake, Nationalism and Educa
tion in Modern China (New York, 1932); T'ang Leang-li, China in Revolt
(London, 1927); Ph. de Vargas, "Some Elements in the Chinese Renaissance,"
New China Review, April and June, 1922; C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern
Chinese Fiction, 1917-1957 (Yale University Press, 1961, pp. xii, 662). The
autobiography of Ku Chieh-kang, who bridged the transition between the old
and the new, and a very intimate and revealing document showing the forces
playing on men of his kind and his reaction to them, has been translated by
A. W. Hummel in The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, Being the
Preface to a Symposium in Ancient Chinese History (Ku Shih Pien) (Ley den,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 387

1931). See also J. De Francis, Nationalism and Language Reform in China
(Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. xi, 306); J. R. Levenson, Liang
Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Harvard University Press, 1959,
pp. xii, 256); O. Briere, Fifty Years of Chinese Philosophy, 1898-1950,
translated from the French by L. G. Thompson (London, George Allen &
Unwin, 1956, pp. 158); J. R. Levenson, "111 Wind in the Well-Field: The
Erosion of the Confucian Ground of Controversy," in A. F. Wright, editor,
The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 268-287;
T. S. Chow, "The Anti-Confucian Movement in Early Republican China," in
ibid., pp. 288-312; Liu T'ieh-yun, The Travels of Lao Ts'an, translated by H.
Shadick (Cornell University Press, 1952, pp. xxiii, 277), a novel of the early
years of the twentieth century; T. T. Chow, The May Fourth Movement:
Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 1960), on
the years 1917-1921; Wolfgang Frank, The Reforms and Abolition of the
Traditional Chinese Examination System (Center for East Asian Studies,
Harvard University, 1960, pp. viii, 100); W. T. de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and
Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York, Columbia Uni
versity Press, I960), pp. 721-857; J. R. Levenson, "Suggestiveness of
Vestiges: Confucianism and Monarchy at the Last," in A. F. Wright, editor,
Confucianism in Action (Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 244-257: J. R.
Levenson, "Liao Ping and the Confucian Departure from History," in A. F.
Wright, editor, Confucian Personalities (Stanford University Press, 1962); R. C.
Howard, "K'ang Yu-wei (1858-1927): His Intellectual Background and Early
Thought," in ibid. See also the bibliography at the end of Chapter XIX.

On social changes, see Lady Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese Lady and Certain
of her Contemporaries (New York, 1930); William Hung (editor), As It
Looks to Young China (New York, 1932).

For additional bibliography, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography y (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 38-47.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE TRANSFORMATION WROUGHT BY THE
IMPACT OF THE OCCIDENT:
IV. The Communists Capture the Mainland and
Undertake the Thorough Remaking of China
(A.D. 1945-)

On the defeat of the Japanese and the end of World War II
China entered upon another stage in the transformation wrought by the
impact of the Occident. In its course the revolution which had begun
following the defeat by the Japanese fifty years earlier became progres
sively more sweeping. The Communists took possession of the mainland.
Professing to adhere to the ideology set forth by Karl Marx, they set about
a reorganization of the entire life of the country: political, social, economic,
religious, and intellectual. In the process much of the old that had sur
vived the previous stages of the revolution was swept into the discard.
Much continued. Some basic attitudes persisted and were even strengthened.
Among them were a sense of cultural superiority and with it the ambition
to spread the Chinese version of Communism, especially among un
developed nations; an ethnocentrism and chauvinism heightened by con
tact with Western nationalism; the determination to master all the area
which had been tributary to the Ch'ing Dynasty at its height; an ambition
to make China a force to be reckoned with the world around; the sub
ordination of the military to the civil authority; the tradition of great public
works undertaken by the state; and an appeal to reason in political edu
cation, ethics, and interpersonal relations. Although modified, the language
and the characters through which the language was written were preserved.
Yet at no time since the Chou, Ch'in, and Han, when the main outlines of
China's culture had been shaped, had such drastic changes been wrought.
When, in 1964, these lines were penned, the revolution of which the
Communist stage was the latest had only begun. No one could know what

388

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 389

the next stage would be. The observer could merely be sure that change
would continue.

THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA IS CONFRONTED BY
THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION

The defeat of the Japanese in the summer of 1945 con
fronted the National Government with the problems of reconstruction.
Throughout the war the Chinese had been buoyed up by the hope of a
better day when once the enemy had been expelled. The cherished dream
envisioned a unified country and rapid recovery from the economic damage
wrought by the invaders and the fighting which had expelled them.

The obstacles to the fulfillment of the dream were formidable. Not
since the abdication of the Ch'ing had any one government succeeded in
making its authority effective in all the territory that had been ruled by
that dynasty. As we have seen, the country had been divided among
various war lords. The pattern that had characterized the downfall of earlier
ruling houses had been repeated. Strong men had collected armed forces
and had contended for the mastery of the realm. Had it not been for the
irruption of the Occident, if the precedent of earlier centuries had persisted,
after a shorter or longer period one of the competitors would have elimi
nated his rivals and inaugurated a new dynasty. But from the Occident had
come the ideal of another form of government, a republic. The continuation
of the Confucian monarchy was impossible. Under the leadership of Sun
Yat-sen, followed by Chiang Kai-shek, the Republic of China had been
created. The Republic of China was dominated by the Kuomintang, or
Nationalist Party. But even before the Japanese invasion it had not
brought all the former Ch4ng domains to full loyalty. Chiang Kai-shek had
sought to rule through the forms of a republic. But his was in essence a
one-man regime. He had marked ability and tended to think of the welfare
of the country as being dependent on himself. He regarded himself as a
Christian, but his ideals were compounded of that faith, the program of
Sun Yat-sen, and the Confucian heritage, with the last in the ascendant.
In the top echelons as well as the lower ranks of the government that Chiang
headed were many men of Western training who wished to see China be
come a democracy as that term was understood in the Anglo-Saxon world.
However, they were a minority. Nor were they united. Moreover, large
numbers of influential men were not committed to that ideal. As in earlier
centuries, many officeholders were chiefly concerned to fill the rice bowls
of themselves and their kindred, or sought power for its own sake. As was
to be expected, under such circumstances officialdom was honeycombed
with corruption. Outside the Kuomintang were numbers who were not in
accord with that party and who, while seeking to promote democracy,

390 VOLUME i

headed factions that advocated differing approaches to China's problem
and sought a voice in the government. In addition, the Kuomintang had
always to face the Communist regime. Each profoundly distrusted the other
and was intent on the full mastery of the country.

Added to the political and ideological factors were chronic economic
problems, rendered acute by the years of war. The population, already
grown beyond the means of subsistence under the prewar economic struc
ture, had been further impoverished by long domestic conflict and foreign
invasion. Railways and other means of transportation, never sufficient for
the requirements of the new age, had deteriorated. The beginnings of
industrialization had suffered. Inflation was both a grim reality and a con
tinuing threat. Physical relief to the millions of sufferers from the war was
imperative.

To top it all, the Republic of China was exhausted by the long struggle
against the Japanese. It had borne the main brunt of the invasion. It had
been saved partly by its determined resistance and partly by the aid of its
Western friends, especially the United States. But for that aid it would
probably have collapsed.

COMPLICATED INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The problems of reconstruction were complicated by the
web of international relations in which China was entangled. As we have
repeatedly seen, in the nineteenth and the fore part of the twentieth century
foreign powers had thrust themselves on the Empire, and the attempt of
the Boxers to free the land had only compromised more drastically the
independence of the country. The Japanese invasion and World War II
had added further complications.

A new factor brought by the war was the United Nations. The Republic
of China was represented in the gathering in San Francisco in the spring
of 1945 which drew up the charter of that body. Along with the U.S.S.R.,
France, Great Britain, and the United States, it was given a permanent
seat on the Security Council The charter was signed in June, 1945, and
on the ratification of the required number of governments, came into
effect in October of that year.

Another new problem was the repatriation of the Japanese, both the
armed forces and the civilians. The United States gave substantial assistance,
but the burden was primarily one for the Republic of China and was added
to the others which that regime had to bear and at a time when they were
particularly pressing.

Relations with the U.S.S.R. presented difficulties. For nearly three
centuries Russia had constituted a recurring menace. The land frontier
between the Ch'ing Empire and Russia was longer than any other on the

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 391

planet. Again and again friction had developed. The Republic of China
had not been able to escape it. At the end of World War II the U.S.S.R.
had official relations with it rather than with the Communists. In April,
1945, Stalin assured Patrick Jay Hurley, the American Ambassador to
China, when the latter saw him in Moscow, that the U.S.S.R. would join
with the United States and Great Britain in bringing about the unification
of the armed forces in China and declared that he regarded Chiang Kai-
shek as "selfless" and a "patriot." The following month Stalin told Harry
Hopkins, a representative of President Truman, that the Chinese Com
munists were not qualified to unify China, that Chiang Kai-shek was the
only Chinese able to do it, and that the U.S.S.R. looked to the United States
to assist in the reconstruction of China. Mao Tse-tung's emphasis upon
the peasants rather than the industrial workers as the basis for revolution
differed from that of Stalin. Stalin was intent on recovering for Russia
what had been lost to Japan in the war of 1904-1905. In February, 1945,
at Yalta, where China was not represented, Prime Minister Churchill, Presi
dent Roosevelt, and Marshal Stalin agreed that Dairen was to be inter
nationalized, that the pre-eminent interests of the U.S.S.R. there were to be
recognized, that the lease on Port Arthur which Russia had obtained in
1898 and had been forced to give to Japan in 1905 was to be assigned to
the U.S.S.R., that the Chinese Eastern Railway and the South Manchurian
Railway, providing as they did Russian access to Dairen, were to be placed
under a joint Soviet-Chinese company, but with* assurance of the preserva
tion of the Russian interests in the line, and that the status quo in the
Mongolian People's Republic (Outer Mongolia) was to be preserved. Yet
the Yalta arrangements also provided that China was to have full sover
eignty in Manchuria, and that the provisions concerning Dairen, Port
Arthur, the railways, and Outer Mongolia were to require tide concurrence
of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek bitterly resented the fact that the
Yalta negotiations had been carried through without consulting him. He
did what he could to salvage all that was possible.

On August 14, 1945, after prolonged negotiations, the Republic of
China and the U.S.S.R. signed a treaty and entered into agreements by
which they promised to collaborate in the common war against Japan, not
to enter into any alliance directed against the other, to work together
closely after the coming of peace, to respect the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of both governments, and not to interfere in the internal affairs
of either. The treaty was to remain in force for thirty years. In an exchange
of notes the U.S.S.R. "reaffirmed its respect for China's full sovereignty"
over Manchuria, and China agreed to the independence of Outer Mongolia
if a plebiscite in that country favored it, gave the U.S.S.R. a favored posi
tion in Dairen, approved the joint use of Port Arthur by the two powers,
the defense of that port by Russia, and the union of the Chinese Eastern

392 VOLUME i

and South Manchurian Railways under the equal ownership of China and
Russia with a Russian citizen as manager. The U.S.S.R. thereupon rushed
troops into Manchuria. At the request of the Republic of China it delayed
its evacuation of Mukden until that government could take possession.
However, the Russians systematically stripped Manchuria of much of its
machinery and sent it into their own territory. They disarmed the Japanese.
When they had done so they withdrew but left behind them large quantities
of Japanese arms and ammunition. The Communists moved into the coun
tryside and seized them.

THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA ATTEMPTS RECONSTRUCTION

In the face of the many domestic difficulties and the inter
national complications, the government of the Republic of China set itself
to the herculean task of reconstruction. It endeavored to accomplish what
it had been unable to achieve even before it was weakened by the pro
longed attack by the Japanese. It attempted to extend its administration
not only to areas which it had controlled before 1931, but also to the
regions which had long been under the Japanese. Of these the chief were
Manchuria, where its authority had never been effectively asserted, and
Taiwan (Formosa), which had been under Japanese rule since 1895. By
the year 1947 progress had been made toward attaining these goals. The
National Government had* stationed troops in some of the chief cities of
Manchuria, notably Mukden. It had placed a governor over Taiwan.
However, in Manchuria the Communists were taking possession of the
countryside. The governor placed in charge of Taiwan was rapacious and
corrupt. Although by blood and language the large majority of the
Taiwanese were Chinese, they had long been separated from the mainland
and viewed officials sent by the National Government as foreigners. The
conduct of the new arrivals further alienated them.

In areas in China proper recently occupied by the Japanese, numbers
of the representatives of lie National Government aroused hostility. They
tended to regard the Chinese who had remained under Japanese rule as
collaborators with the recent enemy. The capital of the Republic of China
was once more established in Nanking. Officials who returned there from
"free" China and the citizens who had been under the rule of the Japanese
puppets had had such different experiences that co-operation in recon
struction was difficult.

Loud complaints were heard of the lack of democracy in the National
jGovermnent The regime was in the hands of one party, the Kuomintang.
Sun Yat-sen had believed that to be necessary, but had professed to see
in it a temporary stage which was to be followed by one in which other
parties would share. Many said that the government under the Kuomintang

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 393

was a police state. Numbers of dissidents, especially among the students,
a class which had long had a record of vigorous protest and action against
administrations which they did not like, were imprisoned, or in other ways
visited with severe measures. The Communists were especially vocal.

FRIENDLY ATTEMPTS BY FOREIGNERS TO HELP
WITH RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION

Friends of China in other countries were moved by the plight
of the people and the stupendous task which the widespread suSering pre
sented to a government crippled by war, confronted with multitudinous
problems, and handicapped by corruption and inefficiency. From many
lands and agencies, some private and some official, efforts at relief came.
Although only recently organized, UNRRA (the United Nations Relief
and Rehabilitation Administration) was one channel. The United States
Government was another agency. Christian missionary organizations, both
Roman Catholic and Protestant, were active. Roman Catholics and
Protestants strove not only to help in physical relief, but also to renew
their varied programs which had been interrupted by the war.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES SEEKS TO
HELP RESTORE INTERNAL PEACE

Conditions in China were of deep concern to the Government
of the United States. The United States had long interested itself in China.
It had sought to safeguard the independence and the territorial and ad
ministrative integrity of China. It had been drawn into active belligerency
in World War II by its efforts to curb Japan's aggression in China. It had
borne the main burden of the defeat of Japan by sea and by air and during
the war had given substantial direct help to the Chungking government. In
the course of its effort to defeat Japan the United States Government had
endeavored, in vain, to induce the regimes headed respectively by Chiang
Kai-shek and the Communists to unite in presenting a common front to
the invaders.

Now that Japan was eliminated, the United States Government believed
that if China was to achieve reconstruction internal unity was imperative.
Its representatives helped in the disarming and repatriation of the Japanese
and aided the National Government in reoccupying the parts of the
country which had been under Japanese rule. It supported the forces of
the National Government with military supplies, naval vessels, and air
equipment.

Late in 1945 President Truman sent General George C. Marshall to
China as his personal representative to help in the "unification of China

394 VOLUME I

by peaceful, democratic methods." Marshall had had experience in China
and had been chief of staff in all theatres in World War II. He was a man
of high integrity, marked ability, and complete selflessness. On his arrival,
early in January, 1946, he was able to induce the Political Consultative
Conference called by Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking to endorse a program
for bringing together all parties, including the Kuomintang and the Com
munists, under the leadership of Chiang and the guidance of the principles
of the San Min Chu /, "to construct a new China, unified, free, and demo
cratic." Marshall induced the National Government and the Communists
to cease fighting each other, to join in creating one national army, and to
set up executive headquarters in Peip'ing. The carrying out of the agree
ment was entrusted to the executive headquarters, and on it the National
Government, the Communists, and the United States were represented. In
spite of this agreement, fighting broke out between the Communists and
troops of the National Government, but Marshall succeeded (June, 1946)
in bringing about a truce.

When the capital of the National Government was returned to Nanking
negotiations continued, but the conflicting aims of the Kuomintang and the
Communists proved irreconcilable. Each was intent on controlling all the
country. Each accused the other of bad faith. The Communists refused
to send representatives to the National Assembly, which met in Nanking
in November, 1946, to frame a constitution which, it was hoped, would
fulfill the dream of Sun Yat-sen by ending the period of tutelage under one
party and introducing a democratic multiparty regime. The Communists
were enraged by the dispatch of Nationalist troops to North China, a region
which they considered their own. Their anger mounted when, in spite of
Marshall's efforts to bring about a truce, the Nationalists pressed their siege
of Kalgan, a strategic center north of Peip'ing, and took it about a month
before the meeting of the National Assembly.

The United States satisfied neither the extremists in the Kuomintang
nor the Communists. Both accused the American Government of aiding the
other. The Communists especially were loud in their denunciations. At
Marshall's instance, J. Leighton Stuart — a prominent Protestant missionary
educator who had been bora in China, had spent most of his life there,
and had the confidence of many Chinese — was appointed American am
bassador. He and Marshall labored to bring the dissidents together. In
January, 1947, in spite of Chiang Kai-shek's urgent plea that he remain as
his adviser, Marshall left China for Washington and became Secretary of
State.

In the summer of 1947 President Truman sent a mission to China to
ascertain the facts in the situation. It was headed by General Albert C.
Wedemeyer, who had been Chief of Staff for Chiang Kai-shek in the latter
part of the war. He was given ambassadorial rank and with his subordinates

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 395

collected a mass of information. Before leaving China he spoke out publicly
and bluntly. He pointed to the corruption and inefficiency in the National
Government. In reporting to President Truman, he said that the continued
fighting in Manchuria was draining the strength of the National Government
and recommended that the United Nations take immediate action to end
the war there and place the region under a joint trusteeship of China,
Russia, Great Britain, France, and the United States. He held that if this
was not done the Communists would dominate not only Manchuria but the
rest of China as well.

THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT FAILS IN ITS OBJECTIVES
AND IS FORCED OFF THE MAINLAND

Wedemeyer proved a true prophet. In spite of Marshall's
repeated advice, Chiang Kai-shek kept an incompetent and corrupt military
commander in Manchuria and appointed as his successor an able general
who was handicapped by illness and by the lack of trustworthy subordi
nates. Chiang Kai-shek himself went to Peip'ing to direct the campaign in
Manchuria, but he did not succeed in stemming the retreat, and early in
November, 1948, Mukden, the last stronghold of the National Government
in Manchuria, was taken by the Communists. A few weeks earlier Tsinan,
the capital of Shantung, had fallen to them.

Early in January, 1949, the National Government appealed to the
governments of Russia, France, Great Britain, and the United States to act
as intermediaries in the negotiation of peace with the Communists.

The attitude of the Chinese people would have made such action by
the powers futile. The nation as a whole had lost faith in the National
Government. In spite of many officials of ability and integrity, the wide
spread corruption, the inefficiency, and the police measures taken to
restrain dissent had alienated the majority. The final blow to confidence
followed the failure of the attempt of the National Government in the sum
mer of 1948 to curb inflation. The paper currency of the National Govern
ment had rapidly deteriorated in purchasing power. The effort was made
to issue a currency based on gold, and those having that metal were induced
or required to give it to the state in return for the new notes. After a few
weeks the latter shared the fate of the earlier issues. Those who had trusted
the state became hostile. The National Government had palpably lost "the
Mandate of Heaven" — as dynasty after dynasty had done on its approach
ing demise.

The only viable alternative to the National Government or complete
chaos was the Communists. None of the other parties had the numerical
strength or the discipline to fill the vacuum. In 1949 the Communists
rapidly advanced. Possibly to their surprise, resistance quickly crumbled.

396 VOLUME I

On January 15 they occupied Tientsin. The last day of January they took
Peip'ing. On March 24 they seized Taiyiian, the capital of Shansi. On
April 20 they crossed the Yangtze and on April 24 they were in Nanking.
By the end of May they had taken possession of Hankow, Hanyang,
Wuchang, and Shanghai. The National Government moved its capital to
Canton and then to Chungking. The bulk of its troops, chronically unpaid
and with officers whom they did not trust, had no stomach for fighting. In
January, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek retired from the presidency. But he
retained his headship of the Kuomintang, and on March 1, 1950, he
resumed the presidency. By the middle of 1950 he and those who followed
him took refuge on T'aiwan (Formosa). There they continued the outward
forms of the Republic of China. On October 1, 1949, the Communists pro
claimed the People's Republic of China, with its capital at Peip'ing, now
given its earlier name, Peking. They were preparing to drive the National
Government out of its last refuge, when international developments to
which we will turn in a moment prevented the attainment of that goal.
The Communist Party c$5£aits victory partly to the vacuum created by
the weakness of the National Government and its other rivals and partly
to its disciplined leadership and organization. It had recovered from its
defeat in the 1920's and had learned by its long resistance to the National
Government, the endurance of "the Long March" — the arduous journey of
its leadership to escape the pressure of Chiang Kai-shek's forces on its for
mer holdings south of the Yangtze to its new center at Yenan in the North
west — and its sturdy guerrilla resistance to the Japanese. In spite of repeated
internal tensions, its leadership presented a united front to its enemies.
In contrast with the Russian experience with the strife between Trotsky and
Stalin and then the post-mortem denigration of Stalin by Khrushchev, which
were for all the world to see, after the Yenan days that united front was
outwardly preserved — at least until the time when these lines were penned.

THE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP

The Communist leaders continuously most in the eyes of the
world were Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Liu Shao-ch'i, and Chu Te. Mao
Tse-tung (1893 — ) was the son of a peasant in comfortable economic
circumstances in Hunan, the province famous in the second half of the
nineteenth century as the home of Tseng Kuo-fan and Tso Tsung-t'ang,
who had done much to rescue the Ch'ing dynasty from the demise
threatened by the rebellions of the third quarter of that century. He went
to school in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, and was caught up in the
fresh currents that were stirring the youth of his day. He had sufficient
training in the older classical literature to be familiar with it, later to write
poetry in traditional forms, and to preserve a continuing admiration for
the historical fiction of the earlier days. He sensed that the future would

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 397

demand physical fitness, joined with other youths in accustoming his body
to hardship, and acquired the remarkable endurance he displayed in later
years. He was impressed with the writings of the pioneers in the new intel
lectual and social currents, first K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and
then Hu shih and Ch'en Tu-hsiu. After graduating from a normal college
in Changsha in 1916 he went to Peking and was there for two periods,
at least part of the time in Peking University, the center of the throbbing
life of the "New Tide." He worked in the library of that institution and
was an omnivorous reader. Then and in later years he covered much of
the revolutionary thought that was issuing from Chinese pens and from
translations of Western writers. By the summer of 1920 he had become
a convinced Marxist. Not far from the same time Ch'en Tu-hsiu had taken
the same step. Even before arriving at Marxist convictions, Mao had begun
organizing laborers and engaging in political agitation in Hunan. Although
he co-operated with the Communist Party early in the 1920*s he differed
from the then orthodox line and held that the revolution must come from
the peasants rather than from the industrial proletariat. His "heresy" for a
time cut him off from the Party, but in 1931 he was restored to its good
graces and became outstanding in the Communist areas in Kiangsi. In
January, 1935, during the Long March, he was elected the chief of the
Party. From then on his leadership of the Chinese Communists was not
successfully challenged.

Chou En-lai was from a far different background but was also early
swept into the revolutionary tide. Born in 1898, he was the son of a scholar
who aspired to office under the Ch'ing dynasty. His father saw to it that he
was early introduced to the traditional learning. In his teens the lad
enrolled in one of the best of the new schools which were combining the
old with the new. He participated in the student movements that protested
against the "unequal treaties," studied in France and Germany, and while
in Europe became noted as a Communist. Returning to China, he quickly
rose to prominence in the Party. He survived various crises in its stormy
history and in Yenan continued to be outstanding. In the years of Com
munist triumph he remained in the front ranks and had much to do with
the foreign diplomacy of the People's Republic of China. Suave and charm
ing when he chose to be, he had the polish that characterized the scholar
official class of the Empire. In this he was in sharp contrast with Mao Tse-
tung, who never attempted to throw off the manners of his peasant rearing.

Like Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch'i was a native of Hunan, He, too,
was the son of a prosperous fanner. After graduating from a normal college
in Changsha he went to Shanghai and enlisted in the Socialist cause. Re
turning to Central China, he became a labor organizer. He was soon
active in the national labor movement. He was repeatedly in Russia. By
1945 he was in the inner circles of the Chinese Communist Party and was
regarded as an outstanding expert in Communist theory. He was not as

398 VOLUME I

much in the public eye as were Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, but he
was eventually (1959) raised to the titular head of the state.

Chu T£ was the military man of the quartette. Born in 1886 in
Szechwan of a well-to-do father, as a boy he was given the traditional
classical education. In his early twenties he was introduced to Western
subjects and acquired a military training. After the revolution that upset
the Ch'ing dynasty, he continued a military career and eventually became
an adherent of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. In 1924 he went to
Germany to study and while there was converted to Communism. After
returning to China, he organized a Communist force in the mountains of
Hunan and Kiangsi, joined with Mao Tse-tung, and was appointed the
commander-in-chief of the Red army. He shared in the Long March.
When the Communists mastered the mainland, he was put in high office
in the People's Republic.

THE PROBLEMS CONFRONTING THE COMMUNISTS

The Communist leaders and their cohorts faced an array of
problems which might well have discouraged even as determined and con
vinced a company as were they. Many of the obstacles which had con
fronted the National Government remained and were aggravated by the
failure of that regime. The railroads and other means of communication
were, if possible, in worse state than at the defeat of the Japanese. The
currency was worthless. The Russians had carried off most of the trans
portable machinery of the industrial establishments in Manchuria — where,
thanks to the Japanese, was most of the manufacturing in the country.
Population had outstripped the means of subsistence. In vast areas the
local and provincial governments had broken down. Overseas trade had
not been restored even to its prewar level. Many foreign countries regarded
the Communists with distrust or hostility and could not be expected to give
financial assistance. Although it had retreated to T'aiwan, the National
Government was unreconciled and Chiang Kai-shek was determined to
return to the mainland.

In some respects the magnitude of the problems constituted an oppor
tunity. The National Government was so discredited that it could as yet
offer no effective opposition. Nowhere else did formidable organized rivals
exist. The inarticulate masses and the articulate intelligentsia were prepared
to welcome any promising alternative to the existing chaos.

THE COMMUNIST PROGRAM

Surprised and rendered confident by the rapidity of the
collapse of the armies of the National Government, the Communists at

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 399

once undertook the realization of the program to which they were com
mitted. They were determined to reshape China in such fashion as to
make it a socialist country according to their interpretation of Marxism.
That meant, negatively, the sweeping away of much of the remnants of
the old China. It included, positively, the re-education of the entire nation
to conform to the Communist ideology. It also entailed the restoration and
extension of the railways, the industrialization of the country, improvement
in public health and in education, the reclamation of waste lands, the
reforestation of the hills and mountains stripped of trees and soil by the
wasteful methods of earlier generations, the utilization of the minerals and
soil, the harnessing of streams for power and irrigation, and better agri
cultural methods to increase the supply of food and of raw materials for
textiles. The Communist program also embraced full emancipation from
the remnants of foreign imperialism; the restoration of Chinese suzerainty
in all areas that had ever acknowledged it, even when that acknowledg
ment had entailed little or no actual rule; and winning such a voice in the
affairs of mankind that China would be respected as a major, perhaps the
major power in the world scene — a place commensurate with her past
achievements and her position as the most populous of nations. The pride
enshrined in her historic title, "The Middle Kingdom," persisted and was
enhanced.

To bring their program to realization, the Communists entered upon
campaign after campaign, endeavoring to mobilize all the resources of the
country. At the time these lines were written, less than sixteen years after
the Communist capture of the mainland, the outcome was by no means
certain. Evidences were accumulating that the nation was being pushed
beyond the nervous and physical capacity of the human frame. The cost
in suffering and lives had been staggering. The ostensible purpose was the
welfare of the people as a whole. The effort was declared to be more than
justified by what future generations would enjoy. Millions joined en
thusiastically in the effort, for the Communists gave the country the strong
est government that it had known for centuries. But no one could safely
predict that the goal would be attained.

At first sight the Communists appeared to be intent upon sweeping
aside all the nation's past as evil and beginning afresh to construct a new
society based on their understanding of Marxism. Yet on more discern
ing appraisal, the Communists were seen to be holding, whether consciously
or unconsciously, to much in the traditions which we have noted in the his
tory of China. The Communists professed to be done with Confucius.
Yet they loudly proclaimed that they were laboring for the welfare of the
people as a whole — an ideal which Confucianism had long inculcated.
Confucianism had taught that true civilization was to be achieved under
the leadership of an elite educated in its ideals and dedicated to the service

400 VOLUME I

of the masses. This, too, was what Communists strove to achieve, but
with principles which they regarded as taught by Marx-Leninism. The
self-examination which the Communists enjoined in their education could
claim precedent in Confucian practice. The atheism that was part of the
Marxist dogma found congenial soil in a culture whose intellectuals had
tended — under the influence of Sung Neo-Confucianism and other strains
in Chinese philosophy — to be religiously agnostic. China's past had re
peatedly witnessed efforts to regiment the entire population. That was first
seen on an Empire-wide scale under Ch'in Shih Huang Ti in the third
century before Christ. But it had again and again been attempted. More
over, Emperor after Emperor had carried through public works at the
cost of thousands of lives in forced labor— as in the building and repair
of the Great Wall, the construction of the Grand Canal, and the erection
of palaces and of such capitals as Ch'angan. Here the Communists could
find ample precedent for their vast undertakings through the ruthless ex
ploitation of labor. The effort put forth to spread the Chinese brand of
Communism over all mankind and especially through East Asia, thus
"liberating" other peoples, had kinship with the long-cherished conviction
that the Chinese way of life was the only true civilization and that a benefit
was being conferred by persuading or compelling others to adopt it.

Unless we are to lengthen these pages far beyond their due proportion
in a book as comprehensive of all China's history as this attempts to be,
we must drastically summarize and condense the record of the fifteen years
which followed 1949. We must stop at a semicolon, for because of the in
exorable calendar we must pause in our account when the Communist
stage in China's history was as yet unfinished and when its future was
unpredictable.

One other generalization we must make. The Communist stage was
both a continuation of the revolution brought by the impact of the Occident,
and a sharp break. The preceding stages had been brought about primarily
by the impact of western Europe, especially Britain, and the United States.
That impact had come either directly or indirectly, the latter mainly through
Japan. Anglo-Saxon liberalism and democracy had been the chief sources.
Until late in his life, when he turned to Russia, so far as he was indebted
to the West Sun Yat-sen had been predominantly in contact with ideals of
Anglo-Saxon provenance. He was a Protestant Christian. Chiang Kai-shek
was baptized a Methodist and his second wife's family had been reared
under American Methodist influence. Numbers of the officials in the Na
tional Government had been educated in the United States, and some in
high places had come to a profession of Christianity through Anglo-Saxon
Protestant missionaries. The Communist victory was a major defeat for
Western, predominantly Protestant, ideology.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 401

THE COMMUNIST ATTEMPT TO CUT CHINA'S TIES
WITH THE ANGLO-SAXON WEST

When they obtained possession of the mainland, one of the
early acts of the Communists was to cut the ties of China with the West,
especially the United States. That was to be expected. In the ucold war"
which was developing, the chief antagonists were Russia and the United
States, and the Communists looked to the U.S.S.R. as the champions of
Marxism. The Communists regarded Great Britain as the leading villain
in the imposition of the "unequal treaties" on China. They resented the
extensive aid given by the United States to the National Government.
To their mind, Christianity was intimately associated with Western im
perialism. They held that to be true of both Protestantism and Roman
Catholicism. The well-known hostility of the Papacy to Communism height
ened the antagonism of the Chinese protagonists of Marxism to the Roman
Catholic Church.

Even before the Communists had taken over the mainland, they viewed
the United States as their most dangerous foreign enemy. In October, 1949,
they arrested the American consul in Mukden on the alleged charge that
he had beaten a Chinese employee. The American State Department
vigorously denounced the action and appealed to thirty nations to join
in the protest. After a few weeks the consul was released and left China.
Great Britain gave official recognition to the People's Republic of China
soon after its proclamation. But that did not prevent the new regime from
instituting progressively severe restrictions on British merchants. Within a
few years all British business men had left the mainland. Through Hong
Kong, restored to Great Britain after the defeat of Japan, the British con
tinued their long-standing commerce with the Chinese, but they were even
more effectively shut out of residence on the mainland than before the
treaties that followed their first war with China.

The Communists promptly took steps to cut off connections between
Christians and their fellow believers in the West. Although they were frank
in their atheism, they professed to grant full religious tolerance if their
rule was not endangered. However, they regarded all Christian missions
as cultural imperialism. They denounced, and induced some Christians
to denounce, missionaries, especially the most notable Protestant mis
sionaries of the past and the present, declaring them agents of political as
well as cultural imperialism. Protestant missionaries had long had as their
goal the bringing into being of self-supporting, self-propagating, self-
governing churches. The Communists required the Chinese Protestants to
conform to that ideal. They insisted that all ties be severed with churches
outside China, that missionaries leave, and that financial aid from foreigners
be discontinued. They induced some of the Protestant leaders to organize

402 VOLUME I

nationally in support of the "three-self" program. A number of Protestant
missionaries were imprisoned or put under house arrest. A few were sub
jected to "brain-washing" to induce them to endorse the Communist pro
gram. Although for several permission was long delayed, the large majority
of the Protestant missionaries were allowed to leave the country. Many were
expelled after being publicly disgraced. All educational and philanthropic
Protestant institutions, except three or four theological schools, were taken
over by the state, and by 1964 were reduced to one.

Roman Catholics were treated more harshly. They were required to
cut all ties with the Vatican. Corresponding to the measures taken with
Protestants, the Communists persuaded some Catholics to form the Catholic
Patriotic Association and brought pressure on the Chinese episcopate to
join it and to perpetuate the apostolic succession by consecrating several
of their fellow clergy as bishops. Rome broke off communion with those
who complied — a step which the Communists welcomed. Numbers of
Catholic missionaries were imprisoned and tortured in an attempt to compel
them to confess that they were spies of the imperialists. Many Chinese
priests and nuns were imprisoned, tortured, and subjected to "re-educa
tion" and "brain-washing" to bring them to support the Communists. An
undetermined number perished. Protestant and Roman Catholic congre
gations in the rural areas dwindled or disappeared. They persisted longer
in the cities, and adult conversions as well as the baptism of infants
continued, but in diminishing numbers. But more and more restrictions
were placed on the churches, and communication with their fellow believers
in other countries, even those within the Communist bloc, was increasingly
difficult.

LAND REFORM"

As was to be expected from the emphasis of Mao Tse-tung
on the peasantry, the Communists early began what they called "land re
form." By this they meant the expropriation of the holdings of the land
lords and of such institutions as temples, ancestral shrines, monasteries,
schools, and churches, and the distribution among the men who farmed
it of the soil thus released. By May, 1951, three-fourths of the rural
population was officially reported to have profited by the program. Ten
million hectares were said to have been confiscated and divided among
eighty million peasants. The following year "land reform" was declared
to have been completed. In the process thousands of the landlords and
of moneylenders who had battened off the peasants lost their lives. Public
meetings were held to hear complaints of alleged oppression. "People's
courts" conducted the trials. Many of the accused were killed in mass

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 403

executions. Estimates varied as to the number of landlords and money
lenders who perished. Some of them ran into the millions.

THE ORGANIZATION OF PEASANT PROPRIETORS INTO "MUTUAL AID
TEAMS," "CO-OPERATIVES," "COLLECTIVES" AND "COMMUNES"

The Communists were not content with the distribution of
the landlords' holdings among the peasants. They believed that national
welfare and the supplies required for the growing population, the laborers
in the mounting industries, the production of cotton and other fibers for
textiles, and the needed foreign exchange, including repayment of the
Russian loans, made necessary the more effective organization of agricul
ture. This they attempted in accordance with what they held were socialist
principles. Although in 1953 they declared that the total production of
food was much in excess of those figures, it was probably about that of the
last prewar year. In pursuance of its goal the government sought to in
stitute "mutual aid teams" made up of from fifteen to thirty families each.
In 1953 Peking claimed that teams of this kind numbered six millions.
Beginning in 1954 the "mutual aid teams" were transformed into "agri
cultural producers' co-operatives." They were means of pooling land,
implements, draft animals, and labor. The land itself was still privately
owned. In June, 1956, the claim was made that 91.7 per cent of the farm
households were in these co-operatives. As was to be expected, critics
said that the majority of the peasants joined reluctantly and that the
finances and accounting entailed were in arrears. In 1956 a further step
was initiated. The co-operatives were transformed into "collective farms."
Some of the latter were owned by the state and others jointly by the
members of the farms. By the summer of 1958 the assertion was heard
that 95 per cent of the peasant households were in these collectives. The
state farms were mostly in the Northeast and embraced only a small pro
portion of the cultivated land. On them tractors and other mechanical
devices were employed. In 1958 a still more drastic program was an
nounced. Farm households were organized into "communes," with common
kitchens and dining rooms and the collective care of the aged, of infants,
and of the rearing of children. The ostensible purpose was to supplant
the fragmentation of the land into small holdings, on which machinery and
draft animals could not be economically utilized, with larger units, which
could be cultivated more efficiently. In the communes local industries were
inaugurated to utilize labor during the slack seasons of agriculture. By the
autumn of 1958 the government reported that 23,397 communes had
been set up and that they contained 112,240,600 families, or 90.4 per
cent of the peasant population. Pronounced dissatisfaction followed and
by 1963 modifications had been proclaimed. The control of the land was

404 VOLUME I

turned back to smaller, workable groups similar to the co-operatives, and
the peasants were permitted to grow much of their own food and livestock
on land which they were allowed to own. Attempts were made by deeper
plowing and enlarged use of fertilizers, to increase agricultural production.
But it was said that the cadres to whom supervision was entrusted had
insufficient familiarity with local soils and other conditions. Production
fell off. How much the food shortages and under-nourishment of the early
1960's were due to the system, how much to natural calamities, and to
what degree to the growing population could not be adequately determined.
Yet it was said that many of the farmers joined in the communes whole
heartedly and sacrificially. By 1964 attempts were made at reemphasis on
the communes.

The socialization of agriculture included the fixing of quotas for the
co-operatives and communes, and compulsory sale to the government for
reselling through state agencies to the urban population, for use by officials,
for export for foreign exchange, and for repayment of the Russian loans.

The government entered upon large-scale public works to control
floods, increase irrigation, and reforest the denuded uplands and sterile
soil. It organized extensive efforts to fight plant and animal diseases, ex
terminate pests, improve agricultural techniques, and introduce better seeds.
In the 1960's critics declared that much of this program had not only
failed but had given rise as well to conditions which hampered production.

THE STATE MASTERY OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY

The Communists applied their socialist principles not only
to agriculture. They also took over trade and industry and in time made
them state undertakings. Here the transition did not entail the wholesale
violence and executions which had accompanied land reform. On the eve
of the Communist capture of the mainland, only a small proportion of the
trade and manufacturing were government enterprises. By the end of 1954
it was said that only about a fifth remained fully in private hands. In some
instances a private firm suffered such embarrassment from government
regulations that at its request it became an agent of a government company.
Then it was transformed into a joint state-private enterprise. On other
occasions the transition was at once to a joint undertaking of the state and
the former owners. In still others the government expropriated the business
directly. Industry, retail and wholesale trade, and handicrafts were pro
gressively taken over by the government. For a time small retail merchants
were permitted to continue and the state contented itself with wholesale
operations. Co-operatives were encouraged. But by 1958 the free market
had been drastically reduced.

Associated with the nationalization of trade and industry were price-

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 405

fixing, rationing, and the allocation of quotas of foods and other com
modities to localities and individuals.

THE RE-EDUCATION OF THE CHINESE

Important though the applications of socialism to agriculture,
trade, and industry were, even more sweeping was the program for the re
education of the Chinese people. The Communists set about inculcating
upon all the nation their views of the universe, history, man, ethics, and
the structure of society. Never before had any government entered upon
as drastic a remaking of the culture of so numerous a people. Earlier stages
of the revolution brought by the impact of the Occident had destroyed
important aspects of the inherited culture. Before the Communist victory
three of the foundation stones of the old China had disappeared: the civil
service examinations based on the Confucian Classics, the educational
system that prepared for the examinations, and the monarchy. They were
bulwarks of the Chinese way of life which dated from before the time of
Christ. The Confucian family remained. Badly weakened by the acids of
Western modernity, it still did much to shape the mores of the nation. Now
it, too, was swept into the dust bin.

The Communists did not completely disregard China's history. They
reinterpreted it. They viewed it from the standpoint of Marxist ideology.
Chinese equivalents of such terms as "feudal" and "bourgeois" were em
ployed to disparage institutions and customs which Communists viewed
as blocking the kind of society which they wished to construct. Whether
consciously or unconsciously, they were following the precedent of several
dynasties. Again and again a ruling house had taken stringent measures
to bring the Empire to conformity with what it deemed orthodoxy. Ch'in
Shih Huang Ti had sought to extirpate all the schools of the Chou dynasty
except that on which he based his regime. Beginning at least as far back
as the later years of the T'ang, successive dynasties had supported Con
fucianism through the civil service examinations based on the standard
writings of that school and latterly as interpreted by Chu Hsi and other
scholars of the Sung. For generations the Ch'ing Emperors endeavored to
inculcate Confucian standards by the regular, frequent, and wide public
reading of the Sacred Edict. That document was an enlargement of pre
cepts of the K'ang Hsi Emperor which extolled Confucian morality and
denounced Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity. The rigorous self-examina
tion of adherence to the teaching of Marxism, reinforced by group fellow
ship and confession, had a foreshadowing in a Confucian example of daily
introspection to measure the scholar's conformity to moral standards.

The attack upon the traditional family was especially marked in the
early days of Communist domination. Youths were encouraged to denounce

406 VOLUME I

their fathers as "reactionaries" and "rightists." This was in direct contra
diction to "filial piety," a basic principle of Confucianism. Instead of the
historic "five relations" : between prince and minister, father and son, older
brother and younger brother, husband and wife, and friend and friend —
three of which had to do with the family — children in the nurseries were
taught "the five loves" : for the fatherland, for' the people, for labor, for
science, and for public property. None of them so much as mentioned the
family. In the communes a deliberate attempt was made at the rearing
of children collectively rather than in the family. Although the breakup of
the traditional family had begun before the Communists, and much of the
criticism of pre-Communist intellectuals had been directed against the
Confucian family with its patriarchal authority, the servitude of women
and children to the head of the family, and the dictation of betrothals and
marriages of the young by the old — here for the first time was a thorough
going comprehensive attempt to achieve it.

The attack on the Confucian family did not necessarily mean loose
sexual morality or the fluidity of marriage ties. A strict morality was in
culcated in the service of the people and the country. Prostitution was dis
couraged. Efforts were made by the courts to settle disputes between
husbands and wives. The marriage law of 1950 carried further some
changes begun under the National Government. In contrast with tradi
tional mores, it ruled that marriages were to be arranged not by the parents
or matchmakers but by the immediate parlies. It also prohibited concu
binage, bigamy, and the betrothal of children, and permitted the remarriage
of widows.

This legislation reinforced a basic change in the status of women which
had already begun. Binding the feet of women had been disappearing. It
continued to pass. Under the constitution of 1954 women were granted full
political, economic, domestic, social, and cultural equality. In 1954 the
All-China Federation of Democratic Women claimed a membership of
eighty millions. Among other objectives it stood for equal pay for equal
work and for a higher proportion of women in the government. By 1964
progress toward the achievement of these goals was being registered.

Various channels and means were employed to effect the re-education
of the Chinese people and to bring conformity to Communist standards.
Membership in the Communist Party entailed indoctrination. It brought
with it privileges as well as duties and in a highly competitive society was
sought as a way to livelihood, prestige, and power. In 1949 the members
of the Party were said to total about 4,500,000. In 1959 the figure was
reported to have risen to 13,960,000. The accuracy of these statistics is
questioned. At least once the central authorities were apparently disturbed
by the quality and dubious orthodoxy which followed the rapid growth
and took steps to weed out the undesirable elements. But the total of Party

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 407

members was still impressive. The many local units of the Party were
centers of indoctrination for the masses. The army and the militia were
also media of indoctrination. Enrollment in either was accompanied by the
teaching of Communist precepts. Methods of mass propaganda made possi
ble by the mechanical devices copied from Russia and the Occident were
extensively employed. The radio reached millions. "Movies" centered
largely on revolutionary themes approved by the authorities. A vast mass
of literature was issued, much of it in popular form. To its preparation
were directed the talents of men and women who had achieved distinction
as writers or who aspired to recognition. Much was accomplished by
cartoons, placards, and "comic strips." In all schools, from the elementary
grades through the universities, indoctrination was through formal instruc
tion and through meetings and assemblies. In the early years of Com
munist rule attention was paid to "thought reform." "Political study" and
"mutual aid" groups were set up in which were enrolled officials of
former regimes, famous scholars, and university presidents and teachers.
In these groups and centers, from mature officials and aspirants for em
ployment in the new government to the humblest students, intensive in
struction was given in Marx-Leninism as interpreted by Mao Tse-tung.
Thousands were encouraged to write confessions of their "errors" and
"immoralities." In extreme cases they read them in public, with de
nunciations of their past, descriptions of the manner in which their views
had been changed under Communist guidance, recognition of remaining
"defects," and a pledge to overcome them through continued self-examina
tion and the aid of "progressive" colleagues and Party members. Long
meetings were held for this purpose. The recalcitrants were imprisoned or
were put in compulsory labor units for "reform" through work. All this was
deemed necessary if the Communists were to achieve their purpose and
remake China into the kind of Socialist society which was their goal. For
many the process brought both mental and physical suffering. In spite of
the effort of the authorities to obtain genuine conversions, and through
repeated self- and group-examinations to eliminate "insincerity," under
neath was much seething unrest or timid but unconvinced conformity. Yet
for millions acquiescence was attained and with it an unquestioning docility.
In January, 1956, Chou En-lai invited intellectuals to put forward
nonconformist views. In May, 1956, the head of the propaganda depart
ment said publicly: "Let a hundred flowers bloom and diverse schools of
thought contend." In February, 1957, Mao Tse-tung in a long discourse
repeated the invitation. Whether Mao believed that thought reform had so
far succeeded that such permission could safely be granted, whether he was
moved by the revolts in Hungary and Poland in 1956, or whether he hoped
to lure dissent into the open and so to eradicate it is not known. Whatever
his motive, much criticism of the Communist program was voiced. In June,

408 VOLUME I

1957, the government acted vigorously to silence the disaffected. Some
were killed, others were imprisoned, and still others were constrained to
admit their "errors."

GIGANTIC EFFORTS TO REPAIR THE ECONOMIC DAMAGES WROUGHT BY
WAR AND TO CONSTRUCT AN INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETY

The reorganization of agriculture through land reform,
mutual aid teams., co-operatives, and communes, the nationalization of trade
and industry, and the sweeping effort at reshaping the mind of the Chinese
people were by no means the only features of the Communist program.
Determined efforts were made to repair the damage inflicted on the cur
rency, the transportation, and the industry of the country by the long years
of domestic strife and foreign invasion and to build a structure that would
place China in the forefront of the nations of the world in providing its
people with the products of modern science and machines.

To this end the Communists quickly endeavored to set up a monetary
system which would eliminate the inflation that had been one of the
immediate causes of the wide loss of confidence in the National Govern
ment. They forbade the use of silver dollars, gold, and foreign currencies.
They sought to cut down government expenditures, to have a more effec
tive centralized control of provincial and local budgets, and they issued
their own People's Currency (IMP). Although the IMP was not based
on cash reserves, the Communists kept prices from spiraling as rapidly
as under the National Government. The effort was not entirely successful
and in 1954 a new JMP currency was issued and was exchanged for the old
at the rate of 1 to 10,000. The Communists had declared that the first
JMP was among the most stable currencies in the world. They also claimed
that the new JMP was based on reserves of silver, gold, and foreign
exchange. That assertion did not hide the fact that the JMP was a man
aged currency and that the government's budget had mounted sharply.
Yet for some of the years the government insisted that it had balanced
its budget and had achieved a surplus to repair the deficits of earlier years.
Although the People's Bank remained the only institution authorized to
issue currency, and the Communists attempted by the compulsory purchase
of government bonds to limit the amount of money in circulation, agricul
tural producers' co-operatives printed notes of small denominations, which
circulated widely in rural areas.

The Communists set about the repair and extension of railways and
highways. They restored bridges, improved the rolling stock, and kept
the passenger service running more nearly on time and with cleaner coaches
than had been seen for many years. They also extended the railway
system by new construction. They gave wide publicity to the erection of
a bridge across the Yangtze at the Wuhan center. That difficult engineering

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 409

feat had long been contemplated. When achieved, it gave uninterrupted rail
communication between Canton and Europe by way of Peking, New rail
lines were built. Among them were ones in Szechwan, in the Southwest,
to the coast, and especially in the North and Northwest. By 1960 double-
tracking was proceeding on the through lines from Peking to Canton
and from Peking to Shanghai. Highways were improved and new ones
were constructed. Some asphalt roads were pushed through with banners
and slogans.

Ambitious public works were undertaken, as, for example, on the
Yellow River, notably at the Sanmen gorge in Honan, to produce hydro
electric power and electric lighting, to reduce the danger of floods, and
to enlarge irrigation.

Much of the rail and highway construction and of the harnessing
of the rivers was accomplished by a vast expenditure of manpower. That
was largely by forced labor. Critics said that most of this was in effect
slavery and declared that millions were involved in it. The Communists
spoke of reform through labor and employed that device to deal with
dissidents. They also required students in the many schools, especially of
secondary and higher grades, to alternate periods of study with assign
ments to manual labor. They thus sought to break down the traditional
scorn of the scholars for work with their hands and to help identify the
intellectuals with the rank and file of the population. Soldiers in the
extensive armed forces were also employed in construction.

The Communists entered upon an ambitious and determined program
of industrialization. To this end they increased investment, especially in
heavy industry. That meant reducing consumption and tightening the
belts of the rank and file — millions of them already below the level of
comfortable subsistence. They were willing to do this for the sake of
future generations. They boasted that within a few years they would equal
Great Britain in the totals of manufactured products. In consonance with
what was being done in some other countries, they formulated five-
year plans for which goals were set. The first five-year plan embraced
1953-1957. That was foUowed by a second five-year plan for 1958-1962.
These plans included agriculture and railway construction as well as
manufactures. To insure that developments in agriculture and industry
would proceed concurrently, the phrase "walking on two legs" was coined
— meaning emphasis upon both phases of economic activity. The Com
munists strove for rapid development, a hope voiced in the slogan of 1958,
"the great leap forward." In the earlier years they sought help from Russian
technicians and imported some physical equipment from the U.S.S.R.
By 1964 they were obtaining no assistance from their former great ally,
either in personnel or machinery. They restored and improved some of
the Japanese plants in Manchuria. They built additional factories. They
engaged ambitiously in the production of steel. At one stage they encour-

410 VOLUME I

aged this in many small establishments. They claimed that the quotas
officially set for the country had been more than reached and that peas
ants had been educated in a confident respect for modern methods, but
critics declared that much of the product was so handicapped by impurities
that it was useless. As time passed, the government said that while heavy
industry was being maintained, a larger proportion of effort was being
expended in light industry, largely for consumer goods.

Much of the industrial development was in the West, especially the
Northwest. Population was being moved into those areas. For example,
in Inner Mongolia Chinese were outnumbering Mongols. Industrialization
was not, as formerly, primarily in the coastal provinces, from contacts
by sea with the West and Japan, but inland. Lanchow, the capital of
Kansu, from being a sleepy town became a hive of industry, with broad
streets, burgeoning factories, large government offices, huge apartment
houses, theatres, hospitals, and schools. It was a gateway to enterprises
in Sinkiang.

Among non-Communist foreign specialists the precise degree of achieve
ment in industry was a matter of debate. The figures released by the gov
ernment were optimistic. For example, the claim was made that the
major goals of the second five-year plan had been reached three years
before the completion of that period. They were said to show that in
1960 not only had the budget been balanced, but that an increasing pro
portion was being devoted to economic reconstruction and cultural devel
opment rather than to military purposes. Statistics were cited to prove
that between 1957 and 1960 the production of steel had mounted six
fold, from 3,000,000 to 18,400,000 metric tons, and that that of coal
had risen in those years from 130,000,000 to 425,000,000 metric tons.
However, non-Communist experts questioned these totals, partly on the
grounds of the difficulty of the collection of precise figures by the govern
ment, and partly because they might well be inflated for purposes of
propaganda, both domestic and foreign. Reports were widespread of
inefficiency, of wastage due in part to breakdowns or delays in trans
portation, and of slowing down attributable to overfatigue. Some motor
vehicles, machine tools, generators, and precision electronic instruments
were being produced, but the quantity and quality were not clear. The
agricultural crisis of the early 1960's led to a paring of the goals of indus
trialization, the shelving of many projects, the removal to the rural areas
of much of the urban population, and the command to the factories to
turn out more farm machinery, consumers' goods, and fertilizers.

An increasing proportion of the manpower in mining and industrial
projects was by laborers organized into unions. Industrial, but not crafts
unions, were co-ordinated into the All-China Federation of Trades Unions
administered by an executive committee elected by a national labor con
gress which met every five years. In addition were national assemblies of

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 411

the several industrial unions, and the regional, provincial, and local federa
tions. The unions were expected to induce their members to follow the
policies of the state, to prevent waste and corruption, to conduct recrea
tion halls and cultural centers, to maintain spare-time schools for their
members, and to operate training schools for their officers. They were, as
well, required to further political education in the purposes of the govern
ment. Public recognition was given to workers who exceeded production
goals. Hours of labor were long, regimentation was strict, and wages were
reduced by "voluntary" contributions for government bonds and savings
and by union dues. Wages were in part based upon the prices of the
commodities needed by the worker. Piece rates were set up. Women
had an increasing share in industrial labor.

Housing constituted a major problem. To meet the need for the
laborers as well as for others attracted to the cities under the new regime,
large additional buildings with many apartments were erected. They were
particularly prominent in Peking, but they were also found in many other
urban centers.

Attempts were made to safeguard the health and the safety of workers
in factories and mines. In a land where life had traditionally been cheap
and the accident rate high, efforts were put forth to adopt some of the
devices of the welfare states of the West, whether Communist or non-
Communist. In the 1950's laws were passed for insurance against death,
disability, illness, and old age. Workers' hospitals, rest homes, and
sanitariums were projected and some of them were erected. Free medical
clinics were provided for several of the larger factories.

In some of the cities communes were set up. Much of this was said
to have been at the voluntary initiative of women who sought through
handicrafts and small industrial undertakings to augment the family
income.

EDUCATION

The Communists carried further and modified the programs
for education which had been begun under the National Government.
This was esesntial if China was to be industrialized and to take an effective
part in the modern world. The Communists sought to eliminate illiteracy.
In 1960 they claimed that between 1949 and that year the illiteracy of
workers had been reduced from eighty per cent to twenty per cent. They
said that in 1959 the illiterates in the population at large had been reduced
to eighty millions. They aimed at universal primary and junior secondary
education. In 1959 official figures had it that eighty-six millions were
in primary schools and twelve millions in secondary schools. In I960
the Communists were planning to integrate these two stages of education
and so to make them continuous for every child. If the objective were

412 VOLUME I

to be attained, hundreds of thousands of teachers would be needed. Efforts
were made to recruit and train them. Other kinds of schools were promoted.
Institutions on a university level were multiplied and utilized to prepare
promising youth for research and for furthering cultural advancement.
For the burgeoning industries technical schools were favored to provide
personnel for designing and handling machinery and for business adminis
tration. Part-time schools were carried on for workers who were regularly
employed. In 1960 the claim was made that colleges of this kind were
conducted in each of the 17,000 counties of the country. In the early years
of Communist rule the number of higher educational institutions was
reduced by consolidating those which seemed to be superfluous. The trend
was also to have each of them specialize on some branch: agriculture,
medicine, engineering, mining, physical education, or foreign languages.
For a time, only Peking University and the Chinese People's University
were devoted to general studies. As the years passed, the number of
institutions of higher learning once more increased. Only a minority were
under the direction of the central government. The majority were super
vised by the provincial, municipal, and autonomous regions' administra
tions. In the economic crisis of the early 1960's, the school enrollment was
said to have been reduced twenty percent in 1961-62 and in 1962-63
another twenty percent.

In all schools of whatever grade Russian experience was influential.
For some years Russian advisers were sought and Russian texts were
translated. Before the mainland came under Communist domination, Eng
lish had been the favored foreign language. It was still taught, and in 1962
was the one most widely used. Russian was then next to it.

In all the schools, of whatever grade or constituency, political educa
tion in Communist principles and practice was required. Under the
National Government, the San Min Chu I of Sun Yat-sen had been
standard. Sun Yat-sen was still rendered lip service as a revolutionist, and
his widow was given a high post in officialdom. But Mao Tse-tung was
esteemed the paragon of orthodoxy and his writings were held to be authori
tative.

Chinese students continued to go abroad. Now, however, the vast
majority went to Russia and substantial minorities were in Communist-
ruled countries in central Europe. None from the mainland, unless they
were refugees, went to the United States, the land which had been host to
more than any other country in the West. In the early 1960's, with the
cooling of relations between the U.S.S.R. and the People's Republic of
China, the number of students going to Russia fell off sharply and in
Moscow the dwindling remnant for the most part kept severely aloof from
all but their fellow countrymen.

For a time in the 1950's many foreign students, chiefly from Asia

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 413

and countries of the Communist bloc, came to Peking. Early in the
1960's, except for the Indonesians, their numbers declined and those
who remained felt themselves isolated from the Chinese.

As the years passed, the regimentation of students and teachers was
tightened. The government did not repeat the experiment of "letting the
hundred flowers bloom." What dissatisfaction existed was strictly under
ground and found no overt expression.

ATTEMPTS AT LANGUAGE REFORM

With their revolutionary attitude, the Communists could
be expected to make changes in the language. In the earlier part of the
century the "New Tide" had been marked by innovations. Among them,
as we have seen, were the use of the vernacular in serious writing and
the attempt to have one form of the spoken language adopted in all the
country. The Communists sought to complete some of these changes
and to introduce others. They continued an earlier program which pressed
for the universal use of a standard form of the Mandarin to supersede the
many reciprocally unintelligible vernaculars which impeded oral communi
cation, especially on the coast south of the Yangtze. They also ordered
the teaching of Mandarin in the elementary and secondary schools of non-
Chinese ethnic groups in such areas as Inner Mongolia and Sinkiang.
They worked on the phonetic writing of the language, but did not succeed
in obtaining the wide use of any one system. They not only devised
new characters, but they also sought to promote the use of simplified
forms of existing characters and to further the learning of a standard
list of the characters that were most frequently employed.

THE PROMOTION OF HEALTH

In a variety of ways the Communists endeavored to improve
the health of the nation. They pushed sanitary measures, especially in the
leading cities and on the passenger coaches on the railways. They enlisted
thousands of teachers, students, and health workers in campaigns to
remove refuse from the streets, to construct public comfort stations, to dig
wells, and to eliminate flies, mosquitoes, and rats. In 1958 they launched
the Patriotic Health Drive with slogans against four pests—grain-eating
sparrows were added to the other three. When the reduction of the num
bers of sparrows was followed by an increase in the insects which fed
on food-producing plants, bedbugs were substituted for the sparrows in
the four pests that were fought. The Communists sought to train thou
sands of midwives so to aid in the care of mothers and offspring that
the infections would be eliminated which carried off a large proportion

414 VOLUME I

of the infants in the first few days after birth. They required regular group
callisthenics for students, clerks, factory- workers, and soldiers. They
promoted vaccination against smallpox, inoculation against some other
diseases, including cholera, the manufacture and use of antibiotics, and
other public health measures. They stepped up the education of physi
cians, surgeons, and nurses. In doing so, they were unable to reach
immediately the standards attained in much of the West. They endeavored
to promote the traditional forms of medical practice as well as those which
originated in the Occident. They fought epidemics of the bubonic plague.
The efforts to kill the rats by which the infection-carrying parasites were
spread were a phase of the campaign. Hospitals were multiplied. Creches
and nurseries were established for the infants and young children of work
ing women.

In the intense efforts to improve public health in a short space of time,
weaknesses were inevitable. Many of the personnel were inadequately
trained. Numbers of hospitals were below required standards. Complaints
were heard that in the care of the sick preferred treatment was given
to officials, Party members, and soldiers, to the neglect of the rank and
file. Yet some foreign observers remarked the deep interest shown by
physicians in patients of any rank.

In the 196Q's a reaction was apparent Travelers reported that the
cities were not as clean as in the mid-50's. That and the reappearance of
beggars and prostitutes were to be expected. The government had put on
such intense pressures and in so many aspects of the nation's life for brief
spaces of time in efforts to attain its goals that overfatigue had come.
Early in the 1960's, although actual famine was reported to be nonexistent,
the widespread shortage of food could not but lead to a decline in energy
and a relaxation of efforts in many directions. How far this would become
chronic and to what extent it would be a passing phase of the revo
lution could not be safely predicted when these lines were written.

Shadowing all the campaign for better public health was the mounting
population. So far as the efforts at public health succeeded they would
aggravate the problem. In March, 1957, a major campaign for birth
control was launched. But before the end of the year it was discontinued.
Contraceptives were still available and birth-control clinics remained open,
but they were no longer stressed. In 1962 a fresh and more determined
effort was made to postpone the age of marriage and to keep families
to two children to one couple.

Early in the 1960's the government engaged in extensive purchases
of grain from Canada and Australia to relieve the shortage which it
ascribed to natural disasters. It also appeared to strive for an equitable
distribution of such food as was available. But it would not admit that the
widespread hunger was a symptom of overpopulation.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 415

SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Whether the slackening of effort in the promotion of public
health, the threat of population explosion, and the overfatigue which
issued from the repeated high-powered drives for achievement in indus
try and transportation were evidence of irreparable weakness in the Com
munist regime was uncertain when these pages were penned.

Enough was known, however, to make clear remarkable advances in
some areas to which the Communists were devoting attention. This-
worldly as they were, the Communists pinned much of their faith on
science. The marked native ability of the Chinese had long been demon
strated under other than Communist auspices. The government sought to
direct this into scientific research. It availed itself of scholars who had
been trained in America and western Europe and who either chose to
remain under Communist rule or were unable to escape. For some years
it also had help from Russians. The government was determined to over
take and if possible to surpass the achievements of the West. Although
it sought to curb a few experiments and theories which it deemed ideologi
cally reprehensible and subjected some foreign-trained scientists to
"thought reform," it provided laboratory facilities for research. In 1956
a twelve-year plan for the development of the sciences was formulated. The
Chinese Academy of Sciences co-ordinated government research insti
tutes. The latter were reported to number thirty-one in 1952 and sixty-
eight in 1957. For the five years from 1952 to 1957 the total personnel was
declared to have tripled, the research personnel to have more than
quadrupled, the technical personnel of higher ranks to have more than
doubled, and the graduate students to have multiplied six times. In 1963
the prediction was freely made that within a few years the Chinese would
have developed an atomic bomb. Relatively unbiased foreign specialists
who were able to visit the country reported excellent work in several
directions. Among them were the survey of China's resources in minerals
and soil, with reports of much larger deposits of iron ore and oil shale
than had previously been known.

In archaeology marked progress was registered. In the construction of
roads and factories many graves and historic sites were uncovered, and
trained experts were able to investigate them and to publish their find
ings. For example, much new light was shed on paleolithic and neolithic
cultures, on the history and civilization of the Shang period, and on the
Ch'angan of the Sui and Tang dynasties; and the tomb of the Wan-li
Emperor of the Ming was carefully excavated and its treasures placed on
public exhibition.

416 VOLUME I

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

The political structure by which the Communists controlled
the mainland gave evidence of the influence of the U.S.S.R. Yet it was
not a blind copy but possessed distinctive features.

Of primary importance was the Chinese Communist Party. It had
come into being in 1920 and had held its first national congress in 1921.
Before its triumph on the mainland it had experienced many vicissitudes.
Among them were its abortive alliance with the Kuomintang in the
1920's, its defeat, its revival south of the Yangtze, the Long March to
escape the relentless pressure of Chiang Kai-shek, and the years of
resistance to the Japanese from the headquarters in the Northwest. Dis
ciplined by these hardships and yet not weakened by having to bear the
full brunt of the Japanese invasion as the National Government and the
Kuomintang had been, the Party was prepared to take advantage of the
vacuum created by the latters' failure.

One of the early steps of the Communist leaders after mastering the
mainland was to modify the character of the Party membership. In accord
ance with the earlier policy of Mao Tse-tung and the exigencies of the
situation, the recruits had been predominantly rural in origin, from
the North and Northwest. Many had joined the Party from the sense
of adventure and for personal gain in power and livelihood. Now the
effort was made to weed out the less desirable elements and gain recruits
from other than peasant background. To accomplish the first objective
a vigorous campaign was instituted to purge the unworthy and to carry
through a thorough indoctrination in Marx-Leninism with self-criticism
and public criticism in group meetings. By this process, so far as possible,
party cadres (Kanpu) who were guilty of graft, arrogance, and lack of
sympathy with laborers and peasants were either reformed or dropped.
The second objective was sought by admitting and training members from
urban elements and intellectuals and from wider areas.

The seventh National Congress met in 1945. The eighth was con
vened in 1956. In theory, provincial party meetings were to be held, but
some of them had not been convened until 1956. The National Congress of
1956 was composed of over a thousand delegates. Its chief achievements
were the confirmation of the actions submitted to it by the Central Com
mittee and preparatory conferences, and the adoption of a revised consti
tution. A new Central Committee was elected. The real power was in the
small Politburo and the latter's Standing Committee The Standing Com
mittee had six members, four of whom we have already met: Mao Tse-
tung, Liu Shao-ch'i, Chou En-lai, and Chu Te.

In additon to the Communist Party, several parties with much smaller
memberships were permitted. They were made up of those who expressed
themselves as willing to collaborate with the Communists. But they were

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 417

not allowed to recruit their numbers from soldiers, peasants, workers, or
police and were from teachers, scientists, and others of the intelligentsia.
To some members posts were given in the government. In the "blooming
and contending" period many spoke out in sharp criticism of the Commu
nists. In the stern curtailment of freedom of speech which followed, the
dissidents were branded as "rightists" with a "landlord" or "bourgeois"
background and with a record of former association with the "reactionary
Kuomintang clique." Some were removed from their posts, and others,
after public recantations, were allowed to resume office. Late in 1959,
apparently because they were deemed no longer dangerous, P'u-i, the
last Ch'ing Emperor, and thirty high-ranking military officers and civil
officials of the National Government, who had been captured at the time
of the Communist victory on the mainland, were officially pardoned.

In addition to the minor parties, the Communist Party sought support
from the Communist Youth League, the All-China Federation of Demo
cratic Women, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Young
Pioneer Corps, the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the
Chinese Science and Technology Association, and the All-China Athletic
Association.

For the government of the People's Republic of China a constitution
was adopted in 1954 by the first National People's Congress. The constitu
tion had been framed by a drafting committee, a majority of whose mem
bers were Communists and whose chairman was Mao Tse-tung. The
constitution declared that the People's Republic of China was a people's
democratic state led by th& workers and based on an alliance of the
workers and peasants. It declared China to be a unified, multinational
state in which all power belonged to the people. The minority nationalities
were guaranteed freedom to use their spoken and written languages and
to preserve or reform their own customs. They were in autonomous areas
and might adopt rules subject to the approval of the Standing Committee
of the National People's Congress. The constitution was designed as a
guide for the economic development of China in the period of transi
tion to socialism. Citizens were guaranteed freedom of the press, freedom
of assembly, freedom of demonstration, freedom of religious belief,
inviolability of person and dwelling, freedom to choose and change resi
dence, and privacy of correspondence.

The supreme authority lay with the National People's Congress. The
members of the Congress were elected for four years and were in five
categories. The Congress chose a Standing Committee which became the
effective governing body. It had a chairman, a vice-chairman, a secretary-
general, and a number of other members. All were elected by the Congress
and were subject to recall. The chairman of the Standing Committee was
the titular head of the People's Republic of China. Under him and the
Standing Committee was the State Council with a premier, vice-premiers

418 VOLUME I

and various general offices, ministries, commissions and bureaus. It was,
therefore, the executive branch of the government. Under the Standing
Committee were also the Supreme People's Procuratorate, which served
as a check on the entire system to safeguard the interests of the state
and the Party; the Supreme People's Court; and the National Defense
Council.

With some modifications, the provincial and local divisions of the
state were continued as they had existed under the National Government
and, indeed, under the Ch'ing dynasty. The main exceptions were the
communes introduced in 1958 and minority nationality areas on the
fringes of China proper. On the plea that they compromised the authority
of the central government, the constitution of 1954 abolished the five
Greater Administrative Regions which had been created in 1949 for the
minority nationalities. But it continued the local districts and the counties
in these areas. A little later autonomous provinces were set up for minority
groups: Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang for the Uigurs, Kwangsi for the Chuang,
and Ninghsia for the Moslems. Although the traditional local units were
retained throughout the country, the forms of government in them were
altered. In a general way, they were reflections of the national structure.
A hierarchy of People's Congresses was set up. The members of each
Congress were elected by the next lower Congress. Every People's Con
gress had its People's Council. Somewhat similarly, a hierarchy of Peo
ple's Courts was instituted, paralleled by People's Procuratorates. The
People's Courts replaced the People's Tribunals, which had been authorized
in 1950 to assist in the "land reform" of the early years of Communist
rule.

THE COMMUNISTS ATTEMPT TO EXTEND THEIR AUTHORITY OVER ALL THE
TERRITORY WHICH HAD BEEN INCLUDED IN THE CH'iNG EMPIRE

The Communists endeavored to extend their authority over
all the vast area which had once recognized the suzerainty of the Ch'ing
dynasty. By the year 1964 they had made progress toward this goal,
but in some areas had not succeeded. Although they encountered some
opposition among the Moslems, in the main they achieved their purpose
in Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, and among the non-Chinese tribes in Ch'ing-
hai, Hsik'ang, Yunnan, Kweichow, and Kwangsi. In Outer Mongolia
they were frustrated. There they competed with Russia and with a Mon
golian particularism which sought full independence. They gave aid in
finances, laborers, and advisers, but in 1961 the United Nations admitted
Outer Mongolia to full membership. Although its independence was thus
formally recognized, the country was clearly being drawn into the orbit
of the U.S.S.R. In Korea, as we shall see in a moment, the Communists
supported a government in the North which claimed dominion over the

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 419

entire country but were defeated in the South by the United Nations. With
Chinese Communist help a friendly regime obtained the mastery of North
Vietnam. In 1963 and 1964 the Chinese Communists were aiding friendly
elements in Laos and Cambodia and were openly sympathizing with the
North Vietnamese effort to take over South Vietnam.

A spectacular adventure, which established Communist rule but at the
expense of wide international censure and of friction with India, was in
Tibet. By an agreement signed May 23, 1951, Tibet accepted the suzerainty
of the Communists. In December, 1953, preliminary steps were taken
to transform Tibet into an autonomous region with a form of govern
ment which would revise that of the Dalai Lama. These measures created
unrest, and in March, 1959, revolt broke out. When the Communists
attempted to arrest him for his alleged share in the uprising, the Dalai
Lama fled to India. In the ensuing fighting numbers of Tibetans were killed
and many became refugees. The holders of the post of Panchen Lama
had long been rivals of those who held the office of Dalai Lama. The
Communists took advantage of the division, induced the Panchen Lama to
come to Peking, and in 1960 had him endorse their program of "land
reform" and the abolition of what they scored as the serfdom imposed
by monasteries. Previously, in October, 1959, the General Assembly of the
United Nations had passed a resolution deploring the recent events in
Tibet and calling for respect for the fundamental human rights of the
Tibetans. In August, 1960, the International Commission of Jurists, a
nongovernmental organization recognized by the Economic and Social
Council of the United Nations, issued a long report which on the basis
of a mass of evidence declared that the Communists were guilty of geno
cide in the attempt to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group and that
they had violated the declaration of human rights adopted by the United
Nations. Undeterred, the Communists continued their measures for what
they called the "liberation" of the Tibetans.

In 1964 the Communists were constructing a road from Nepal to Tibet,
thus seeking to extend the traditional Ch'ing suzerainty over that border
country.

The Communists made no effort to reclaim Macao and Hong Kong,
both historically part of China and with predominantly Chinese populations.
Macao had been under Portuguese rule since the latter part of the six
teenth century but in the twentieth century was of slight commercial impor
tance. Hong Kong, made up of islands and a bit of the mainland ceded
to Great Britain in 1842 and 1860 and of the New Territories under a
ninety-nine year lease granted in 1898, was far larger in population and
in commercial importance. Taken by the Japanese in December, 1941,
it was restored to the British after the defeat of Japan (1945). The
Communists showed no disposition to take it over. Apparently they deemed
it a convenient door into the non-Communist world, and the British author-

420 VOLUME i

ities were careful to maintatain a strict impartiality between the Communist
and Nationalist regimes. The (Communist) Bank of China had a huge
building through which they carried on foreign exchange operations.
Refugees from Communist China flooded into Hong Kong. Some were
wealthy. The majority were destitute. In 1964 the population was in excess
of 3,500,000. The British colonial administration made valiant efforts
to provide low-cost housing for the millions of poor. Private relief agencies
assisted in giving food, shelter, and clothing to the unfortunates. Because
of the cheapness and abundance of labor, factories multiplied and exported
their products. Tourists, chiefly American, added substantially to the
colony's income.

UNDER THE PROTECTION AND WITH THE AID OF THE UNITED STATES,
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CONTINUES

An area that had once been ruled by the Ch'ing dynasty and
continued to stand out against the Communists was retained by the National
Government of the Republic of China. It was made up chiefly of Taiwan
(Formosa, as it was known to Westerners) and some smaller islands,
mainly the Pescadores (Panghu) in the strait slightly west of T'aiwan,
islands close to the shore of Fukien, principally Matsu and Quemoy, and
some islands off the coast of Chekiang.

Here the National Government, officially known as the Republic of
China, continued. It was dominated by the Kuomintang and had Chiang
Kai-shek as its president. He was re-elected as his successive terms expired.
It claimed to be the only legitimate government of China, and its leaders
professed to look forward to the time when it could be restored on the
mainland* In the meantime, T'aiwan was governed as a province.

When the National Government moved its headquarters to T'aiwan
the United States was not committed to defending it. Powerful forces,
with Senator Robert A. Taft and former President Herbert Hoover as
vigorous spokesmen, were emphatic (January 2, 1950) that the navy
prevent invasion. But President Truman promptly said (January 5, 1950)
that the United States would not give armed assistance. However, when
Communist "volunteers" entered the war in Korea against the United Na
tions, Truman reversed his stand and ordered (June 27, 1950) the Seventh
Fleet to prevent a Communist attack on Formosa. At the same time,
he asked the National Government to abstain from efforts to dislodge the
Communists from the mainland. To this the National Government agreed.
The Communists denounced this action of the United States as "aggression"
and interference in China's domestic affairs. The U.S.S.R. sided with the
Communists, but was not able to persuade the United Nations to condemn
the Americans. In the general peace treaty signed in San Francisco on
September 8, 1951, Japan relinquished all claims to T'aiwan and the

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 421

Pescadores, but the present and future status of the islands was not men
tioned and the Republic of China did not sign the treaty. In May of the
following year, after long negotiations, Japan and the Republic of China
entered into a treaty of peace in which Japan renounced all claims to
Taiwan and the Pescadores. In February, 1953 President Eisenhower
said that the Seventh Fleet would no longer be employed to shield Com
munist China. This declaration was approved by Chiang Kai-shek, for
it seemed to give his government freedom to act against the Communists.
In 1955 the Republic of China and the United States entered into a treaty
of mutual defense against attack by an enemy. That same year the Repub
lic of China formally ended its state of war with Germany.

The Communists were not content to permit the National Government
to continue. Again and again they expressed their determination to "lib
erate" T'aiwan and were vituperative in their denunciation of the "Chiang
Kai-shek clique" and the United States. From time to time they shelled
Quemoy and Matsu. In 1956 their batteries launched an attack on these
islands on an unprecedented scale and engaged, unsuccessfully, the National
Government's planes over the T'aiwan Strait. Late in October the attack
declined. In 1955 the Republic of China withdrew its forces from islands
off the coast of Chekiang, but it strengthened its defenses on Quemoy and
Matsu. In the summer of 1962 the deterioration of conditions on the main
land encouraged the Nationalists to believe that the time was opportune
for an invasion to eliminate the Communists. To counter the possibility
of that move, the Communists concentrated heavy forces on the coast of
Fukien opposite T'aiwan and stepped up their bombardment of the offshore
islands. In public statement and in conversations between its ambassador
and the Communist ambassador in Warsaw, the United States was
emphatic that it would not support a Nationalist invasion of the main
land but would protect T'aiwan and the Pescadores against a Com
munist invasion. Peking loudly denounced the United States, and Russia
said that it would come to the rescue of the Communists if Washington
aided a Nationalist attack on the mainland.

In the meantime the National Government had endeavored to improve
conditions on T'aiwan, It thus sought to offset the ill will engendered
by its actions immediately following its occupation of the island. It early
instituted land reform. This it accomplished by purchasing the holdings of
the landlords and distributing them, together with government land,
among the peasant cultivators. It thus avoided the class bitterness and
the execution of the landlords which had been a phase of land reform
on the mainland. By 1954 it declared that tenancy of land had been
reduced to a fifth of the cultivated land. The National Government stressed
education and said that in 1954 nine-tenths of the children of school age
were in elementary schools. By classes for adults it claimed to have reduced
illiteracy from 35.6 per cent in 1949 to 17.76 per cent in 1953. It increased

422 VOLUME i

the numbers in secondary and higher schools. The study of Sun Yat-sen's
San Min Chu I was compulsory. The Four Books and The Five Classics
were also a part of the required curriculum. The National Government
erected highways and put the railroads into working order. It increased
hydroelectric installations. It aided rapid industrialization. It strove to
increase the food supply by better agricultural methods, by bringing mar
ginal lands into cultivation, and by dams to increase irrigation. It pro
moted local and provincial self-government and reported that the large
majority of the population voted in the elections.

Because of the danger from the Communists and the hope of restor
ing its rule on the mainland, the Republic of China maintained armed
forces of about 600,000. To recruit the ranks as the men who had come
from the mainland advanced in years, universal military service was
required.

In all this effort, substantial aid was given by the United States. It
took the form of subsidies for improving economic conditions and
strengthening the armed forces, and of technical advisers, both to the
military and to civilian enterprises.

The Republic of China continued to face serious problems. The first
efforts to establish its rule after the expulsion of the Japanese left deep
scars. A chronic gulf existed between the native T'aiwanese and the
mainlanders. The government endeavored to bridge it by the required
teaching of Mandarin as the one vernacular, but many who had come to
maturity under Japanese rule and had learned Japanese found the transi
tion difficult. Population rapidly mounted — from about 7,617,000 in
1950 to an estimated 11,302,656 in 1962. The increase brought problems
of living standards. Always the danger had to be faced of Communist
infiltration. To guard against it police measures were taken. Chang Hsiieh-
liang, who was once a serious threat to Chiang Kai-Shek and had been
forced to accompany the exodus from the mainland, was held in protective
custody but was accorded lenient treatment. The Kuomintang continued to
dominate the government. Minority parties existed and among them were
critics of the regime who were silenced by vigorous methods. Numbers of
T'aiwanese wished independence, both of the mainlanders and of the
Communists. In 1962 some of them supported a "government in exile" in
Japan.

Yet the Republic of China continued to be recognized by many gov
ernments and had special relations with several of them, including its near
neighbor, the Philippine Republic. In 1964 it appeared to have no pros
pect of re-establishing itself on the mainland, but on Taiwan it seemed
to be fully as stable as was the People's Republic on the mainland. It
sought to counter the activities of the People's Republic in Africa south
of the Sahara, and with success in some countries.

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 423

THE COMMUNIST ADVENTURE IN KOREA

In Korea the Chinese Communists attempted to assert the
influence which had been exercised by the Ch'ing dynasty.

The outcome of World War II brought an international crisis. Korea
had been tributary to the Ch'ing dynasty. As we have seen, late in the
nineteenth century Japan and China had clashed over their respective
interests and as a result of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 China
had been constrained to acknowledge the independence of the country.
Japan rapidly extended its control and in 1910 formerly annexed the
peninsula. Unrest against the Japanese was chronic and the defeat of
Japan in World War II meant the end of Tokyo's rule. On August 10,
1945, two days after the entry of the U.S.S.R. in the war against Japan,
Russian troops moved into North Korea. On September 8, 1945, the
United States placed troops in the South. An agreement between the occu
pying powers fixed the thirty-eighth parallel as the line of demarcation.
The function of the armies was said to be the carrying out of the Japanese
surrender. Disagreement quickly developed between the Russians and
Americans over a method of enabling the Koreans to form a govern
ment for the country. The Russians set up a Communist regime north of
the thirty-eighth parallel. At the instance of the United States, the United
Nations appointed a Temporary Commission for Korea. The Temporary
Commission attempted to organize a government for all Korea, but the
Russians would not permit it to enter the North. Through it the Republic
of Korea was created and was declared to be based upon the wishes
of the large majority expressed through free elections. The Assembly of
the United Nations voted (December 12, 1948) that it was the only
such government in Korea. The Republic of Korea was recognized by
the United States and a number of other nations outside the Soviet bloc.
In 1948 a government was formed in the North which claimed to be the
legitimate one for all Korea and was recognized by Russia and several of its
satellites. On June 25, 1950, in an effort to bring all the country under the
rule of the Russian-supported regime, North Korean troops, supplied with
Russian arms, marched south of the thirty-eighth parallel, claiming that
they had been attacked by the forces of the Republic of Korea. On June
25, at the request of the United States, the Security Council of the United
Nations, which Russia was then boycotting, voted, nine to nothing, with
Yugoslavia abstaining, that North Korea had committed "a breach of the
peace," demanded that it withdraw its forces north of the thirty-eighth
parallel, and called on the members of the United Nations to assist in
carrying out the resolution. Two days later President Truman ordered United
States air and sea forces to aid the Republic of Korea and commanded
the Seventh Fleet of his government "to prevent any attack on Formosa."

424 VOLUME I

The tide of battle swept back and forth across the hapless peninsula.
In the initial weeks the North Koreans occupied most of the South. By
the middle of August, 1950, United Nations forces, sent by several govern
ments, with the Americans predominating, began pushing back the North
Koreans. By the end of the year they were approaching the Yalu River,
the boundary between Korea and Manchuria.

In October, 1950, the Chinese Communists entered the fray. They
sent thousands of troops, which they declared were "volunteers." They
chose to ignore the United Nations and held that the United States was
the "aggressor." With their high-powered methods of propaganda they
whipped up war sentiment on the mainland to "restrict America, aid
Korea." They claimed that American planes had bombed targets in
Manchuria and that the Americans had used planes to sprinkle lethal
germs in that region. Backed by the U.S.S.R., the People's Republic of
China sent representatives to the United Nations to bring their com
plaints against that body. After some weeks the Chinese Communists,
frustrated, withdrew their delegates. On February 1, 1951, the General
Assembly of the United Nations declared the People's Republic of China
to be an aggressor. In the following May it called on all the member
nations to refrain from sending to the North Koreans and the Chinese
Communists arms or other materials that could be used in war.

Hostilities ended in an uneasy armistice. Negotiations were begun
in the spring of 1951. They dragged on into 1953. On July 27, 1953,
the armistice was signed. Prisoners were permitted to choose between
repatriation and remaining with the side which had captured them. A
large number of Chinese and North Koreans decided against returning
home. Only a few of the United Nations' soldiers elected to remain with
the Communists.

For the Chinese Communists the war had at least three important
results. (1) It heightened their antagonism to the United States. (2) It
increased their self-confidence. For the first time in history a Chinese
army had successfully met and driven back a major Western military
force. The precedent of the humiliating defeats of the nineteenth century
and the Boxer outbreak had been broken. The Chinese Communist claim
that the United States was a "paper tiger" had apparently been sustained.
The People's Republic of China had snapped its fingers not only at the
United States but also at the non-Communist world represented in the
United Nations. Even some non-Communist Chinese were gratified by the
achievement. (3) The People's Republic of China became continuously
involved in North Korea, Indeed, North Korea became a satellite. Among
other measures, Peking poured large sums into the region — totaling
several scores of millions of dollars (U. S.).

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 425

THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS ADVANCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Another area where Chinese influence had from time to
time been strong and into which the Chinese Communists moved was
Southeast Asia. Under more than one dynasty Chinese rule had extended
into Tongking and Annam. There the People's Republic of China made its
weight felt. French influence, dating from the seventeenth century, in the
nineteenth century had become French domination, either under the
guise of protectorates or by outright annexation. It extended over Tong
king, Annam, Cochin China, Cambodia, and Laos. French authority had
been weakened by the Japanese occupation during World War II. In
the years that followed World War II it was erased. That was partly
through the Communist Party, the Viet-Minh, founded and headed by Ho
Chi Minh. In 1954 the Viet-Minh armies, aided by Chinese Communists,
won a decisive victory over the French. At an international conference in
Geneva in that year, in which the Korean issue was decided, through an
armistice a division of territory was agreed upon between North Vietnam,
controlled by the Viet-Minh, and South Vietnam, which in 1955 became a
republic under the devout Roman Catholic, Ngo Dinh Diem. Laos and
Cambodia were declared neutralized. At Geneva Chou En-lai, the chief
representative of the People's Republic of China, sought to dominate
the conference. Neither the United States nor Ngo Dinh Diem subscribed
to the Geneva settlement of the Southeast Asia question.

Friction continued. In the 1960's Communist forces, aided by the
Chinese, were making uncertain the situation in Laos and through guerrilla
operations were penetrating South Vietnam. The United States was endeav
oring to prevent the domination of Laos by the Communists and was giving
extensive aid to South Vietnam, with both financial subsidies and military
assistance to the forces that were fighting the Communist guerrillas. In
1962 Peking let it be known that it regarded the American military par
ticipation as aggression and a danger to the peace in East Asia. Peking
extended financial support to North Vietnam. By the 196Q's it had given
the equivalent of several scores of millions of dollars (U. S.). Yet the
Chinese were not popular with the North Vietnamese. But the overthrow
of Ngo Dinh Diem by a military coup d'etat late in 1963 was followed by
heightened Communist activity and early in 1964 President de Gaulle
attempted to reassert French influence in the region.

CHINESE COMMUNISTS SEEK TO MAKE THEIR WEIGHT FELT IN
SOUTH ASIA AND INDONESIA

The Chinese Communists were not content with seeking
to control what a few years before had been French Indo-China. They

426 VOLUME I

also attempted to have an important voice in other parts of South Asia
and the adjacent islands.

The Chinese populations in Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, and Indo
nesia were tempting, and Peking endeavored to champion them. Among
them, notably in Singapore, Communists .were stridently vocal. Measures
taken by the Indonesian government restricting the economic activities
of the Chinese brought coolness in what had been cordial relations and
an exodus of Chinese followed.

At a conference of Asian and African governments in Bandung in
Indonesia in April, 1955, Chou En-lai, by the geniality and charm which
he could exude when it suited -his purposes, did much to allay the
suspicion of some of the Asian delegates. In 1960 Peking entered into
friendship and nonaggression treaties with Burma, Nepal, and Afghanistan,
and negotiated boundary agreements with Burma and Nepal. In 1962
they made a similar agreement with Pakistan. For some years relations
with India were friendly. But Communist activity in that -country aroused
resentment. In 1959 Chinese Communist measures in Tibet, soon followed
by the dispatch of troops to areas on the northwestern, north-central, and
north-eastern border states of India, brought a serious strain between
Peking and New Delhi. Ladakh, where hostilities first centered, was
hard to reach from India and was important to the People's Republic of
China for its routes connecting western Tibet with Sinkiang, and as a
religious center whose influence extended far into Tibet. In the Autumn
of 1962 the fighting became more acute on all fronts. The Indians fought
bravely, but were poorly equipped and were driven back. On November
21, 1962, the People's Republic of China said that it would withdraw
its forces to twenty kilometers behind the lines of actual control on Novem
ber 9, 1959. The Indians were not satisfied, for some of the territory which
it claimed would still be in Chinese hands. In December, 1962, repre
sentatives of Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia, Ghana, and Ceylon
met in Colombo in an attempt at mediation. Then: recommendations
were presented to both New Delhi and Peking. But when these lines were
penned (early in 1964) a peaceful settlement had not been achieved.

THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS SEEK TO EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE AMONG
THE "UNDERDEVELOPED" PEOPLES OF THE WORLD

In accordance with their conviction that they were expo
nents of the true interpretation of Marxism and therefore, as historic
China had long been, of the highest civilization, the Chinese Communists
attempted to extend their influence among all the "underdeveloped" peo
ples on the planet. They concerned themselves with the Middle East, and
among other measures, gave financial aid to Nasser and his United Arab
Republic. In 1960 they recognized the Algerian government-in-exile —

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 427

in that respect going further than the U.S.S.R. They reached out to
Africa south of the Sahara. In 1961, for instance, they presented in
Ghana an impressive exhibit of their products. They actively assisted
Castro and his regime in Cuba. Early in 1964 Chou En-lai made an ex
tended trip to Egypt, Algeria, and several African states south of the
Sahara. The Chinese Communists cultivated the good will of Latin
Americans. Visitors from these and other countries were cordially received
in Peking and were shown the favorable aspects of the Communist
achievements.

ATTEMPTS AT RELATIONS WITH JAPAN

Attempts by both Japanese and Communist Chinese to es
tablish friendly relations were checkered and, on the whole, unsuccessful:
Chinese memories of Japanese aggression and invasion were a handicap.
The fact that Japan entered into treaty relations with the Republic of China
on Taiwan was an affront to Peking. Communists were active in Japan,
but were minorities regarded with jaundiced eyes by the majority parties
in that country. Nor could the Japanese ignore the close ties between the
U.S.S.R. and the Chinese Communists or free themselves from their
decades-long fear of the Russians and enmity towards them. Yet reciprocal
trade relations could be of advantage to both Japan and the Chinese main
land. China was a potential market for some Japanese manufactures.
Chinese raw materials, especially iron, might prove useful to Japanese
factories, and the Japan market would help the Chinese Communists to
desirable foreign exchange. Unofficial trade missions passed between the
two countries. Between 1952 and 1956 the volume of the trade between
Japan and the mainland of China multiplied ten-fold. Yet in 1956 it was
less than two per cent of Japan's foreign commerce. Moreover, in 1958
even that small amount was abruptly terminated by Peking. The ostensible
reason was the tearing down of a Chinese Communist flag by a drunken
Japanese. Tokyo had not yet officially recognized the People's Republic
of China, but Peking demanded that its flag be protected when displayed
in Japan.

SHIFTING RELATIONS WITH THE U.S.S.R.

The relations between the U.S.S.R. and the Chinese Com
munists were marked by alternating degrees of cordiality and coolness.
Down to 1963 relations of the Chinese Communists with the U.S.S.R. were
in general in four periods. The initial two were before the Communists
took over the mainland and have already been noted. The first covered
the years from the time when Sun Yat-sen sought Russian aid and the
Communists attempted to infiltrate and control the Kuomintang to the
break between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists late in the !920*s.

428 VOLUME i

The second embraced the years from that event to 1949. In it Stalin
seemed to have written off the Chinese Communists as not hewing to the
Party line.

The third period was one of close co-operation and lasted from 1949
into 1957. The degree of co-operation varied. Moscow lost no time to
giving recognition to the formal proclamation of the People's Republic of
China. After prolonged negotiations in Moscow, which seem to have been
an indication of hard bargaining, on February 12, 1950, a thirty-year pact
of friendship and mutual aid was announced. Under it the U.S.S.R. and the
People's Republic of China were reciprocally to respect the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of each and were to come to each other's assistance
in case of aggression by Japan if Japan was supported by an ally.
By further agreements, the U.S.S.R. promised to withdraw its forces from
Port Arthur and to return the railways in Manchuria when a peace treaty
with Japan had been concluded, or at the latest by the end of 1952. It
recognized that the administration of Dairen belonged entirely to the
People's Republic of China, and guaranteed credits to the extent of
$60,000,000 (U.S.) for the purchase of equipment and other materials
from Russia. The credits were to bear one per cent interest and were to
be repaid in raw materials, tea, food, gold, and American dollars. With
much fanfare, a Sino-Soviet Friendship General Association was organized
(October 5, 1949), which by 1951 claimed a membership of sixteen
millions. Pictures of Mao Tse-tung and Stalin were prominent and
ubiquitous. Russian technicians came in numbers, and industrial equipment
was sent to assist the Chinese in a variety of enterprises. Munitions and
airplanes were provided to aid the Chinese "volunteers" in Korea and
in other ways to equip the Communist armed forces. In October, 1954,
significantly as the outcome of a visit of a Russian delegation to Peking
rather than of a Chinese delegation to Moscow, as in '1949-1950, the
U.S.S.R. agreed to turn over to Peking by January 1, 1955, its installations
in the Port Arthur naval area and its share in the joint Sino-Soviet develop
ment companies. The death of Stalin in 1953 emboldened the Chinese
Communists to take a more nearly independent position. But they joined,
although moderately, in the anti-Stalin reaction led by Khrushchev. In
1956 Chou En-lai gave his support to Moscow in the Polish and Hungarian
crises by interrupting a trip to Burma to fly to Warsaw and Budapest to
show the support of the Chinese People's Republic to Moscow. However,
marked as was the assistance of the U.S.S.R. to Peking, Moscow did not
give atomic weapons to its Chinese ally. Its financial aid was not large
and much of it was in the form of loans for which repayment was de
manded — chiefly in food, a commodity which China could ill afford.

The fourth period of the relations between the U.S.S.R. and the
Chinese Communists began in 1957 and was marked by tensions which

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 429

were still unresolved when these lines were written. The causes were os
tensibly ideological. Khrushchev maintained that the conquest of the
world by Communism could be achieved peaceably. Peking's spokesmen
insisted that it could only come through war. They supported Albania,
where the regime was denounced by Khrushchev. Moscow was critical of
Peking's communes and did not hesitate to say that they were unwise. The
interests of the U.S.S.R. and the People's Republic of China clashed, al
though less openly, in North Korea. Late in the 1950's and early in the
1960's Chinese influence was predominant. Back of the dissension lay ill-
concealed rivalry for leadership in the Communist bloc. Khrushchev was
insistent on the traditional Russian pre-eminence. True to the ancient
Chinese tradition of setting the standard, as the Middle Kingdom, for
human civilization, Peking claimed to be the orthodox interpreter of
Marxism. Contributory, too, was the Sino-Russian competition, which
was older than Communism. China had lost more territory to Russia than
to any other Western power. In the mid-nineteenth century Russia had
annexed lands north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri which were claimed
by the Ch'ing dynasty and in the second half of that century had nibbled
at a portion of Sinkiang. It had taken the occasion of the Boxer outbreak
to extend its tentacles into Manchuria. In the Communist era it had with
drawn from Manchuria, but it was successfully competing with Peking
in Outer Mongolia. In 1962 Russia was obviously unhappy over the ex
tension of Peking's influence in Southeast Asia and was aiding India with
arms and air equipment in the border conflicts with the Communists. In
1961 Russia cut by nearly a half its aid to the People's Republic of China
and Sino-Russian trade declined sharply.

In 1962-1964 tension mounted. Peking openly accused Moscow of
withdrawing technical personnel and financial aid and attributed to that
fact much of the slowing down of industrialization and of such projects as
the Sanmen dam. It declared that Moscow had unilaterally broken its
promises of aid, including that of 1957 for assisting Peking in the develop
ment of an atomic bomb. It roundly condemned Moscow for entering into
the pact of 1963 for terminating the aerial testing of atomic weapons.
It strongly hinted that Russia should return the territory taken from China
in the 1850's and 1860 north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri. The
withdrawal of Russian aid weakened Peking's air and submarine power.
Peking posed as the champion of underdeveloped nations and colored races
as against the U.S.S.R., which it strongly suggested was easing its cam
paign against capitalism and was siding with the white nations. Yet when
(early in 1964) these lines were written, no sharp diplomatic break had
occurred and Russia still promised to come to the assistance of Peking if
it were attacked by capitalist states.

Early in 1964 the international position of the People's Republic erf
China was enhanced by the establishment, on de Gaulle's initiative, of

430 VOLUME I

diplomatic relations between Paris and Peking and the severance, by Na
tionalist protest, of official ties between the Republic of China and France.

THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS EXPRESS UNALLOYED ENMITY
FOR THE UNITED STATES

The Chinese Communists were unremitting in their antag
onism to the United States. That country was declared to be the chief
enemy of the peace, which was one of their slogans. The protection given
by Washington to "the Chiang Kai-shek clique" in T'aiwan was a chronic
provocation. It was declared to be blatant interference in China's civil
war and internal affairs. The part of the United States in resisting the
Communist attempt to take over Korea was met with both vituperation and
armed force. Policies and actions of the United States in various parts of
the world were denounced — as in Lebanon, Cuba, Laos, and South Viet
nam. Neither country gave the other de jure recognition, but through scores
of diplomatic conversations, as in Geneva and Warsaw, each accorded the
other an approach to grudging de facto recognition. Nor did Peking
venture on all-out war with Washington, whether in Korea or over the
latter's protection to the forces of the Republic of China in their defense
of Matsu and Quemoy.

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AND THE UNITED NATIONS

In the relations between Peking and Washington the deter
mined opposition of the United States to the admission of the People's
Republic of China to the United Nations was a chronic irritation. Numbers
of member governments, including some as friendly to the United States as
that of Great Britain, believed the attitude of Washington to be mistaken.
The British officially recognized the People's Republic of China and main
tained an embassy in Peking. In 1954 the British Socialists, led by Attlee,
, the head of the Labor Party, sent a delegation to Peking. But the British
embassy was not in full strength, consular regulations were exiguous, and
in practice the Chinese Communists had only slightly more official inter
course with the British than they had before the first Anglo-Chinese war
(1839-1842). The United States insisted that the People's Republic of
China was not peace-loving, a requirement which the charter of the United
Nations made prerequisite for membership. It also pointed out that that
government was still (1964) at war with the United Nations: in Korea the
uneasy armistice continued. In the United States some citizens hoped that
both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China could have
membership in the United Nations, but it was by no means clear that Peking
would accept admission on those terms. For a thoughtful appraisal of the
continuity of the People's Republic of China with China's past, see
O. Edwin Clubb, Twentieth Century China (Columbia University Press,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 43 1

1964, pp. 470). Peking was emphatic that it would not be found by any
agreement on disarmament formulated in a conference in which it was not
a party. Here, then, in the early 1960's was a government which controlled
a quarter of the human race but had not been admitted to the family of
nations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The selection of a bibliography for the period from 1945 to 1963 entails
even more difficulty and debate than does that for its predecessors. The mass
of material is prodigious. Much of it is propaganda, and most of what claims
not to fall in that category is so tinged with emotion that it is not far removed
from propaganda. Particularly embarrassing to the scholar who would seek to
approach objectivity in narrating the developments of these years is the frag
mentary character of careful, neutral, dependable accounts of developments on
the mainland after the Chinese Communists erected the curtain which shielded
them from the non-Communist world. Yet the attempt must be made. What is
offered below is compiled with the painful realization that almost every item
could be challenged and that various experts would give quite different lists
and other appraisals of many of the titles included,

On the period from the surrender of Japan to the Communist capture of the
mainland see: for Chiang Kai-shek, two books the latter part of which deal
with the period, favorable to Chiang, S. I. Hsiung, The Life of Chiang Kai-shek
(London, Peter Davies, 1948, pp. xvii, 398); Chiang Kai-shek, China's
Destiny, authorized translation by Wang Chung-hui (New York, The Mac-
millan Co., 1947, pp. xi, 260). For an intimate view, from the standpoint of
an eminent American educator, for a time American ambassador in Nanking,
Fifty Years in China. The Memoirs of John Leighton Stuart, Missionary and
Diplomat (New York, Random House, 1954, pp. xx, 346) is important. For
the official documentary .record of the policy of the United States, there is
United States Relations with China, with Special Reference to the Period 1944-
1949 (Washington, Department of State, 1949, pp. xli, 1054). For the back
ground of American relations, to the appointment of Marshall, and including
the Yalta agreement, a careful account based on the sources is Herbert Feis,
The China Tangle. The American Effort in China from Pearl Harbor to the
Marshall Mission (Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. x, 445). For a brief
summary see K. S. Latourette, The American Record in the Far East, 1945-
1951 (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1952, pp. 208). On inflation is Chiang
Kai-ngau, The Inflationary Spiral: The Experience in China, 1939-50 (New
York, John Wiley and Sons, 1958, pp. xvii, 394). F. F. Liu, A Military History
of Modern China, 1924-1949 (Princeton University Press, 1956, pp. 312), is
on the record of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists.

On the Republic of China on Taiwan, see Wu-chi Liu, editor, Area Hand
book for Taiwan (New Haven, Conn., Human Relations Area Files, 1958, pp.
671); General Report of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (for
the year ending June 30, 1955) (Taipei, Joint Commission on Rural Recon
struction, 1956, pp. vii, 141); C. A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Com
munist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945 (Stanford
University Press, 1962), pp. xii, 256, valuable for its use of Japanese materials.

For translations of some of the pertinent documents on Chinese Com-

432 VOLUME I

munism, see Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (New York, International Pub-
Ushers, 4 vols., 1954-1956); Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K.
Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1952, pp. 552); Kuo-chiin Chao, Economic Planning and Or
ganization in Mainland China: A Documentary Study (1949-1957) (Harvard
University Press, 2 vols., 1959, 1960); Kuo-chiin Chao, Agrarian Policies of
Mainland China: A Documentary Study (1949-1956) (Harvard University
Press, 1957, pp. xiii, 276); F. Stuart Kirby, editor, Contemporary China:
Economic and Social Studies: Documents, Bibliography, Chronology (Hong
Kong, 3 vols., 1955-1959); Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and
Burton Watson, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York, Columbia Uni
versity Press, 1960), pp. 858-946; Peter Berton and Eugene Wu, Contem
porary China: A Research Guide (Institute of Modern Asian Studies, Uni
versity of Hongkong, 1964), indispensable as a guide to the enormous mass of
documentary material.

From the extensive Communist propaganda, see Handbook on People's
China (Peking, Foreign Language Press, April, 1957, pp. 235).

Among the many periodicals, see The China Quarterly (London, The
Summit House, 1960 ff.). See also annual bibliographies in The Far Eastern
Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No. 5, Vol. XV, No. 5; The Journal of Asian Studies,
Vols. XVI-XXII, Nos. 5 in successive Septembers; China News Analysis,
Hong Kong weekly, 1953 ff., by a Roman Catholic, and biased from that
angle, but giving information drawn from a wide coverage of Chinese Com
munist sources well footnoted; translations from the press of mainland China
prepared by the American Consulate General in Hong Kong which include (a)
Survey of the China Mainland Press, translations from the daily press, 1950 ff.;
(b) Extracts (later Selections) from the China Mainland Magazines, bimonthly,
1955 ff.; (c) Current Background, translations from the current press on special
topics, issued about once a month; (d) Chinese Communist Digest, published
by the Joint Publications Service, short extracts translated from the current
mainland press and periodicals on selected topics; (e) translations of entire
books, among them one for cadres and one on the budgets of the provinces;
The Atlantic, December, 1959, Red China: The First Ten Years', and The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 321,
January, 1959, H. L. Boorman, editor, Contemporary China and the Chinese.

For bibliographies of articles in English and translations of Chinese articles
on the natural and social sciences, see Office of Technical Services, Department
of Commerce, Washington, D. C., Selective Bibliography: Chinese Mainland
Science and Technology (1961, pp. 132); and G. Raymond Nunn, Chinese
Periodicals: International Holdings, 1949-1960. Indices and Supplement (Ann
Arbor, Mich., June, 1961), the most comprehensive to date, with indications
of the libraries in the United States in which each is to be found.

For maps see China: Provisional Atlas of Communist Administrative Units
prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (U. S. Department of Commerce,
Office of Technical Services, 1959); Theodore Shabad, China's Changing Map.
A Political and Economic Geography of the Chinese People's Republic (New
York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1956, pp. xv, 295).

A comprehensive study, based on extensive co-operative research, is Chang-
tu Hu, China, Its People, Its Society, Its Culture (New Haven, Conn., Human
Relations Area Files Press, 1960, pp. 611). An inclusive study, based upon
extensive travel, by a French journalist, is Tibor Mande, China and Her
Shadow (New York, Coward-McCann, I960, pp. 360). Critical of Commu
nism, but containing much useful information gleaned from extensive research,

The Transformation Wrought by the Impact of the Occident 433

is Peter S. H. Tang, Communist China Today, Volume 1, Domestic and
Foreign Policies (Washington, D. C., Research Institute on the Sino-Soviet Bloc,
2nd ed., revised and enlarged, 1961, pp. xviii, 745).

Based upon careful research and marked by strong anti-Communist con
viction, is Richard L. Walker, China under Communism: The First Five Years
(Yale University Press, 1955, pp. xiv, 403). Clearly dated, but carefully done,
is W. W. Rostow, The Prospects for Communist China (New York, John Wiley
& Sons, 1954, pp. xx, 379).

A useful sketch is Robert E. Elegant, China's Red Masters: Political
Biographies of the Chinese Communist Leaders (New York, Twayne Pub
lishers, 1951, pp. 264). Glimpses of less important figures, gathered from a
visit to the Communist-held section of China in 1937, is Red Dust. Auto-
biographies of Chinese Communists as told by Nym Wales (Stanford University
Press, 1952, pp. xiv, 238).

Valuable for background is Benjamin L. Schwartz, Chinese Communism
and the Rise of Mao (Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 258).

Among the many books by travelers, varying in their viewpoints and in
sights, the following are fair samples: Lynn and Amos Landman, Profile of
Red China (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1951, pp. x, 245), by American
journalists from two years of travel; Frank Moraes, Report on Red China
(New York, The Macmillan Co., 1953, pp. 212), by an Indian; George Stafford
Gale, No Flies in China (New York, William Morrow & Co., 1955, pp. 191),
by an English journalist who accompanied the delegation of the British Labor
Party to China in 1954; James Cameron, Mandarin Red (New York, Rinehart
& Co., 1955, pp. vii, 334), from a visit late in 1954; Gerald Clark, Impatient
Giant: Red China Today (New York, David McKay, 1959, pp. 212), by a
Canadian journalist; J. T. Wilson, One Chinese Moon (New York, Hill and
Wang, 1959, pp. xiii, 274), by a Canadian geophysicist, valuable for its obser
vations on Communist science; Rene- Dumont, Revolution dans les Champagnes
Chinoises (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957, pp. 463), by a French agronomist,
taking pronounced views; Felix Green, The Wall Has Two Sides: A Portrait
of China Today (London, Jonathan Cape, 1962, pp. 416), a favorable picture,
critical of the United States, based on travels, chiefly in 1960, by an ex
perienced correspondent; Victor Purcell, China (London, Ernest Benn, 1962,
pp. x, 340) , chiefly on Communist China, well informed and sympathetic.

A careful case study of Chinese and foreigner refugees in Hong Kong is
Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study
of "Brainwashing" in China (New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1961, pp. x,
510). See also Theodore H. E. Chen, Thought Reform of the Chinese Intel
lectuals (New York, Oxford University Press, 1950, pp. 247); Roderick Mac-
Farquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New
York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1960, pp. 324); and Kuo-chiin Chao, The Mass
Organization of Communist China (Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1953, pp. ii, 157).

T. J. Hughes and D. E. T. Luard, The Economic Development of Com
munist China, 1949-1958 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1959, pp.
223), is reliable. See also on the economic situation, Ralf Bonwit, "Communist
China's 'Leap Forward*," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 31, June, 1958, pp. 164-172;
Richard Hughes, The Chinese Communes (Chester Springs, Pa., Dufour
Editions, 1961, pp. 90), by an Australian journalist; Chu-yuan Cheng, "The
Changing Pattern of Rural Communes in Communist China," Asian Survey,
Vol. I, No. 9, Nov. 1961, pp. 3-9; J. C. Cheng, "Half-Work, Half-Study in
Communist China," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 32, June, 1959, pp. 187-192; C. Y.

434 VOLUME I

Cheng, Communist China's Economy, 1949-1962: Structural Changes and
Crisis (Seton Hall University Press, 1963), pp. xii, 217.

On Protestant Christianity see Francis P. Jones, The Church in Communist
China: A Protestant Appraisal (New York, Friendship Press, 1962), pp. viii,
180).

On a phase of Communist scholarship see Albert Feuerbacher and S.
Cheng, Chinese Communist Studies of Modern Chinese History (Harvard
University, East Asia Research Center, 1961, pp. xxv, 287).

On the village and family, see C. K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early
Communist Transition (Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 284) ; C. K. Yang,
The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution (Harvard University Press,
1960, pp. 246).

On a phase of the political situation, see Roderick MacFarquhar, "Com
munist China's Intra-Party Struggle," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 31, Dec, 1958, pp.
323-335.

For a general comment on the foreign affairs of the People's Republic of
China, see Michael Lindsay, China and the Cold War (Melbourne University
Press, 1955, pp. xv, 286).

See also Alice Langley Hsieh, Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear
Age (Englewood, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. 204).

On various aspects of the Chinese Communists' relations with their im
mediate neighbors, see Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision
to Enter the Korean War (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1960, pp. x, 219);
Werner Levi, "Tibet Under Chinese Communist Rule," Far Eastern Survey,
Jan., 1954, pp. 1-8; Frank Moraes, The Revolt in Tibet (New York, The
Macmillan Co., 1960, pp. 233); A. Doak Barnett, Communist China and Asia:
Challenge to American Policy (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1960, pp. xi,
575), a very substantial and comprehensive study; R. H. Fifield, The Diplomacy
of Southeast Asia, 1945-1958 (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1958, pp. xv,
584).

On the complicated story of relations between China and the U. S. S. R., see
Henry Wei, China and Soviet Russia (Princeton, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1956,
pp. xvi, 379), taking the narrative from 1917 to 1955; Robert C. North,
Moscow and Chinese Communists (Stanford University Press, 1953, pp. ix,
306), covering the story from the beginning into the 1950's;.H. L. Boorman,
A. Eckstein, R. E. Mosely, and B. Schwartz, Moscow-Peking Axis: Strengths
and Strains (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1957, pp. xxi, 227); Donald S.
Zagofia, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-1961 (Princeton University Press,
1962, pp. 484); G. F. Hudson, Richard Lowenthal, and Roderick Mac
Farquhar, The Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1961,
pp. ix, 227); Zbigniev K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict
(Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. xii, 470); Klaus Mehnert, Peking and
Moscow, translated by Leila Vennawitz (New York, 1963, 522 pp.), by a Ger
man specialist.

For disillusioned intellectuals, see Robert Loh, told to Humphrey Evans,
Escape from Red China (New York, 1962), pp. 378; Mu Fu-sheng, The Wilt
ing of the Hundred Flowers: The Chinese Intelligentsia under Mao (New
York, 1963), pp. xii, 324, an anonymous account.

For additional bibliography, see C. 0. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 45-53.

THE CHINESE
Their History
and Culture

VOLUME II

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE CHINESE PEOPLE:
RACIAL COMPOSITION

Racially the Chinese are a mixed people. That much we
know. We have definite records of many invasions of the fertile valleys
and plains of North China by non-Chinese stocks from the less favored
regions on the north, northeast, and west. Whenever one of these incur
sions led to a prolonged or extensive occupation of territory — as numbers
of them did — it must have been followed by an infiltration of the blood of
the conquerors into that of the conquered. Knowing as we do the names of
at least the chief of these invaders, we can be aware in a general way of
some of the more potent strains which in the past two thousand or twenty-
five hundred years have mingled with whatever may have been the Chinese
stock or stocks at the dawn of recorded history. Hsiung-nu, Turks of var
ious kinds, several branches of the Mongols, Tanguts, and Tungusic peo
ples, including the Juchen and the Manchus — to mention only some of the
more prominent — each occupied part or all of North China. Each must
have made a more or less permanent contribution to the population of the
region. It is also a commonplace that the Chinese are bordered today,
as they have been for -centuries, by non-Chinese of many kinds — such
as the Koreans, the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Miao, the Lo-lo, and
the Mo-so — with almost inevitable intermixture.

We do not know, however, all the racial strains which have entered to
form the Chinese of today, nor are we sure of the relationship among
many of the stocks of whose names we are aware. That is chiefly because
we are not certain of all the components of the population of what is now
China, at the dawn of the historic period. It is not yet clear, for example,
whether the earliest civilized Chinese were a mixture — even though, from
analogy with other early inhabitants of fertile valleys, we may guess
that they were. We can only conjecture that the sharp division between
commoners and aristocrats in ancient times represented also a racial
difference. It is clear that the civilized Chinese of the Shang and the Chou
were surrounded by peoples whom they regarded as barbarians and who
appear to have been divided into many tribes. What the precise ethnology
of all these barbarians was, however, is by no means established. Nor are
we at all sure of the racial affiliations of these early Chinese themselves.

437

438 VOLUME II

South China was quite probably once peopled, at least in part, by negritos
of types similar to those still found in some of the islands southeast of
Asia. Linguistic groups represented in the South and Southwest, which
probably to some extent were associated with racial stocks, were the Mon-
Khmer, the Tibeto-Burman, and the Sino-T'ai. The T'ai, now strong in
the extreme South and Southwest, and represented by the modern Thai,
very likely once reached much farther northward than at present. Possibly,
too, there were other strains.

Through the centuries there has been a southward migration of Chinese
from the North into and south of the Yangtze Valley. The northern
Chinese there encountered other peoples whom they probably partly
drove back and partly absorbed. Again, however, we do not yet know
whether the Chinese were originally related to these stocks, and, if so,
to what extent. It is obvious to the most casual observer that the Chinese
of the North are somewhat different from the Chinese of the South — for
instance, that as a rule the former tend to be taller by an average of two
or more inches, heavier, less dark of complexion, with less broad noses,
more conservative, and less high-strung than the latter. The people of
Central China are intermediate between the two extremes. How much
these differences are the result of varying racial admixtures and how much
they are due to contrasts in climate, food, and physical environment
is not, however, at all clear.

Even more difficult than the determination of the racial stocks that
have formed the Chinese is the assessment of the proportion in which
the different known strains have entered into the present population. The
process of amalgamation by which the Chinese of today have come into
being is by no means complete. Chinese are usually black of hair, yet
many, especially among the children, have light-brown hair, and a reddish
tinge is not unknown. The Chinese are usually scant of beard, yet heavily
bearded individuals are by no means lacking. Chinese are popularly
called members of the "Yellow Race," yet, although the skin of most
Chinese is, when compared with that of the peoples of Northern Europe,
"yellow," some, particularly among the classes where bathing is customary
and the body is protected by clothing from the sun and wind, have a skin
as white as that of Europeans. Chinese are usually spoken of as "slant-
eyed," yet great numbers entirely lack that kind of physiognomy. Some
variations are, of course, individual and occupational. Others, however,
appear to be survivals of racial differences.

Among peoples obviously Chinese some marked groupings occur
which verge on the racial and are evidence of imperfect amalgamation.
One of the most notable examples is the Hakkas. The word itself means
"guest people" or "stranger people." The Hakkas dwell mostly in the
hilly regions of Kiangsi, Fukien, Kwangtung, and Kwangsi, and parts of

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 439

Taiwan. They speak a distinctive dialect and possess some customs which
set them apart from their neighbors. They appear to be the descendants of
immigrants from the North who came south at several different times and
were never fully absorbed, but preserved, among other characteristics, a
tongue more nearly like that of the North than the other Chinese around
them. Moslems, too, while most of them are Chinese in language and
a large proportion of them are of older Chinese stock, often have differ
ences in accent, dress, and appearance which reveal traces of immigrant
blood, and some are distinctly non-Chinese in race and language. The
immigrant Moslem stock is itself not uniform, but has in it at least
Turkish, Mongol, and Arab strains, each of which predominates in certain
sections.

In the South and the Southwest are numerous peoples who are not
Chinese in speech or customs. Intermarriage has been frequent, and in
many places the process of assimilation to the Chinese — which has undoubt
edly been in progress for many centuries — can still be observed. In Szech-
wan, Hunan, Kweichow, Yunnan, Kwangsi, Kwangtung, including Hainan,
and T'aiwan, are thousands of these non-Chinese peoples. As a rule they
tend to inhabit the hills and mountains, apparently because the Chinese
have driven them out of the more fertile valleys and plains. They are
divided ito numerous tribes, such as the Chung Chia, the Miao, Miao Tzu,
or Miao Chia (made up of several groups, among whom are the Hei
Miao, or "Black Miao," presumably so-called because of their dark-
colored clothes, and the Hua or "Flowery" Miao), the Kachins, the
Keh-lao, the Loi (on Hainan), the Lo-lo, the Yao, the No-so, and the Man
Tzu or Man Chia. The ethnological classification of these peoples is highly
debatable. One linguistic analysis divides them into three groups: Lo-lo,
Shan, and Miao; and another, into Mon-Khmer, Shan, and Tibeto-Burmans.
It is probable that some of them are unassimilated remnants of peoples
who were once more widespread in China than at present and have been
in part absorbed by and so have entered into the racial composition of
the people whom we now call the Chinese. Usually they are inferior to the
Chinese in civilization (although representatives in Vietnam and Thailand
have reached high cultural levels) and are regarded by the latter much as
folk of primitive manners are nearly everywhere viewed by peoples of
more advanced cultures. The Chinese have exploited them, have driven
them out of desirable lands, and have held them in contempt.

In the North and Northwest live other peoples whom the Chinese
have not absorbed. In regions such as Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia the
non-Chinese form the majority and the Chinese are obviously still immi
grants. In Inner Mongolia the Chinese seem to be making a fairly effective
bid for supremacy wherever sufficient moisture exists for settled agri
culture. Latterly, as the Communists have promoted industry in the region.

440 VOLUME n

thousands of Chinese have moved in as laborers. In Manchuria the Chinese
are in the ascendant, although in some sections the Koreans are serious
competitors. In the northernmost tier of the old Eighteen Provinces, espe
cially in Kansu, reside many unassimilated descendants of immigrants.
Numbers are Moslems, and religious differences slow down amalgama
tion.

In spite of all the surviving variations in race, the great mass of the
Chinese people is remarkably homogeneous in physical appearance and
culture. The differences are neither so marked nor so numerous as are those
in western and central Europe, in the Near East, or in India.

The approach to uniformity is probably due chiefly to the type of
government and culture under which the Chinese have lived. The political
structure of the Empire, made up largely of a bureaucracy educated in
the orthodox philosophy of the state and inculcating conformity to this
philosophy, welded the peoples into a cultural whole. Political unity
favored movements of peoples within the Empire. Some of these were
engineered by the state — for example, the extensive colonization and forced
migration under the Ch'in and the Han and in recent years under the
Communists. Others were entirely voluntary and often took place on a
large scale in times of famine, when thousands of refugees fled from their
old homes in search of food. The absence of marked differences of caste
and the principle of recruiting the powerful official class on the basis of
worth as disclosed in the civil service examinations, and not on that of
birth, helped to produce a more or less fluid society in which wide inter
marriage was comparatively easy. The long-established custom that no
man could marry a bride of his own family name operated in the same
direction. Conquerors were usually assimilated fairly promptly. This was
in striking contrast with India, where caste lines tended to keep races
apart and to preserve blood distinctions between the successive waves of
invasion. The political unity of China during a large part of its history
and the consequent absence of internal political barriers to migration
within the Empire also made for uniformity — in contrast, for example,
with Europe. As a result, no other group of mankind anywhere nearly
equal to the Chinese in numerical strength approximates it in homogeneity.

NUMERICAL STRENGTH

As to the numerical size of population, all totals have
been a source of sharp disagreement among experts. Census methods
comparable in accuracy with those employed in the modern West, Japan,
and India have never been applied to China as a whole. The best
estimates possible are approximations which may be in error by tens
of millions. For example, a census was taken by the government in 1910,

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 441

in which the returns were by households. Serious uncertainty exists as to
the average number of individuals in a household, and attempts to translate
the figures from households to individuals resulted in such variant totals
for all China as 342.6 millions and 329.6 millions. Even the accuracy
of the number of households is highly debatable. A careful estimate made
in 1918 and 1919 by the Protestant missionary forces gave a total of
individuals in all China of 452.6 millions (for China proper and Man
churia of 440.9 millions), but the compiler declared that the then popula
tion of the Chinese Republic was between 350 and 400 millions. An esti
mate in 1920 by the Post Office placed the population of China proper and
Manchuria at 427.6 millions, and another one in 1926 by the same
agency gave for China proper and Manchuria a total of 485.5 millions.
At least one other calculation is still higher than this last. Another estimate,
for 1930, put the population in that year at 445 millions. Official figures
of the Nanking Government for 1928 gave it as 441.9 millions and for 1936
as 479 millions. One of the greatest of Occidental authorities on population
statistics, after years of study and evaluation of available returns, estimated
all China to have had 342 millions in 1930, but recognized "that no
one knows what the population of China is within many millions." His
figure, however, was vigorously contested as far too low. The official figures
of the People's Republic of China for 1953, which did not include
T'aiwan, was 582.6 millions. In 1961 the Chinese Communists put the
total at 678 millions, which included T'aiwan. In that year the United
States nonofficial Population Reference Bureau estimated that there were
716 million Chinese.

The population is very unevenly distributed. The areas of greatest
density are in the fertile alluvial plains in the southeastern part of Kiangsu
and the northeastern part of Chekiang, on the North China plain, particu
larly where Shantung, Honan, and Hopei corner on one another, in the
productive Red Basin in the center of Szechwan, and around Canton, where
favorable harbors and rich bottom lands encourage trade and agriculture.
Other congested centers are along the coast of Fukien and Chekiang and
in and around the Wuhan cities in Hupeh.

The necessary inaccuracy that is the despair of all who wish exact fig
ures for today bedevils all attempts to estimate the numbers of Chinese in
earlier centuries. The Chinese Government has many times taken enumera
tions. This was an almost inevitable accompaniment of the levying of tax
ation and of the recruiting of armies. As a rule, however, the returns
gave only the totals by households or adults. Even in these the percentage
of error was probably high, if for no other reason than because of the
desire of individuals to avoid taxation or military service and of officials
to juggle the figures for their own benefit. Even if the summaries were
accurate, the problem would remain of determining from them the total

442 VOLUME II

population. Moreover, the areas included were not always the same. The
results of the several attempts that have been made to estimate what the
population of the Empire was at various periods must, then, be regarded
as conjectures which may be very far removed from the truth.

Ma Tuan-lin, a distinguished scholar who flourished in the thirteenth
century A.D., is responsible for the statement that in the ninth century B.C.
a census gave 13.7 million persons between the ages of fifteen and sixty-
five as living north of the Yangtze River, and an estimate based upon
his report declares that the total population of this area was then 21.7
millions. Ma Tuan-lin gives the results of ten enumerations of the pop
ulation taken between A.D. 2 and 155. The average of the ten, reduced
to individuals (on a conjectural scale that may be greatly in error), is
63.5 millions, varying from 83.6 millions, the first, to 29.1 millions, the
fifth, the great differences being ascribed to civil war and to incomplete
returns. Probably, too, the areas measured were not exactly the same.
In A.D. 280, after long strife, the population is put at 23.1 millions,
and in 606 at 46 millions. An estimate for A.D. 618, much higher than
some others, places the total at 129.45 millions. A return from 652 gives
3.8 million households, or, on the basis of 5.5 persons per household — at
best a rough estimate — 20.9 million individuals. One for 733 gives 7.86
million households, or, on the same basis, 43.2 million individuals, and
another, for 755, 9.6 million households, or, again on the basis of 5.5 per
sons per unit, 52.8 million individuals. These four, all from the T'ang dy
nasty, reflect something of the prosperity of that period. In 1097, under the
Sung, before the provinces in the North had been lost to invaders, the total
population, based on households (19.4 millions) is estimated at 106.7
million persons. In Mongol times the figures indicate a population of
between 55 and 60 millions. Ming figures point to a population of about
the same total as under the Mongols. Under the Ch'ing, especially in the
eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, when the Empire
was enjoying great material prosperity, and new plants from the Americas
augmented the supply of food, the totals seem to have mounted very
rapidly. Many estimates have been made, based in part upon census
returns. What appears to be a fairly conservative set of figures, arising out
of the studies made by Western scholars, gives the following totals:

1650 70 millions

1710 .... 140

1850 . 342

1910 342

1930 342

Another set of figures, less conservative, gives the following:

1741 143,410,559

1771 214,600,356

1793 , 313,281,795

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 443

1800 295,237,361

1821 355,540,258

1840 412,814,828

1849 . 412,986,643

Still another estimate puts the total in 1779 at 275,000,000 and in
1850 at 430,000,000.

THE EXPANSION OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE

All the figures for the past two hundred and fifty years
which have any claim to credibility indicate a phenomenal growth in the
population of China — an increase, it may be noted, which is paralleled
by that of the rest of the world.

The Chinese have been not only multiplying but also geographically
expanding. For many centuries that expansion was largely but by no
means exclusively southward. Migration also brought the Chinese into
the highlands of Shansi, Shensi, and Inner Mongolia, into the valleys of
Kansu, into Szechwan, into Yunnan, into Manchuria (for long, only in in
considerable numbers and in the southern districts), and, to a limited
extent, into the oases of what is now Sinkiang. After all of this expansion,
however, at the beginning of the Ch'ing dynasty, nearly three centuries ago,
the Chinese were chiefly confined to China proper.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and probably, although less
markedly, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) the Chinese spread
widely beyond these boundaries. There were several causes: the great
multiplication of population under the beneficent rule of the strong Ch'ing
Emperors furthered by the introduction of new food plants from the
Americas, the improved transportation facilities and the economic devel
opment of lands in the Pacific basin, and latterly, political disorders in
China proper. The Chinese have proved to be physically adaptable to many
different climates. They have thrived in the winter cold of Manchuria and
in the heat of tropical lands. To be sure, those who have moved into
Manchuria have been from northern China, where the winters are frigid,
and those who have gone to the tropics have been from the provinces on
the south coast, so that in neither case was the change in climatic environ
ment revolutionary. Even with this qualification, .the Chinese have proved
adaptable. As manual laborers they have been industrious, frugal, and
capable of withstanding great hardships. As merchants and artisans they
have been enterprising and persistent. As a race they have displayed
marked capacity for survival and multipEcation, qualities which have
given them an advantage in competition with other peoples.

In the past three centuries the Chinese have spread into many and
widely scattered regions. They have pushed into Inner Mongolia. They

444 VOLUME H

have poured into Manchuria by the millions. During most of the years
of the greatest strength of the Ch'ing dynasty, the Manchu rulers attempted
to reserve the larger part of their ancestral home for their own race.
They long tried to keep the Chinese out entirely, and when that proved
futile, to restrict the immigration to certain sections, chiefly in the province
of Fengtien. Yet considerable numbers of Chinese filtered past the barriers
set up by the Manchus into some of the most fertile portions of the for
bidden districts. For years, although there were many permanent settlers,
much of the migration into Manchuria was seasonal — made up of laborers,
chiefly from Hopei and Shantung, who went north for the months when
they could find work on the farms and in the winter returned to their
homes. By 1900 there were probably only between ten and fifteen million
people in all Manchuria (and perhaps much less), although of these the
majority seem to have been Chinese. In the twentieth century the popula
tion of Manchuria has greatly increased. One estimate placed it at twenty-
two and a half millions in 1920 and in 1927 at more than twenty-six
millions. In 1932 it was estimated as being thirty millions. Of the thirty
millions all but about two millions were Chinese or assimilated Manchus.
In 1953 the total was said to be nearly forty-seven millions. This growth
was due partly to the improved transportation afforded fay the railways and
steamships, partly to labor-recruiting agents from Manchuria, partly to the
opening of new lands, and partly to the disorder south of the Great Wall.
Immediately before 1931 the movement to Manchuria was stimulated by
Chinese officials. In parts of Manchuria settlers were offered free lands.
Chinese government railways gave them reduced rates, and at least one
governor of Shantung encouraged his people to go. Numbers migrated
north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri and hence constituted a factor
in the population of the eastern part of Siberia.

The Chinese have settled T'aiwan. At the outset of the Ch'ing dynasty
that island appears to have had comparatively few of them. However, it
became a haven for many partisans of the Ming and for a time was
controlled by Koxinga. After annexation by the Manchus it remained part
of the Empire until, in 1895, it was ceded to Japan. It was peopled largely
from Kwangtung and Fukien, and the movement to its shores continued
even after the Japanese occupation. Today the bulk of the population is
of Chinese stock, either pure or mixed with other elements. In 1949 that
stock was largely augmented by the coming of the Nationalists who took
refuge from the Communist occupation of the mainland.

A fairly extensive migration has moved towards the lands immediately
to the south of China. Indeed, the Chinese have here won an economic
empire, even though the political control remains in other hands. Most of
the emigrants have found occupation as merchants or laborers. They have
come chiefly from Kwangtung and Fukien. A large proportion have thought

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 445

of China as their home, and their remittances to their families and the
contributions, both economic and in ideas, which returning wanderers
made to their native communities have been important factors in the
development of the two southern coast provinces.

In the days of the Spanish occupation Chinese were prominent in the
economic life of the Philippines. From time to time their number was
reduced by massacres, but they persisted in coming. The major part of the
retail business and much of the wholesale trade have been in their hands.

Several scores of thousands of Chinese are to be found in Vietnam.
They have had a large share in the retail trade and at one time controlled
much of the rice market.

Chinese have long been in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, and have
intermarried extensively with the Thai. They have been prominent in
business, the trades, and the professions, and in their hands has been much
of the mining, the refining of sugar, and the rice milling.

Chinese have been very important in the trade and industry of Burma.
They have come both by sea and overland by way of Yunnan.

In what, in 1941, was British Malaya — the British-controlled portions
of the Malay peninsula and its adjoining islands — the number of Chinese
was about equal to the native Malay stock. They began arriving centuries
before the British occupation, but under British rule greatly multiplied and
formed — and still form — the major part of the population of Singapore.
As laborers, artisans, merchants, miners, contractors, planters, and profes
sional men, they have been largely responsible for the economic develop
ment of the region. The British were in possession politically and controlled
no small part of the economic life, but the Chinese profited enormously
from the peace and prosperity that were the fruitage of British rule.
The Chinese have been so important a factor in the population of Malaya
that in more ways than one they have constituted a special problem: for
example, it has been a moot question as to how large a share they should
be given in the government. In the 1950*s Communism was strongly repre
sented among them.

For centuries the East Indies has known the Chinese. Fairly large migra
tions took place under the Ming and again after the downfall of the Ming.
For some years after the beginning of their power in the East Indies, the
Dutch encouraged the Chinese to come, for the presence of the latter aided
the development of the islands. When, in later years, the Chinese seemed
to have become a menace, the Dutch instituted restrictions. The Chinese
continued to arrive, however, particularly after the middle of the nineteenth
century, and by 1917 their number in the Dutch East Indies was estimated
at seven hundred seventy thousand, of whom nearly half were in Java. A
census of 1930 gave the total as 1,233,856 (749,530 men and 484,326
women) and that of 1940 placed the total at 1,430,680. Thousands were

446 VOLUME n

manual laborers in mines and on plantations, but other thousands were
skilled mechanics and traders and many became large landowners and
wealthy merchants. In the 1950's and 1960's they constituted a problem
for the Republic of Indonesia, their legal status was a subject of negotiation
with the People's Republic of China, and severe restrictions were placed
on them. To Borneo likewise the Chinese have been going for hundreds of
years, and the island now contains an undetermined number of them. As
elsewhere in the lands immediately to the south and southeast of China,
much of the mining and trade is in their hands.

In Australia and New Zealand the chief attraction that first drew
numbers of Chinese was gold mining, although a few had arrived earlier
for other purposes. The initial large immigration was in the eighteen fifties.
Before long, opposition developed, for the Chinese proved competitors to
some of the dominant white stock. Restrictions were placed on Chinese
immigration, and the total number of Chinese in the two dominions is
small. Groups of Chinese, none of them — except in Hawaii — numerically
very considerable, are to be found in several others of the Pacific Islands.

Early in the twentieth century an experiment with Chinese contract
labor was made in the gold mines of South Africa, but it was not long
continued and the laborers were sent home. Only a few hundred Chinese
are now to be found in that country.

The Chinese first began coming in large numbers to the United States
in the eighteen-fifties in connection with the gold rush to California. They
supplied much of the unskilled labor, and later many were employed in
building and maintaining railroads. Agitation against them began early, the
basic reasons being that, with their low standard of living, they competed
successfully with white laborers, and they were not easily assimilated.
Except for the temporary residence of such groups as merchants and
students, immigration was prohibited — earlier, for periods of years, and
later (1902 and 1904), indefinitely. In 1943 this exclusion was repealed.
Except for a large number of students, most of the Chinese in the United
States have been engaged in such specialized occupations as domestic
service, market-gardening, labor in canneries, laundering, and restaurant-
keeping. After the Communists mastered the mainland of China, many
Chinese intellectuals came to the United States.

At the time of their annexation to the United States the Hawaiian
Islands contained about twenty-five thousand Chinese residents, and that in
spite of measures which had been taken in the eighteen-eighties and
eighteen-nineties to reduce the number of new arrivals. After annexation,
the exclusion acts of the United States were applied, and Chinese laborers
who were not American citizens were forbidden to go to the mainland.
Chinese still constitute one of the largest racial elements of the extremely
mixed population of the islands.

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 447

In Canada the story is similar. Chinese began coming in numbers in
the eighteen-sixties to engage in mining and to do much of the rough work
in building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Opposition developed because of
competition with white labor, and restrictions on further immigration were
enacted, chiefly in the form of a head tax on each arrival. The tax was
increased until it became almost prohibitive.

There are Chinese contingents in Mexico, in several of the countries of
Central and South America, and in some of the islands of the West Indies.
The largest numbers have been in Mexico, Cuba, Trinidad, British Guiana,
Panama, Brazil, and Peru, the two last-named countries having more than
any of the others. In 1931 a vigorous anti-Chinese movement broke out
in Mexico which led to the exodus of several thousands, and some anti-
Chinese agitation occurred in Peru.

Except for the laborers employed in the World War, and for students,
very few Chinese have been resident in Europe.

From this necessarily brief and somewhat statistical survey, it is clear
that widespread migrations of Chinese have been in progress, especially
during the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentieth century. Out
side the political boundaries of China (or at least the territories occupied
by the Ch'ing dynasty), however, the total number of Chinese, when
compared to that of those who have remained at home, is inconsiderable.
Emigration has afforded but little relief to the congestion of population in
China.

The small size of this movement overseas has been due in part to the
reluctance of the Chinese to expatriate themselves and in part to the
restrictions placed on them in most of the lands to which they would care
to go. Unpopularity has been the result partly of the clannishness of the
Chinese — for, in spite of extensive intermarriage with natives, they have
tended to keep apart — but probably has been due chiefly to economic
factors. In lands immediately south of China the Chinese trader and
moneylender have often been more aggressive and thrifty than the natives
and have held some of those stocks in a kind of economic servitude.
Frequently, therefore, they have been both feared and hated. In lands like
Australia and North America, which have been pre-empted by the white
race and which are suitable for extensive settlement by them, the Chinese
laborer, with his industry and his lower standard of living, was feared as
a competitor and was either completely or all but completely excluded.
Wherever he has gone, especially in Malaya and Indonesia, tiiQ Chinese has
contributed substantially to the prosperity of his adopted country.

The effect upon China of this rather limited overseas migration has been
very considerable. Economically, the sums brought or remitted home by
the emigrant have made for the prosperity of the regions from which he has
come — chiefly the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung. In the realm of

448 VOLUME II

ideas the results have been little short of startling. It was an emigrant, Sun
Yat-sen, who more than any other one man was responsible for the pre-
Commurdst radical political revolution in China, and his initial impulse
came from his residence, as a boy, in Hawaii. For years, in his propaganda
for renovating China, he sought and obtained support from his fellow
countrymen abroad. These, indeed, have again and again aided in financing
changes in many realms of Chinese life: political, economic, intellectual,
and religious. Thousands of other emigrants, some of them nationally and
even internationally known, but most of them obscure, have returned to
the land of their ancestors, seeking to bring it into partial conformity to the
ways of the Occident. The transformation in China during the past few
decades might not have been so thoroughgoing and certainly in many
instances would have taken a different course had it not been for these
emigrants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

On the racial composition of the Chinese see O. Franke, Geschichte des
chinesischen Reiches (Berlin, 1930), Vol. 1, ch. 2; S. M. Shirokogoroff, An
thropology of Northern China (Shanghai, 1923); S. M. Shirokogoroff, Anthro
pology of Eastern China and Kwangtung Province (Shanghai, 1925); S. M.
Shirokogoroff, "Who are the Northern Chinese?'* Journal of the North China
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1924, pp. 1-13; S. M. Shirokogoroff,
"Northern Tungus Migrations in the Far East," ibid., 1926, pp. 123-183;
Chi Li, The Formation of the Chinese People (Cambridge, 1928); T. Y.
Hsieh, "Origin and Migrations of the Hakkas," The Chinese Social and Political
Science Review, Vol. 13, pp. 202-227; L. H. D. Buxton, China, The Land and
the People (Oxford, 1929).

On non-Chinese peoples within the borders of China, see S. Couling, The
Encyclopaedia Sinica (London, 1917), pp. 1-5 (the article includes a fairly
extensive bibliography) ; J. H. Edgar, "The Country and Some Customs of the
Szechwan Mantze," Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 1917, pp. 42-56; Miss M. M. Moninger, "The Hainanese Miao," ibid.,
1921, pp. 40-50; W. C. Dodd, "The Relation of Chinese and Siamese," ibid.,
1920, pp. 1-13; J. H. Edgar, "Notes on Names of Non-Chinese Tribes in
Western Szechwan," ibid,, 1922, pp. 61-69; F. M. Savina, Histoire des Miao
(Hongkong, 1930); Ed. Chavannes, Ethnographic des No-so, Leurs Religions,
Leur Langue et Leur Venture. Avec Documents Historiques et Geographiques
Relatifs a Li-kiang (Leyden, 1913); C. P. Fitzgerald, The Tower of Five
Glories (London, 1941).

On the population of China, see R. S. Britton, "Census in Ancient China,"
Population, Vol. I, pp. 83-94; H. H. A. Bielenstein, "The Census of China
during the Period A.D. 2-742," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern An
tiquities, No. 19, pp. 125 ff.; C. P. Fitzgerald, "A New Estimate of the Chinese
Population under the Tang Dynasty for 618 A.D.," The China Journal, Vol. 16,
pp. 5-14, 62-72; M. T. Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai,
1922), pp. 11-14; S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York, 1907),
Vol. I, pp. 258-288; S. Couling, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, pp. 446-448; and

The Chinese People: Racial Composition 449

especially, because they are by a recognized expert who has taken advantage of
earlier studies, W. F. Willcox, "The Population of China in 1910," Journal of
the American Statistical Association, March, 1928, pp. 18-30, W. F. Willcox,
"A Westerner's Effort to Estimate the Population of China, and Its Increase
since 1650," ibid., September, 1930, pp. 255-268, and W. F. Willcox, "Increase
of the Population of the Earth and of the Continents," preprinted from Inter
national Migrations, Vol. 2, New York, 1930. Willcox's conclusions have been
vigorously contested. A valuable study, later than the others, is Ping-ti Ho,
Studies in the Population of China, 1368-1953 (Harvard University Press,
1959, pp. xviii, 341, xxxii). See also L. A. Orleans, "The 1953 Chinese
Census, a Perspective," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 16, pp. 565-574;
Ta Ch'en, The Population of Modern China (University of Chicago Press,
1946, pp. ix, 126); John Shields Aird, The Size, Composition and Growth
of the Population of Mainland China (U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau
of the Census, 1961, pp. vi, 100); E. H. Pritchard, The Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 23, pp. 3-20.

On the migrations of Chinese, see F. L. Ho, "Population Movement to the
Northeastern Frontier of China," The Chinese Social and Political Science
Review, Oct. 1931, pp. 346-401; Chi Li, The Formation of the Chinese People
(Cambridge, 1928); E. Biot, "Memoire sur les Colonies Militaires et Agricoles
des Chinois," Journal Asiatique, 4e ser. XV, 1850, pp. 338-370, 529-595; W.
H. Mallory, "The Northward Migration of the Chinese," Foreign Affairs, Vol.
7, pp. 72-82; H. F. MacNair, The Chinese Abroad (Shanghai, 1924); P. C.
Campbell, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries within the British Empire
(London, 1923); C. Walter Young, "Chinese Labor Migration to Manchuria,"
Chinese Economic Journal, July, 1927; R. Adams, The Peoples of Hawaii
(Honolulu, 1925); E. Dennery, Foules d'Asie (Paris, 1930); Ta Chen, Chinese
Migrations (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics No. 340, 1923); Amry Vanden-
bosch, "A Problem in Java. The, Chinese in the Dutch East Indies," Pacific
Affairs, Vol. 3, pp. 1001-1017; Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Malaya (New
York, Oxford University Press, 1948, pp. xvi, 326); C. C. Wu, "Chinese Im
migration in the Pacific Area," The Chinese Social and Political Science Review,
Vol. 12, pp. 543-560; T. Y. Hsieh, "The Chinese in Hawaii," ibid., Vol. 14,
pp. 13-40; and G. B, Cressey, "Chinese Colonization in Mongolia," Pioneer
Settlement, American Geographical Society Special Publication, No. 14, New
York, 1932. W. Campbell, Formosa under the Dutch (London, 1903), a
translation of seventeenth century Dutch records, gives some idea of the extent
of Chinese settlement on Formosa at that time. See also Ta Chen, Emigrant
Communities in South China. A Study of Overseas Migration and Its Influence
on Standards of Living and Social Change (New York, 1940). Important on
the internal and external movements of population in the 1930's and I9401s is
B. Lasker, Asia on the Move (New York, 1945). Harold J. Wiens, China's
March toward the Tropics (Hamden, Conn., The Shoe String Press, 1954, pp.
xv, 441), is concerned entirely with the migrations of Chinese from the North
to the southern sections of China Proper.

For additional bibliography, see C. 0. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 115, 116.

CHAP TER FIFTEEN

GOVERNMENT

INTRODUCTORY

One of the most noteworthy achievements of the Chinese has
been in the realm of government. Here they have been among the most
successful of all the .peoples of the globe. Judged by the area and the
number of people which it controlled, the length of time it endured, and
its record in promoting the unity of an empire and maintaining order and
insuring justice, the governmental structure which disappeared in the
twentieth century compares favorably with that of any other ever devised
by man.

Under such dynasties as the Han, the T'ang, and the Ch'ing the area
governed by the Chinese through their political machinery has beeu
surpassed only by such empires as the Mongol (which, though ephemeral,
was huge), the British, and the Russian, and possibly the Roman, the
Arab, and the Spanish. Even under such dynasties as the Sung and the
Ming, China was larger than western Europe. With the exception of the
British Empire at its height, the population held together by China's po
litical structure at the beginning of the twentieth century was greater than
that ever under one government.

The Chinese state which has been transformed in the twentieth century
has had a longer duration than any other of which we know. Its roots go
back into the Chou dynasty. Its essential outlines, as it was at the close of
the nineteenth century, took form in the Ch'ien Han, in the second century
B.C.

The government of China was not faultless. In spite of it and some
times because of it, civil strife and foreign invasion often devastated the
land. Under it injustice and inhumanity were fairly chronic and at times
widespread. Occasionally it broke down almost completely. The Chinese
seem never to have been as successful in ruling subject peoples or peoples
of very diverse racial stocks and cultures as were the Romans and the
British.

When all of this has been said, the fact remains that seldom has any
large group of mankind been so prosperous and so nearly contented as were
the Chinese under this governmental machinery when it was dominated
by the ablest of the monarchs of the Han, the Tang, the Sung, the Ming,
and the Ch'ing.

It was owing largely to their government that the Chinese achieved and

450

Government 451

maintained so remarkable a cultural unity and displayed such skill — all the
more notable because they were partly unconscious of it — in assimilating
invaders. When one recalls how western Europe, no larger than China
proper and with no more serious internal barriers of geography, failed, both
to its great profit and infinite distress, to win either political or cultural
unity, the achievement of the Chinese becomes little short of phenomenal.
It was, indeed, a success which ultimately defeated itself. Political and
cultural unity, with the concomitant lack of the stimulus which comes from
variety, tended dangerously toward self-satisfaction and stagnation, and so,
ultimately, toward weakness and decay.

Why were the Chinese so successful in their government? A completely
accurate answer is probably unattainable. However, a few contributing
elements seem fairly clear. One was the political- and social-mindedness
of the educated classes. When, in the throbbing intellectual life of the Chou,
the Chinese first began to put down in writing anything like an adequate
record of themselves, the articulate were largely absorbed with political and
social themes. The chief concern of most of the outstanding thinkers of the
Chou was the present well-being of man — the creation of a society which
would make for the good life. Theories as to what constituted the good life
differed, and still greater lack of agreement existed as to the means by which
it was to be attained. Eventually, as we have seen, after experiments with
Legalism and Taoism, one of the schools of thought, usually called Con
fucianism, was adopted — by the Han and in a modified form — as the ortho
dox philosophy on which the state was to be built.

^In Confucianism was the second reason for China's success with gov
ernment. Any attempt to sum up in a few words the political theory which
goes under that name is probably foredoomed to be unsatisfactory. This is
partly because, in spite of its professed allegiance to Confucius, a good
many other influences molded it, and the proportions of these changed from
time to time. What is called Confucianism underwent many alterations and
varied from age to age.JTaoism was a fairly constant factor in Chinese life,
and since in some periods it was popular at court and much studied by
many of the educated, its influence on political ideals was not inconsider
able. Taoism made for quietism, a minimum of governmental machinery,
and a distrust of force. In contrast, what usually goes under the name of
Legalism was also persistent Perhaps it should best be characterized as the
administrative mind. It made for autocracy and the close regulation of
collective and individual life. Other philosophies of the Chou, which as
separate schools had disappeared before the close of the Han, also left
their impress/In general, Confucianism believed that human society could
prosper only as men preserved right relations to one another and to the
universe about them. Ethics was stressed. The education of all the nation
in moral character was regarded as one of the chief purposes of the state.
This was to be by the example of the ruling classes rather than by force.

452 VOLUME II

Hence much emphasis was placed on discovering and training officials who
would measure up to the ideal Happiness, so Confucianism declared,
depended in no small degree upon the maintenance of right relations be
tween men and the universe about them. This was to be achieved partly
by righteousness of life and partly by the regular and correct observance
of ritual, particularly of the sacrifices and prayers to the spirits of many
kinds by which man was believed to be environed.) Even those who, like
Hsiin Tzu, were entirely skeptical as to the existence of these spirits, con
tended that the ritual should be perpetuated — for purposes of social control.
In the third place, the success of China's government was due to the
means by which the Confucian ideals were inculcated. The beginnings of
the system of state education, especially for the ruling classes, are said to
be traceable in the Chou or even earlier. Whether or not this is true, the
device of a bureaucracy recruited through civil service examinations was
one of the most noteworthy inventions of the Chinese. Although across the
centuries Confucianism underwent striking modifications, the bureaucracy
persisted and was a continuing feature of the government from dynasty to
dynasty. We know that some of the principles back of it are to be found
in the writings of the thinkers of the Chou. We know, too, that in its
essential features it was, in embryo, in operation under the Ch'ien Han,
and that it was elaborated by later dynasties. The bureaucracy, member
ship in which in theory and often in practice was based upon merit, at
tracted to itself much of the ability of the nation. Through it lay the chief
road to what ambitious men most crave: power, social recognition, and
financial independence. Admission to it was by way of the civil service
examinations. These, in turn, at least in later centuries, were designed to
test the applicant's competence in remembering and expounding the tenets
of Confucianism as contained in its standard texts. Since education in the
schools was mainly for the purpose of preparing candidates for the examina
tions, that, too, was based upon Confucianism. As a result the governing
class and all who aspired to belong to it were given a uniform training in
Confucianism. The prestige, influence, conviction, and self-interest of this
class joined in inculcating in the masses a similar although not so thorough
going a uniformity. As a consequence China was fully as much a cultural
as a political unit. By its acquired momentum, cultural integrity persisted
when, at intervals, the structure of the state was temporarily disrupted, and
proved an aid to reunion.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AS IT WAS BEFORE THE
MODIFICATIONS WROUGHT BY THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

To the Western specialist in political science the history of
government in China should prove fascinating. Here is a vast body of po-

Government 453

litical thought, experimentation, and experience reaching back over hun
dreds of years. An extensive literature provides a mine of information.
Education was so much for the purpose of preparing recruits for the service
of the state and had to do so largely with the underlying principles, and so
many of the intelligentsia actually held official positions, that for a large
proportion of those who produced and read literature, government was a
major interest. In consequence, Chinese histories, including the voluminous
dynastic records, have a good deal to say of government and the functions
performed by it, and treatises of varying antiquity, some of them very
extensive, deal more specifically with it.

It is difficult to parallel all the Chinese political structure with Occi
dental examples. Some Western observers have insisted that the Chinese
state was always so different from any known in the Occident that in the
Western sense of the term it can scarcely be called a government. This, it
must be emphatically said, is not true. However, enough differences existed
between Chinese and Western political forms to give some ground for the
assertion. In pre-twentieth century China, unity was dependent not upon
a feeling of nationality, as in the modern world, or primarily upon force
(although that entered into the plan), but upon cultural ideals, in part so
cial, in part moral, and in part political, which were inculcated through the
imperial organization.

Occasionally in the preceding chapters hints have been given of some
of the main developments in political machinery: an early Chinese state
centering around a monarch and occupying only a small territory; the
fissiparousness of the Chou, with the progressive increase of territory
occupied by the Chinese and the decline in the power of the central au
thority; the conquest by the Ch'in of the whole Chinese cultural area and
the establishment of a highly autocratic state ruling through a hierarchical
bureaucracy and according to the principles of the Legalist school; the
collapse of the Ch'in with the partial revival of decentralization under the
Han, and then, also under the Han, the strengthening of the power of the
monarch operating through a modified form of the hierarchical bureaucracy
of the Ch'in recruited partly through civil service examinations and based
upon Confucianism; the interesting experiments of Wang Mang; the in
terruptions in the operation of an empire-wide government during the
years of invasions and civil strife between the Han and the Sui, with the
many attempts at re-establishing it under the various states of that period;
the strong centralization under the Sui and the early Emperors of the
T'ang, utilizing and developing the structure inherited from the Ch'in and
the Han, followed by partial decentralization and the weakening of the
effective authority of the monarch; and the perpetuation, with modifications
and amplifications, of the machinery of the Ch'in, the Han, and the T'ang
by the Sung and the Ming, and even by foreign conquerors, including the

454 VOLUME n

Mongols and the Manchus. Since the Han no basic revolution had been
made in the form of government. Many changes in detail there were, and
occasional interruptions in the operation of the machinery. Territorial sub
divisions varied in titles, names, numbers, and boundaries; the relations of
officials to one another and to the Crown were repeatedly modified. How
ever, even Wang An-shih, with all his radicalism, did not venture to
interfere with the essential features of the administrative system. The
bureaucracy was a constant institution. Bent chiefly on enjoying the fruits
of a structure already in existence, the Manchus wrought modifications
which were comparatively minor. Not until the twentieth century did there
come fundamentally important departures from the past.

This is not the place to go into the history of Chinese political institu
tions. To do so would require much more space than is here available.
Moreover, specialized studies necessary for such an account are still lack
ing. It is, therefore, best to content ourselves with the description of the
main outlines of the government in the first part of the nineteenth century,
just before the beginnings of the changes brought by the irruption of the
Occident. It was in this form that the state continued, with important
modifications, until shortly after 1900.

As has repeatedly been said, since the Han the state had usually been
based upon Confucian principles, modified by other schools and to meet the
exigencies of changing situations. According to these principles, all civilized
mankind was held ideally to be included under one ruler. Human society
was thought of as integrated in an all-embracing world empire rather than
made up, as in the West in modern times, of reciprocally independent
sovereign states. Governments there were, like those in Burma, and Korea,
not closely supervised by the Emperor, but all were held to be subordinate
to him and were expected to recognize his overlordship by periodical
embassies.

Up to the beginning of the twentieth century this theory of universalism
was cherished and constituted one of the reasons for the difficulty of inter
course between the Chinese and the Occident. To Westerners the assump
tion seemed preposterous and bigoted. However, it had something sublime
about it, resembling the dream back of the Roman Empire and the Papacy.
In China, indeed, the state combined religious and political functions. All
civilized mankind was conceived of as having but one organization and
fellowship. In principle such religious and political divisions as have
drenched the rest of the world in blood were not to be tolerated. More
nearly than any other large group of mankind the Chinese approximated
to this ideal. In the great periods of their power they controlled most of
the civilized world with which they were in close contact.

The state was regarded as an enlarged family and the attitudes of a
patriarchal society permeated the whole. The people were to be reasoned

Government 455

with and educated quite as much as commanded. So, under the Ch'ing, the
famous Sacred Edict became a means of popular education. Originally
sixteen sententious moral maxims from the pen of the K'ang Hsi Emperor,
but eventually expanded into easy colloquial, it contained instructions in
the duty of Chinese to one another and to the government and was supposed
to be read to the public twice a month in every city and town.

THE EMPEROR

At the head of the state stood the Emperor, regarded as a
kind of father of his people. He was declared to hold his office through the
Mandate of Heaven. His subjects, and especially his ministers, owed him
loyalty. He in turn was believed to be able to retain this mandate only
through his own "virtue." In theory he was represented as ruling as much
by the influence of his character as by force. If he persistently proved him
self unworthy, Heaven might transfer its decree to someone else. A flood,
a drought, or some other natural disaster might be interpreted as a sign of
Heaven's displeasure. Or persistent tyranny and oppression might be
regarded as an offense against the sacred trust. Thus revolt could seek to
justify itself: a rebel who succeeded in supplanting the reigning monarch
and placing himself on the throne might be regarded as having in turn
received the divine commission. No family had ever acquired the throne
solely because of its "virtue" — as Confucian theory required it to do. Once
on the throne, however, it professed adherence to Confucianism to maintain
its power. Within a given dyhasty the rulers came from the same family.
Under the Ch'ing, the succession was determined according to the special
rules of the Manchus. With the exception of the last two Emperors, where
the preceding monarch had left no male issue, it was in direct descent in
the male line. In only one instance, that of the Tung Chih Emperor, who
was an only son, did the throne come to the eldest. Until the Kuang Hsu
Emperor, each of the Ch'ing had been designated by his predecessor. The
Kuang Hsu and Hsiian T'ung Emperors had been the choice of the
Empress Dowager, although made through a council of the notables of the
imperial family and the realm.

The Emperor had many designations, some of them official, some
popular. Among them were Huang Ti (a title adopted, it will be recalled,
by the famous First Emperor of the Ch'in dynasty) , Huang Shang, Tien
Tzu (Son of Heaven), and Wan Sui Yeh (Lord of Ten Thousand Years).
The personal name of the reigning monarch was never to be mentioned.
On his death, the Emperor received a temple name, by which he is usually
designated in histories. There was also a men hao, literally "year designa
tion," usually called "reign name" or " reign title," by which dates were
reckoned. The custom of employing a nien hao dated from early in the

456 VOLUME H

Han. Until the Ming the nien hao might be changed, occasionally several
times, during the reign of a monarch. Under the Ming, with one exception,
and after the Manchus came into power, the same nien hao was employed
throughout a reign. In Western histories, then, the Emperors of the Ming
and Ch'ing are almost invariably known by their nien hao. Thus the Em
peror whose temple name is Sheng Tsii Jen is best known in the Occident
by his nien hao, K'ang Hsi.

In theory, the Emperor was supreme over all civilized human society.
He was the administrative director of the state, and officials derived their
authority and titles from him. In him resided the power of legislation, and
he was the supreme judge. The religious head of society, he not only per
formed many ceremonies, either in person or by proxy, as the high priest
of mankind, but also appointed or confirmed the chief dignitaries of various
cults, such as the Dalai Lama and the Taoist "Pope." He presided over
the intellectual world, and certain of the highest of civil service examina
tions were supposedly conducted by him in person or in his presence.

In practice the power of the Emperor was curtailed. Most of the
imperial powers had to be delegated. Precedent, public opinion, custom,
the inertia of the vast body of officialdom (particularly of the local au
thorities), the distances (great if measured by the time required for travel) ,
the elaborate formalities and ceremonial which governed the court and by
which even a strong monarch found himself restrained, the moral law as
expressed in the Classics of the Confucian school, legal codes inherited
from the past, councilors, the official censors, the impossibility, even for the
ablest, of fulfilling in person all the exacting duties of the office, and in the
case of the Ch'ing, the racial incompatibility between the Manchus and
the Chinese — all acted as a check on the Emperor. A man of extraordinary
energy and ability, such as the K'ang Hsi Emperor or the Ch'ien Lung
Emperor in his younger days, could dominate the entire machinery of state.
A monarch of lesser ability could not make his will so effective — as when
the Kuang Hsu Emperor failed to carry through the reforms of 1898.

The Emperor had an Empress Consort, secondary wives, and concu
bines of several ranks. None of them, however, was supposed to have a
voice in the government. As we have seen, an Empress Dowager might
have immense influence. If the Emperor was a minor, a regent acted for
him, and the power of an Empress Dowager was greatly enhanced if she
held that office.

The administration of the palace necessitated a vast array of func
tionaries and servants. The heads of the organization of the imperial house
hold were usually of high rank. Much of the work of the palace was
performed by eunuchs, and in the last years of the Ch'ing, as on several
occasions under preceding ruling lines, a few acquired much power.

Government 457

THE CENTRAL MACHINERY

Below the Emperor, in the capital, and acting for him, were
numerous bodies through which much of the supervision of the realm was
exercised. In practice the highest was the Chun Chi Ck'u, usually translated
(very freely) as the Grand Council or Council of State. Originated by the
Manchus, it dated, at least in the form in which it became the Grand
Council, from 1730. It usually met daily, in the very early morning. The
number of its members was undetermined, but for many years was four or
five, about half Chinese and half Manchus. In it most of the more important
affairs of state were discussed.

In theory the highest body was not the Chun Chi Ch'u but the Nei Ko
— literally Inner Cabinet or Hall, but usually denominated in English the
Grand Secretariat. This had been created under the Ming, taking the rank
but not the power of the ancient premiership. Even after it had been
superseded by the Chun Chi Ch'u as the active Council of State, admission
to one of its ranking posts (there were four Grand Secretaries and two
Assistant Grand Secretaries, half being Manchus and half Chinese) was the
highest honor which could come to a Chinese official. However, its func
tions had become almost nominal, and its members usually had other
duties, which took them away from the capital most of the time.

In addition to these two councils, numbers of bureaus and boards
existed to which were delegated specific portions of the business of state.
The chief of these were the "Six Boards": the Li Pu, or Board of Civil
Office; the Hu Pu, or Board of Revenue; the Li Pu, or Board of Rites (in
Chinese this Li is a different character from that for the Board of Civil
Office) ; the Ping Pu, or Board of War; the Hsing P#, or Board of Punish
ments (probably, if its duties are taken into account, more accurately
named the Board of Law) ; and K ung Pu, or Board of Works. The functions
of these boards were, in general, those indicated by the titles, and in a
work of this length require little further elaboration.

The only boards whose designations in English sound especially
strange to the ears of modern Westerners were those of Civil Office and of
Rites. The Board of Civil Office was charged with the direction of the
bureaucracy through which the Empire was administered. In that body
appointments, promotions, degradations, retirements, and honors — to both
the living and the dead — were made on its recommendation. In a state
ordered on the Confucian theory a Board of Rites had an important place.
From the standpoint of that school it was essential to the welfare of society
that the ritual, both secular and religious, maintained by the government
be correctly and regularly performed. Upon it depended the smooth co
ordination of mankind with the spiritual and material universe which was
deemed essential to the happiness and prosperity of men. By it, too, men

458 VOLUME n

were held to be educated and regulated. Li, then, is only imperfectly
translated as rites. It possessed an ethical meaning. The outward ritual was
supposed to be both an expression of and an incentive to morality. The
system was not unlike that support of religion by the state which has been
a familiar phenomenon in the West. Hence it is not strange that a special
and major board in charge of the Li was regarded as necessary.

Each of the Six Boards had two presidents, one Manchu and one
Chinese, and two Manchu and two Chinese vice-presidents. Each, too, had
its staff of secretaries and clerks. Moreover, each was subdivided into
several departments, and attached to some were subordinate bodies, such
as the Board of Music, to which was entrusted the music of state functions,
especially of religious services, and which was under the Li Pu.

In addition to the Six Boards there were three other major bodies. One
of these — uniquely characteristic of China — was the Tu Ch'a Yuan, or
Censorate. This institution had its origins at least as far back as the Ch'in,
but as was natural, its form and detailed duties changed from time to time.
In general, its function was, as its name suggests, to criticize the govern
ment. This included such duties as keeping a watch on officials and report
ing to the Emperor any delinquencies, talcing exception to the acts of the
Emperor himself, checking over important state documents for mistakes,
assisting in the examination of officials, investigating reports of financial
corruption in governmental accounts, keeping watch over state property
and the construction of public buildings, supervising the ceremonies on
formal occasions to be sure that they were properly conducted, and joining
with two others of the central bodies as a high court of review for a large
range of cases. Naturally, there was a subdivision of duties among its
members.

The censors expressed their criticisms in the form of memorials to the
throne. Theoretically, they were given great liberty of speech. In practice
they were often fearless. However, censors did not rank very high in the
official scale. Moreover, a censor might be punished for his pains. Yet
during the Ch'ing dynasty only about half a hundred such penalties are
recorded. Timid censors might fear to speak, or occasionally one might
use his position to bring embarrassment to an enemy. On the whole, public
opinion, as voiced by the articulate classes (usually scholars and officials),
rallied to the support of a censor whose strictures were well founded.

Another body was the Tung Cheng Ssii, or Office of Transmission,
whose function it was to open, record, and transmit memorials on routine
business. Still another was the Ta Li Ssu, or Grand Court of Revision,
which exercised a general supervision over the administration of the
criminal law. It, the Board of Punishments, and the Censorate were known
as the "Three Supreme Tribunals." They met together as a court of appeal,
to which all verdicts of capital punishment were sent for review.

Government 459

These nine bodies, sometimes called the Nine Chief Ministries of
State, by no means exhausted the central bureaus in Peking. There was
the Li Fan Yuan, sometimes inaccurately called, in English, the Colonial
Office, which had charge of most of Mongolia, Tibet, and Sinkiang. There
was the famous Hanlin Yuan, rather freely translated as the Imperial
Academy. Admission to it was reserved to those who had stood high in
the civil service examinations, and so was esteemed a great honor. It also
served to provide posts for some who had not yet been appointed to other
offices in the bureaucracy and formed a kind of springboard to desirable
posts. Its functions were literary, such as the expounding of the Classics,
the preparation of official documents, and the composition and preservation
of elaborate records, especially of the words and actions of the Emperor,
from which the history of the dynasty would eventually be compiled. Then
there was a department charged with the instruction of the heir apparent.
During most of the Ch'ing, positions in it were purely honorary sinecures,
since very infrequently was the public appointment of a successor to the
throne made until the death bed of the Emperor. The list of relatively minor
bureaus included one on sacrificial worship (for the dead), one on state
ceremonies (for the living), another in charge of formal official banquets,
an imperial college (whose students were in preparation for the civil
service), and the Imperial Board of Astronomy (connected with the Board
of Rites).

The government issued an official publication, the Ching Pao — usually
called by foreigners the Peking Gazette — in which such documents as
decrees and memorials were reproduced. The Ching Pao circulated among
high officials throughout the Empire and was widely reprinted, in full or
abridged form, on private initiative, for more popular distribution.

This structure at the imperial capital had strong similarities, in its gen
eral subdivision of functions among specialized boards and its central
councils of state, to monarchical states in the Occident. However, some
significant differences must be noted. Among them were the absence of any
provision for a voice in the government by elected delegates of the more
influential classes and the complete lack of any office for the conduct of
intercourse with nations of equal rank. At least one recognized means
existed by which members of the most powerful group, that of the scholar-
officials, could bring pressure to bear — memorializing the throne. Often it
was very effective. Yet it differed decidedly from the device which had
been evolved in western Europe during the course of centuries — that of a
body such as Parliament or the Estates General, representing the weightiest
and most vocal groups in the realm, and recruited in part or in whole by
election.

The absence of a ministry of foreign affairs co-ordinate in dignity with
the other major central boards was but one evidence of a basic conviction

460 VOLUME n

concerning the nature of the Chinese state. Mankind was conceived of as
forming a political as well as a cultural unit. It was known that some
civilized as well as some barbarous peoples had not acknowledged that
ideal. However, the recognition that governments existed which were
permanently entitled to deal with the Emperor on the basis of equality,
and that there was a body of international law by which such intercourse
was to be guided, involved nothing short of a revolution in the existing
Chinese theory of society.

THE OFFICIAL HIERARCHY OUTSIDE THE CAPITAL

The major territorial administrative divisions of China proper
were the provinces (sheng*) . The number had been altered from time to
time and remnants of pre-Ch'ing units lingered in popular and literary
parlance. Under the latter part of the Ch'ing, however, the provinces of
China proper totaled eighteen. In 1884 Sinkiang was made a province.
Manchuria was divided into three additional provinces, but the machinery
and control of these varied from those of the eighteen of China proper. The
administration of the outlying dependencies of the Empire was still different.

The eighteen provinces were in turn subdivided into fu, or prefectures,
t'ing, sub-prefectures independent of a fu, chou not governed through a
ju, chou subject to a fu, and hsien, usually translated as districts, and
also subject either to a fu or to one of the chou which was not under a fu.
The hsien were much more numerous than either the t'ing or the chou.

The chief officers of the province were usually rather loosely designated
in English as the Viceroy or Governor-general (Tsung Tu, Chih Chun, or
Chih Tai), the Governor (Hsun Fu, Fu Yuan> or Fu T'ai), the Lieuten
ant Governor or Treasurer (colloquially called the Nieh Tai}, the Salt
Comptroller, and the Grain Intendant. The officers of the subdivisions most
frequently mentioned were the Intendant of a circuit (colloquially, the Tao
Tai), the Prefect, or head of a fu (Chih Fu), the Sub-prefect (Tung Chih),
the Magistrate of an independent chou (Chih Chou), and the District
Magistrate (Chih Hsien). There were other officials who did not figure
so frequently or so prominently in the administration. Ranks in the hier
archy were* indicated by colored buttons on the official caps and by insignia
on the front and back of robes of state.

The viceroys outranked all the others. Under most of the Ch'ing there
were eight of them. Usually a viceroy was placed over two provinces
(Fukien-Chekiang, Hupeh-Hunan, Shensi-Kansu, Kwangtung-Kwangsi,
and Yunnan-Kweichow). In one instance he was placed over three, Kiang-
su-Anhui-Kiangsi. Chihli (the later Hopei) and Szechwan each had a
viceroy but no governor. Each of the other provinces had a governor.
Shantung, Honan, and Shansi were not under a viceroy. In general, the

Government

461

; viceroys were supposed to have the powers of a monarch within their
jurisdictions— subject always to the crown. In theory the governor had
much the same functions, but subject to the viceroy, except, of course,
in the three provinces over which there was no viceroy. In practice the
two often conflicted and exercised a check over each other. The functions of
the other provincial officers are, for our purposes here, sufficiently
described by their titles.

The members of the hierarchy who came most directly in touch with
the masses were the heads of the ju, the chou, the t'ing, and the hsien,
especially the last. They were judges and had charge of the police, of the
performance of certain religious rites, and of the collection of taxes, and
were charged with other administrative functions that touched the ordinary
man. In accordance with patriarchal ideals, they stood in loco parentis
to the populace and were called "fathers and mothers" of the people
within their jurisdictions.

Along with its obvious virtues, the system had many defects. Among
the chief was financial corruption. Salaries were small and expenses large,
especially as every official had many dependents to support — including
relatives and a throng of secretaries and other functionaries necessary to
the conduct of his office. He had, moreover, to pay sums more or less
substantial (theoretically as gifts) to various officials to obtain appointment
and had to be prepared to part with additional sums when he came up
for reappointment. To be sure, offices carried with them many emolu
ments that were regarded as legitimate, but the temptation to gain money
in every possible way was very strong.

In effect the country was divided into huge semiautonomous states
jwhose heads were intrusted by the Emperor with almost independent
powers. With certain exceptions, each governor and viceroy was supposed
:to handle the affairs of his own jurisdiction with as little reference to
Peking as possible, and in turn was held responsible by Peking for what
ever went amiss. This independence of action of the heads of provinces
was repeatedly -seen in the nineteenth century, and never more vividly
than when, in 1900, the viceroys and governors outside of the Northeast
chose to disregard the apparent declaration of war on the powers by
Peking and remained on friendly terms with the invaders. Local semiauton-
omy was necessary in a land the. size of China in a day when no railways,
telegraphs, automobiles, or airplanes bound the country together. If so
large an area was to be successfully governed from one capital, it had to
be by granting discretionary powers to the highest officers in each major
administrative unit.

The danger was that strong officials in the provinces would set them
selves up as fully independent monarchs and even make a bid for the con
trol of the Empire. This was heightened by strong local loyalties and

462 VOLUME II

prejudices. The menace was fairly chronic through the entire history of
China. Early in the course of the Ch'ing, it will be recalled, the dynasty
was almost wrecked by the rebellion of Wu San-kuei and other terri
torial magnates in the South. Throughout the centuries strong monarchs
had tried various safeguards against the danger of such rebellion. Since
the Han, government through a hierarchy recruited through civil service
examinations had been the most nearly constant and successful. In addi
tion, a number of ingenious devices were employed by the Ch'ing in
much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By no means all of them
originated with the Manchus, nor is it clear that each was adopted with
this specific purpose in mind. The larger proportion of all officials in the
hierarchy, even the most humble district magistrates, were appointed from
the capital. Their specific local assignments might come from the provincial
authorities, and a powerful official might and often did exert pressure
to bring about the appointment of a protege, but Peking did not risk
the possibility of any governor or viceroy building up a regional machine.
Moreover, no official was permitted to hold a post in his native province.
Seeming exceptions were sometimes made when a man was designated as a
locum tenens to a position in the province of his birth. Obviously such
a procedure rendered it difficult for any official plotting rebellion to appeal
fo provincial loyalties. Appointments to office were, moreover, only for
?the term of three years, and while the assignment was often renewed,
fit seems only infrequently to have been for more than an additional
triennium. Then, too, both Peking and the provincial authorities sent out
messengers from time to time on special errands. Some of the imperial
commissioners might even outrank a viceroy. The censors might impeach
.provincial officials, and the right of officials of certain ranks to memorialize
^the throne gave a recognized channel for voicing criticisms. An elaborate
system of checks and balances existed — of viceroy and governor against
each other, and of the other high provincial officials on one another and
on the governor and the viceroy. Members of the imperial family could
not hold office in the provinces. Peking held the high provincial officials
strictly accountable for whatever happened in their jurisdictions. Certain
decisions, such as final action on many cases involving capital punish
ment, were reserved to the capital. These safeguards did not prevent
rebellion, but they did much to minimize its frequency and to hold
together, with a nice balance between needed local initiative and responsi
bility to a central authority, the large area that was China proper.

THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS

In theory and to a large extent in practice, the members
of this impressive hierarchy of civil officials were recruited through an

Government 463

elaborate and grueling system of examinations. Three main sets of tests
led to what roughly corresponded to degrees awarded by Western uni
versities. The three "degrees" were hsiu ts'cti, chu jen, and chin shih. In
addition to these three, as variations from them or as subdivisions of them,
were other stages, each designated by a distinct title.

In every hsien and roughly every two years in each fu, under the
proper official, there was conducted the first set of the examinations. Those
who passed them were given the title of hsiu ts'ai. This had the effect of
recognizing the possessor as qualified to prepare further and to compete in
the next stage of the system. The hsiu ts'ai had certain privileges. Some of
them received a subsidy from the government to enable them to continue
their studies; they were exempt from liability to corporal punishment by
the magistrates; they were considered members of the local gentry and
could be invited to share in the discussion of local affairs; and they were
accorded other rights and immunities. Within the ranks of the hsiu ts'ai
were subdivisions and titles of honor. In general the hsiu ts'ai constituted
a privileged class to which accrued a good deal of social prestige. Now
and then a minor officer was appointed directly from among their number,
but they were not eligible to such posts as that of a hsien magistrate.
To hold their titles, they had to continue their studies and to stand a
re-examination every three years.

The next major set of examinations led to the title of chu jSn. This
was held in the provincial capitals, as a rule at intervals of three years
(actually, on the average, somewhat more frequently). In each of these
cities was a plot of ground on which hundreds of permanent stalls were
erected for this purpose. The tests were more formidable than those leading
to the hsiu ts'ai. They were under the direction of a supervisor and an
associate appointed directly from Peking, and much ceremony attached
to them. Every examination was divided into three sessions, each with its
separate topics. The night before the session the aspirants were led to
their cells and sealed in them, and did not emerge until the third day. The
mere physical strain was by no means slight, and it was not uncommon for
a candidate to die under it. Those who were successful in the ordeal were
marked and honored men, especially those who passed at or near the head
of the list

Even the "degree'* of chu jdn did not usually entitle its recipient to
hold office. As a rule, a man was eligible only after having passed a third
set of examinations, held at Peking. These also were usually at triennial
intervals, and in the spring following the examinations leading to the
chu j£n. Only chu jen were admitted. Again there were three grilling
sessions. The successful examinees were rewarded with the title of chin shih.
Those emerging with the highest credit were honored by additional desig
nations. Still another examination was held, theoretically in the presence of

464

VOLUME II

the Emperor and on a theme set by him, which resulted in further grading
the chin shih.

Chin shih who passed with the greatest distinction were usually given
posts in the Hanlin Yuan, in itself no mean honor, and all were either
awarded official posts or were placed on the list of "expectant officials"
from which appointments were to be made. Chu jen who had been unsuc
cessful in their efforts to enter the ranks of the chin shih might either
attempt the examination again or be appointed to office after meeting tests
which were presumably somewhat less exacting.

The subject matter of the examinations was largely Chinese literature,
chiefly that of the Confucian school. Most examinations consisted of com
posing essays and poems on topics selected from this literature. The essays
and poems were required to conform to decidedly artificial standards and
were judged by the criteria of style rather than of originality of thought.
The competition was much more keen than any to which we are accus
tomed in education tests in the Occident. Only a small percentage of the
contestants at each of the successive examinations achieved the coveted
degrees. Of those who presented themselves for the chu jen at any one time,
only one out of fifteen or more was successful, and of those who sat for the
chin shih, usually much fewer than one in ten. The number admitted to the
degree of chin shih in any one year was seldom more than three hundred
fifty and as a rule much less. Candidates often tried again and again, and
occasionally a grandfather, father, and son came together. While in many
instances younger men attained the rank of chin, shih, the median age was
somewhere in the thirties.

The defects of the system were obvious: the absorption in purely
verbal matters, and the premium upon memory and upon ability to write
according to the standards of an arbitrary literary style, rather than upon
originality or vigor of thought and promise in administrative skill. In many
scholars, too, there were fostered an intellectual arrogance, a narrowness
of outlook, and a stereotyping of thought which discouraged all progress.
Other weaknesses not necessarily inherent in the procedure frequently
accompanied it. In spite of elaborately devised safeguards, some men
cheated, undetected, or bribed the readers of the papers. From the Sui
through the Ch'ing, sons of high officials could enter the bureaucracy either
without meeting the ordeal of the examinations or by passing tests which
were much easier than those required of others. The right to use the title
of the lower degrees was sold by the government, especially in the years of
the decadence of the Ch'ing.

Yet over and beyond the weaknesses were values which the foreign
observer might easily miss. Even in the worst years of the dynasty only
a small minority of the degrees were obtained fraudulently. Titles which
had been bought were popularly not regarded as highly as those acquired

Government 465

by merit. The competition was so exacting that as a rule success went only
to men of more than average mental ability and capacity for concentrated
application. Possession of the degrees and of a position in the hierarchy
was the most coveted honor in the Empire. The examinations, then, brought
into the service of society through the state many of the really able men of
the country. Even more important was the promotion of cultural unity. All
civil officials had passed through the same training in the literature which
set forth the ideals of the Confucian school. Not only officials but also the
thousands of disappointed aspirants, many times as numerous as the suc
cessful, had been subjected to the same regimen. Since the entire formal
education of the country was dominated by the purpose of preparing men
for the civil service tests and drew its teachers from the ranks of those who
had been in training for them, many thousands who had never proceeded
far enough with their studies to compete in the examinations had at least
a smattering of the standard learning. The educated class, trained in this
uniform fashion, enjoyed a prestige greater than that accorded to scholars
in any other nation: they dominated society. Their ideals and manners
were, accordingly, largely taken over by the masses and tended to permeate
the entire nation. The Confucian dream of a society molded by the example
of an educated ruling class had to no small extent become an actuality. In
spite of its great geographic extent, therefore, China proper was essentially
one in civilization and government. Political division was seldom more
than temporary and never permanent.

With all its defects, the culture upon which this unity was built was
rich and worthy. It inculcated high ideals in the relations of men to one
another, so essential to an ordered and prosperous society; it possessed
and fostered an extensive and varied literature; and it set high store by good
taste and by an appreciation of certain phases of the aesthetic side of life.

The hierarchy and the civil service examinations were among the most
notable devices ever originated by any branch of the human race.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

/ Underneath the official hierarchy recruited through the civil

;rvice examinations was the local government. Most of it was by units
hich were largely self-governing, such as the village, the family (includ-
;g its enlarged form, the clan), and the guild. In a certain sense China
was a vast congeries of these all but autonomous units, and the hierarchy
intervened only when they failed to function or fell out with one another,
or when some crime was committed of which it could not but take cog
nizance. The picture, too, was complicated by the presence of secret
societies, some of them very powerful.

The imperial government acted chiefly as an umpire between interests

466 VOLUME n

which at any time might come into conflict. It provided, too, for the super
vision of certain large economic enterprises, such as extensive public
works, and for the common defense against external invasion and internal
disorder.

The local units were controlled in part on a principle of which much
was made in Chinese administration — that of group responsibility. All the
members of a family or a village could be held accountable for the deeds
of each of their fellows. Pressure was usually brought from above upon
the recognized headman or headmen, but might be exerted upon all the
individuals in the unit.

Nothing more need be said at this point concerning the family, the
guild, and the secret societies, for these are to be described in later chapters.
It must be noted, however, that they were very important factors in local
and — at times — in provincial and national administration. The village
government had as its chief organs a council of elders or managers and
a headman, the latter usually termed the ti pao. The council of elders was
often made up of the leaders of the more important families and of the men
who were generally recognized as having the most influence in the village:
scholars, and those who had won esteem by their force of character, ex
perience, and administrative ability. In some localities and times, however,
these positions went to rich schemers or to men who used corrupt measures
to attain them. As a rule, no formal election seems to have been held,
although in theory the elders were nominated by their fellow villagers and
confirmed by the responsible -magistrate, usually the chih hsien. Member
ship appears rather to have come through tacit recognition by public
opinion. In theory the ti pao was chosen by the magistrate and was the one
through whom the village had its communication with the official hierarchy.
In at least some villages in the South, the village council was associated
with the village temple. To the council of elders and the ti pao went such
tasks as lighting the streets, maintaining the watchmen, building and repair
ing dikes, constructing and maintaining the wall (if there was one), super
vising markets, approving of all transfers of land, erecting and repairing
temples, sinking and cleaning community wells, collecting the taxes and
contributions levied by the state, and adjusting disputes between fellow
villagers or with other villages. Controversies which could not be settled
in this manner might be taken to the magistrate, but such litigation was
usually costly and prolonged and was entered upon only as a last resort
In some sections tax collectors constituted an hereditary group, distinct from
the ti pao and elders.

This organization of local governments was to be found not only in
the villages but also in the larger towns and the cities. These were usually
divided into wards, each with its council of elders and its ti pao, who func
tioned much as did those of the villages.

Government 457

It must be added that local institutions varied markedly in the different
areas of China. Few descriptions can be written which prove valid for the
entire country.

Then, too, the "local gentry," as foreigners sometimes called them, were
very influential. Scholars, retired officials, men of wealth, the elders of the
leading clans, were much listened to in local affairs and exercised a good
deal of initiative in matters affecting the welfare of the community.

In addition to the family, the guild, the secret society, the village, and
the gentry, there were many other local organizations that took over some
of the functions that in some countries in the Occident are performed by
the government. Among them were volunteer fire companies, benevolent
societies, groups for watching the crops, and associations for mutual aid.
The Chinese have a great capacity and zeal for organization. This was
displayed in scores of ways and helped to render them, in their local
affairs, self-managing with the minimum of interference from above. It
must be added, however, that repeatedly they were hampered by reciprocal
distrust and by incapacity for administration. Often individuals, groups,
and classes displayed a distressing lack of ability or of willngness to co
operate.

LAWS AND COURTS

What in the West is called law was much of it in China a
matter of tradition and custom. Thanks largely to the common basis of
culture insured by the civil service examinations, certain ethical principles
were recognized as authoritative throughout the land. This, indeed, was in
accordance with the dominant Confucian theory. Life and conduct were
supposed to be governed by universally valid principles. These were in
cluded, in general, under what the Chinese denominated It (not the same
character as that employed for ceremonies). Originally quite possibly em
ployed to designate the manners and customs of the aristocracy, in the
course of the centuries li came to be regarded as binding on all civilized
mankind. It was conceived of as conforming to the will of Heaven and was
akin to although not identical with the concept of natural law that was
present in the Graeco-Roman world and has been transmitted to the
modern Occident. In addition, each local unit had its customs. Enforce
ment of li and local customs was chiefly through public opinion, which was
very powerful, and by the various local organizations.

There was, as well, a body of statutory law issued in the form of a
code. Although much narrower than //, it was supposed to conform to it.
In a sense the introduction of written law was a departure from strict
Confucian theory and, whether consciously or unconsciously, resembled,
rather, the concepts of the Legalists. Statutory law was perpetuated by

468 VOLUME II

dynasty after dynasty, like the form of the official hierarchy. For example,
the Ch'ing adopted, with modifications, the code in use under the Ming.
It was altered from time to time by imperial decree and showed marks
of a distinct development.

The code was made up largely of what in the Occident would be called
criminal and administrative law. Some items of civil law (proportionately
not very numerous) were included in it. The code of the Ch'ing was called
the Ta Ctiing Lu Li and was composed, as the name indicates, of lu and li.
The lu were fundamental laws based largely upon the Ming code. Pro
mulgated early in the dynasty, in theory they remained unchanged. The //
seem to have been introduced first by the Ming, and were an attempt to
incorporate the results of judicial decisions in actual cases. They were also
in the nature of supplementary statutes modifying and extending the lu
and subject to periodical revision. The lu were divided into seven main
heads: general, civil, fiscal, ritual, military, criminal, and concerning public
works. The general section included principles applying to the whole; the
civil dealt with the system of government and the conduct of magistrates
and regulated the succession to hereditary titles; the fiscal related to such
matters as inheritance and the census; the section on ritual had to do with
state sacrifices and ceremonies; the military included the protection of the
palace, the guarding of the frontier, and the equipping and provisioning of
the army; and the section on public works provided for such undertakings
as dikes and the examination and repair of public buildings.

Several features of the criminal law — the bulkiest portion of the lu —
impress the modern Anglo-Saxon reader as different from the legal system
under which he has lived. There was the principle of joint responsibility,
by which, for a particularly heinous crime, an entire family might be
exterminated, with the mitigation that sons below the age of puberty were
merely to be emasculated. Then, too, although no liability attached for an
accidental death, the judgment as to what was accidental differed radically
at times from that of the West. Persons were often held culpable for deaths
for which in the Occident they could have been adjudged free from
blame. Even in the case of some fatalities which were decided to have been
accidental, those persons who had been the innocent cause were fined or
required to make a payment to the deceased relatives. Moreover, the rules
of evidence were dissimilar from those in most lands in the modern West,
and torture might be used to extract confession from the prisoner —
although all but certain forms of it were illegal. From the standpoint of the
modern Occident, some punishments were barbarous, such as beating with
a bamboo until the victim's back was badly mangled, and death by slicing
the culprit into fragments (prescribed, apparently, not so much for the
present suffering it caused as for the erasure, so far as possible, of the
criminal from the spirit world by the complete dismemberment of his

Government 459

body). Those condemned to death were sometimes, as an act of clemency,
allowed to commit suicide.

Such differences as these were among the causes of friction between
foreigners and Chinese officials in pretreaty days and were urged as
reasons for extraterritoriality. It should be remembered, however, that the
law provided regular schedules by which penalties might be reduced or
commuted, that Chinese punishments and torture were not a whit more
extreme than those once employed in Europe, and that as late as the
eighteenth century Chinese criminal procedure was probably more humane
than that of some of the most powerful of the governments of the Occident.
Only with the reform of the laws and prisons of the Occident in the nine
teenth century — under the influence of the humanitarian movement — did
China fall behind.

Precedent played a large part in legal cases, and there were voluminous
compilations of court decisions. An extensive legal literature existed, and
magistrates, along with their other duties, were supposed to be sufficiently
acquainted with the law to act as judges. However, litigants and prisoners
did not employ counsel as in the West, and (at least under the Ming and
Ch'ing), although the magistrates had jurisconsults, Chinese society partly
lacked that learned professional, the lawyer, who has loomed large in the
Occident. Perhaps because of the difference in tradition, the educated
Chinese thought less legalistically than does the educated man of Europe
and America. This also was a cause of friction. Especially in intergovern
mental relations between China and the Occident, the latter, accustomed
to its own categories, misunderstood and was misunderstood.

Much corruption was found in the courts. The many underlings attached
to the magistrates' offices derived their income largely from litigation and
criminal cases. The magistrate, even when he himself was honest, was a
stranger in his district and so was largely dependent upon his subordinates
for a knowledge of the local situation. The function of judge was, moreover,
only one of that official's many duties and suffered from divided attention.
As a result, entry into the courts usually proved costly in the extreme and
the verdict often went to the longest purse.

TAXATION

The revenue to support the hierarchy of officials and the
machinery of district, provincial, and imperial governments came chiefly
from four sources: the land tax, tribute, customs duties, and the salt
monopoly. The land tax was supposedly fixed according to an assessment
made in 1713, but in practice, since the charges for collection were in
addition to it and constituted a source of income for some of the officials,
it was as much more as the collector could get. Usually the addition seems

470 VOLUME II

to have been from ten to fifty per cent. The tax could be increased in other
ways, quite legal and regular, so that in practice the actual sums paid
might be twice or more than those authorized in 1713. As assessed under
the Manchus, or at least the later Manchus, in most sections the land tax
was a combination of several levies of more or less ancient origin: a poll
tax, a tax as commutation for forced labor, and another as a substitute for
assistance in transmitting official communications.

In addition to a land tax, paid in cash, was a tribute collected in pro
duce, such as silk, copper from mines, and especially grain. The tax in
grain, levied on the land, and often compounded by a cash payment, in
effect was usually an addition to the land tax. There were many government
granaries and much of the grain was transmitted to Peking.

In the days before the treaties and augmented foreign trade and before
collection by the foreign-dominated imperial maritime customs service, the
customs duties did not loom as prominently as the land tax. They were,
however, a considerable source of revenue and were derived from both
imposts on foreign trade and domestic commerce.

Salt was, as it had been for centuries, an important source of income.
The manufacture, distribution, and sale of salt constituted a state monopoly
— although it might be conducted through individuals or firms to whom
the government had fanned it;

Several other sources of revenue were regularly tapped, although most
of them yielded comparatively minor sums. The sale of office sometimes
brought in considerable amounts. Taxes on tea, on fish, and on reeds used
for fuel and thatching, mining royalties, fees on the transfer of land and
houses, licenses to pawnbrokers and to other financial and mercantile
enterprises, a consumption and production tax, and what corresponded to
the octroi of Europe — a levy on produce as it entered a town — all swelled
the total.

Contrasted with the revenues of governments of the modern West,
those of the old China were not large. Compared with the total income of
the people, the tax load seems to have been much less than that of most
of the major countries of the present-day Occident. This was very possibly
true even when the expenses of local governments and the more or less
extra-legal "squeeze" of officials were added. Moreover, in times of disaster,
such as drought or flood, the government often remitted or reduced the
taxes of the afflicted districts. The relative lightness of the imposts was due
partly to the comparatively limited functions of the older Chinese state.
Many of the tasks undertaken by Western governments of today were left
to the initiative of local units or entirely nonpolitical organizations. The
members of the civil hierarchy amounted to only a small fraction of the
population. The holders of degrees in the service of the state probably
seldom if ever exceeded ten or fifteen thousand. Even when die large

Government 471

number of non-degree holders attached to most offices was added, the
percentage of the population deriving its income from the public purse was
not nearly as high as that in many Western states of today. Then, too, no
huge public debt existed, with heavy charges for interest and sinking funds.
Moreover, while the military forces took a large proportion of the revenues
of the government, the burden was not nearly as burdensome as is that of
the armies and navies of many modern states. The China of the Ch'ing
dynasty was by no means a fiscal paradise. It displayed much corruption
and inefficiency. However, the financial burden placed upon the realm by
the Emperor and the hierarchy, judged by modern standards, appears not
to have been particularly onerous.

THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT

After the great revolt during the early part of the reign of
the K'ang Hsi Emperor and before the foreign wars and rebellions of the
middle of the nineteenth century, the military organization of the China of
the Ch'ing was, in its main outlines, about as follows. First of all, there were
the descendants of those who had conquered China, now become, in theory,
an army of occupation. The original army of conquest had been made up
of Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese. Jliis was grouped jnto what were
called "Banners"— of varying colors. Eventually these numbered twenty-
four^ although often they wej^jialkd.the.!!Eight Banners J!^£lLPlJ:he latter
being divided into three goups:^ of . Maiichus, Chinese, and Mongols, the
B^s^_a^_'^-ciyil_service provided posts^ for most of the Manchus
resident in the Eighteen Provinces. At the time of the conquest, the
Bannermen amounted possibly to two hundred thousand, a total later
raised to about two hundred fifty thousand. Membership was inherited, and
eventually the Banners possessed an enrollment of not far from three
hundred thousand. About half were stationed in Chihli (Hopei), where
they could defend the capital. A large number were in Manchuria, the home
of the dynasty, and good-sized contingents were placed in Sinkiang, to
hold that turbulent possession, and in Kansu, Shensi, and Shansi, to defend
the northern frontier. There were garrisons, but totaling only a small
minority of the whole, in other strategic centers of the Eighteen Provinces,
notably in a city in Hupeh, in Nanking, and in Canton. The heads of the v
major divisions of the Banners — commonly known as Tartar Generals —
outranked the viceroys, and nominally served as a check on them — part
of that elaborate system through which the Ch'ing sought to guard against
revolt. As time wore on, the members of the Banners became parasitic
pensionaries, totally incompetent as a military force. They proved entirely
useless, for example, at the time of the T'ai P'ing Rebellion and in the
uprising which ushered in the Republic.

472 VOLUME II

In addition to the Banners was the Army of the Green Standard, made
up of Chinese, organized by provinces, and subdivided into land and naval
forces. About the middle of the nineteenth century this numbered, in theory,
somewhat more than six hundred thousand. The body in actual service,
however, was probably very much smaller, for officials padded the rolls to
draw pay for as many as possible and increased their own incomes by re
ducing to the lowest feasible point the numbers of those in the ranks. The
units of the Green Standard were so divided under various commands that
only with difficulty could they be welded into an effective force on a large
scale — an insurance against serious rebellion, but also a severe handicap
when a major revolt or foreign invasion had to be faced. Each province had
a commander of the Green Standard, but in practice heads of subordinate
units were accorded much latitude, and some of the civil officials, such as
the viceroys, had contingents directly under their control.

For admission to official position in the army, a system of military
examinations existed which corresponded fairly closely in its main stages
and degrees to that for the civil service. There were tests in the hsien and
the fu for entrance to the first degree; others, usually every three years, in
the provincial capital, for the second degree; and examinations for the
third degree only at Peking, and usually also about every three years. As
in the tests for the civil service, successful aspirants became expectant
officials, and appointment to office generally depended even more upon
family connections and discreet gifts to those who could bring about pro
motion than upon high rank in the competition. The subject matter of the
examinations was in part tests in military pursuits, such as archery and
gymnastics, and in part essays on military subjects. The profession of a
soldier was socially vastly inferior to that of a civil official. Military degrees,
therefore, were not nearly so highly regarded as those admitting to the civil
service.

It will easily be seen that the military organization of China under the
Ch'ing was far from being as efficient as the civil hierarchy. It was too
weak ever seriously to threaten to dominate the state, but at times it
proved useful in maintaining local order' and curbing minor revolts.

THE GOVERNMENT OF OUTLYING DEPENDENCIES

/ During the years of vigor of the Ch'ing, before the foreign

pars and rebellions of the middle of the nineteenth century, the portions of
tfae Empire outside the Eighteen Provinces were kept, so far as possible,
directly under the Manchus. Chinese were seldom appointed to official
position in them. Efforts were put forth to exclude Chinese settlers from
sections next to China proper, notably Inner Mongolia and Manchuria,
and when, as was almost inevitable, these restrictions broke down, attempts
were made to prevent Chinese from intermarrying with the natives. The

Government 473

Manchus looked upon all their empire as a conquest. If they were to con
tinue to hold China proper, they had, perforce, to associate Chinese with
themselves in its administration. However, they jealously guarded their
other possessions as their own— to be regarded in no sense as belonging
to the Chinese. Only in their years of decay did they find it necessary to
share them with the latter.

Manchuria was divided into three provinces organized somewhat after
pe fashion of China south of the Great Wall. Much of the officialdom was
military, but the southernmost of the provinces, Shengking, which, because
of its proximity to China proper, had increasingly a large settled Chinese
population, was given more of a civil administration. In the days of the
dynasty's strength, both civil and military officials were Manchus, and a
large proportion of them belonged to the imperial clan.

Through the rest of the outlying dependencies, the Ch'ing governed on
the principle of disturbing as little as possible the political institutions that
had existed before the conquest, but exercised a fairly close oversight by
planting Manchu officials supported by garrisons at strategic centers, by
keeping up communication with them, and by insisting upon the right to
appoint, or at least to confirm, all heads of important local units. Most of
the peoples of Mongolia and Sinkiang were allowed to maintain something
of their old tribal and family organization, although the Manchus often
sought to group them in such a manner as to weaken tribal loyalties. In the
attempt to strengthen Manchu control, colonists were brought into some
regions. The local unit was usually the Banner, each Banner being com
posed of about fifty or more adult males capable of bearing arms. In the
majority of instances the Banner had at its head a chieftain or dzassak.
The dzassak held his post by virtue of imperial appointment, but generally
in practice also by heredity. In turn the Banners were often grouped by
tribes. In Inner Mongolia, where the control of Peking was more minutely
exercised and the organization had some resemblance to that of China
proper, the tribes were organized into leagues. Outer Mongolia was divided
into four large regions. At important towns and cities, such as Urga,
Yarkand, and Turfan, Manchu officials of varying grades were placed, for
the most part supported by troops. The quality of the holders of these
positions often suffered from the practice of using many of them as posts
to which to exile officials who for some reason had incurred the imperial
displeasure. Over the administration of the peoples of Mongolia and of
much of Sinkiang was the Li Fan Yuan at Peking.

Connecting Peking with the most important centers in the outlying
dependencies were post routes, diligently maintained. The submission of
the peoples of these regions was further sought by the practice of according
titles to influential individuals and by requiring periodical visits to Peking
of important natives, either in person or by proxy.

In Tibet the organization was different Here was a vast region governed

474 VOLUME n

$3y a political-ecclesiastical machine, the Lama hierarchy. None of the

' leaders of the hierarchy, either at the capital or at the largest monasteries,

v could be chosen without the consent of a representative of Peking. At the

head of the Manchu administration in Tibet, at Lhasa, was an imperial

resident. Major subordinates were stationed at three centers, including

Lhasa. All were under the Li Fan Yuan.

, The system by which the Ch'ing administered the non-Chinese sections
of their Empire succeeded fairly well so long as the imperial line remained
vigorous. It was, however, foredoomed to ultimate failure, for it was de
signed to do the impossible— to maintain the status quo. No attempt was
made to amalgamate the Empire by the extension of Chinese culture outside
the Eighteen Provinces. Each major section of the realm was encouraged
in maintaining its own institutions in so far as these did not immediately
threaten revolt.

SUMMARY OF THE OLD SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

This, then, was the system of government under the Ch'ing
before it was affected by the coming of the Westerner. Like all human
institutions, it had its weaknesses. It suffered from corruption and ineffi
ciency, especially from the latter part of the eighteenth century/The large
degrce^rfjocal autonomy in both the civil and the military organization
andTte"^ to' prevent fe5effi5rf,"BSttc£red

quick, ^effective ^

revolt, But for these defects, China might not have proved so helpless a
victim in her wars with Western powers and the rebellions of the middle
of the nineteenth century might not have gained such headway. The civil

servirajaamis^^ ^It5s~~*5a~

tramrng^toT memorize verbatim j&& Jteature QLa4^cdar jrchppl of

philosophy, nourish^ a^^ tfie

Cheese to be.willingloJ^ greatly delayed

adjustment to the new conditions brought by the coming of the West

and thus heightened the debacle when the pressure of Occidental culture
could no longer be resisted. Cultural uniformity through the civil service
examinations was a brake on change and possible
rervfce^as popularly '

handicap in d^ll%-W!& an:Ocddeatm armed to thej^^auadlrbm wKch
only force could JhjapeLJxL,win.Jfc^dom and respect.

Serious, too, was the dependence upon a hereditary imperial line.
In the Chinese system of government the monarch formed the keystone
of the arch. The structure had been erected by great autocrats such as Ch'in
Shih Huang Ti and Han Wu Ti. The hierarchy was simply hands and feet
to the Emperor. Except for a regency in the case of a minor, no method

Government 475

had been devised, either by custom or formal enactment, for carrying on
the government in the name of the prince. When a ruler or a ruling line
proved hopelessly incompetent, the remedy most frequently sought was
revolt. This in part accounts for the repeated change in dynasties and the
much more frequent rebellions. Rebellion was the chief means by which
discontent could become vocal. It was usually either a protest or an in
strument of the ambitious. Loyalty of a minister to his prince was one of
the cardinal Confucian virtues, but accepted political theory also had a
place for popular revolt against a dissolute or unjust ruler and recognized
in the fait accompli of a change in the reigning family the transfer of the
Mandate of Heaven. This was in marked contrast to Japan, where loyalty
to the throne has been even more a cardinal virtue, where history records
only one imperial line, and where at a very early time the tradition was
established of having the rule carried on by the most competent, but in
the name of the legitimate house. In China, whenever an able and vigorous
monarch was on the throne, the system worked well. When, however, as
was inevitable under the principle of hereditary succession, a vicious or
incompetent heir came into power, the machinery creaked and not in
frequently broke down. As we have so often noted, it was this defect which
largely accounted for the undoing of China in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The Empire was headed by a decadent family at the time when
it faced the greatest crisis of its history.

Probably the basic weakness lay in the fact that as the theory on
which the government rested was carried to its logical conclusion stagnation
was unavoidable and decay probable. As the T'ang, the Sung, the Ming,
and th^a'ing--periected»thal^ystem which the Ch'in and the Han had
hegurUo-oi^aniz^^he state— a bureaucracy dependent on the Emperor and
dripejdj^ a particular social philosophy — ossification set in. A system re
lentlessly applied threatened fo ruin a great people.

Significant is the fact that the apex of the system had increasingly been
aJinelSlfSS^^ in the thirteenth century,' for more

than half the time the imperial house was of alien blood. The machinery
of the state had been captured by non-Chinese. Although parts of the
country had repeatedly been under conquerors whom the Chinese regarded
as barbarians, never until 1280 had the entire realm succumbed to them.
The eventual breakdown was due to a combination of the incompetence
of the Manchus and the unwillingness and inability of the entrenched
Chinese scholar class to undertake the drastic reorganization demanded by
the new age into which China had been thrust by the West.

The failings must not be allowed to obscure the achievements of the
3hinese imperial system. These have been mentioned repeatedly in the
^receding pages and do not require reiteration. In spite of its defects, the
x)litical structure which so largely disappeared in the first five decades

476 VOLUME II

of the twentieth century was among the most remarkable and successful
ever devised by man.

THE CHANGES IN THE GOVERNMENT WROUGHT BY
CONTACT WITH THE OCCIDENT

Space is lacking to record, even in its main outlines, the
history of the changes in the structure of the government of China due to
contact with the Occident. Some of the most important have been mentioned
in previous chapters. Their course has been kaleidoscopic and confusing in
the extreme. The end is not yet. China may be only at the beginning of
her political revolution. Any description of the current form of govern
ment may be out of date before it can be printed.

Although an historical narrative is here out of place, certain prominent
features and trends must be noted. One of these was the attempt of the
Ch'ing to guide China through the transition by introducing new institutions
and making adjustments while preserving the essentials of the old, such
as the monarchy and the hierarchical bureaucracy. Given a dynasty in its
prime under such a monarch as the K'ang Hsi Emperor, this attempt,
while extremely difficult, would have had a fair chance of success. As it was,
we now know that failure was practically certain. At the time of the T'ai
Ping Rebellion, instead of renovating from the ground up or else abolishing
the Banners and the Green Standard, these were allowed to go on their
somnolent way and a new military force was created. Later came attempts
to create an army of the Occidental type, but the most noteworthy result
was the forging of a weapon by which the commander of the best units,
Yuan Shih-k'ai, was eventually able to dominate the country and for about
four years to maintain a certain degree of internal order. A few new central
bureaus, such as the Tsungli Yamen, were added to the old ones at Peking.
New nation-wide services, principally the post office and the maritime cus
toms, were created. A direct handling by Peking of many affairs formerly
delegated to provincial and local officials was brought about by pressure
from the highly centralized governments of the West. New taxes were levied,
especially tikin — the latter originally devised to help meet the cost of
suppressing the T'ai P'ings. Late in the dynasty beginnings were made at
bringing the laws and courts of the country more nearly into conformity
with those of the West. After the Russo-Japanese War the administration
of Manchuria was reorganized and Chinese were given a larger share in it.
The reform of the civil service was attempted and (1905) the old system
of examinations was abolished. Representative, elective provincial assem
blies and a national assembly were instituted, and a parliament promised.
The expenses of government increased, partly because of indemnities to
the powers, partly because of the greater cost of the new military establish-

Government 477

ment, and partly because the state was compelled to undertake additional
functions. Moreover, the financial stability of the government was threat
ened by the pledging of some of the major revenues, notably the customs
duties, for the payment of sums due foreigners. None of these changes
would necessarily have proved fatal to the fundamental features of the old
government. It was ineptitude in high places which made impossible the
orderly assimilation of innovations from the West.

As we have seen, the old has been progressively swept aside amid re
peated disorder and civil strife. The passing of the examination system dealt
the death blow to the prestige and dominance of Confucianism, which had
been the means of national cultural coherence. In the new educational
system, Confucianism retreated more and more into the background. The
Communists sought its complete elimination. The abolition of the monarchy
cut off the head of the official hierarchy. The demise of the monarchy and
of the old system of examinations required radical readjustments in the
methods of recruiting and choosing the members of the civil service, and
the institution was greatly weakened. The many abortive attempts at na
tional and provincial constitutions modeled at least in part on those of
the West were a further cause of disorganization. Of national constitutions
at least four were adopted in the twenty years which followed the procla
mation of the Republic. Some of them were confessedly temporary, but
at least one was hopefully denominated "permanent." Several provinces
formed constitutions, usually only to allow them soon to fall into desuetude.
Financial solvency was threatened by the pledging of additional sources
of revenue to secure foreign loans. New organizations, such as local and
national educational associations and chambers of commerce, arose and
often had an important voice in political affairs.

The disappearance of the old was hastened by the attempts at intro
ducing the institutions of Communist Russia. For example, the tangpu,
local committees of the Kuomintang which had Russian prototypes, for a
time supplanted in part the village elders and even the hsien magistrate.
From 1927 to 1945 much of the country was ruled by the Kuomintang.
This party, organized by Sun Yat-sen and his colleagues long before the
Russian Revolution, later was modified under Russian influence. Eventually
it attained a nation-wide organization, in an ascending scale from the
tangpu through intermediary regional committees and offices to the Na
tional Party Congress. The program under which the party operated called
for three stages: a period of military operations to crush opposition, one of
political tutelage during which the nation, under the control of the party,
was to be prepared for self-government, and one of constitutional govern
ment in which the dictatorship of the party would end and popular demo
cratic institutions come into being. The first period was officially fixed as
ending in 1929, and in 1945 the country was still regarded as in the second.

478 VOLUME II

In 1946 an attempt was made to frame a constitution which would in
augurate the third stage, but it broke down because of the refusal of the
Communists to co-operate.

The National Government, established at Nanking in 1927, was in
theory organized (1928) on an outline inherited from Sun Yat-sen and
had in it many Russian features. It was under the Kuomintang and derived
its mandate from the Central Executive Committee and the Central Super
visory Committee elected by the National Congress of that party. In direct
control of the government was a Central Political Council of the Kuomin
tang made up of the membership of these two committees and presided over
by a standing committee of the three. This was succeeded, in 1937, by a
Supreme National Defense Conference, later the Supreme National Defense
Council The central government had five bodies: executive, legislative,
judicial, examining, and controlling (something like the old censorate, for
impeaching and auditing), each called a yuan.

Marked progress was made in framing codes in accord with the ideals of
the Occident, so that there might be no longer any excuse for extraterri
toriality. For the time being, an independent judiciary could scarcely be
said to exist. The dominance of the military precluded it.

The civil strife and the rule of the military were corrosive forces.
Early in the history of the Republic, for instance, the military governor
overshadowed and eventually usually entirely displaced the civil governor.
The country was largely carved up among military men, often of very hum
ble origin and poorly educated, who rose to power out of the general dis
order. Such provincial and local government as survived generally existed
on their sufferance. At the head of each province was a kind of committee
with a chairman. In practice many of the provinces were controlled by
military leaders who were largely independent of the national govern
ment. After 1926 these war lords were mostly eliminated. Only the Com
munists remained fully independent.

Yet remnants of the old organization persisted and it was to these
that the country largely owed such order as existed. The provinces con
tinued, and six additional ones were created (usually from existing divi
sions) on the borders of the original twenty-two inherited from the Ch'ing.
The hsien survived as a characteristic local administrative unit, and villages,
families, and guilds kept up their functions, although often much modified
and weakened. There were many irregular tax levies, but the land and
salt taxes and the customs duties (sadly diminished after 1937 by the
Japanese blockade) continued to be basic sources of revenue. Guilds, clans,
and secret societies still played an important part in government. Secret
societies, indeed, may even have become more influential under the Repub
lic. A large proportion of the educated belonged to them. Seldom did
a man join more than one. While their membership and proceedings were

Government 479

not public and their activities were only infrequently noted in the public
press, they formed extremely important factors in politics. The Control
and the Examining Yuan of the Nationalist Government were attempts
at reviving two of the characteristic features of the imperial system, the
censorate and the civil service examinations. After 1949 the Republic of
China attempted to carry on this structure on T'aiwan, and Chiang Kai-
shek talked hopefully of restoring it on the mainland.

On the mainland, as we have seen, the Communists put into effect
a structure which departed even more from the traditions of the past
than did the Kuomintang. They sought to profit by the example of the
U.S.S.R., but with attempts to adapt the Russian experience to the Chinese
situation. Like the Kuomintang, they conserved much of the provincial and
local divisions and traditions.

Prophecy is always dangerous and never more so than in present-
day China. What the government of China will be, if and when it becomes
fairly stabilized, is impossible to predict. That the old can never return
seems clear. For better or for worse, the Chinese have broken with the
system inherited from the Chou, the Ch'in, and the Han. Some of the spirit
of the old may persist. For example, an educational system under the close
control of the government and inculcating a uniform culture as a means of
national unity has been stressed. Two conflicting tendencies common to
most governments and long visible in China are present: the desire for
local autonomy and the urge to national unity through some kind of hier
archical bureaucracy. It seems safe — and something of a banality — to
guess that, as heretofore, a working compromise between the two will
be arrived at, presumably, since this is the trend of modern states, with
greater centralization than under the Ch'ing. Western influences and the
spirit of nationalism are so strong that it appears probable — and this is
also platitudinous — that whatever form or forms of government develop
will not be reproductions of the old but will be something new — will
possess many features derived from the Occident, and yet will be attempts
at adjustment to China's needs and to the genius of the past. It seems
clear, moreover, that the nationalism which has been rising so rapidly
and which shows no signs of abatement will not permit the Chinese to rest
satisfied short of the complete union of all territory traditionally Chinese.
If the country is to be permanently unified, the acceptance by the nation,
whether consciously or unconsciously, of some sort of fundamental phi
losophy, doing for the new what Confucianism did for the old, would
seem to be necessary. Whether that philosophy will be Communism is
unclear. If it proves to be Communism, modifications, eventually drastic,
will be made in the Marxian-Leninism which in theory has been orthodox.

It will be fascinating to watch the progress toward the evolution of
lie new. Certainly, unless the Chinese have lost their remarkable capacity

480 VOLUME II

for government — and this seems entirely unproved — in time they will
erect once more a reasonably stable and efficient structure.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The materials in Chinese on government are extremely voluminous — docu
ments of many kinds, compilations, and treatises. The following may be men
tioned as prominent examples. Tu Yu of the T'ang wrote the Tung Tien, which
contains sections on political economy, examinations and degrees, government
offices, rites, music, military discipline, geography, and national defense, and
traces its subject historically, beginning at the earliest times. Ma Tuan-lin, of
the thirteenth century, compiled, on the basis of the Tung Tien, his Wen
Hsien Tung K'ao, larger than the latter, including a somewhat wider range
of material, and coming down from the beginning of history almost to his own
time. A supplement was added in the sixteenth century, and a revision of this
latter, made by imperial order, was completed about 1772. An extension was
published in the eighteenth century. An official description of the government
under the Ch'ing is the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, modeled after a similar one under
the Ming, compiled in 1694, revised in 1727 and 1771, and rearranged in 1818.

Useful books dealing entirely or in part with the government of China
under the Ch'ing before the changes brought by contact with the Occident
are T'ung-tsu Ch'u, Law and Society in Traditional China (Paris, Mouton,
1961, pp. 304), a translation of the Chinese original published in 1947; H. B.
Morse, The Trade and Administration of China (revised edition, London,
1913); S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York, 1883); Pao Chao
Hsieh, The Government of China (1644-1911) (Baltimore, 1925), using in part
Chinese sources, especially the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien] W. D. Mayers, The
Chinese Government. A Manual of Chinese Titles, Categorically Arranged and
Explained (Shanghai, 1878), very useful, especially for the names and descrip
tions of various boards and officials; the even fuller N. S. Brunnert and V. V.
Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China (Shanghai, 1912);
R. M. Marsh, "Bureaucratic Constraints on Nepotism in the Ch'ing Period,"
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 19, pp. 117-134; and Pierre Hoang,
Melanges sur I' Administration (Varietes Sinologiques No. 21, Shanghai, 1902).
See also Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China. Imperial Control in the Nineteenth
Century (University of Washington Press, 1960, pp. xiv, 783).

The civil service examinations are described in fitienne Zi, Pratique des
Examens Litter aires en Chine (Varietes Sinologiques No. 5, Shanghai, 1894),
in W. F. Mayers, op. cit., chapter 6. Some material on the history of these
examinations is in ]L Biot, Essai sur I'Histoire de 1T Instruction Publique en
Chine (Paris, 1847).

On the older local government of China there is an interesting account in
Y. K. Leong and L. K. Tao, Village and Town Life in China (London, 1915),
rather too idealized and too inclined to dodge the defects and abuses. Another,
more realistic, but tending to be pessimistic and limited chiefly to the sections,
in the North, of which the author had intimate knowledge, is in A. H. Smith,
Village Life in China (New York, 1899). Still another, describing later con
ditions but in which were many survivals of the past, is in D. H. Kulp II,
Country Life in South China. The Sociology of Familism. Vol. I, Phenix
Village, Kwangtung, China (New York, 1925), See also Kung-chuan Hsiao,

Government 481

Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (University of
Washington Press, I960, pp. xvi, 783); and Tung-Tsu Ch'u, Local Government in
China under the Ch'ing (Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. xiv, 496.

On laws and the administration of justice in China before the changes
wrought by the coming of the Westerner, the Ta Ch'ing Lit Li has been
translated in part by Sir Thomas Staunton in Ta Tsing Leu Lee, etc. (London,
1810) and more fully by G. Boulais in Manuel du Code Chinois (Varietes
Sinologiques No. 55, Shanghai, 2 vols., 1923-1924). Another standard work is
E. Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law (London,
1899). T. R. Jernigan, China in Law and Commerce (New York, 1905) con
tains an interesting summary, based largely on Staunton. R. T. Bryan, An
Outline of Chinese Civil Law (Shanghai, 1925) is a brief synopsis of the then
current laws, principles, and procedure, which combined the old and the new.
A longer study of ancient and especially modem law is J. Escarra, Le Droit
Chinois (Peking, 1936); Tungtso Chii, Law and Society in Traditional China
(The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1961), is indispensable for a historic survey.

On government finances, and especially on taxation, there is Han Liang
Huang, The Land Tax in China (New York, 1918) — a doctoral dissertation;
another doctoral dissertation, Chuan Shih Li, Central and Local Finance in
China (New York, 1922); still another of the same origin, Kinn Wei Shaw,
Democracy and Finance in China (New York, 1926) — largely historical and
carrying the story into republican times; E. H. Parker, China (New York,
1917), chapters 10, 11, 12; Morse, op. cit., chapter 4; and Hsieh, op. cit.,
chapter 7. On the salt tax, see an excellent article by E. M. Gale, "Public
Administration of Salt hi China: A Historical Survey," The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science, Nov., 1930, pp. 241-251.

A summary and criticism of the older military system is in W. J. Hail,
Tsdng Kuo-fan (New Haven, 1927), pp. 1-16. The organization of the army
is also described in Mayers, op. cit., chapters 6 and 7. On the examinations
leading to office in the army, there is fitienne Zi, Pratique des Examens
Militaires en Chine (Varietes Sinologiques No. 9, Shanghai, 1896).

On the government of the dependencies, see Mayers, op. cit., pp. 80-114,
and Hsieh, op. cit., chapter 12.

There is a wealth of treatises and material on the changes in government
in the twentieth century. An excellent account, somewhat optimistic and
dwelling especially on the changes after 1926, is A. N. Holcombe, The Chinese
Revolution (Cambridge, 1930). Morse, op. cit., chapter 3, contains a brief
description of government under the first years of the Republic. J. C-h. Lynn,
Political Parties in China (Peking, 1930) is a somewhat sketchy account of
the major parties and cliques, chiefly after the establishment of the Republic.
A fairly short summary is H. M. Vinacke, Modern Constitutional Development
in China (Princeton, 1920). One set of documents is Constitution and Sup
plementary Laws and Documents of the Republic of China (translated and
published by the Commission on Extraterritoriality, Peking, 1924). Tuan-sheng
Ch'ien, The Government and Politics of China (Harvard University Press,
1950, pp. xviii, 526) deals chiefly with the record of the Kuomintang through
1948. See also P. M. A. Linebarger, Government in Republican China (New
York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1938, pp. xv, 203). Translations of important
documents and periodical descriptions of the then current government are to
be found in the various issues of the China Year Book (London, 1912-1919,
Tientsin, 1921-1930, Shanghai, 1931 et seq.). Some of the new laws in the

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early years of the Republic are contained in T. Chen and N. F. Allman, The
Modem Commercial Legislation of China, Translated and Compiled (Shanghai,
1926), and The Civil Code of the Republic of China, translated by C. L. Hsia
and others (Shanghai, 1930). Some documents and articles of value are also
to be found in The Chinese Social and Political Science Review (Peking, 1916
et seq.). There are several doctoral dissertations in French which have useful
material and interesting points of view, among them Sieying-chou, Le Fed-
eralisme en Chine: Elude sur quelques Constitutions Provinciales (Paris, 1924),
Tsien Tai, Le Pouvoir Legislatif en Chine (Paris, 1914), and T. T. Ouang, Le
Gouvernement de la Chine Moderne (Paris, 1923). The basis on which the
National Government at Nanking was organized, The San Min Chu I, has
been translated by F. W. Price and L. T. Chen in San Min Chu L The Three
Principles of the People. By Dr. Sun Yat-sen (Shanghai, 1927). A brief^ but
comprehensive description of the Nanking government is in M. S. Bates, "The
National Government," (China Christian Year Book, 1931, pp. 13-21), and of
the Kuomintang in M. S. Bates and F. W. Price, "Kuomintang," Encyclo
paedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 8, 1932, pp. 610-614.

A treatise on some phases of the legal aspects of China's relations with
foreigners is L. Tung, China and Some Phases of International Law (London,
1940).

On the Communist period see Franz Michael, "The Role of Law in Tra
ditional, Nationalist, and Communist China," The China Quarterly, No. 9, Jan.-
March, 1962, pp. 124-148; Shin Kichi Eto, uHai-lu-feng. The First Chinese
Soviet Government," The China Quarterly, No. 9, Jan.-March, 1962, pp. 149-
181; Albert P. Blaustein, editor, Fundamental Legal Documents of Com
munist China (Fred B. Rothman & Co., South Hackensack, N. J., 1962).

See also the bibliographies at the end of Chapters XII and XIII. For
additional titles see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibliography (University
of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 94-102, and H. Franke, Sinologie (Bern, A.
Francke, 1953), pp. 151-156.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ECONOMIC LIFE AND ORGANIZATION

Food, clothing, and shelter have loomed large in the objec
tives of the Chinese. This is of necessity true in any society. Rather more
than most peoples, however, the Chinese have been this-worldly in their
ideals. In a certain sense they can. be characterized as materialistically
minded. Certainly interest in the physical basis of life has been prominent
in the philosophies on which the state has acted. As far back as we can
trace Chinese culture, it was consciously dependent upon agriculture and
sought to further it. Most of the great schools of thought of the Chou
endeavored to promote man's bodily welfare as an essential condition of
all gains in morals and the arts. The Legalists, on whose theories Ch'in
Shih Huang Ti unified the Empire, stressed the economic organization of
society. Confucianism recognized the fact that if there was to be civiliza
tion the masses must not be allowed to go unclad and hungry. Of the
indigenous philosophies accorded a prolonged place of honor in Chinese
life, only Taoism belittled the striving for bodily comforts and sought to
make man independent of the trammels of the flesh.

It is not surprising that, with this background, the Chinese state con
cerned itself with the economic life of the country, and that it continues
to do so. Nor is it remarkable that more than once so thoroughgoing a
direction of the production and distribution of the country was essayed
by the state that Westerners and modem Chinese have dubbed the attempt
socialism. Wang Mang and Wang An-shih were simply carrying out in an
exaggerated form the principle of governmental control which seems usually
to have been acknowledged as valid by the Confucianists as well as by
the ancient Legalists. The Communists could find in China's past a tradi
tion which gave warrant for their program — even though, with the possible
exception of the Ch'in, that program was more drastic than any which the
country had known.

While something akin to socialism was by no means alien to Chinese
thought, under the Ch'ing and many earlier dynasties the imperial policy
was very largely that of laissez faire. Here and there the government stepped
in. Coinage was in the hands of the state. The salt trade was an official
monopoly, although as a source of revenue rather than as a means of
reducing the price and improving the quality for the consumer. Close
supervision was exercised over foreign trade. State granaries in which was
stored the rice collected as one form of taxation could in times of scarcity

483

484 VOLUME II

be used to equalize prices and relieve distress. Officialdom usually deter
mined the disposition of waste lands, and no title to any real estate was
secure without its imprimatur. In the main, however, the imperial and
provincial governments exerted almost no authority over the agriculture,
business, and industry of the country.

Comparative freedom from bureaucratic interference did not mean
that individualism was rampant in the Empire's economic life. On the
contrary, the regulation which the bureaucracy did not impose was exer
cised by local and extrapolitical agencies, such as the family and the
guild. The actual situation was almost the opposite of laissez faire. Far
from being free to do as he liked, the individual was closely bound by
custom and a network of co-operative agencies.

This organization differed markedly from the capitalistic system of the
modern Occident. The old China had no huge accumulations of mobile
wealth. Great riches were in the form of lands, pawnshops, rich clothing,
jewels, and bullion. No stock companies existed, with their facilities for
centering in one enterprise the investments of hundreds or thousands of
individuals. The partnership, the guild, the secret society, and the family
were the characteristic forms of economic combination. Moreover, in
contrast with most peoples of the modern Occident, economically China
was almost entirely self-contained. Foreign trade never bulked large in
the total business of the realm.

An economic history of China should prove most illuminating. A
record of the experience of a people which has devoted so much atten
tion to both the theory and the practice of supplying man's physical needs
would have much of interest. Unfortunately the story has yet to be written.
The available material is enormous, but only the most tentative beginnings
have been made toward collecting and interpreting it.

In the main the Chinese were fairly successful in solving their eco
nomic problems. Their organization made possible a livelihood for a great
number of people. Under such dynasties as the Han, the T'ang, the Sung,
the Yuan, the Ming, and the Ch'ing they constituted one of the most
numerous and prosperous masses of mankind. In the latter part of the
eighteenth and in the nineteenth century the Chinese were the largest fairly
homogeneous group of the human race. They still are. The standard of living
which they had achieved compared favorably with that of any people
before the sixteenth century. It will be recalled with what enthusiastic
superlatives Marco Polo, who had traveled in most of the highly civilized
sections of the world of his day, described the populous cities and the
wealth of Cathay. It was not until the modem age that the Occident,
enriched by its geographic discoveries and its industrial revolution, forged
ahead of China and set a new standard of comfort for the race.

On the other hand, the majority of the Chinese have lived and continue

Economic Life and Organization 485

to live at an economic level which to the modern Occident seems grind
ing poverty. Again and again throughout China's history famines have
devastated great sections (one estimate shows an average for two thou
sand years of nearly one famine a year that was important enough to
find a place in the records), and at several periods sweeping declines
in population seem to have occurred and must have been accompanied
by intense physical suffering. Floods and drought, the collapse of dynasties
with the attendant civil strife, invasions, high mortality in youth, wasting
disease, and a family system which made for the rapid multiplication of
population — each had a part. But for defects in the economic structure,
however, there would probably have been fewer rebellions, for many of
these were in large part induced by the pinch of poverty, and a better
organization for a greater control of man's physical environment would
have prevented or mitigated the distress due to disasters of nature. It is
significant that the mechanical inventions which have made possible the
increases both in population and in standards of living in so much of the
world during the past century and a half originated not in China but in
the Occident. The reasons must be a matter of debate, but the fact is
indisputable. With all their devotion to the material well-being of man, the
Chinese fell behind the West in achieving it.

AGRICULTURE

From time immemorial agriculuture has been the major occu
pation of the Chinese. Most of the Chinese have been and are supported
directly by fanning and by the occupations immediately connected with
it. The devotion to agriculture has been furthered by the natural environ
ment. Much of China's soil is very fertile, especially in the great deltas
of the Yangtze and Huang Ho, and in some of the smaller river valleys.
Moreover, agriculture was traditionally held in honor. The farmer ranked
high in the social scale. The Emperor officially opened the spring by cere
monial plowing, and magistrates throughout the Empire were supposed
to perform a similar rite.

The absorption of so large a proportion of the population in the task
of raising food and the raw materials for clothing is an indication of the
nature of the agricultural methods. These have been marked by the intensive
application of human labor and a paucity of machinery. Agriculture has
been more akin to gardening than to farming. Machinery there was—
simple, from the standpoint of the modem West, and some of it crude—
and use was made of draught animals. By far the major part of the work,
however, has been performed by human beings. Even on larger farms,
where animals can be employed more extensively than on smaller ones, as
a rule more than half the labor has been by human hands. As we have

486 VOLUME II

seen, the Communists have endeavored to alter this structure with a
greater use of machinery.

Along with intensive cultivation by manpower have been other char
acteristics. Most of the units have been small. In at least many sections
the majority of these were farmed by their owners, and although until
the Communists came to power renters were numerous, practically all the
laborers were free. Under the Manchus there was very little of slavery or
of binding the peasant to the soil in semifree serfdom.

Some of these generalizations require elaboration. The units of culti
vation were usually small. No accurate survey has ever been made for all
China, and holdings have varied in size with the character of the soil, the
kind of crops raised, the water supply, and the human factor which in
places amassed large estates. One survey in the 1930's of portions of six
provinces in North and East Central China gave the average size of nearly
twenty-four hundred farms as a little over five acres, varying from slightly
over ten acres in two hsien in Anhui to about two and a half acres in one
hsien in Fukien. Another survey made about the same time seemed to
show that in the places examined two-thirds of the farmers in Kiangsu
and slightly more than half in Hopei (Chihli) were attempting to make
a living off one acre or less of land. It found the average of the holdings
in Kiangsu to be about three and a quarter acres, and in Hopei about four
acres. As was to be expected, in the North, with its smaller rainfall, the
average farm was larger than in the Yangtze Valley or on the south coast,
where the precipitation is heavier and the growing season longer and where
more than one crop a year has usually been possible. ' • ,

While the above figures indicate that the great majority of farms were
small, there were numerous exceptions. Until the drastic redistribution of
land by the Communists, China had many landed estates, some of them
family possessions and others endowments of temples or of various phi
lanthropic enterprises. Some were hundreds of acres in extent. These exten
sive domains, however, were not necessarily cultivated as units. Most of
them appear to have been rented to tenants in plots but little if any larger
than those worked by their owners. Many of the proprietors resided on their
land and so formed in places a kind of country gentry. Title to a consid
erable proportion of the rented land, however, was held by absentees. This
made for a very different kind of rural society than where the own'ers
lived on their estates. When paid in cash, the rent yielded the landlord
about eight and a half or even eleven per cent on his investment. When
rent was a share of the crop, it took about half of what the tenant produced.
The proportion of the agricultural land included in the larger holdings
varied from section to section. The percentage of peasant proprietors
appears to have been highest in the older provinces of the North, and
lowest in Fukien, Kwangtung, and the Yangtze Valley.

Economic Life and Organization 487

In the last decades before Communist domination the exact percentage
of farmers the country over who owned the land they tilled is not known.
Certainly, however, it was fairly high. One set of figures seems to show that
somewhat more than half the farmers cultivated their own land, that
about a fourth leased part and owned part, and that only about a fourth
were entirely tenants. Many of the tenants, moreover, rented their fields
from the communal holdings of the clan to which they belonged. Peasant
proprietors acquired their land chiefly through inheritance, although trans
fer by sale or mortgage was not unusual. The division of ancestral acres
through successive generations of heirs made for the smallness of the
tracts farmed. Probably much less than half of the work on the farms,
on the average, was hired labor, and most of this appears to have been
of local origin and not migratory. The rural population, staying by its
ancestral acres unless uprooted by some such catastrophe as a famine or a
war, had a profound effect on Chinese society. Conservatism and stability
in outlook and customs were of its essence.

Not only were the total holdings of any one farmer small, but in turn
they were usually made up of still smaller tracts scattered in several places
about the village and separated from the farmhouse by a distance of from
a third to half a mile. As inevitable corollaries, such farms could not be
cultivated as units, it was difficult if not impossible for one peasant to fight
plant and animal diseases without the co-operation of his neighbors (often
not easily obtained), time and energy were lost in going from one plot
to another, and labor-saving machinery could not be employed to advan
tage. It was an inefficient form of rural organization. Moreover, a large
proportion of the farms were too small for economical cultivation. It was
the larger farms that were the most profitable.

With these small holdings and the intensive application of human labor,
the density of population in some portions of China was almost unbeliev
able. The survey which showed that farms averaged a little over five acres
also disclosed the fact that the average family supported by each was 5.7
persons. The most crowded rural sections had more inhabitants per square
mile than Bengal, the most thickly settled part of India, or than rural Japan.

A standard of living inevitably followed which, from the Western stand
point, was appallingly low. To this contributed the fact that, especially in
the North, where the growing season is shorter, there are some months
when labor cannot be applied to the land. Supplementary industries occu
pied part of the spare time, but by no means all. A survey, made before
the inflation of the 1940's with their skyrocketing prices, indicated that the
average yearly income of a fanner's family, excluding any allowance for
house rent but including produce raised on the ground and consumed by
the family, was $147 (American currency), or only about $2,30 a month
per capita. Half even of this distressingly slight sum was taken up by the

488 VOLUME n

costs of farming, so that only about $73 a year was left for the subsistence
of the average family. In North China, where the poverty was greater, an
investigation showed that the rural population had only about $5 American
currency per capita a year for food, fuel, shelter, and clothing, whereas a
minimum living wage was three times that sum. Only by rigid economy
could the masses eke out the barest existence. For most of them the money
required for even elementary education was all but out of the question.
The rate of illiteracy was correspondingly high and the problem of achiev
ing a democratic national or provincial government was consequently
augmented.

Yet in fairly normal times chronic semistarvation was by no means
universal. Infant mortality was excessive, but it seems probable from
statistics taken from several widely separated areas that a larger propor
tion of the population attained old age than in rural India, although de
cidedly less than in France. Moreover, many farmers made an annual profit
on their operations. No one who traveled in China in the opening years of
the twentieth century, especially in the Yangtze Valley and the South, could
forget the comfortable farmsteads he saw, with their air of dignity and
peace. Many a well-to-do rural family nourished for generations a tradi
tion of culture and self-respect. As has been suggested, both incomes and
profits averaged much less in. the North, with its smaller rainfall, than in the
Yangtze Valley. In the North, therefore, the standard of living was lower
than in the South.

Given the method of cultivation by the lavish application of human
labor, it followed that a considerable proportion of the land remained
untilled. Only the more fertile soils could be made to yield a sufficient
return to justify the investment of labor required by the traditional methods.
Much of the unplowed land, to be sure, was not utterly waste. Some
of it was utilized for pasturage, usually of a scanty type. Hilly land es
pecially was employed for sheep grazing. It was also largely cut over for
fuel — of dried grass, brush, or wood. Cutting off the wood, brush, and grass
from the hills, even to digging up the roots (as was often done under the
pressure for fuel), hastened erosion. Any humus and most of the tillable
top soil were washed away and the land impoverished. Often much of the
remaining sand and gravel was carried to the plains by heavy rains and
there impeded cultivation.

Even in the fertile plots some of the space, possibly five per cent or
more on the average, was taken up by paths and the ever-present graves.
In spite of its dense rural population, therefore, China had not extended
its farm land to the ultimate possible limits.

Agricultural experts from the Occident more than once remarked on
the skill of the Chinese farmer in taking advantage of the materials at his
hand. Even to the amateur observer the application of practical agricultural

Economic Life and Organization 489

lore was apparent. The most obvious testimony to it has been the huge
population which China has been made to support, a considerable minority
of it in comparative comfort. In this, to be sure, the Chinese have been
favored by soil and climate, but natural advantages alone would not have
accounted for their success. In utilizing their environment they accumulated
much experience and displayed no small degree of intelligence. Some of
their knowledge was arrived at empirically. Probably most of the Chinese
fanners simply followed, with little if any understanding, methods inherited
from the past. In this, however, they were not unlike the peoples of other
lands. Moreover, superstition rather than intelligence often dictated pro
cedures, as in many other sections of the earth. Yet after all the qualifying
deficiencies have been taken into account, the fact remains that the tra
ditional Chinese agriculture had much to commend it.

First of all, the Chinese cultivated a very wide range of plants. This
variety was favored by the size of the country and the ensuing differences
in climate and soil. Much of it, however, was due to the eagerness of the
Chinese to appropriate whatever useful plant came to their attention. To
native varieties were added, through the years, many from foreign lands.
Some of the most prevalent of the food plants were certain and others
were possible importations. The average Westerner thinks of the Chinese
as eating chiefly rice. For large portions of the country this impression is
not entirely untrue. For most of China proper south of the valley of the
Yellow River, and particularly for the lower part of the Yangtze Valley
and the provinces on the south coast, rice of many varieties is a major
article of diet and the crop most extensively grown. However, scores of
millions of Chinese, especially in the North, have never tasted rice. Many
other grains have been raised. Wheat is cultivated in Manchuria and is a
major crop in the North China plain, in Shantung, Kansu, Shensi, and the
northern portions of Anhui and Hupeh. Millet is extensively raised in the
North, and particularly in the semiarid portions of Kansu, Shensi, Shansi,
and Inner Mongolia. Kaoliang, a kind of sorghum, is widely planted in the
northeast of China proper and has formed the staple crop in much of
Manchuria. Kaoliang supplies not only food, in the form of grain, but its
stalks and leaves have been used for thatching, matting, packing, bridges,
and fuel. Rice, wheat, millet, and kaoliang have constituted the chief grains,
but others, such as buckwheat, barley, and oats, are to be found in some
sections.

Many legumes have been raised. Peas, alfalfa, clover, and beans of
several kinds, including the soy bean, are among them and are valuable
not only as food but also for maintaining the fertility of the soil The soy
bean especially has been notable (particularly the yellow variety) for the
total of its production and its extensive use as a source of oil, sauce, bean
curd, soup, and other forms of food, and of oil cake for fertilizer and for

490 VOLUME II

fattening hogs. Root crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, have been
very common. Sesamum seed has been cultivated chiefly for its oil. Rape,
which ripens before the planting of rice and cotton, has been widely grown,
and its seeds supply oil, its new shoots greens, its dried stems fuel, and the
refuse fertilizer.

Many vegetables have been raised. Note should be made of the edible
water chestnut and lotus roots. Numerous kinds of fruit, too, have been
cultivated, although some foreign observers have believed that the Chinese
could, with benefit, have given greater attention to them. The very name
of tea is of Chinese origin, and the leaf remains, as it has been for many
centuries, a staple crop and the source of a universal Chinese drink. Our
first reference to the drinking of tea is from the second half of the third
century after Christ. Tea drinking was first confined to the South, but
during the T'ang it became widespread. By the eighth century even the
poor were using tea, and the growth and preparation of the tea leaf had
become an important occupation. Melons of various kinds, including
especially the watermelon, have been characteristic. Pomelos, oranges,
bananas, pineapples, papaws, and lichees have been raised in the tropical
and subtropical South, and such fruits and nuts as oranges, pears, cherries,
peaches, apricots, walnuts, chestnuts, grapes, plums, and apples in some
other parts of the country. The bamboo is grown over much of China, in
many varieties, and has almost innumerable uses. Its young shoots provide
food, its foliage clothing, and its stalks material for building and for many
kinds of furniture and implements.

The raw materials for clothing have been raised by the fanner. From
time immemorial the silkworm and its associated mulberry tree have been
a chief care of the Chinese. A wild silk, from larvae fed on oaks, has also
been produced, especially in Shantung, Hopei and Manchuria. Cotton is
the material of the larger proportion of Chinese clothing and has been and
is grown in North, in Central, and in South China. It forms a major crop
of the lower part of the Yangtze Valley. Ramie has provided most of the
material for China's "grass cloth." A number of other plants have been
cultivated for their fiber, among them hemp and jute.

It must also be noted that a great deal of tobacco is grown, in which,
whatever its solace, there is no food value, and that of late years much
land has been given over to the raising of the opium poppy — a serious
economic waste, with disastrous moral and physical concomitants.

In addition to producing a wide variety of plants, the Chinese have
been noted for their slight dependence upon meat and animal products for
food. They appear never to have cared for butter or cheese, and made al
most no use of cow's or goat's milk. In the main this has been a saving.
To use the products of the field directly for human food without the waste
of first passing them through the digestive processes of an intermediary

Economic Life and Organization 491

animal obviously effects an economy in an area needed to support a given
number of human beings. The Chinese diet has not been entirely lacking
in meat. Most of it, however, has been derived from fish, which take up no
land, and from pigs and chickens, which are in part scavengers and hence
not a full charge upon food otherwise available for man. In at least one
region thrifty farmers have effected a further saving by planting their irri
gation pools to fish and gathering their harvest in the autumn after the
water is no longer needed on the fields. Ducks and geese have been widely
raised. Mutton and beef have been used, but in relatively small quantities.
Some animals have been utilized to assist man in his work: the water
buffalo in the Yangtze Valley and the South, the donkey, the horse, the
mule, and the ox in the North.

In spite of their independence of flesh and animal products, the Chinese
achieved a fairly well balanced diet. This was probably not through scien
tific method but by chance experience. Proteins not acquired through meat
have been supplied by vegetable products, such as bean curd. Fats have
been obtained in the form of vegetable oils. Roughage and some of the
needed salts and vitamins have come through vegetables, a large proportion
of them served green and not cooked long enough to destroy their beneficial
elements. A laborer with his bowl of rice, his greens, and his bean curd, and
perhaps with some tidbit cooked in oil, is not far from a well-balanced
ration. The brewing of his tea necessitates boiling the water, and since a
large proportion of his liquid is taken in this manner he has a partial
safeguard against the infections which lurk in most of the streams and wells.

This diet has doubtless had defects. To obtain the requisite amount of
protein the Chinese must often eat a large quantity of grain. The practice
of polishing the rice, and the semiwhite condition of much of the wheat
flour, has deprived him of some of the salts and the vitamins in the outer
covering of the grain. Often the food has had too little variety. The in
sistence in wide regions on rice as the only grain eaten has meant semi-
starvation for some who could procure wheat or sweet potatoes at a lower
cost per unit of food value. Much land better suited to other crops has
been devoted to rice culture. It seems probable that the average diet has
suffered from a calcium content too low for maximum growth. For these
reasons, and because of the narrow margin by which even in normal times
a large proportion of the population is removed from the starvation level,
the bulk of the Chinese appear to have been dangerously underfed.

Not only has the Chinese farmer raised a wide variety of plants and
economized on flesh, but he has been noted as well for the pains with
which he has sought to keep up the productivity of the land. No natural
fertility, even as great as that of some of China's alluvial plains, could have
yielded, unassisted, such continuous returns over so long a period as has
the soil of China. The fact that today China maintains so large a popu-

492 VOLUME II

lation is due in no small degree to the persistence and the skill with which
the fanner has kept his fields supplied with the needed plant food. A chief
source of fertilizer has been what the Westerner euphemistically and some
what squeamishly denominates "night soil." This, which in the sewage
disposal systems of the modern Occident is completely wasted, and often
does positive harm by polluting the rivers, has been carefully collected
and returned to the fields. The laborer carrying pails of night soil from
the cities to the country has been one of the most familiar sights — and
smells — of China. Legumes, which add nitrogen to the soil, have been
extensively grown. In some instances they have been turned under, before
ripe, as green manure. Compost piles have been frequent sights. Droppings
from animals have been carefully collected and used either for fuel or for
manure. Ashes, with their potassium and phosphorus, have been scattered
on the cultivated land. Soil from the canals, probably rich in needed
minerals, has been placed on the fields, and sun-dried earthen bricks, when
past their usefulness in buildings, have been pulverized and made once
more to serve plant life. Rotation of crops has been practiced. In many
ways the Chinese peasant could give the average Western farmer lessons
in conservation.

Some wastefulness there has been. In parts of Fukien, for instance, the
rice straw has been burned to get it out of the way. Elsewhere, because of
dearth of fuel, straw which otherwise might be put back on the land has
been consumed for domestic heating and cooking. The fields must usually
provide both fuel and food. Moreover, the comparatively small number of
animals has made for a shortage in manure and so for a certain handicap
in maintaining fertility.

The Chinese fanner has acquired great skill in handling water. From
the dawn of recorded history he has been draining swamp lands, con
trolling streams, and building canals for irrigation. Today the plains of
China proper are usually traversed by a network of canals. Millions of
acres of hillside and rolling ground have been carefully terraced, often at
great expenditure of labor, both to retain water when flooded for wet rice
culture and to prevent washing. Water is usually conveyed to the fields
from the canal or pond in buckets carried by men or by pumps operated
either by man power or by animals. Hundreds of miles of dikes have been
constructed and maintained to keep lowlands from being flooded. Canals,
too, are frequently not only an aid to irrigation but also to drainage. The
Chinese have learned to keep the surface soil stined to conserve moisture.
This has been of especial advantage in the semiarid regions of the North,
and particularly in Inner Mongolia, where "dry farming" extends the area
of cultivation beyond what would otherwise be possible.

The Chinese discovered means of fighting some of the pests which
attack their crops. Thus in the South they have for centuries introduced

Economic Life and Organization 493

colonies of ants to their orchards to feed on insects that infest the trees.

Force of circumstances and his own intelligence have made the Chinese
fanner an expert in economy. Not only has he raised several crops a year
on the same field wherever the season is long enough to permit it, but he
often has had more than one crop growing on the same land at the same
time. For example, while wheat, sown in drills, is maturing, cotton seed is
scattered broadcast, and its young plants have made a good start by the
time the grain is cut. As many as three crops ripening at different times
have been seen at once on the same plot. The Chinese has been adept at
conserving fuel. Although through much of the country the winters are
chilly and in some sections very cold, rooms are generally heated, if at all,
only by a charcoal brazier or, in the North, by a k'ang — a bed of brick
or earth with flues running through it horizontally. Instead of spending fuel
in warming the air of an entire house, the Chinese puts on heavier clothing.
For most of the populace this is the form of garments between the two
layers of which loose cotton is inserted as winter comes on. In some in
stances the cotton is quilted. The k'ang, often warmed by the flue from
the kitchen fire, may, from the Western standpoint, leave much to be
desired in the way of comfort and may be plentifully infested with vermin,
but it has at least the virtue of getting a good deal out of a given amount
of fuel. Much building material has come directly from the fanner's own
field. Sun-dried brick and tamped earthen walls, bamboo, and kaoliang
are common and relatively inexpensive materials for the house.

While Chinese farm tools have usually been very crude and have had
many defects, often they have displayed excellent features. Then, too, in
a land where labor has been cheap and the farms small and the fields still
smaller, the expensive power-driven agricultural machinery of the United
States and Canada would be far from economical. The Communists, as
we have noted, have attempted to eliminate this defect. The Chinese have
shown no little ingenuity in contriving or utilizing helpful devices. They
have hatched eggs by simple but effective methods of artificial incubation.
In fishing they have had many types of nets and also have employed
cormorants. Their methods of pumping water and of pressing bean cakes
for oil are worthy of comment.

Co-operation has obviously been desirable, especially since most of
the farms have been so small. This the Chinese were not altogether suc
cessful in achieving, but by no means did they entirely fail. In protecting
crops, in irrigation, in guarding dikes, to a certain extent in saving or
borrowing capital and making loans, and in their villages and family and
clan systems and secret societies, Chinese fanners developed organizations
for mutual aid and protection.

Deforestation has been regarded as one of the great defects of China's
economy. Much of the country once was adequately and in places densely

494 VOLUME II

wooded. The richness and variety of the native flora could be seen where
a temple, the remnants of an imperial hunting preserve, or some other pro
tection, artificial or natural, allowed a grove to survive. In many a bare
area, where nature was given a chance, young growth quickly sprang up,
often of many kinds of plants. Yet centuries of human occupation denuded
the major part of the country. In the earlier days much of the forest was
probably cut simply for the purpose of fitting the land for tillage or to
destroy the coverts of wild beasts. In later centuries the need for fuel and
building material kept the hillsides stripped. One result was the carrying
away of the soil to the plains. Disastrous floods often occurred because
a rain quickly ran off from denuded watersheds. Here was to be found one
of the causes of the recurrent famines, especially in North China.

Yet* even in the management of their timber resources the Chinese often
displayed much skill. Many of the groves of marketable trees were owned
by temples and monasteries, and in some an approximation to a scientific
procedure of forest management was developed which produced a constant
supply of wood for revenue and for the use of the religious community. In
at least one section of China private owners had a traditional system of
cutting trees for the market and replanting for future crops. The culture
of bamboo, in itself a kind of forestry, was very highly and skillfully
developed.

Even from this brief description some of the effects of Chinese agri
cultural economy upon the life of the nation must be apparent. The lack of
machinery, the relatively small utilization of draft animals, and the extensive
use of human labor meant that in order to produce for the nation the
requisite food and materials for clothing and shelter the great majority of
the population had to be engaged in agriculture. After the needs of those
who tilled the soil had been met, only a small surplus of farm products
remained for exchange with the towns. The predominantly rural character
of the nation made for conservatism, for old social institutions ever persist
longest in farming districts. The presence of so large a proportion of peasant
proprietors encouraged sturdy self-reliance and self-respect.

In spite of its virtues, the Chinese rural economy had many defects.
The usual means of borrowing capital was costly. Interest rates were high:
twenty and thirty and even eighty and one hundred per cent a year. As a
result of the small size of the farms, the average peasant had little capital
against lean years or unusual expenses, such as a wedding or a funeral. This
and the demands of normal farming operations meant that many of the
peasants were chronically in debt and burdened by a ruinous weight of
interest. Great areas were periodically flooded which could have been
completely reclaimed by better engineering methods. In some regions in
North China semiarid lands existed for which deeper wells would have
provided the needed water. The customary shallow plowing did not ade-

Economic Life and Organization 495

quately utilize the resources of the soil. Roads were atrocious and land
transportation costly. Seed selection was lacking or poor. Many plant and
animal diseases reduced the return for the fanners' labor. Poor methods
of production and marketing were responsible for the loss of foreign
markets for silk and especially for tea. Many agricultural implements were
needlessly clumsy. Not much was done to develop better varieties of fruit.
The many days of seasonal unemployment were not profitably employed.
Underlying the pressure of population upon subsistence were social and
religious customs and institutions which encouraged early marriage and
a high birth rate.

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHANGES IN AGRICULTURE
WROUGHT BY CONTACT WITH THE WEST

In the first four decades of the twentieth century some at
tempts were made to remedy the defects in agriculture and the rural
economy. Improvements in transportation were achieved. Railways were
constructed. Highways for the use of automobiles were built and busses
multiplied. Kerosene and the kerosene lamp were introduced and lighted
farmers' homes. Foreign markets were developed for some of the products
of the land. A longer staple cotton was brought in and augmented the
yield of that widely used fiber. Christian missionaries and foreign famine
relief agencies promoted better seed selection and new techniques for
fighting plant and animal diseases. The government inaugurated agricultural
schools and experiment stations. Rural co-operatives were organized, partly
by foreign famine relief agencies. Foreign famine relief funds constructed
irrigation canals and sank wells in the semiarid North and Northwest.
Various efforts at reforestation were made by the government and well-
disposed foreigners.

THE COMMUNISTS UNDERTAKE A COUNTRY-WIDE RECONSTRUCTION
OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE

When the Communists mastered the mainland they endeav
ored to eliminate the defects in agricultural life, organization, and methods.
Under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung they had long addressed themselves
to rural problems. They now seized the opportunity to combat the many
evils which handicapped the rural population — that economic foundation
of national life. We have already seen .(Chap. XIII) the measures which
they adopted and here need no more than rapidly summarize them. By
"land reform" they eliminated landlordism with its rent-racking. At the
same time they liquidated the moneylenders who were battening on the
farmers. Through co-operatives, then collective farms, and then communes,

496 VOLUME II

they endeavored to overcome the fragmentation of the peasants' holdings
and so to make possible the use of labor-saving machinery, the wide
application of chemical fertilizers, improved seeds and breeds of livestock,
the control of plant and animal diseases and pests, and deeper plowing.
They inaugurated extensive irrigation projects, sank wells, drained marshes,
and engaged in reforestation. They improved transportation. They sought
to devise industries profitably to utilize the time heretofore lost by the
farmers in the North during the slack season in the winter. When these
lines were penned the Communists seemed to have pushed ahead too rapidly
and not to have succeeded in winning the ungrudging co-operation of the
fanners. The agricultural crisis of the early 1960's appeared to have been
ascribable partly to the Communist program, partly to natural disasters,
and partly to the increase of the population.

THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA MAKES AGRICULTURAL ADVANCE ON T'AIWAN

On T'aiwan, the major territory which remained in its hands
after 1949, the Republic of China made substantial advances in agriculture
and by less traumatic methods than those employed by the Communists
on the mainland. They achieved land reform without the mass executions
which accompanied the Communist program. Without collective farms and
rural communes they attained higher levels of production. In spite of the
rapid increase in population, the standard of living rose.

INDUSTRY

One of the features of agriculture in China was the con
siderable percentage of his produce which the farmer exchanged for cash.
This meant that with all their simplicity and monotony of life and low
standards of living farms were not entirely self-sufficient. It also encouraged
specialization in industry, no small amount of domestic commerce, and
marked development of towns and cities.

Towns seem to have begun in very early historic times. As far back
as the Shang dynasty an urban life was appearing. In a certain sense primi
tive Taoism was a protest against the resulting complexity of civilization.
During the Sung large cities based on commerce and industry flourished.
Under later dynasties they multiplied. Under the Ch'ing there were great
cities and hundreds of smaller towns and villages. Until the modern methods
of transportation and agriculture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
gave rise to the huge growth in the metropolitan populations of the
world, the chief cities of China were as large as those anywhere on the
planet. This indicates a diversified economic life.

As in practically all the rest of the world before the nineteenth century,

Economic Life and Organization 497

industry in China, on the eve of the changes wrought by the Occident, was
in the handicraft stage. Some machinery there was, but it was generally
of the simplest, and relatively little application was made of power other
than that of men's muscles. In industry as in agriculture one of the out
standing features was the lavish expenditures of human labor.

Similar to what was true in other countries, a tendency existed to
specialization by localities. Thus the makers of furniture, the manufacturers
of the mock money used in ceremonies for the dead, and the silversmiths
tended to group themselves along particular streets of a city. In Peking
several hundreds of families that engaged in making artificial flowers lived
and worked not far from the market where these were sold. Certain cities,
too, were noted for distinctive products. Thus the manufacture of one
type of rug centered mostly in Peking and Tienstin, the carving of ivory
in Canton, the production of a fine type of lacquer ware in Foochow, and
the manufacture of porcelain at Ching-te Chen, In Shansi each village that
engaged in smelting iron concentrated on one type of article. Either the
proximity of the essential raw materials, or the creation of a reputation and
the acquisition of experience in a famous shop or shops, or possibly a
combination of factors, tended to give a city or district a natural monopoly
of a certain product.

To attempt any enumeration of the products of industry in China
would prolong this chapter unduly. It need only be said that the very
length of the list would indicate not only the complexity and variety of
Chinese life but the high standard of living of many of the Chinese. The
great majority of the population was poor, with little or no means of ac
quiring more than the necessities for the barest kind of existence. A small
house, most of the materials for which came from the farmer's own acres,
a few tools, a little furniture, cotton clothing, sandals or shoes and
not always these, a simple and not too varied diet, tea as a drink and some
times that only as a luxury, were as much as the masses could expect.
However, the production and exchange of even these would have given
rise to a certain amount of specialized industry and commerce. A fairly
numerous minority, moreover, utilized the economic, social, and political
organization of the land to rise above this level. There were many in
comfortable circumstances and still others who were wealthy. They pro
vided a market for more than the necessities, and their demands increased
and diversified manufactures. Silk was extensively spun and woven and in
many kinds of fabrics. Furniture was often of rare woods elaborately
carved and inlaid. The homes of the powerful and wealthy were large,
and into them usually went a great deal of labor, both skilled and unskilled.
In a land which held literature in high esteem and which early invented
both paper and printing, the manufacture of paper and the occupation of
the printer engrossed the time of some of the urban population. Barbers,

498 VOLUME ii

shoemakers, dye makers, fur dealers, tailors, hat makers, paperhangers,
manufacturers of effigies burned for the sake of the dead, and makers of
incense and of toilet articles were all to be found. In a land which num
bered, in the aggregate, many of the well-to-do, the manufacturers of
luxuries found support: goldsmiths, silversmiths, carvers of semiprecious
stones, workers in ivory, producers of the more costly types of pottery,
weavers of rugs, and the like. Manufacturers of drugs did a thriving busi
ness. The list might be continued at great length. To the visitor from the
West many Chinese cities presented a fascinating picture of what, mutatis
mutandis, the industries of western Europe must have been like before
the advent of power-driven and labor-saving machinery.

As in medieval Europe, moreover, industry was organized by guilds.
China did not invent the stock company with its provision for combining
the savings of many individuals into one huge and powerful unit of pro
duction. Until the coming of the West, capitalism as it existed in the
modern Occident had not appeared. Industrial units were small, owned and
operated by individuals or families or in the form of partnerships. These
needed protection against ruinous competition and the aggression or op
pression of officials or powerful groups. Accordingly they formed guilds.

How far back in Chinese history guilds originated we do not know.
Certainly for centuries they were a prominent feature of economic and
social life. The Chinese displayed great capacity for extrapolitical organiza
tion. The individual who attempted to stand alone found himself at a
great disadvantage. Families, secret societies, villages, and guilds of many
kinds were long characteristic of Chinese society. The guilds were chiefly
confined to walled towns and cities — the larger population centers. They
were of many kinds and were formed not only by handicraftsmen but also
by merchants, by various occupations and interests, such as the barbers,
the beggars, the blind, the masons, the carpenters, the cooks, the story
tellers, the actors, the waiters, and even the thieves. Those that for the
moment concern us may be called craft guilds, although that classification
would probably not have been made by the Chinese.

The craft guilds were usually not as elaborate or as wealthy as the
merchants' guilds. As a rule they were purely local organizations and not
provincial or national, although there might be affiliations that exercised
wider than local influence. Membership was practically compulsory to all
those of a particular craft. If an individual refused to join, ways could be
found to induce him to change his mind. He might even be visited with
personal violence, and government officials knew better than to interfere.
It was exceptional, however, for an eligible man to decline to apply. The
advantages were so obvious that usually no persuasion was required. The
guild, indeed, had as one of its functions the maintenance within its vicinity
of a monopoly for its members. It sought to restrain competition within its

Economic Life and Organization 499

ranks. To that end it fixed both the minimum prices of the products and
the wages of employees. For the same reason it regulated the hours of labor
and the rest periods. A member who refused to conform or who violated
the rules was subject to punishment, ranging all the way from fines to
death. The guilds performed many services for their members. They helped
them collect debts and afforded protection against thieves. They also often
assumed the functions of a benevolent society. Some of them had their
own cemeteries, and many provided coffins and funeral expenses for the
burial of their poor. Numbers arranged for medical care for ill members.
Each had a patron divinity or divinities to whom it paid communal wor
ship. For example, in at least one place the tailors had the mythical
Emperor Huang Ti as their god. The guilds were also a means of social
intercourse. They held periodical meetings, and the guild hall, when such
existed, formed a kind of club house.

The craft guild included both employers and employees, although, even
before the modern labor union appeared, at times the latter temporarily
formed a separate organization to enforce demands about wages. Boys
came up into guild membership through an apprenticeship, and after com
pleting the latter, were admitted, sometimes with quite a little ceremony,
and at others merely upon payment of an initiation fee. Often the guild
regulated the number of apprentices which a member might have, and thus
kept down competition. A trained worker on moving to another city might,
if local feeling was not too strong, become affiliated with the corresponding
guild in his new home upon the presentation of a card from the guild from
which he came.

The income of the craft guilds was derived from initiation fees, period
ical dues, fines, special assessments, and taxes on sales. The budgets of some
guilds needed to be fairly large, for the wealthier organizations owned and
maintained guild halls and had secretarial staffs. The head secretaries were
rften men of some importance, and a few in the larger centers possessed
a degree from the civil service examinations — an advantage in dealing
with officials. Other guilds were much more modest and met in the shop
Df one of the members, rented a room, perhaps in some temple, or obtained
the temporary use of a temple for worship and the annual meeting. The
secretarial staff, too, might be very small or even be dispensed with.

The forms of organization differed widely. There were usually at least
i president and a board of directors who generally were elected, although
n at least one instance they were chosen by lot. Regular meetings were
leld, more frequently of the officers, but at least annually of all the mem
bers. A guild might employ inspectors to see that its rules limiting com
petition were obeyed: members found it advisable to keep watch of one
mother. A guild court might be held to deal with infractions.

In a land in which the struggle for existence was as intense as in China,

500 VOLUME n

and the individual was so greatly in need of protection against the govern
ment and various economic and social groups, the craft guilds played a use
ful function. They regulated competition and were an agency for concerted
action. It was customary for a guild to institute a strike or a boycott to ob
tain its wishes or to enforce its objection to some governmental order. Those
who carried away the night soil, for example, might cease work in protest
against a police ruling, until the inconvenienced community formed an
accommodation to their demand. Butchers united against taxes, and some
times all the merchants of a community banded against badly controlled
troops. The nation-wide boycotts by which more than once in the twentieth
century the Chinese expressed their indignation against the Japanese and
the British, took their rise in an old tradition of group resistance to ob
noxious persons and measures.

Yet the craft guild had its disadvantages. By restraining free competi
tion, it was a brake on improvement both in machinery and in efficiency.

CHANGES IN INDUSTRY PRODUCED BY CONTACT WITH THE OCCIDENT

Whether the presence of the craft guild in China can be held
in any degree responsible for the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not
originate there but entered from the Occident, must be a matter of con
jecture. Whatever the reason, it was from the West, as we have seen in
earlier chapters, that the innovations came. These affected industry much
more than they did agriculture. What some of them were have already
been briefly recounted. Steam-driven machinery and the factory were
introduced. At the outset the manufacture of cotton was most affected.
By 1930 the amount of capital invested in cotton mills was about
$300,000,000 (Chinese currency) and the number of hands employed
about a quarter of a million. Cotton mills were particularly numerous in
East Central China, especially in Shanghai, where in 1928 about half the
cotton spinning and weaving of China by modern machinery was located.
In 1930 the province of Kiangsu, including Shanghai, had approximately
two-thirds of the cotton spindles of China. Hupeh ranked next. In the
North, notably in Shantung and Hopei (Chihli), cotton mills were found.
While until the 1950's cotton mills outstripped all other forms of the
industrialization of China by the machine methods of the West, steam silk
filatures were also introduced, and for them, too, Shanghai was the chief
center. Some of the other industries in which Western appliances entered
were the milling of flour, the manufacture of matches, the smelting of iron,
and the manufacture of steel. Among modern factories were listed some
for the preparation of albumen from eggs, canneries, bakeries for biscuits,
cement works, chemical and dye works, breweries, distilleries, plants for
bottling aerated waters, shipyards, electric light and power works (in

Economic Life and Organization 501

rapidly increasing number) , glass works, ice plants, leather factories, plants
for expressing oil, rubber works — manufacturing shoes, soles, overshoes,
and hot water bags — paper mills, rice-hulling-and-cleaning mills, saw
mills, soap and candle works, sugar refineries, and woollen and knitting
mills. Few of the larger cities were completely untouched by the new
processes. The Japanese invasion in the 1930's and 1940's led, after 1937,
to the transfer of factories to the West and to the development of new
industries in that region. Industrial co-operatives, too, developed under
war conditions.

The traditional forms of industrial organization suffered from the
entrance of the factory and from competition with products from the West.
The guilds did not immediately disappear. In many places, however, they
were greatly weakened, and some went out of existence. The passing of
the guild was hastened by the advent of the labor union. In March, 1927,
one hundred and eighty such unions were reported in the city of Canton,
of which at least seventy grew out of guilds. Labor unions began to appear
several years before the spectacular advance of the Kuomintang in 1926
and 1927. Indeed, over twelve hundred strikes were recorded between
1918 and 1926, of which about two-thirds were successful. In 1913 a na
tional labor party was formed in Shanghai. An all-China labor congress
was held in Canton in May, 1922, and in the preceding months Hong Kong
had been paralyzed by strikes of seamen and sympathetic workers. It will
be recalled that as the Kuomintang moved northward the radical wing
organized unions of laborers and that these made demands, often pre
posterous, upon their employers. It is significant of the changes in progress
in China that some of the new unions were composed exclusively of women,
and that women also joined some of the trade unions of which the members
were chiefly men. With the reaction of the moderates and conservatives
within the Kuomintang against the radicals, and the vigorous action taken
against Communists, many labor unions disappeared and others became
less vocal. By no means all of them died, however. The strongholds of the
labor unions were in Canton, where the radical movement first centered,
and Shanghai, which led the nation in the new type of industries.

The labor unions often had ground for legitimate protest. Judged by
standards now prevailing in the West, the working day was inordinately
long, the hygienic and safety conditions in factories often shockingly bad,
and wages low. Usually no effective rules existed against child labor.
There were a few humane employers. The more advanced among them had
devices for profit-sharing with employees and provided ample light and
ventilation in their factories. In 1929 the National Government promulgated
a factory law with some enlightened provisions. Some of the Protestant
Christian groups had the welfare of the worker at heart, and even the
conservative wing of the Kuomintang did not dare to go counter to the

502 VOLUME II

emphatic endorsement of the cause of labor in Sun Yat-sen's San Min Chu
I. Several local governments and war lords issued regulations for the pro
tection of labor. Although none of these efforts obtained more than com
paratively slight results, it is probable that conditions in modern factories,
in both hours and sanitation, averaged somewhat better than those under
the handicraft system.

THE COMMUNISTS ACCELERATE CHANGES IN INDUSTRY

The Communist capture of the mainland was followed by
profound and drastic changes hi industry and the organization of labor.
The People's Republic of China embarked on a program which had as its
aim the adoption of the machines that had been developed in the West,
with the ambition of equalling and eventually surpassing the production
levels of "capitalist" non-Communist nations and improving the living
standards and the educational equipment of the workers. To this end, as
we have seen (Chap. XIII), they stressed the development of heavy
industry and constructed many new plants. They rapidly eliminated much
of the former private organization. For a time the small handicraft units
were brought under strict control or were supplanted by state enterprises.
Laborers were given a completely new structure from the local to the
national level. They were provided with some of the facilities in housing,
health, workers' compensation, and old age pensions that characterized the
welfare states of the West.

As we have also noted (Chap. XIII), early in the 1960's agricultural
distress led to a slowing down of the advance. More emphasis was placed
on consumers' goods and other forms of aid to the tillers of the soil.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA AFTER 1949

As in agriculture, so in industry, in the refuge on Taiwan the
Republic of China made noteworthy advances, but by less spectacular
methods than those employed by the Communists.

MINING

The Chinese have long been making use of the mineral
resources of their land. From very early days they have known iron, copper,
bronze, zinc, gold, silver, and lead. In mining coal they antedated western
Europe. Coal was probably utilized at least as early as the fifth century
A.D,, and as far back as the Tang was employed in smelting iron. Shansi
was the center of iron manufacture for the North, for here are large
deposits of coal as well as some iron ore. In Szechwan salt was produced
from brine pumped from wells, some of them two or three thousand feet

Economic Life and Organization 503

deep, notable engineering feats bored by a primitive but effective type of the
percussion process now widely used in the West. The brine was evaporated
either by natural gas obtained from borings in the same region, or by
coal or straw. Native suppliers of the precious metals are not particularly
plentiful in China proper, but gold ornaments were popular, and silver
and copper formed the basis of the Empire's currency. The Chinese
probably took more advantage of the available mineral resources than did
any other people before the last three or four hundred years.

Yet mining in the old China faced handicaps. At times officials taxed
it heavily. Feng shut, that system of pseudoscientific superstition which had
a marked hold on the Chinese mind, often discouraged it and even forbade
it. It is only in comparison with the small use made of other than the
precious metals by the rest of the world before the modern era that the
Chinese appear to have learned to take advantage of their mineral deposits.

With the penetration of China by the Westerner came a growing utiliza
tion of China's mineral resources. Before the Communist era, beginnings
were made, partly by Chinese and partly by foreigners. A major plant for
making steel, the Hanyehp'ing Company, was created in the Wuhan center.
The Japanese exploited the resources in Manchuria, notably at Fushun,
where they had what was called the largest open pit coal mine in the world.
In Hopei the joint Chinese and British Kailan Mining Administration pro
duced large quantities of coal. In the twentieth century a large proportion
of the world's antimony and tungsten came from China.

COMMERCE

We have repeatedly seen that from the economic standpoint
China was and even still is largely self-sufficient. To this contributed her
geographic isolation and her own vast area with its variety of products.
Foreign trade there has been, and from early times, but until very recently it
was largely in luxuries. Even with the overpassing of natural barriers and
the marked increase in foreign commerce in the past few decades, in pro
portion to her population China's foreign commerce is smaller than that of
any other major group of civilized mankind.

This relatively slight participation in international trade does not mean
the absence of internal commerce. One of the features of Chinese civiliza
tion, indeed, has been the merchant. The scholar might affect to despise
him and rate him low on the social scale, but he flourished nevertheless.
The many towns and large cities testify to this, for they would have been
impossible but for his presence. One of the outstanding characteristics of
the Chinese is their keenness as traders. Not only at home but also in
foreign countries, especially in the lands immediately to the South, Chinese
have proved and continue to prove their skill in business.

Commerce, like industry, was by small units organized in guilds. Finns

504 VOLUME II

were family or partnership affairs, and the need of organization for protec
tion against one another and outsiders forced those of the same trade
together into guilds which in their essential features resembled those
formed by craftsmen. They had their officers, their membership, their
regular meetings, and their rules. Through them were negotiated many of
the transactions with merchants of other cities. They fixed the minimum
prices which their members could charge and exacted penalties for infringe
ment of these or of other regulations. They served as benevolent societies
to assist impecunious members. They tended to be wealthier than the
craft guilds and many of them owned sumptuous halls, which were not
only places of business but also centers of social life as well. Merchant
guilds were often very powerful and even coerced officials and the general
community.

In addition to the guilds organized by particular crafts, professions, or
types of business there were what are usually called in English provincial
guilds. Uniting the natives of a province or city who resided in another
city, they were evidence of strong local loyalties and of community dis
crimination in favor of natives and against outsiders. The provincial guilds
provided social and business rendezvous, gave aid to indigent fellow
provincials, and at times assisted in promoting the business interests of
their members.

So strong was the habit of working through guilds that in some cities an
organization like a guild and including most of the merchants of the locality
became the governing body of the entire community. Notable instances were
seen in Swatow and Newchwang.

Moreover, secret societies entered into commerce. Organizations of that
character of more than local extent sometimes brought together members
of related businesses and occupations in an entire region — boatmen on the
Yangtze, for example, and some of the shippers.

These societies and the guilds were often a force in politics and in
international affairs. For instance, the guilds were largely responsible for
the boycott on American trade in 1907, which was induced by the ill
treatment of Chinese immigrants to the United States by American officials.

Thousands of villages were too small for guilds, or, indeed, to keep
alive even one merchant. In many villages and towns a market was held
every day and special fairs annually or a few times a year. To them came
buyers and sellers, most of them from the immediate neighborhood, but
sometimes from greater distances. Often a fair was held under the auspices
of a temple, as a means of income. In the larger villages, as well as in the
towns and cities, were many shops, each usually specializing in a particular
commodity or group of commodities. Peddlers were very numerous. Food
shops, too, were multitudinous.

Much commerce was by means of a "middleman." The "middleman"

Economic Life and Organization 505

was of more importance in China than in the West. The purchase and sale
of land and the negotiation of betrothals were regularly transacted, and the
transfer of goods of many descriptions was often accomplished through
him. This did not mean the development of wholesale houses or of the
commission merchant on any such scale as in the modern West, nor is any
close similarity implied to the jobbers, small dealers, and distributors of
the Occident.

Weights and measures were almost as confused and confusing as in
medieval Europe. Theoretically the decimal system prevailed — a great aid
in reckoning. In practice, however, it was often ignored. Thus while in
theory one hundred catties (the foreign name for the Chinese chin) made
one picul (the foreign name for the Chinese tan), in practice the number
of catties to a picul varied from commodity to commodity and from city to
city. Moreover, the catty also fluctuated in weight from locality to locality
and according to the commodity and the trade. So, too, measures of length
differed with the occupation and the trade, A unit with the same name might
be one length for the carpenter, another for the mason, and still another
for the tailor. Similarly in areas: the mou, which was usually roughly
reckoned as a sixth of an English acre, in some regions was only about
one-twelfth and in others nearly a third of an acre. Here was a hindrance
to business on anything more than a local scale.

Uncertainty in commerce was heightened by the absence of fixed prices.
As in much of the rest of the world, each transaction was a trial of wits
between purchaser and seller, the one offering much less than he expected
to pay, the latter asking much more than he hoped to get, and the ultimate
transaction involved a compromise.

As an aid in computation the Chinese have employed the abacus. The
origin and history of this device in China seems uncertain, but apparently
it has been known there for centuries.

In some manner the impression has gotten abroad among Westerners
that in business the Chinese merchant of the old school was a model of
honesty. This was undoubtedly true of some individuals, and particularly
of importers who found a reputation for probity advantageous in dealing
with foreigners. A manager of the largest foreign bank in China is said to
have declared that he had never known a Chinese defaulter. Chinese, how
ever, labored under no delusion as to one another's complete trustworthiness,
but devised elaborate safeguards to protect themselves against the deceitful.
Guilds had means of detecting and punishing those who took unfair advan
tage of their fellow members by disobeying rules designed to give an equal
chance to all. The family could be held responsible for the misdeeds of one of
its number. The Shansi bankers, to be described in a moment, are said to
have held as hostages the families of employees, especially those entrusted
with business in other provinces, and not to have released them until the

506 VOLUME II

employee, having discharged his errand, made a satisfactory accounting.
Then, too, the plan was adopted of guarantors for the fulfillment of obliga
tions, or for the good behavior of an individual. Moreover, what the
Westerner denominates "squeeze" was regarded as normal — a percentage
made on purchases by a servant for his master, or exacted by officials.
While in theory a tacitly recognized form of commission, and since it was
allowed by all parties, being not, strictly speaking, dishonest, in actual
operation it was often the means of peculations, from very small to very
large sums. A great deal of adulteration of goods was practiced, weights
and measures were juggled, and tricks were played on the customer with
bad money. All this does not mean that the Chinese have been so very
much less upright than other peoples. It does, however, indicate that the
current assertion that they were and are extraordinarily trustworthy must
be qualified.

MONEY AND BANKING

From the standpoint of the Occident of the present, and
even of earlier days, the currency system of the older China was crude and
sometimes chaotic. In very early times various mediums of exchange were
in use, including cowries — those shells widely employed as money not only
in China but also in many other parts of the world. Cowries, indeed, were
in circulation in China as late as the fourteenth century. Coinage began as
far back as the Chou dynasty and seems to have been continuous from
that time into the twentieth century. It will be recalled that Han Wu Ti
made it an imperial prerogative, forbidding the existing method of the
issue of money by various local dignitaries. Some of the early coins were
in the form of cowries, and others had the shape of swords, knives, or
spades. Until a comparatively late date, salt and pieces of silk served as
money in at least one province, and their use for this purpose was widely
spread and over long periods. For more than two thousand years the
prevailing coin was of copper or of copper alloy and had the outline of
the cash familiar until recent decades — round, with a square hole through
the center. A generation or more ago among the cash in daily circulation
could be found those issued in the T'ang and the Sung.

The cash were reckoned by strings, or tiao, of a thousand each. The
number was largely theoretical, for the string was practically always several
short of that number. Money-changers charged twenty or thirty cash for
their labor and for the cost of the string and by common consent deducted
them from the tiao* In some districts the tiao had only five hundred cash.
Cash, too, varied in size and value. The debasing of coinage was by no
means unknown.

Individually the copper cash were of small value. At the rates of
exchange common during the fore part of the twentieth century an Ameri-

Economic Life and Organization 507-

can dollar would buy from two thousand or three thousand of them — and
even more. Manifestly they were a convenience only in a land where,
compared with the modern Occident, the price level was very low, and
where the struggle for existence was so severe that a coin the value of a
cash was worth haggling over.

Until the present century, with occasional exceptions the only metal
minted in China was copper. Iron was sometimes employed. Silver and
gold were practically never coined. This may have been due in part to the
comparative scarcity of these metals. The paucity of natural deposits of
gold and silver ore within China proper must greatly have limited the
supply.

As we have seen, the Chinese had paper money in more than one
dynasty, beginning at least as early as the Tang, and have had sorrowful
experience with inflation by the unwise over-issue of it.

Obviously, even in a country with a low price level, units of exchange
larger than a cash were needed. The demand was not met by coins. Under
some dynasties paper money made partial provision for it. Gold was
seldom a medium of exchange but was used only for jewelry and in the
arts, or in ingots or gold leaf for hoarding. The customary device was silver
ingots. These were not minted by the government, but were issued by
private initiative. The unit was the tael (the foreign name for the Chinese
Hang). Theoretically a tael was worth a thousand cash, but in practice
the actual weight and fineness varied from locality to locality and from
agency to agency. At the outset of the twentieth century there were at
least seventy-seven distinct kinds of taels — and probably more than twice
that number. Thus the Shanghai tael differed from the Hankow tael and
that of the imperial Board of Revenue from that of the Maritime Customs.
By Western standards, the tael was usually somewhere between five
hundred and six hundred grains, Troy measure, of pure silver. (It will be
recalled that the American dollar is 412.5 grains in weight, and of .900
fineness.) The Chinese lump silver of commerce was called sycee (hsi ssu}
and was made up into ingots of varying fineness and shape, called by
foreigners "shoes," a term whose derivation is uncertain. The weight of
a shoe also was not fixed, but was usually slightly above or below fifty
taels. The Chinese divided the tael according to a decimal system. The
foreigner called the tenth of a tael a mace and the hundredth part of a
tael a candareen. In practice, in making payments which required silver
of a fractional part of a shoe, a portion of the ingot was cut off. Weighing
pieces of silver and testing them for fineness formed a regular part of
business transactions and necessitated the assistance of experts.

Naturally all this variation in the currency was a handicap to business,
not only within the Empire as a whole but within individual cities and
communities as well.

Given this development of commerce and this complexity of the cur-

508 VOLUME II

rency, banking almost inevitably came into existence. Apparently it began
at least as early as the T'ang. Its chief functions were domestic exchange.
Banks dealt in drafts which made possible the buying and selling of goods
between towns and cities of the Empire with the minimum shipment of
silver. They assisted in the transfer of government funds. They facilitated
change. They issued bills which circulated locally as money. They re
ceived deposits from customers, allowed overdrafts, and made loans —
although to a smaller extent than do banks in the modern Occident.

On the eve of the modifications wrought by the impact of the West at
least four different kinds of institutions conducted a business which may
be classed as banking. Many merchants who regularly bought and sold in
more than one city dealt in bills of exchange payable in the cities in which
they did business. Incidentally they might, as a matter of accommodation,
accept deposits from their regular customers, make advances to them,
and allow overdrafts. Then there were "cash shops," whose primary
function it was to make change from cash into taels or vice versa, or from
one kind of tael to another. These too might make small loans or allow
overdrafts to shopkeepers who were their regular customers. There were
pawnshops, the better of them licensed by the government and often
powerful. A large proportion of them were eminently respectable and not
only lent money on security of clothing, jewelry, and similar chattels, but
also acted as places for the storage of valuables. Then there were institu
tions more nearly corresponding to banks of Western types, whose function
it was to receive deposits, make loans, and buy and sell drafts. They were
usually small, rarely having as large a capital as 100,000 taels. They were
never stock companies, but were organized by families, by individuals, or
as partnerships. Every city of importance had its bankers' guild, but this
did not serve as a clearing house.

The most influential of the bankers were mostly from the province of
Shansi. The Shansi bankers, indeed, constituted one of the most prominent
features of the business and financial structure of the Empire. Just how
far back in Chinese history they went is difficult to say. The best Chinese
authorities seem to agree that they arose in the seventeenth century. The
necessary capital may have been originally derived from the coal and iron
of the province. Shansi is especially rich in coal, and for centuries some
of it was shipped to adjacent valleys and plains. In Shansi coal was used to
smelt iron, and the province was long the source of much of the North's
supply of that metal. The system, too, may have arisen out of other forms
of trading. Whatever the origin of the business, in the nineteenth century,
just before the revolutionary changes induced by the impact of the West,
Shansi bankers were a recognized part of the economic life of the Empire
and were found in the principal towns and cities. They did not constitute a
corporation, for no such device existed, but they co-operated as a close

Economic Life and Organization 509

association of the prominent banking families of Shansi, and most of the
agents and employees seem to have been from that province. It was
through them that the government transmitted much of its funds, and they
assisted the state in other ways, and in turn were accorded official patronage.
In spite of this banking system, credit played a less prominent part in
the commercial life of China than of the West. Loans were made, and
merchants were often deeply in debt. The New Year's season was famous,
among other reasons, as the time by which debts must be met. To a less
extent, the fifth-month and eighth-month festivals were a time for paying
bills. When loans were needed, they were often obtained through a co
operative effort. Several people clubbed together and contributed equal
sums to a common fund. The use of the fund went to each member for a
given length of time. When all had had their turn, the organization was
dissolved. However, a large proportion of the business of the country was
conducted on the basis of cash transactions. Farmers sold to townspeople
for cash, and merchants usually demanded cash. The actual exchange of
commodities, without money as an intermediary, seems to have been more
frequent than in the modern West. There was less advancing of credit by
one merchant to another than in the present-day Occident. Interest rates
were high, and mobile capital comparatively scarce. Much of the country's
wealth was in land, and the majority of the Empire's richest men seem not
to have been merchants but officials. The characteristic form of endow
ment for a temple, or for any other purpose, was not stocks and bonds,
as in the modern Occident, but land.

TRANSPORTATION

The internal commerce of China has inevitably been de
pendent on transportation. Here the achievement has been decidedly a
mixture of success and failure. The Chinese have displayed great skill in
utilizing their waterways. Practically every stream that can be considered
at all navigable has its boat traffic. For centuries, too, the Chinese have
made extensive use of the canal, not only for irrigation but also for trans
portation. Locks were devised to transfer boats from one level to another.
Hundreds of miles of canals were and are in use. They are particularly
numerous on the great alluvial plains on the lower reaches of the Yangtze
River.

The craft range all the way from great ocean-going junks to sampans,
which, to use an Americanism, can "float on a heavy dew." On the upper
reaches of the Yellow River rafts of inflated skins have been numerous.
Wherever a boat can go, the Chinese have employed it. They have even
laboriously pulled them up through the rapids and gorges of the Yangtze
and so have made that passage the main route in and out of the Szechwan.

510 VOLUME II

Many boatmen have acquired extraordinary skill in handling craft that,
to the inexperienced foreigner, seem clumsy. When oars are employed, as
they often are, they are manipulated chiefly by sculling rather than by
rowing. It will be recalled that boat traffic, especially when the propelling
power is wind or current, is a relatively inexpensive, though leisurely, form
of conveying freight.

In land transportation the Chinese have been much less successful. To be
sure, bridges are a familiar feature of almost every Chinese landscape
and are of many types, such as massive ones of stone in or near some of the
chief cities, gracefully arched smaller stone structures, and the ingenious
suspension bridges that span the torrents of West China. Great Emperors,
notable among them Ch'in Shih Huang Ti and Han Wu Ti, made lavish
use of wealth and labor to construct highways throughout their domains.
Many of these were paved with huge stones. Officials, too, were supposed
to be charged with the care of roads. Great virtue was held to attach to
building roads and they were often undertaken at private initiative. How
ever, once constructed, they were usually allowed to fall into disrepair, and
the tillers of adjacent fields encroached on them. Through much of China's
history they seem to have been very poor. Certainly those which the foreign
traveler of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries encountered could seldom
be called good.

In the North, land transportation has been partly by crude carts, partly
by wheelbarrows (sometimes helped by a sail), partly by donkeys, and
partly on the shoulders of men. Camel trains are common in Mongolia
and Sinkiang and to a certain extent in the northern part of China proper.
In the South, wheelbarrows and men have predominated. Donkeys are
utilized, especially in hilly districts. From the Yangtze Valley southward
roads have generally been narrow. If paved, it has been with blocks of stone
laid end to end and affording a track broad enough only for the wheel
barrow. No foreign resident of China where these older methods of trans
portation prevailed will soon forget the lavish use of human labor, or the
shrill complaint of the ungreased wheelbarrow. Sedan chairs often served
for the conveyance of passengers; donkey, mule, and horse litters were
known; and travel by horseback was not uncommon, particularly in the
North.

Inns were frequent on the main roads, and even on the byways were
to be found in many of the villages. Judged by the standards of the present-
day West they were decidedly uncomfortable, but they compared not
unfavorably with those of the rest of the older Orient or of medieval
Europe.

Manifestly, where a district could be reached only overland, commerce
in commodities which combined large bulk and weight with comparatively
small value proved unprofitable. It is obvious, in the light of these handicaps,

Economic Life and Organization 511

why so often famine wasted one part of the Empire when a surplus of food
was to be found in another.

Judged by modem standards, the postal service of the old regime was
inadequate. A government post took charge of official dispatches. Many
private agencies transmitted letters, parcels, drafts, and specie by couriers
and post boats. Few if any of the private agencies, however, extended over
more than one or two provinces. Time distances, too, were great.

Given the many handicaps to internal commerce — the varieties of
weights, measures, and monetary values, the lack of capital and of stock
companies, and the poor transportation facilities — the wonder is that so
extensive a domestic trade existed. Obviously anything resembling the
standardization of products and the huge corporations of the present-day
United States was quite out of the question. The economic organization of
China was manifestly in a much earlier stage of development than that of
western Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not strange
that the impact of the West produced startling changes.

CHANGES IN COMMERCE, MONEY, BANKING, AND TRANSPORTATION
PRODUCED BY CONTACT WITH THE OCCIDENT

Many of the alterations wrought in recent years in commerce,
money, banking, and transportation have been noted in earlier pages and
chapters and need not here be repeated. We have seen the growth in foreign
trade, together with the fact that the per capita volume is so small that
China is still largely self-supporting. We have mentioned some of the
innovations in transportation: the railway, the automobile, bicycles, the
rikshas, displaced by the pedicabs, the airplane, and steam craft — the latter
ranging all the way from ocean liners down through the comfortable boats
which have plied the lower reaches of the Yangtze, the smaller steamers
with especially powerful engines that have made the dangerous trip through
those gorges of the Yangtze which are the chief channel of communication
between the inland empire of Szechwan and the outside world, to the
steam launches, often very dingy, which have competed with sailing craft
on some of the canals and the smaller rivers. We have noted the rise in
prices, in general paralleling that in the rest of the world, and the inflation
of the 1940's. We have hinted at innovations in commercial organization
and in currency. However, some of these changes require slightly further
elaboration.

In the organization of the country for commerce the presence of the
foreigner initiated modifications, some of them marked. The alien brought
some of his own mercantile institutions and customs or worked out others
adapted to the Chinese situation, and these made their impression on native
practices. For instance, the Chinese became familiar with the stock com-

512 VOLUME II

party, partly because many of the largest foreign concerns operating in the
country were organized after that manner. Accordingly, they formed
stock companies of their own, and while many of these had only in
different success or failed, some made money for their owners.

For many years the usual channel between alien and native merchants
was a Chinese middleman, called in Western parlance a compradore. This
was a concession to local conditions. The compradore was salaried by the
foreigner, and in addition, as his chief source of income, was allowed
commissions on transactions made through him. He engaged and discharged
the members of his employer's Chinese staff and made all the contacts with
Chinese merchants. While his reign endured, direct intercourse between
Chinese and foreign merchants was at a minimum. The compradore owed
his position to his knowledge of the Chinese language and of Chinese
business methods. It was to his interest to see that no change took place
in the latter. On the eve of the full-scale Japanese invasion the compradore
was declining in importance. Less and less of a foreign firm's business
was conducted through him. The merchant from abroad dealt directly with
Chinese without his mediation, and the Chinese merchant tended to
establish immediate contacts with foreign countries.

Until the Communist domination of the mainland, the characteristic
unit of Chinese mercantile enterprise was still an individual, a family, or
a partnership. Stock companies, while some of them were important, were
in the minority. Merchants continued to be organized by guilds. The
chambers of commerce appearing in almost every important city (they
multiplied rapidly after 1900 and as long ago as 1914 there were about
thirteen hundred of them) seem to have owed much to their Occidental
prototypes, but it is probable that the Chinese experience with guilds
facilitated their formation. To some of them only representatives of guilds
were admitted, and they provided a means, largely lacking under the old
regime, whereby guilds could co-operate.

The chambers of commerce became recognized intermediaries between
the merchants and the government, and from time to time they were
subjected to official regulation and control. It was through them, too, that
a conquering general usually made his demand on a city for a financial
contribution. Eventually a national organization of chambers of commerce
was formed and for a time its annual meetings were of considerable
importance.

Although in the fore part of the twentieth century their influence on the
government grew, the merchants and bankers of China had no predominat
ing part in shaping the political destinies of the nation. Sometimes through
their chambers of commerce merchants had an important role in local
politics, and now and then were a factor to be reckoned with nationally.
Their financial contributions were essential to the success of many of the

Economic Life and Organization 513

generals and warring factions, notably the National Government, and more
than once were granted with conditions attached. More often than not the
contributions were forced, a kind of irregular tribute for which the only
return was a temporary reprieve from additional exactions or from torture
and death.

Western example was largely responsible for a new banking structure.
Huge foreign institutions, the chief of which was the (British) Hong Kong
and Shanghai Banking Corporation, played so important a part in financing
loans of the government and in overseas commerce that it would have been
strange had the Chinese not organized banks of the Occidental type. The
Bank of China and the Bank of Communications came into being, both
of them originally state institutions, coming down from the last few years
of the Ch'ing dynasty. Both had branches in many cities, both had decidedly
checkered careers due in part to their political connections, and they were
rivals, at times bitterly so. In each the government appointed only a
minority of the directors, and both were very prominent in the financial
world. In 1928 the National Government brought into existence a new
Central Bank designed to be more fully a state institution than either of
the others. A good many banks were founded by provincial governments.
All too often these were the tools of war lords, who through them issued
floods of paper money, much of it worthless but for a time kept in circulation
by force. In addition, a large number of banks of a modern Western type
were organized by private individuals. Each of several of these had paid
up capital stock running into the millions. Some had offices in more than
one city. They were indications of a rapid change in the financial organiza
tion of the country and possibly were evidence of an increasing amount of
fluid capital.

For years old-style banking houses persisted, but in greatly diminished
importance. Many of them succumbed under the financial crisis brought by
.the passing of the Manchus. The end of the Ch'ing dynasty was a partic
ularly severe blow to the Shansi bankers, who had been used to transmit
government funds and whose fortunes were accordingly fairly closely
identified with those of the old regime. Some of the Shansi banks, however,
managed to weather the storm.

The currency of China became even more intricate and jumbled under
the influence of the alien. Although partly superseded by dollars and in
1933 officially demonetized, taels continued as a unit of reckoning and in as
confusing a variety as ever. For a time cash persisted, but, especially during
the World War of 1914-1918, when copper was greatly in demand, many
were melted down and other forms of currency took their place. Indeed,
they almost entirely passed out of circulation. Coined silver first entered
in the form of Spanish dollars, brought by Western traders. To them were
later added Mexican dollars, and these became so common that prices

514 VOLUME II

were frequently quoted in "Mex." although a native Chinese term, yuan,
eventually supplanted it. Hong Kong, Straits Settlements, and many other
kinds of dollars of alien origin were imported. In time the government
began to mint silver, also in the form of dollars (or yuan), and these coins
were issued by various national and provincial administrations. In the
1930's, following the trend in other countries, silver was nationalized and
largely passed out of circulation. A subsidiary currency in silver and copper
was minted in quantities. Added to this was the paper money of govern
ments and of native and foreign banks. These mediums of exchange
fluctuated in value with reference to one another, and often very markedly
and rapidly. The number of subsidiary coins which could be bought for a
dollar changed with the locality, the sort of dollar, and the kind of minor
coin. Often, too, the coin or bill standard in one city was at a discount in
the next. However, notes of some of the larger and more stable institutions,
such as the Bank of Communications and the Bank of China, were widely
circulated and passed at face value or at only a small discount. To add
to the bedlam, China was in effect on the silver basis, and foreign exchange
was subject to the fluctuations in the price of that metal in the markets of
the world. The rapid shifts in foreign exchange did not greatly affect the
prices of domestic products, but since goods purchased abroad had to be
paid for in gold, the repercussion upon foreign trade was serious. In the
1940's the runaway inflation that accompanied the war with Japan was
the outstanding feature of the monetary situation. It prevailed in both
"free" and "occupied" China and upset earlier standards.

In the twentieth century many suggestions were offered for reforming
the currency, and now and again a more or less halfhearted attempt was
made to put one or another of them into effect.

The coming of the Communist regime brought drastic changes in
commerce, money, and banking. Foreign and domestic trade was progres
sively taken over by the state. Inflation was largely, although not entirely,
curbed, and paper money supplanted coins and bullion. Banking was made
a government monopoly. Most of the foreign commerce was with countries
in the Communist bloc. But for a time in the 1950's spectacular exports
were made to South and Southeast Asia of products of the new industries.
The huge building of the (Communist) Bank of China in Hong Kong was
chiefly for foreign exchange. Early in the 1960's extensive imports of grain
were contracted for with Canada and Australia to help meet the food
shortage.

After what has been said previously about the innovations in the trans
portation system, little more need be added. Obviously, marked improve
ments have been registered. Quite as obviously, however, communication
continues to be one of the nation's major problems.

We have previously noted how much the post office and telegraph have

Economic Life and Organization 515

done to tie the nation together. The government postal service of today
first arose through foreign initiative under the Maritime Customs. In 1896
it was formally established by imperial decree. It had a remarkable record
in maintaining its service throughout the country in the face of the civil
disorder that followed 1912. Its agents frequently successfully sent the mails
through bandit lines into a beleaguered town. By money orders and parcel
post as well as the transmission of letters it contributed to the unification
of the nation. By association with the postal system of the world it helped
to keep China in touch with other lands. In 1908 the telegraphs of the
country passed into the hands of the state. Today a network of lines con
nects the chief cities and many of the towns. The radio, too, has been
developed, both for internal and for international communications. The
telephone has been widely installed.

SUMMARY

Obviously the fate of China is inextricably bound up with
economics. No nation in which great areas are overpopulated, in some of
whose districts famine has been recurrent, and in which millions are
underclothed and undernourished can hope easily to maintain a stable
government. Under such conditions there will always be discontented
spirits who prefer rebellion to starvation. As we have noted before, China
is caught in a vicious circle. Under the great Manchu Emperors population
increased rapidly. For more than a century these rulers had so maintained
internal peace and order that the margin of subsistence expanded. The
introduction of new food plants from the Americas assisted in the growth
of population. With the collapse of the Ch'ing dynasty and of the old form
of government, and with the ensuing political disorder, the margin shrank
rapidly. As a result, millions were left stranded. Thousands of these entered
the armies and other thousands became bandits. The result was the still
further restriction of the margin of existence, more distress, and more
fighting and banditry. The political and the economic problem go hand in
hand. Both must be solved together.

Yet the Chinese have by no means entirely failed in their economic life.
Even to keep alive so huge a population has been and is no mean achieve
ment, and millions, though a minority, have been and are maintained in
comparative comfort. In the 1950's the Communists on the mainland and
the Nationalists on T'aiwan made valiant efforts to solve the problem.

So huge a mass of mankind on a low standard of living must be a
problem not only for itself but for the rest of the world. The world cannot
but be interested in watching the outcome of the phase of the present
revolution which affects the economic life of China. If the Chinese succeed
in regulating their birth rate and in adapting Western machinery and agri-

516 VOLUME II

cultural and commercial methods in such a manner as to raise the average
level of subsistence, the rest of the human race cannot fail to benefit. If
the standard of living for the masses should fall still lower, not only China
but also the rest of mankind will be the loser.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Much information on economic life in China, chiefly on twentieth century
developments, is contained in The Chinese Economic Bulletin, issued by the
Chinese Government, the Chinese Economic Monthly, issued by the Chinese
Government (1923-1926), and the Chinese Economic Journal also issued by
the government.

General books are L. D. Stamp, Asia: An Economic and Regional Geog
raphy (New York, 1929), and L. D. Buxton, China, the Land and the People
(Oxford, 1929). Partly general are K. A. Wittfogel in Zeitschrift fur Sozial-
forschung, Vol. 4, 1935, Heft 1; Ch'ao-ting Chi, Key Economic Areas in
Chinese History as Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water-
Control (London, 1936); R. P. Hommel, China at Work. An Illustrated
Record of the Primitive Industries of China's Masses (New York, 1937); E.
Stuart Kirby, Introduction to the Economic History of China (London, George
Allen & Unwin, 1954, pp. 202); D. E. T. Luard and T. J. Hughes, The
Economic Development of Communist China, 1949-1960 (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1961, pp. vi, 229).

An occupation so important to the Chinese as agriculture almost inevitably
has given rise to a fairly extensive literature. We know of a book on this
subject as early as the fifth century of the Christian Era. At least one fragment
of a T'ang dynasty treatise, on the construction of plows, has come down to
us. A work of the Sung dynasty containing pictures of various phases of agri
cultural operations and of weaving has survived. There is another one of the
same dynasty which treats of fanning, the breeding of cattle, and the rearing
of silkworms. Still another, drawn up by imperial ordei;, appeared in the Yuan
dynasty. There are others from the Ming and the Ch'ing, either compiled or
published by imperial decree. One of these Chinese treatises on agriculture has
been translated by O. Franke in Keng Tschi T'u, Ackerbau und Seidengewin-
nung in China (Hamburg, 1913).

Of books on Chinese agriculture in Western languages the following may
be mentioned: Mabel Ping-hua Lee, The Economic History of China, with
Especial Reference to Agriculture (New York, 1921), a somewhat ill-digested
doctoral dissertation whose value lies almost entirely in its excerpts from
various Chinese works; F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, or Permanent
Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan (Madison, Wisconsin, 1911), by a
prominent American expert on agriculture on the basis of observations during
a visit to East Asia; Agrarian China. Selected Source Materials from Chinese
Authors (Chicago, preface, 1938); J. L. Buck, Chinese Farm Economy, a
study of 2866 farms in seventeen localities and seven provinces in China
(Shanghai and Chicago, 1930), using careful scientific methods, and covering
certain sections in Fukien, Chekiang, Kiangsu, Anhui, Honan, Hopei, and
Shansi; J. L. Buck, Land Utilization in China. A study of 16,786 farms in 168
localities, and 38,256 farm families in twenty-two provinces in China, 1929-
1933 (Chicago, 3 vols., preface, 1937); K. A. Wittfogel, Wirtschaft und

Economic Life and Organization 517

Gesellschaft Chinas. Erster Teil, Produktivkrafte, Produktions — und Zirkula-
tionsprozess (Leipzig, 1931), based upon extensive research in the literature
available in Western languages; Wilhelm Wagner, Die chinesische Land-
wirtschaft (Berlin, 1926), an encyclopedic treatment by an expert, based upon
observation during several years of residence in China and on examination of
a large amount of material in European languages; W. H. Mallory, China: Land
of Famine (New York, 1926), by a former secretary of the China Inter
national Famine Relief Commission; F. W. Otte, China: wirtschaftspolitische
Landeskunde (Gotha, 1927, Vol. 42 of Petermans Mitteilungen)\ J. D. H.
Lamb, Development of the Agrarian Movement and Agrarian Legislation in
China (1912-1930) (Peiping, 1931); and Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China's
Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (University of Washington Press,
1960, pp. xiv, 783).

The following articles are among those having interest and value: P. C.
Hsu, "Rural Co-operatives in China," Pacific Affairs, October, 1929, pp. 611-
624; W. H. Mallory, "Rural Co-operative Credit in China," The Quarterly
Journal of Economics, Vol. 45, May, 1931; W, H. Adolph, "Aspects of
Nutrition and Metabolism in China," The Scientific Monthly, My, 1929, pp.
39-44; J. B. Tayler, "The Study of Chinese Rural Economy," The Chinese
Social and Political Science Review, January and April, 1924; W. C. Lowder-
milk, "Forestry in Denuded China," The Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, November, 1930, pp. 127-141; B. Laufer, "Some
Fundamental Ideas of Chinese Culture," Journal of Race Development, 1914-
1915, Vol. 5, pp. 160-174; C. C. Chang, "A Statistical Study of Farm Tenancy
in China," The China Critic, Sept. 25, 1930, Vol. 3, pp. 917-922; Shan-yu Yao,
"The Chronological and Seasonal Distribution of Floods and Droughts in
Chinese History, 206 B.C.-A.D. 1911," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol.
6, pp. 273-312; and E. G. Pulleyblank, "The Origins and Nature of Chattel
Slavery in China," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,
Vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 185-220. See also the bulletins of the College of Agri
culture and Forestry of the University of Nanking. Pearl S. Buck, The Good
Earth (New York, 1931) is, in fiction form, an excellent description of rural
life in a particular section.

On the general subjects of industry, foreign and domestic commerce, and
transportation, the following are useful as works of reference: H. B. Morse,
The Trade and Administration of China (revised edition, London, 1913);
Mean Arnold (the distinguished commercial attache of the American legation
in China) et alii, China, A Commercial and Industrial Handbook (Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1926); The China Year Book (London, 1912-
1919, Tientsin, 1921-1930, Shanghai, 1931 et seq.), unusually rich in informa
tion. The reports and other published documents of the Maritime Customs
are a mine of information. T. R. Jernigan, China in Law and Commerce (New
York, 1905), has some good summaries. Later studies are J. B. Condliffe,
China To-day: Economic (Boston, 1932); E. E. Ware, Business and Politics
in the Far East (New Haven, 1932); Grover Clark, Economic Rivalries in
China (New Haven, 1932); and Yu-kwei Cheng, Foreign Trade and Industrial
Development in China (University of Washington Press, 1956), covering the
period 1911-1948.

On villages in a part of North China as they were at the close of the last
century there is a very readable but somewhat pessimistic account by a resident
in that region, A. H. Smith, Village Life in China. A Study in Sociology (New

518 VOLUME II

York, 1899). On a village in South China an account by a trained sociologist
is D. H. Kulp, Country Life in South China. The Sociology of Familism. Vol. 1.
Phenix Village, Kwantung, China (New York, 1925). See also the excellent
study, Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in China, A Field Study of Country Life
in the Yangtze Valley (London, 1939). On twentieth century conditions in
Fukien, see Lin Yueh-hua, The Golden Wing, A Family Chronicle (New York,
1944),

On conditions in a big city, see S. D. Gamble, How Chinese Families Live
in Peiping. A Study of the Income and Expenditure of 283 Chinese Families
Receiving from $8 to $550 Silver per Month (New York, 1933).

On the guilds of China there is a little book by H. B. Morse, The Guilds of
China (London, 1909), the information being drawn largely from "Chinese
Guilds, or Chambers of Commerce and Trades Unions," by D. J. Macgowan
in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1888-
1889, pp. 133-192, and the Decennial Reports of the Chinese Imperial Mari
time Customs. Descriptions of several guilds, together with translations of
documents, are in S. D. Gamble, assisted by J. S. Burgess, Peking, A Social
Survey (New York, 1921). J. S. Burgess, The Guilds of Peking (New York,
1928), depends partly upon his earlier study with Gamble, but contains much
additional information.

On conditions of labor and labor legislation and the modern labor move
ment, see Ta Chen, The Labor Movement in China (Honolulu, 1927); S. H.
Lin, Factory Workers in Tangku (Peking, 1928); J. D. H. Lamb, The Origin
and Development of Social Legislation in China (Yenching University, Peiping,
1930), formal and "official" in the extreme; Adelaide Mary Anderson,
Humanity and Labour in China, An Industrial Visit and Its Sequel (1923 to
1926) (London, 1928); Fang Fu-an, Chinese Labour (Shanghai, 1931); R. H.
Tawney, Land and Labour in China (1932); C. C. Chu and T. C. Blaisdell,
"Peking Rugs and Peking Boys. A Study of the Rug Industry in Peking,"
Special Supplement to the Chinese Social and Political Science Review, April,
1924; Monpeng Mou, Involution des Corporations Ouvrieres et Commercials
dans la Chine Contemporaire (1931); Nym Wales, The Chinese Labor Move
ment (New York, 1945); and Shih Kuo-cheng, China Enters the Machine Age.
A Study of Labor in Chinese War Industry (Cambridge, 1944).

On modern industry in China, among many articles and books are H. D.
Fong, "Industrialization and Labor in Hopei," The Chinese Social and Political
Science Review, April, 1931, pp. 1-28; H. D. Fong, "Cotton Industry and
Trade in China," ibid., Oct. 1932, pp. 347-424; D. K. Lieu, China's Industry
and Finance (Peking and Shanghai, ca. 1927); E. M. Hinder, Life and Labour
in Shanghai (New York, 1944); Franklin L. Ho, Industries (Symposium on
Chinese Culture) (Shanghai, 1931, pp. 278-329); Yuan-li Wu, An Economic
Survey of Communist China (New York, Bookman Associates, 1956, pp. x,
560), with an extensive bibliography; W. W. Hollister, China's Gross National
Product and Social Accounts, 1950-1957 (Glencoe, 111., Free Press, 1958, pp.
xx, 161); C. M. Li, "Statistics and Planning at the Hsien Level in Communist
China," The China Quarterly, No. 9, Jan.-March, 1962, pp. 112-123.

On railways, see Chang Kia-ngau, China's Struggle for Railway Develop
ment (New York, 1943); E-tu Zen Sun, "The Pattern of Railway Development
in China," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. XIV, pp. 179-200.

On money and banking, see D. H. Leavens, "Chinese Money and Banking,"
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Nov.

Economic Life and Organization 519

1930, pp. 206-213; Yli-chuan Wang, Early Chinese Coinage (New York,
American Numismatic Society, 1951, pp. viii, 254); F. M. Tamagna, Banking
and Finance in China (New York, 1942); T. W. Overlach, Foreign Financial
Control in China, (New York, 1929); S. R. Wagel, Chinese Currency and
Banking (Shanghai, 1915); W. P. Wei, The Currency Problem in China (New
York, 1914); F. E, Lee, Currency, Banking, and Finance in China (Washing
ton, 1926); E. Kann, The Currencies of China (second edition, Shanghai,
1927), probably the best book on the subject; W. Vissering, On Chinese Cur
rency, Coin and Paper Money (Leiden, 1877), valuable because it is drawn
chiefly from the encyclopedia of Ma Tuan-lin and consisting largely of a
history of money in China into the Sung dynasty; and Lien-sheng Yang, Money
and Credit in China. A Short History (Harvard University Press, 1952, pp.
143).

On prices and wages, see "Prices, Wages, and Standards of Living in Peking,
1900-1924," Special Supplement to the Chinese Social and Political Science
Review, July, 1926; S. D. Gamble, Peking Wages (Yenching University, Pei-
ping, 1929); F. L. Ho, "Prices and Price Fluctuations in North China, 1913-
1929," The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, Oct. 1929, pp. 349-
358; S. D. Gamble, The Household Accounts of Two Chinese Families (New
York, 1931); S. D. Gamble, "Daily Wages of Unskilled Chinese Laborers,
1807-1902," The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 3, pp. 41-73; and L. K. Tao,
Livelihood in Peking (Peking, 1928); Chung-li Chang, The Income of the
Chinese Gentry (University of Washington Press, 1962), pp. xvii, 369, fol
lowing a work by the same author and title, published 1958.

For additional bibliography, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 111-119.

CHAPTER SEVENTH EN

RELIGION

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

In connection with the chapters on history we have already
rehearsed the main outlines of the development of religion in China, We
have seen that the nature of the earliest religion of the Chinese is in
dispute. There are those who contend that it was monotheism and that
it was later corrupted by polytheism and by the worship of ancestors
and of spirits residing in various natural objects. Others — and this is the
present tendency — believe that the theistic elements in some of the
ancient literary remains were late accretions and that the primitive faith
was probably a mixture of animism, including the worship of ancestors,
and of reverence for forces and objects of nature, such as heaven and
earth and some of the heavenly bodies, whose co-operation was regarded
as necessary to the well-being of man.

Whatever Chinese religion may have been in its primitive stages,
its main outlines in the latter part of the Chou are fairly discernible.
There were ceremonies in honor of ancestors. Spirits of varying degrees
of potency were believed to reside in many natural objects, such as moun
tains and rivers, and to demand reverence. Some of the stars, notably
those in Ursa Major, were highly esteemed. Heaven and Earth, particularly
the former, were held in great veneration and sacrifices were offered to
them. One Power was regarded with such awe and to it were ascribed
such attributes of personality that a type of theism may be said to have
existed. This Power was denominated either Tien (Heaven) or Shang
Ti (the Supreme Ruler or the Ruler Above). The two terms probably
had separate origins and at one time different meanings, but by the latter
part of the Chou they had all but coalesced and were declared by some to
be identical in the object designated. This theism was not monotheism in
the sense that no spiritual beings other than Tien or Shang Ti could be
worshipped. Moreover, varying conceptions existed of the Supreme Power.
By some, probably the majority, it was held to be personal, but at least
a few conceived it as entirely impersonal.

The duty owed to the spiritual beings was believed to be largely
ceremonial. Ritual correctly performed was regarded as extremely impor
tant. Music and posturing, along with sacrifices of food, had their place.
At least before the close of the Chou dynasty (whether as a late devel-

520

Religion 521

opment or as a heritage from the past is in dispute) an ethical element
entered and Heaven was believed to be displeased with violations of the
moral code.

The correct performance of the ceremonies and other duties owed to
spiritual beings was declared essential to the welfare of man. All nature
was thought of as an orderly whole, a universe. If this universe was to
be kept functioning properly, man must do his part — a part in which both
ritual and loyalty to moral obligations were important. If man failed to
perform his duty, the machinery of the universe would be disarranged and
natural disasters of various kinds would ensue, such as floods, drought, and
the failure of crops.

Ceremonies were of many kinds and grades. Each class or group
in society had those appropriate to it. No one must infringe upon those
of another or the harmony of nature would be disturbed. The head of the
state, the various territorial princes, and members of the aristocracy were
especially charged, or privileged, with specific religious functions.

Yet no priestly class emerged. There were those particularly well
versed in ritual whose function it was to assist in its direction. There
were professional diviners, experts in the various methods of discovering
by lot or oracle the proper course of action. However, no specialized group
existed as in ancient Egypt or India which depended for its prestige and
power upon a monopoly of the approach to the spirits, gods, and divine
forces. Officiation at religious ceremonies formed part of the prerogative
of those charged with the civil, military, and social leadership of society.

We have also seen that in the Chou period various schools of thought
developed, all of them taking account of religion and some of them with
very strong religious elements. There was what Westerners usually call
Confucianism, with its three leading exponents and formulators: Con
fucius, Mencius, and Hsiin Tzu. There was Taoism, advocating a type
of society so simplified that it approached anarchism, and with speculations
concerning the nature of things which ever since have fascinated many
and were long both an excuse for and an incentive to the search for a means
to immortality. Mo Ti advocated a theory for the organization of society
upon the principle of universal love and found justification for it in what
he believed to be revealed in nature and in the writings and experience
of the ancients — the love of God for men. He was followed by two
schools, one of which stressed the religious aspects of his teaching and the
other his methods of reasoning. The Legalists, or the school of adminis
tration, wished to govern society by drastic regulations strictly administered.
Other schools and independent thinkers of the Chou which have been
named earlier do not need even to be mentioned here. The era was one
of active and creative thought in which religion could not fail to be
involved.

522 VOLUME II

The latter part of the Chou was a time of political and social tur
moil and transition. When the dust had settled, what were in many
respects a new state and a new society had come into being. Ch'in Shih
Huang Ti attempted to reorganize China on the theories which had proved
successful in his native state — those of the Legalists. When the brief course
of his dynasty had been run, leaving behind it momentous permanent
results, the Han followed, won for the Empire a comparative stability,
and placed an indelible stamp on the institutions of China. Under the Han
Confucianism, greatly modified by the influence of other schools, was
eventually established as the philosophy of the state. Taoism, however,
continued potent and often numbered among its devotees persons high
in court circles. It became something quite different from that disclosed in
the great classics it inherited from the Chou. The other schools of the
Chou gradually died out, but some of their writings survived and were
not without effect, often very lasting and profound, upon the subsequent
life and thought of the Empire.

When the Han dynasty went the way of all flesh, approximately
four centuries of internal turmoil followed, during which a major new
religious influence, this time from abroad, made itself felt. Buddhism,
it will be recalled, first reached China — at least so far as we are now
aware — under the Han. It was, however, in the centuries of the post-
Han internal political division of the Empire, when there was no single
state organized on an intolerant Confucian theory to offer resistance, that
it achieved its large place in the land.

It was under an Empire revived and unified afresh by the Sui and
the T'ang that Buddhism reached its apex. The Chinese made it largely
their own and most of the sects through which it persisted seem to have
been of native origin. A wide range of Chinese life was affected by it.
Confucianism, Taoism, folklore, philosophy, popular religious beliefs and
practices, and art were never the same after its years of popularity. After
the middle of the T'ang Buddhism in China gradually lost in vitality.

Until very recently Buddhism was the only foreign religion which had
much effect upon more than a minority of the Chinese. Zoroastrianism,
Manichaeism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have all been present
at one time or another, several of them for centuries. Yet the Moslems
are the only group which have numbered much more than one per cent
of the population, and even they have been largely apart from the main
current of Chinese life and have had but little effect upon it. Of late years, as
we have seen, Christianity has had widespread but still a minority influence,
which has waned on the mainland under Communism.

Beginning with the Han and especially after the Sui and the T'ang,
with the revival and strengthening of the civil service examinations based
upon Confucian Classics, Confucianism was, until the twentieth century,

Religion 523

usually the philosophy established and supported by the state. It was,
therefore, dominant in the life of the nation. Taoism always had its advo
cates, frequently including those high in official circles, and at times was
accorded imperial patronage. Buddhism often enjoyed popularity at court
as well as with the masses. Confucianism, however, was the basis on which
the Empire was organized.

It is tantalizing to have to pass over the history of the religious life
of the Chinese in the fragmentary manner in which it has been touched
upon in preceding chapters and in this brief summary. This is all the
more so because no satisfactory account is to be found in any language
and the subject is one which invites exploration. If and when such a work is
written it will treat not only of religious and philosophic thought, but also
of institutions, ceremonies, the relation of religion to the state and to
society in general, and the effect of religion upon art and literature. It
will pay attention to religion as practiced both by the ruling and educated
classes and by the masses of the people, and will record the rise and decline
of popular religious cults and the story of the origin and disappearance of
the many divinities which for longer or shorter periods were revered
by some or all of the Chinese. Whether such an account can ever be com
posed is uncertain. Obviously it will have to rest upon many preliminary
studies in the vast literary remains of China's past, and much, too, must
wait upon archaeology.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE CHINESE

Unsatisfactory though these brief historical notes are, they
may render somewhat more intelligible religion as it was on the eve of
the revolution brought by the coming of the Occident. They will, more
over, serve to make clear some of the reasons for the religious attitudes
of the Chinese.

About these attitudes certain generalizations can be ventured — subject,
as generalizations usually are, to exceptions and qualifications. Any pic
ture painted with broad strokes may well fail to portray what religion
meant to any one Chinese. To include this would require a large canvas
with detailed portraits of a number of individuals of varying types and
would far transcend the proper limits of this chapter. Sweeping outlines
may, however, possess a certain rough accuracy.

First of all, then, religiously the Chinese have been very eclectic. In
proportion to the total population, the number of simon-pure Buddhists,
Confucianists, or Taoists has been comparatively small. The average
Chinese was an animist, a polytheist, a Buddhist, a Confucianist, and a
Taoist, with no sense of incongruity or inconsistency. For example, in the
cult of the dead, ceremonies which came down through the Confucian tra-

524 VOLUME II

dition and others of Buddhist origin had their place, and in domestic rites
animism, popular polytheism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism were
almost inextricably mixed. Other streams that have not been so potent
in China have sometimes mingled their waters in the common current. In
this eclecticism the Chinese were by no means always critical. The masses
particularly often held at one and the same time reciprocally contradictory
views.

Associated with this eclecticism was a certain tolerance. The state
ment commonly made and widely lauded both in China and the modern
West, that the Chinese have been a religiously tolerant people, requires
qualification. Again and again there were persecutions, some initiated and
conducted by the state and others popular in their origin. The state,
which, beginning with the Han and reinforced by the T'ang, was until the
twentieth century built upon Confucianism, repeatedly sought to stamp
out, or at least to restrict, other cults. Thus in the Sacred Edict, which
through much of the Ch'ing was officially and widely taught, Buddhism,
Taoism, and Christianity were held up to ridicule and the populace exhorted
to have nothing to do with any of them. Heterodox faiths and philosophies
were condemned, to be sure, not primarily because from the metaphysical
standpoint they were deemed false, but because they were believed to be
injurious to the political and social structure of the Empire, organized as
it was on Confucian principles. At first sight the course of China's history
seems not to have been marred by religious wars as has been much of
that of Europe. On the other hand, at least most of the so-called religious
wars of Europe were waged only in part and usually not chiefly from
religious motives: the slogans employed covered personal, dynastic, racial,
or national antagonisms and ambitions. In China, too, some of the bloodiest
rebellions appealed to religious sanctions, and the frequent sanguinary
conflicts between Moslem and non-Moslem portions of the population
have been notorious.

When these qualifications have been made, however, the fact remains
that in practice there was much of religious toleration in China. Just why
this is so must be in part conjectural. It may have been because the
practical-minded Chinese were eager to take advantage of every possible
benefit from each of the systems that came to their attention. It may
have been because of a fundamental religious uncertainty — a lurking
suspicion that all religions are at least in part false, a lack of confidence in
the finality of any one of them, and yet a fear that each may possess
elements of truth. It may have been, too, because of the desire to build
a mankind-embracing culture, and of the concomitant talent for absorbing
other cultures. It seems probable, for example, that many of the divinities
that later appeared purely indigenous were taken over from other peoples
as these were conquered and assimilated.

Religion 525

Still another characteristic of Chinese religious life was its optimism.
There was little of the despair of human existence, of the pessimism
about the worth of human life, and of the desire to be rid of personality
that one finds in much of Indian thought. This is in spite of the fact that
Buddhism, so influential in China, was originally a means of getting rid
of desire, and in the eyes of many interpreters, of the separate entities
called persons. It is significant that in Chinese Buddhism nirvana, as a
place where desire is at last extinguished, largely dropped into the back
ground, and that heaven and hell, where separate personal existences were
pictured as continuing, loomed large in popular Buddhist teaching. This
optimism, too, was seen in the discussions about the basic quality of
human nature, which have been prominent in the history of Chinese
philosophy. Orthodox Confucianism declared men to be by nature good.
Even those who, like Hsiin Tzu, denied the truth of this contention usually
regarded human nature as improvable. There was, too, a certain confidence
in the moral trustworthiness of the universe. Some regarded the universe
as beyond human understanding and as indifferent to the fate of men, either
collectively or as individuals. Others held that the universe moves accord
ing to unvarying law and that nothing like a personal God is at the heart
of it. In the main, however, orthodox Confucianism taught that moral
law is part of the essence of things, that when men obey it prosperity ensues
and that evil-doing is a cause of calamities. To this confidence in the moral
goodness of the forces of the unseen world Buddhism contributed, for
the many buddhas and the bodhisattvas to whom it taught people to
look for help were represented as merciful and loving righteousness
and as ultimately more powerful than evil.

Closely allied with this optimistic attitude toward the universe was
the strong ethical note in much of Chinese religion. Confucianism empha
sizes man's duty to man and praises such virtues as sincerity, kindness,
loyalty, filial piety, and not doing to another what one does not like to
have done to oneself. The Emperor was supposed to rule because of his
virtue. National calamities might come as a result of his • misdeeds, and
in imperial proclamations public confession of lack of righteousness was
not unknown. Protestations of the righteousness of the imperial acts and
motives were often made. Buddhism strongly reinforced this ethical note
and taught that suffering is a certain consequence of unrighteousness.
Popular Buddhism had vivid representations, both in its literature and in
pictures and effigies in some of its shrines, of the tortures which were
believed to be meted out in the next life for sin, and spoke also of the
joys of its heavens in which the good are rewarded. To be sure, much of
popular Buddhism held that future bliss may be achieved through simple
faith or by the correct performance of ritual acts that possess no ethical
significance, but the total effect upon the Chinese of its tutelage was

526 VOLUME II

probably to heighten moral sensitivity and to strengthen impulses toward
good. In spite of antinomian features in a stage of its history, Taoism also
contributed toward making Chinese religion moral. Some of its treatises,
both the abstruse and the popular ones, sounded the ethical note.

It must immediately be said that the Chinese, like many other peoples,
had great confidence in ritual and in practice believed it to be quite as
important as an ethically good life. For this the Chou tradition as pre
served in the Classics and the state cult were to no small extent responsible,
for as we have seen, it set great store by the observance of ceremonies.
We must, however, add that some of the Confucian writings united ethics
and ritual, holding that ceremonies should be performed with a moral pur
pose and that moral growth is aided by correctly performed ceremonies.
Confucius himself, while valuing ritual, placed his major emphasis on
ethics. It was, indeed, in this realm that he made his greatest contribu
tion. Buddhism and Taoism, as popularly practiced, confirmed confidence
in ritual. The widespread animism nurtured the conviction that the unseen
spiritual beings are to be induced to serve man's will by amoral rites.

Along with this confidence in rites was what to the modern Westerner
seemed a kind of slovenliness in the temples and in the carrying out of
the ceremonies. Numbers of temples and shrines were well maintained,
and from time to time some that became dilapidated were repaired. Often,
too, a shrine was cleaned in preparation for a major ceremony. However,
even before the antireligious wave of the 1920's and after, a large propor
tion of the temples seemed to be in a state of chronic neglect, and a
visit between important occasions would often find courts weed-grown
and the great halls dusty and festooned with cobwebs. While ceremonies
were supposed to conform to prescribed forms, and correct posturing,
costuming, and utterances of phrases were emphasized, yet, as in the
case of funerals when beggars were employed to fill out the procession,
the wearers of the elaborate clothing might be unwashed, and in the less
obvious corners of the shrine dust and debris might lie undisturbed.

A further characteristic of the religious attitude of the Chinese was
this-worldliness. The earliest religion of the Chinese that we know seems to
have had as its primary object the material happiness and prosperity of
men here and now. It believed that the dead live on, but its concepts of
their state were very vague and its chief concern was the welfare of the
living. Several of the schools of thought of the Chou period shared and if
anything emphasized this tradition. Their purpose, it will be recalled, was
the achievement of an ideal human society. Confucianism possessed this
attitude very strongly, and since it was long the accepted philosophy of
the state, assisted in perpetuating it. Religion, from this standpoint, is a
means of keeping the machinery of human society moving smoothly and
successfully. In ethical teaching the social duties were stressed. By its
rites religion was believed both to help preserve order in the relations

Religion 527

of men to one another and to insure the friendly co-operation with men
of the unseen forces, spiritual or otherwise, of the universe. In popular
practice this belief took rather crass forms. Men gave to the spirits that
they might obtain benefits here and now. The boatman might be seen
offering incense to ward off danger, and in at least one city the merchant
burned incense and made his kowtow or bow at the beginning and end
of the day to improve his business. If a god was besought by offerings
for a particular favor, such as recovery from illness or success in a business
undertaking, and the occasion turned out otherwise than had been hoped,
the disappointed worshipper might display an outraged sense of having
been defrauded and curse the deity. In time of drought the image of a god
might be exposed to the sun to let it feel how hot it was and might even be
fined by the magistrate for allowing the calamity, be condemned, and
broken in pieces.

Utility was by no means the only motive in Chinese religion. There
was much of reverence that had in it no element of self-seeking. Confucius,
in extolling awe for Heaven's decrees, touched a responsive chord in
the hearts of many of his countrymen. The honors paid to the dead
often had in them self-forgetful respect and affection.

Chinese religion displayed much other-worldliness, but akin to utility.
Taoism early became a channel for the search for immortality, and across
the centuries one source of its appeal was the conviction that through
it the desired state could be achieved. One of the chief reasons for the
strength of Buddhism was its vivid pictures of the future life and the con
fidence it created in many that through its agency the faithful could
escape the pains and be assured the blessings of an existence beyond the
grave.

Another feature of Chinese religion was a credulous superstition. In
this the Chinese were by no means unique. However, they were behind
no other people in their anxiety to take advantage of lucky and to avoid
unlucky days, hours, and places, in ascribing disease to spirits, and in
devices for fending off spirits that were believed to bring misfortune.

Yet, as we have seen more than once in preceding chapters, the Chinese
could boast of many robust skeptics. Thinking of them, one modern
Chinese declared that the Chinese would be the first people to outgrow
religion. From at least Yang Chu and Hsu'n Tzu in the Chou there has
been a strain of more or less open dissent from currently accepted beliefs.
It appears not to have been entirely lacking in Confucius. Certainly some
famous passages in the Lun Yu have led many of his professed followers
to find in him a precedent for their own agnosticism. This skepticism often
contained a good deal of what was at least superficially inconsistent. Han
Yu" denounced most caustically the imperial honors to a miracle-working
bone of Buddha and yet wrote an exhortation to a crocodile to depart
from the district in which he had jurisdiction. Again and again officials

528 VOLUME II

who privately expressed disbelief in the existence of spirits, in their public
capacity led in ceremonies which had as their object the control of these
same spirits. In this they were not without precedent in Confucius, for
even though that revered teacher may have been agnostic concerning
at least some of the beliefs of his day, he strongly advocated the meticu
lous and reverent performance of the traditional rites.

It must also be said, what must have been apparent from much that has
been recorded in the historical chapters, that a great deal of profound
thought on some of the ultimate philosophic and religious problems is
to be found in Chinese literature, and that by no means all of it ends in
the denial of the reality of the objects of man's religious faith. Through
the centuries many Chinese have been skeptical of much of the popular
superstition and yet have been deeply religious and could give a reason
for the faith that was in them.

Chinese religion had both the social and the individual emphasis.
According to the Confucian tradition, religion is largely for the salvation
of society, for cultivating those relations among men which make for a
wholesome social order. Yet Confucianism had much to say about the
cultivation of character, and Buddhism and Taoism had as at least part
of their aim the perfection of the individual.

One last general characteristic of Chinese religion that needs mention
is state control. As far back as the Chou and probably earlier, religion
was a function of society as expressed in such institutions as the state
and the family. When, under the Ch'in, the Empire was organized, the
authority of the state in religion was rigorously exercised. In theory the
state remained supreme in such matters down through the Ch'ing. The
control of the state was not always vigorously asserted. A good deal of
practical toleration existed. Yet the right was always there and from time
to time was emphatically exercised. No great religious organization has ever
made an effective bid for superiority over the state in the loyalties of the
Chinese. The Buddhist monks, although the richest and most numerous
of the religious groups, seem never to have been so closely knit on a
geographically inclusive scale as has been the Roman Catholic Church
in the West. Nor has the doctrine of the complete separation of church and
state much precedent in China. Under the Ch'ing, for example, the state
exercised a supervision over the Buddhist monastic communities, appointed
officials to control them, and designated the monasteries which had the
right to admit postulants to the monastic vows.

THE STATE RELIGION AND CONFUCIANISM

From these general characteristics we must turn to the chief
phases of the religious life in China in the nineteenth century on the eve
of the changes introduced by the coming of the Occident. In a sense it does

Religion 529

violence to the picture to differentiate the several systems. The eclecticism
of which we have spoken made the religious beliefs and practices of
most individuals and communities a composite from which only Islam and
Christianity succeeded in standing aloof. However, the separation has
a certain validity, for historically there have been very diverse religions
and philosophies which have by no means entirely coalesced.

It would be difficult to defend the logic of any order adopted in pre
senting the various religions, but the observances fostered by the state,
and Confucianism as the cult officially sponsored by the government, may
well be allowed to come first.

Confucianism is largely a Western name, although the Chinese speak
of K'ung Chiao or the "Confucian Teaching" (or "Religion"). The desig
nation more commonly employed by the Chinese has been Ju Chiao,
or the "Teaching of the Learned." Ju Chia has also been used, but for
the Confucian school, or Confucianists. Confucius was revered as the
cult's greatest sage, but other teachers and scholars were honored as having
shared in its development. To a certain extent, beginning with the Han, Con
fucianism represented the totality of Chinese philosophic thought outside
such special systems as Taoism and Buddhism — and even these strongly
influenced it.

The question is sometimes debated whether Confucianism is a religion.
The answer depends in part upon a definition. If one calls religion — as
does one standard authority — "any system of faith and worship," then
Confucianism may be said at least to contain religious elements. As we
have repeatedly seen, it was in large part concerned with the organization
of the state and of society and with man's relation to man. However, no
thoughtful person can meditate long upon either state or society without
encountering problems as to the nature of man and of the universe and
the relation of the one to the other. Is man by nature good or bad? What
are the criteria by which good and bad are to be distinguished? Is the
universe friendly, unfriendly, or indifferent to man? Can man believe in a
being or beings who in part or entirely control the course of the universe?
If so, can he make such an adjustment to them that he will be reinforced
in his efforts to achieve what he believes to be desirable goals for himself
and society? Chinese both in and out of the Confucian school inevitably
raised such questions, and in consequence their thinking and acting
showed a religious tinge. Moreover, Confucius, as we have again and again
said, set great store by the ceremonial, part of it unmistakably religious,
which had come down from the past. The Confucian school, accordingly,
was a bulwark of the religious rites that are supposed to have originated
in the Chou dynasty or earlier and of certain others that developed from
or were akin to them. Confucianism, therefore, can certainly be said to
contain religious features, even though it included other elements.

It is the religious rites and beliefs preserved or nourished by Confucian-

530 VOLUME II

ism with which we are here chiefly concerned, and not the political and
social doctrines, for these have been or will be considered elsewhere.
Through the centuries Confucian scholars differed on the question of the
personality of Tien and the existence of spirits, but most of them agreed
that the universe favors righteousness in man and all would maintain
religious rites. Even though some, like Hsiin Tzu, declared that these
rites could not alter the course of nature, they contended that they were
valuable as a means of educating the people, and so as a form of social
control

It is probable that even without the influence of the Confucian school
the state would have supported some kind of religion. Most ancient and
many modern governments have done so. Had it not been for Confucian
ism, however, that religion would probably have been very different
from what it was. It seems to have been owing chiefly to Confucianism
that the Imperial Government sought to maintain the religious ritual of
antiquity which the Sage had endorsed. The government also recognized
divinities and permitted or actually supported ceremonies which Confucius
had never known but which were believed to be consistent with his teaching.

THE STATE CULT ALLIED TO CONFUCIANISM

The state cult which is often called Confucianism and in
which ceremonies in honor of Confucius and his disciples were accorded
an important part, had a long and varied history. Confucianism was far
from being unchanging. Across the centuries it was altered again and again.
Some of this has been hinted at earlier. The resulting product under the
later Ch'ing Emperors was a composite of many influences and movements
and a large proportion of it would probably have seemed to Confucius and
his immediate disciples very strange and quite out of keeping with their
teachings.

According to the theory of the Chinese state which was reinforced by
Confucianism, the Emperor was the religious as well as the political head
of the realm. The Emperor, indeed, was a part of the order of the universe
and was commissioned by Tien not only to rule all mankind but also
to perform certain religious functions. He was a son of Tien and an asso
ciate of Heaven and Earth (Tien and Ti). A pantheon with ordered
ranks was recognized, and to it the Emperor could admit and in it promote
and demote divine beings. Repeatedly he conferred titles, usually very
resounding ones, on divinities. To the Emperor was reserved the per
formance of some of the ceremonies conceived as essential to the smooth
co-operation of man and the universe. The chief of these was that at the
altar of Heaven. In connection with it was — and is, for it still stands — a
group of imposing buildings of varying dates in a vast enclosure on the

Religion 531

southern border of the capital. The altar is a terraced, marble structure, in
the open air. It is circular, the traditional form of the symbols of Heaven.
Here, on the longest night of the year, the Emperor officiated at a sacrifice
to Tien. At the ceremony was a tablet to Shang Ti, and tablets to the
imperial ancestors, to the sun and moon, the five planets, Ursa Major,
the twenty-four constellations, the signs of the zodiac, the God of the
Clouds, the God of Rain, the God of Wind, and the God of Thunder. At
other times of the year other, less elaborate ceremonies were conducted,
in theory by the Emperor, To the north of the capital was an altar to
the Earth where the Emperor, in person or by proxy, sacrificed at the
summer solstice. Ceremonies were also conducted there at other times.
Here the prevailing form was square, the traditional symbol of Earth.
To the east of Peking was an altar to the sun and to the west an altar
to the moon, the one round and the other square. The Emperor was also
supposed to sacrifice to his ancestors and to the spirits of the ground
and of the grain. On occasions of unusual importance, such as the accession
of a dynasty or a great crisis in the affairs of state or of the imperial
family, the Emperor, by special ceremonies, announced the event to his
ancestors and to Heaven and Earth, or perhaps merely to his ancestors.
Near the capital were temples to some other spirits of natural objects,
where the Emperor officiated at ceremonies either in person or by proxy.
At one of them he officially opened the husbandry of the spring by plow
ing. He was also required to sacrifice to a sacred yo, or mountain, when he
was near it, or to send a representative to do so. Sacrifices to some other
spirits and divinities of lesser rank were performed, not by the Emperor
in person but by officials delegated by him.

iMany members of the official hierarchy on duty in the provinces were
charged with the performance of religious rites. Sacrifices to the spirits
of local mountains and streams were expected of them. They also took
part in such ceremonies as those in the local temples of Confucius and
in the temple of the City God. Officials in the provinces were supposed
to offer sacrifices at the time of the spring planting to the Gods of the
Soil and the Grain. Those of certain grades, including the viceroy, were
required to open the operations of the spring by sacrifices to Shen-nung,
the ancient mythical Emperor and patron of husbandry, and by plowing.
There were also official ceremonies for neglected ghosts, said to have been
ordered by the Hung Wu Emperor, the founder of the Ming, who, an
orphan of destitute parents, is reported not to have known the burial place
of his father and mother. Visits of officials, either in person or by proxy,
were expected to be paid to other divinities, some of them local and
some revered by the various crafts. In other words, within their jurisdiction
officials had it as one of their functions to insure by the performance
of the proper rites the same smooth co-operation between men and the

532 VOLUME II

powerful spirits and forces of the universe which, for the entire realm,
the Emperor was expected to maintain.

The pantheon of the spirits and divinities recognized by the state cult
was grouped into three grades. In the first were Heaven and Earth, the
deceased Emperors, and the Gods of the Ground and the Grain. Near the
close of the Ch'ing, Confucius was promoted to this rank. In the second
were, among others, the sun and the moon; many famous rulers of antiquity,
such as Yao and Shun; the chief disciples of Confucius and the leading
exponents of his doctrines; distinguished men and women of virtue and
learning; and the Gods of the Sky, of the Clouds, of Rain, Wind, and
Thunder. In the third were great physicians of the past, the God of War,
the Ruler of the North Star, the God of Fire, the City Gods (Gods of the
Walls and Moats), and a number of others.

A few of the divinities honored by the official Confucian cult require
special mention. One of these, naturally, was Confucius himself. Every
territorial division, such as the hsien, the fu, and the province, was supposed
to have what foreigners called a Confucian temple, usually known to the
Chinese as the K'ung Miao ("Confucian Temple"), the Wen Miao
("Temple of Literature," or perhaps "Temple of Civilization"), or Hsueh
Kung ("Temple of Learning"). This meant that in some walled cities
such as the capital of a province, which might also be the chief city of a
fu and contain one or more fisien, two or more such structures were found.
Especially famous temples were at Ch'ii-fou, the home of the Sage, where
a lineal male descendant ennobled in recognition of that fact was supposed
to maintain ceremonies to him and to care for his grave, and at Peking,
where was an unusually large structure. The Confucian temple normally
consisted of an enclosure containing several courts and buildings. The
southern wall was not pierced by a gate until some student of the district
had obtained first rank in the examinations for the chin shih. The main
building had as its chief features (at its northern end, facing south) a tablet
to Confucius, and ranged on either hand, on the eastern and western sides,
tablets to the leading disciples of Confucius and to men, like Chu Hsi,
who through the centuries had added luster to the Confucian virtues or
to the Confucian school. Cloisters connected with the main hall contained
tablets to others distinguished for adorning the Confucian doctrine. The
tablets of the various individuals were placed according to a fixed order,
some being in positions of especial honor. New names might be admitted
by imperial decree. In a few temples were images of Confucius. In these
the Sage was usually represented as swarthy of countenance and garbed
in the dress of his period. In a building or a room near the main hall
might be tablets to the ancestors of Confucius. On one side of the temple
enclosure, too, might be a shrine for tablets to famous scholars and officials
who were natives of the locality. The waUs of the temple were red, the

Religion 533

official color of the Chou, and other features of the equipment and cere
monies associated with the place were supposed to date from that dynasty.
Twice a year in each temple formal official ceremonies were held, with
an elaborate ritual believed to have come down from antiquity and with
offerings of food and the burning of incense. They were usually just before
dawn (although they might be held during the day), and with the stately
hall, the official costumes of the participants, and the posturing, music, and
procedure, through which many successive generations had expressed their
reverence, could be very impressive. Official visits were supposedly paid to
the temples twice each month.

These temples, it may be added, existing as they did throughout the
Empire, and being maintained officially, were potent in reinforcing and
continuing Confucianism. Added to them were halls to Confucius in at
least some of the state schools, which helped still further to preserve for
the Sage and his teachings the loyalty of the powerful official-scholar class.

Another shrine connected with the state cult was the Ch'eng Huang
Miao, literally the "Temple of the Wall and the Moat," but more freely
translated as the Temple of the Tutelar God of the City. Each walled
city was supposed to have one. Here was an image of the local Ch'eng
Huang, or god. He was* often represented with two assistants, and some
times with his wife and concubines and sons, and with other gods. While
the image remained constant, the god himself was usually thought of as
changed from time to time, much as the local magistrates were trans
ferred. Confirmation of the position was theoretically made by the national
head of the Taoist cult, subject to the approval of the Board of Rites.
He was often conceived of as a deceased official, and in some cities was
a deified local hero and remained constantly at one post. The god and
his temple usually played an important part in the life of the city. Magis
trates were expected to make them official visits. Semimonthly ceremonies
were held, and usually twice a year, in the spring and autumn, the image
of the god was carried in procession through the streets. The god and
his entourage were often cared for by societies, membership in which
might carry with it social prestige. The common people said prayers and
made offerings in the temple, and to the god was announced each death
in the community. The god was expected to protect the city from harm.
He was also believed to watch the deeds of the inhabitants, to report
them to Heaven, and to turn over evildoers, on death, to the ruler of
purgatory. This latter conception was of Buddhist provenance and an
illustration of the fashion in which the faiths of China interpenetrated one
another.

The Gods of the Soil and the Grain should also be mentioned. The Gods
of the Soil were of very early origin. Theoretically each political unit was
under the protection of one of them. In theory the head city of each

534 VOLUME II

province, fit, and hsien had an altar to its local God of the Soil. This was
square, the traditional form of objects associated with the cult of the Earth
and related deities, and was open to the sky and surrounded by trees. In
addition to the large one for the Empire at Peking, the Emperor had an
altar of his own in his palace, constructed of earth from various parts of
his domains. The God of the Grain was usually closely associated with
that of the soil, and throughout the Empire official ceremonies were held
and offerings made to the two on the open-air altars at stated times each
year.

In many villages, too, was a shrine to the local God of the Soil The
god was supposed to record all village happenings and to report them to
Heaven and the ruler of purgatory. Announcements of births and deaths
were often made there. The shrine, sometimes very simple, and sometimes
in an elaborate building, was frequently very important in the life of the
village. Its upkeep constituted a community interest and in it might be
images of other gods.

Another deity prominent in the official cult was the God of Literature,
Wen Ti or Wen Ch'ang. His worship had a most interesting development,
the full course of which seems not yet to have been accurately traced. He
is said actually to have lived, perhaps under the C'ang dynasty, but if so,
that fact appears to have been accidental. Reported incarnations showed
the influence of Buddhism. He was believed to reside in Ursa Major, a
constellation which from very early times had been venerated by the
Chinese. He was often represented with several attendants. Whatever the
origin and growth of his cult, he had numerous shrines where official
ceremonies were conducted in his honor. His temples served as clubhouses
for scholars.

A deity who loomed very prominently in the state cult was Kuan Yii
or Kuan Ti, usually, but not with entire accuracy, called the God of War.
The latter designation came from the fact that he was the patron of the
military officials, somewhat as Confucius was revered as the sage of the
civil officials. The temple in his honor was called the Wu Miao, or
"Military Temple" (also the Wu Sheng Miao— the "Military Holy Tem
ple"). It will be recalled that Kuan Yii was a commander in the memorable
period of the Three Kingdoms, a supporter of Liu Pei, and one of the
trio who took the "Peach Garden Oath" famous in Chinese fiction and
drama. His deification and popularity developed slowly and the honors
accorded him appear never to have been so great as under the Ch'ing. In
the later years of that dynasty he was much reverenced. In theory at least,
a temple was erected to him in every province, fu, and hsien, and at
periodical intervals official ceremonies with sacrificial offerings were con
ducted, usually led by the chief military official. Yuan Shih-k'ai par
ticularly honored him and ordered the observance of his cult. In the Wu

Religion 535

Miao were, at least sometimes, tablets not only to Kuan Yii but to other
famous generals as well, making it a kind of military hall of fame. Especially
associated with Kuan Yii was the name of Yo Fei, the loyal and heroic
general of the Sung, who often shared honors with him. Kuan Yii was
popular with more than the soldiers. He was believed to be skillful in
driving out evil spirits and for this reason was much invoked. He was
regarded as a patron divinity of more than one province, was looked upon
as a god of literature, and was highly esteemed by merchants.

There were, moreover, temples to the Emperor, Wan Shou Kung, where
on stated occasions officials were expected to assemble and perform
ceremonies.

Possibly also there should be classified under the state religion deified
famous men. Some of them were revered only locally, others more than
locally. A popular official, a general, or a martyr to a patriotic cause might
have a shrine built to him, and there ceremonies would be held in his
honor and prayers made to him. In its origin, the cult might be unofficial,
but if its hero were to attain full status as a recognized god, an imperial
decree would be required ordering his deification and assigning him rank
and title.

At least one more type of divinity worshipped under state auspices
requires mention — that of the mountains. The spirits of the hills were early
revered in China. Early, too, five peaks came into especial prominence,
each being associated with one of the five directions: east, west, north,
south, and the center. Of these the most notable was for many centuries
T'ai Shan — the Tung Yo, or Eastern Peak — in Shantung. As the eastern
most of the five, it was believed to control the springs of life, to govern
man's fate on earth, and to rule the souls of men after death. For a time
in its history, T'ai Shan was regarded as an official messenger to Tien,
through whom the Emperor offered the special sacrifice f£ng. As the years
passed, its functions were modified, yet repeatedly it was sacrificed to by
Emperors and given honorary titles. Important events, such as the birth
of a son and the choice of an heir to the throne, were officially announced
to it. T'ai Shan was by no means entirely or even chiefly a divinity revered
by the state: the spirit or god of T'ai Shan had wide popularity with the
masses. The cult of T'ai Shan was, indeed, another example of the way in
which originally separate faiths mingled. Both Buddhism and Taoism took
advantage of and reinforced it. When Buddhism came with its conceptions
of the afterlife, it was not unnatural that T'ai Shan, already regarded as
determining the span of men's years and presiding over the spirits of the
dead, should be assigned the rulership of one of the Buddhist hells where
punishments for certain categories of sins were inflicted. Taoism especially
appropriated T'ai Shan, and at least some of the many temples to the god
scattered over China belonged more nearly to Taoism than to any other

536 VOLUME II

of the major faiths. The mountain was a favorite objective of pilgrimages.
On it were many shrines and through the ages millions have toiled to its
summit. As a protection against evil spirits, stones that were said to be
from T'ai Shan were frequently placed where one street debouched into
another, to frighten away the demons who sought there a thoroughfare.

To many modern observers the features of the state cult which had to
do with sacrifices and religious ritual may well seem uncritically super
stitious. Alongside them, however, must be set the ethical emphasis of
Confucianism. Officials, from the Emperor down, exhorted those subject to
them to observe the moral principles of the sages. Much of this, to be
sure, was a platitudinous hypocrisy which deceived no one except the very
simple. But the sincerity that Confucius stressed was by no means entirely
lacking. Even though a minority, there were untold numbers, some of them
among the educated and powerful and some of them in the humble walks
of life, who embodied to a remarkable extent the virtues which the Sage
had emphasized. Throughout the land the Confucian virtues were lauded
and set a standard of conduct that exercised a profound influence.

The state had a system of religious and moral education that reached
the great bulk of the Chinese. Of this the frequent and regularly performed
ceremonies constituted an important part. The preparation for the civil
service examinations, based as it was upon the Confucian Classics, directly
reached hundreds of thousands in each generation, and by the prestige
accorded the holders of literary degrees, invested the Confucian precepts
with a halo of sanctity. Official proclamations, and under the later Ch'ing
Emperors, the public reading of the Sacred Edict, afforded additional
channels for familiarizing the populace with orthodox moral standards.
Among the duties enjoined by the Sacred Edict were care for one's parents,
harmony and forbearance in the family and clan, reciprocal helpfulness in
the community, the assistance of neighbors in a calamity, courtesy, thrift,
foresight, the attempt to reconcile disputants and so to allay litigation, the
avoidance of talebearing and of pride, assistance to schools, the eschewal
of gambling and thieving, and reverence toward Heaven. The motives
appealed to, it may be noted, were largely prudential: the present welfare
of oneself and of society, and affection to one's parents. There was no threat
of punishment or promise of reward in a future life and no especial appeal
to the will of Heaven.

HONORS TO ANCESTORS

It is by no means clear whether what is usually known as the
worship of ancestors should be classified under Confucianism. Temples to
and ceremonies in honor of ancestors long antedated Confucius. Many
ideas and practices far from Confucian in their origin came to be grouped

Religion 537

around conceptions of the future life and ritual for the dead. In this
development Buddhism and Taoism had a very large share. Popular
superstition and animism made extensive contributions. Yet it is probably
due more to Confucianism than to any other one factor that the cult of
the dead loomed so large in China. Certainly it was to Confucianism that
it owed a large proportion of its ceremonies and characteristic concepts.
Many of the rites for death, mourning, and burial, for instance, were taken
from the ancient writings which Confucianism regarded as its Classics
and which it had no small share in creating and preserving.

No other phase of Chinese religious life was more prominent than the
ceremonies for the departed. They constituted, indeed, one of the outstand
ing characteristics of Chinese culture and were an integral part of that most
potent of Chinese social institutions, the family. No attempt to understand
the Chinese can be anything but imperfect without at least a brief descrip
tion of them.

In a country as large as China, variations in practices and beliefs
associated with the dead were inevitable and a comprehensive description
runs the risk of being partially untrue for a particular community or may be
such a combination of what existed in several different localities that it will
not give an exact picture of what took place in any one of them.

The dead were supposed to be dependent upon the living for their
weal or woe. Ceremonies in honor of ancestors, moreover, had a decided
utility in helping to tie together the family and the clan. Their maintenance,
therefore, depended upon a mixture of motives: respect and affection for
the departed, fear, the desire for the prosperity of the living, and social
usefulness. There entered, too, the binding influence of custom and the
desire so to conduct the ceremonies as to win the good opinion — or perhaps
the envy — of one's neighbors. In the hearts of some, respect and affection
for the dead were doubtless the predominant or even the only motive.
Possibly a larger number kept up the ceremonies simply from the desire
to conform to the customs of civilized society and had no confidence that
through them good would accrue to the dead or that the dead would be
able to bless or injure the living. Probably the majority, however, were
moved by a more or less strong belief that through the prescribed ritual
the dead were benefited and were induced to aid the living.

Theories as to the location of the departed were not uniform, but in
general it was believed that the soul of the deceased is to be found in
three places at once, or, perhaps, more correctly, that each man has three
souls. Each of the dead, so it was held, goes to the future world to be
judged and is assigned either to a heaven or to a hell — a conception
probably of Buddhist provenance, although likewise to be found in later
Taoism. Each also is both in the grave and in the ancestral tablet. The
popular idea had it that there are many restless spirits who, either because

538 VOLUME II

of ill fortune or crime while still in this life, or through neglect of the living,
wander about doing harm to men. The idea of the transmigration of souls
which entered with Buddhism was also to be found, but not so much in
the foreground as in India.

The ceremonies for the dead sometimes began even before life
departed. The dying person might be taken off the bed or k'ang on which
he was lying, for fear that if this was not done his spirit would later haunt
it, and the curtains of the bed might be taken down to prevent his rebirth
as a fish. Frequently, too, an attempt was made to call back, viva voce,
the soul of the dying. Sometimes a hole was broken in the roof to facilitate
the exit of the soul. Notice of the death was placed on the door, and an
nouncement might formally be sent, possibly by a procession, to the local
God of the Soil, and the following day the soul of the dead might be brought
back from the shrine.

The coffin had perhaps been prepared months or years in advance
(although usually so only in case of the rich) . Often, indeed, it was a mark
of affection to present one's parents with coffins, and so to give them
assurance of provision for a worthy burial. The body, properly washed and
dressed in mortuary robes, was placed in the coffin with fitting ceremonies
and the lid sealed. Near by a temporary tablet was set up.

Buddhist and Taoist priests might be called in to help the soul of the
deceased through possible sufferings by chanting from their sacred books,
assisted perhaps by a drum or gong or orchestra. Visits of condolence were
formally paid by friends and ceremoniously received.

The actual burial might be delayed for months or even years, pending
the selection of a fortunate site for the grave and the determination of an
auspicious day. Upon these was held to depend much of the happiness of
the dead, and in consequence, of the prosperity of the living. The funeral
was usually as elaborate as the means and the status of the family allowed,
or more so. The funeral procession included the coffin, in some sections a
huge image to frighten away evil spirits, Taoist or Buddhist monks, possibly
the holder of a civil service degree to conduct the ceremonies, musicians,
a tablet for the soul, a large picture of the deceased, mourners, and insignia
setting forth the honors of the dead. Attendants might include beggars
hired for the purpose. In at least some places this was regarded as a pre
scriptive right of beggars, and to disregard it might induce violence. Before
the procession started, food and incense might be placed before the coffin,
and the chief mourners make ceremonial prostrations to the deceased.
Along the route of the cortege paper money might be scattered, presumably
to keep evilly disposed spirits from snatching away the soul of the dead.
At the grave some of the insignia, and a paper house with paper clothes,
servants, and other accessories to comfortable living might be burned, the
supposition being that these were thus transferred to the spirit world, there

Religion 539

to be at the disposal of the deceased. Ceremonies, too, were conducted at
the grave. A dot was placed on the character 3* on the ancestral tablet,
making it ^ — preferably by some official or holder of a literary degree.
The placing of this dot was presumably the act which fixed the tablet as
a habitation of the soul. These ceremonies, it will be seen, had their origin
in various sources. Some of them, however, were conducted according
to the older Confucian works, especially the / Li and the Li Chi.

Mourning was governed in part by customs handed down through
Confucianism. It was also partly determined by later traditions and rules.
Its duration and intensity varied with the degree of relationship. For a
parent it was theoretically three years, but in current usage a good deal less
— running into the third year after death and defined by the Li Chi as
twenty-five months, but usually in practice about twenty-seven months.
For part of this period the hair was allowed to go uncared for, and marriage,
ostensibly forbidden, took place only when celebrated with no public
festivities. Mourning clothing was worn. Formerly, as a sign of loyalty and
grief the widow might hang or drown herself, and this act, possibly carried
out with some ceremony and graced by the presence of a magistrate, might
be recognized by the Emperor with an honorary tablet or p'ai lou (arch).
Some of the Ch'ing rulers attempted to discourage the practice, but they
were not completely successful.

Prominent in the cult of the dead was the shen chu, called by foreigners
the ancestral tablet. In the home of the eldest son and usually of the other
sons was customarily a tablet to a deceased father, and on it were, as well,
the name of the mother and perhaps the names of the sons. There might
also be tablets to other near relatives and to the founder and principal
member of the clan. For these there might be a special niche, or if the
family could afford it, a room or even a building in the home. Sometimes
they were in the main reception room. Before these tablets incense might
be burned daily and offerings of food placed on stated occasions. Important
family events, such as betrothals, were announced to them, and before
them, at a marriage, the wedding couple made their kowtow. Prayer might
be offered them for help in emergencies and lots be cast before them.

Many clans had ancestral temples. These had their prototypes in the
religious practices of very early historic times. Many of them were
sumptuous, They were managed by the elders or by a group elected by the
various branches of the clan, and they and the ceremonies in them were
usually maintained by endowments. These endowments might be used
not only for the upkeep of the temple but also for the support of the aged,
the poor, and the widows of the clan and for other family purposes. In the
temple might be several halls separated by courts and the whole surrounded
by a high wall. In one of the halls were tablets to the deceased male mem
bers of the clan. These were arranged on steps, those of the same generation

540 VOLUME II

on the same step, the oldest being on the highest with that to the founder
of the clan in its center. The temple might also have portraits of the dead.
A poorer member of the clan might be in constant attendance to keep
incense continuously burning and to light candles before the tablets twice
a month. Once a year, at the time of the winter solstice, there was held in
the ancestral temple a major ceremony, with a sacrifice. The custom was
supposed to go back to pre-Confucian times and its ritual to be of great
antiquity. Its perpetuation formed part of the tradition of the Confucian
school. A similar sacrifice might be held on the occasion of a funeral. The
clan took the opportunity of the annual ceremony to meet and transact
business. A hall in the temple might be used for a school, and the temple,
too, might become a court of justice in which the clan pronounced judgment
on one of its members.

Many other practices were connected with the cult of ancestors. About
New Year's time the dead might be welcomed to the homes from the an
cestral temples, and then, a few days later, be formally sent back to their
customary abodes. At Ch'ing Ming, the great spring festival, the graves were
cleaned and repaired and offerings made of food and incense. Other occa
sions, such as the birthday of the deceased, might also be commemorated
by a special ceremony and offering.

It can readily be seen that the cult of progenitors had important social
results. It formed a bulwark of that outstanding social and economic unit,
the family, it made for the conservation of much of the past, it was a means
of moral and social control, and it acted as a check on individualism. As a
factor in molding Chinese life and thought, it can hardly be exaggerated.

BUDDHISM

Beginning in the T'ang, Buddhism in China suffered from a
slow decline. However, it continued to have a prominent place in the life
of the country. Its monasteries and shrines were numbered by the tens
of thousands. In Hangchow alone (one of the strongest Buddhist centers,
to be sure, and hence not typical) a survey made in 1930-1931 disclosed
the existence of nearly a thousand of them. It was also inextricably inter
twined with folklore and with much of literature and art.

Through the interpenetration of religions by one another and the
eclecticism so characteristic of China, the Chinese who could be called
exclusively Buddhist were almost entirely confined to the ranks of the
professionals — the monks and the nuns. On the eve of the Communist
seizure of the mainland the monks, known as ho shang or, when a teacher
of the Buddhist law, fa shih, were estimated to number between somewhat
less than half a million and a million. The total for the nuns was very much
less, probably only a few thousand.

Religion 541

The majority of the monks were from the poorer classes, but some came
from well-to-do and educated families. Many had been purchased in child
hood by the monastery from indigent fathers and mothers who found thus
a small fee for themselves and an assured livelihood for the son. Some
entered as the result of a vow made by a parent seeking healing or fearing
death. Others were enrolled, as adults, drawn by one or more of several
motives : the desire for a livelihood or for protection from punishment for
crime, the wish in old age to prepare for death, disillusionment and the
consequent longing for escape from the world, or the hunger for peace
and for light on the mystery of existence.

The novice was given a course of instruction. If a child, he was usually
entrusted to the tutelage of one of the monks, was taught to repeat memo-
riter portions of the sacred writings, and learned the services by participat
ing in them. Insistence upon careful instruction varied with the monastery.
The majority of monks were content with knowing greater or smaller por
tions of the ritual and with being able to repeat some passages from the
sacred books. They did not necessarily have much comprehension of the
principles of their faith. Many, perhaps the majority, displayed an abysmal
ignorance of them. Some, however, probably a small minority, were very
learned, and monks of dignity and beauty of character who meditated long
and earnestly on the problems of life were by no means completely lacking.

Admission to the monastic community was by three stages. First the
candidate was received into the novitiate by simple ceremonies in which he
took the ten primary vows, among them the promises not to take life,
steal, be unchaste, tell lies, or drink intoxicating liquors. Next he entered,
by further vows and ritual, the state of what in Hinayana Buddhism is
known as the arhat (in Chinese lohan or a-lo-hari) , who, it will be recalled,
is seeking salvation for himself. Last of all, in accordance with Mahayana
conceptions, he assumed the vows of a bodhisattva (in Chinese p'u-t'i-sa-t'o,
or, for short, p'u-sa), to seek salvation not only for himself but also for
others. Part of this last ceremony was a test of the candidate's ability to
endure the suffering which he was supposed to have undertaken for others
and consisted of burning cones of incense in rows on his scalp. The scars
of this ordeal, plainly visible on his shaven pate, throughout his life
afforded tangible evidence of his calling. At least in certain periods of
China's history, these ceremonies could be legally administered only by
heads of monasteries who had imperial permission, and the latter were
comparatively few. The fully qualified monk was given a religious name
and a document certifying to his status. The certificate assured him a
welcome in other Buddhist monasteries. In addition to the fully qualified
monks, the monastic community might include lay brethren who did much
of the menial and manual labor.

The monk was supposed to conform to certain standards of conduct.

542 VOLUME II

He was to remain unmarried, was to eat no flesh, and, of course, was to
observe the vows taken at the various stages of his admission. His dress
was conventional and traditional: gray, orange, or yellowish brown in color,
with ornate vestments for some of the services. As a rule, monks were re
garded by the populace with mingled fear and contempt — fear because
of their supposed influence over the spirit world and the dead, and con
tempt in part because they had failed to assume the duties of marrying
and rearing children so much honored by Confucianism and so necessary
to the maintenance of the family and the ancestral cult. The ignorance
and idleness of many of the monks accentuated the popular disdain,
although the occasional scholar or saint commanded respect. In moral
character some were markedly unworthy, but the average appears not to
have been much if any below that of the community at large.

A very few monks practiced extreme asceticism, perhaps shutting
themselves up for years in a small cell with a minimum of food, or inflicting
on themselves such physical mutilation as burning off a finger. The bodies
of some of the deceased monks who practiced asceticism or who were
regarded' as especially holy were embalmed, painted, and gilded, and
displayed to be reverenced by the faithful. It may be added that usually
the corpses of monks were cremated. With interesting conformity to
Chinese usage, ancestral tablets might be set up for the dead members of
the community and might be preserved in a special hall.

For support the monks did not depend upon peripatetic begging with
an alms bowl as earlier tradition required. Most of them were attached to
monasteries, temples, and shrines. Income was derived partly from en
dowments, partly from offerings, including those of women praying for
sons, and partly from fees for the performance of ceremonies, largely for
the dead. The endowments were usually in land. Buildings might be erected
by gifts from officials and bear the name of the donor prominently in
scribed. Collections might be solicited and the name of each giver with the
accompanying amount placed on a posted list. The motive appealed to
might be merit or fame.

The monasteries were either in towns and cities or in the country. If
in the country, beautiful natural surroundings were usually chosen for
them — perhaps a mountain valley or a hillside — and trees were en
couraged to grow up about them. They varied greatly in size and, naturally,
somewhat in interior arrangement. The organization customarily included
a head (fang chang) who corresponded roughly to the abbot in a Christian
monastery, and the division of the monks into two groups, one charged
with secular affairs— the reception and care of guests, purchases, and the
administration of funds and other property — and the other with the religious
duties of the establishment, such as religious instruction and the ordering
of the services and of meditation. The daily services were usually two or

Religion 543

three in number — if the latter, one early, one at midday, and one in the
evening — and consisted of such features as invocations, praises, and the
recitation of chapters from the sacred books, as a rule with the assistance
of musical instruments, such as bells, drums, cymbals, and especially the
"wooden fish" which was a customary part of the equipment of the
worship hall. At appropriate times during the service the participants
knelt, stood, and marched in procession. Frequently there were sacrificial
offerings of rice and tea. Special services were held on stated days, of which
there were several each month. Meditation had its part in the life of the
monastery, especially since the Ch'an school remained prominent, and
often a special hall was devoted to it. However, although in many instances
it was practiced conscientiously, all too often meditation was formal and
perfunctory. The dormitories or other sleeping rooms for the monks were
sometimes very comfortable, and occasionally, in spite of the rule, the
monks had individual possessions.

The number and arrangement of buildings, halls, and images varied
from sect to sect and from monastery to monastery. The usual outline of
the monastery was a rectangle surrounded by a wall. Along the sides might
be cells for the monks, guest rooms, the dining hall, storerooms, and the
Iik6. Crossing the quadrangle transversely and separated by courts might
be three halls. In the one nearest the entrance were customarily found four
menacing figures, two on each side of the hall, each of a different color, and
known collectively as the Four Heavenly Kings (Ssu Tien Wang). Each
was supposed to govern one of the continents which lie in the direction
of the four points of the compass from Mt Sumeru, the center of the
universe. Their fierce demeanor did not inspire fear in the instructed be
liever, but rather confidence, for- they afforded protection to and bestowed
happiness upon the faithful. In the center of this first hall was an image
of Maitreya (in Chinese, Mi-lo-fo), fat and laughing, and commonly called
by foreigners the Laughing Buddha. This statue, it may be noted, was the
conventionalized portrait of a Chinese monk of the tenth century who was
believed to be an incarnation of Maitreya. He was the bodhisattva who,
after the law had been forgotten and the world had become corrupt, was
to come and establish on earth the lost truths of Buddhism. Back to back
with Mi-lo-fo, usually separated from him by a screen, was Wei-t'o, a
bodhisattva, the protector of monasteries, represented as panoplied in full
armor and armed with a sword. The worshipper, having passed these en
couragements to his faith, proceeded to the second and main hall, where
were represented the leading truths and figures of Buddhism. In the place
of honor was generally either one great image, usually that of the historic
Guatama Buddha (or, perhaps, Kuan-yin, "The Goddess of Mercy," or
O-mi-t'o-fo) or a trinity of images called "The Three Precious Ones"
(San Pao) or "The Three Great Venerable Ones." If a trinity, the ideas

544 VOLUME ii

or persons represented by the images might vary. They might be the his
toric Buddha flanked by O-mi-t'o-fo (Amitabha, also called A-mi-t'o or
A-mi-t'o-fo) and the "Healing Buddha" (Yao-shih-fo) or by two other
buddhas or bodhisattvas, or they might be the Buddha, the Law, and the
Community. Guatama Buddha was not always a member of the trinity.
Behind the screen that backed these central figures might be an image of
Kuan-yin, who was sometimes depicted as rescuing people from peril.
Lining the wall of the central hall might be statues of the Eighteen Lohans,
or Arhats — listeners to and profiters by the Buddhist doctrine. Or there
might be statues representing the thirty-two points of personal beauty
attributed to the Buddha, or the Twenty Devas (Gods). The main hall
might also contain shrines to other gods, some of them Chinese, or to
buddhas of bodhisattvas, Ti Tsang, the so-called Lord of Hell, or Ruler
of the Dead, -might be one of them. Between the first and second halls
might be another one containing a statue of some bodhisattva, such as
Kuan-yin or Ti Tsang, or, perhaps, images of the Five Hundred Lohans.
As a rule the third hall, in the rear, called the Fa T'ang, or Hall of the
Law, had only smaller images and was used by the monks for their regular
services or for teaching and preaching to the laity. On the altars in front
of the images were likely to be candlesticks, incense-burners, flowers, and
dishes for the offerings of food. Some monasteries included a hall for
meditation and might have separate buildings for the library and for other
purposes. Vivid portrayals of the tortures inflicted in the Buddhist hells
might be presented. The heavens with their joys might also be depicted. The
Wheel of the Law was often featured. Not infrequently there was a pool
stocked with fish, to be fed by the pious as an act of merit and as a symbol
of their care for all sentient beings. Such animals as pigs or cows might
be kept for the same purpose. The monastery, then, was designed not
only for the residence and use of the monks but also to present to them
and to the laity the main features of the teaching of Buddhism and thus
to be an aid to understanding and practicing its doctrines.

As will have been noticed in the preceding paragraph, the beings revered
by the Chinese Buddhists fell into several categories. There were gods, some
of them of foreign, usually Indian, origin, and some indigenous. They were
not as highly regarded as were many other beings, for they had not
attained nirvana and were still subject to metempsychosis. They might even
be reborn into a lower state than man. There were the "patriarchs," notable
among them Bodhidharma, the reputed founder of the widely prevalent
Ch'an school. There were the lohans. The more honored of them numbered
eighteen, earlier sixteen, although the names included in the eighteen
varied. As we have seen, however, five hundred of them might be repre
sented in a temple. Those held in greatest reverence and most widely
popular were the buddhas and bodhisattvas. It was taught that there have

Religion 545

been many buddhas. Naturally the one most generally represented was
Gautama or, more frequently in Chinese Shih-chia-fo or Shih Chia-mou-ni
(Shakyamuni), the historic founder of the faith. As a rule he was repre
sented as seated on a lotus in the attitude of meditation, sometimes as re
cumbent (the "Sleeping Buddha") when, at the time of his death, he was
entering nirvana, and, less frequently, as an ascetic, emaciated and
unkempt. Probably even more popular was the Buddha Amitabha
(O-mi-t'o-fo), through faith in whom, according to the widely prevalent
teachings of the Pure Land (Ch'ing t'u) sect, entrance was to be had at
death into the Pure Land, or Western Heaven. The repeated invocation
of his aid was supposed to be efficacious in the achievement of this desired
result, so that his name has probably been uttered in China more often than
that of any other honored by Buddhists. P'i-lu-fo (Vairocana), the incarna
tion of Buddhist doctrine, and early connected with the T'ien T'ai school,
was often represented. Yao-shih-fo, revered as the God of Healing, was
popular. Kuan-yin, the "Goddess of Mercy," was probably the most widely
worshipped of the bodhisattvas. Originally a male figure, an Indian god,
Kuan-yin was almost always represented as female, although the male
form survived. Mythical stories were told of her life. She was regarded
as the embodiment of womanly virtues, of beauty, mercy, and gentleness.
Frequently images placed a child in her arms. She was especially revered
by women, and her statue was often in women's apartments. She was
thought, for example, to grant children. Those of any age or of either sex
sought from her deliverance from danger and she was much honored by
mariners as their patroness. Representations of her often showed her
rescuing those in peril — from the sea, from wild beasts, or from other dis
tresses. Ti Tsang, rather incorrectly called the God of Hell, was in reality
a bodhisattva who delayed entering nirvana that he might deliver souls
from the torments of hell. He was, accordingly, much prayed to. It may
be noted in passing that what are called Buddhist hells might better be
denominated purgatories, for residence in them is not necessarily perma
nent, even though prolonged, and souls, having passed through their
punishment, might have deliverance from them. The Bodhisattva Wen-shu
(Manjusri) was regarded as the embodiment of wisdom. P'u-hsien
(Samantabhadra), the "all gracious," usually depicted as riding on an
elephant, is a bodhisattva who was highly thought of. The list might be
much lengthened.

Both of the two main divisions of Buddhism, Hinayana (Chinese
Hsiao Sheng) and Mahayana (Chinese Ta Sheng), made their influence
felt in China and more or less coalesced. Mahayana predominated. The
Chinese enumerated ten schools or sects of Buddhism which either orig
inated or gained a following in the country. However, in the twentieth
century at least four were no longer to be found in China, though their

546 VOLUME II

influence was supposed to persist, and no new one had come into existence
for centuries. Those that remained had partly interpenetrated one another
and have had some of their lines of separation blurred. Professed adherents
of more than one school might be found living peaceably together in the
same monastery. This failure to produce new divisions and this dimming
of distinctions were due chiefly not to carefully reasoned tolerance but to
haziness in thinking and flabbiness of conviction and were further evidence
of the decay of the faith. In monasteries the Ch'an was the most wide
spread. A large majority of the monks belonged to it. Among the monks
Tien T'ai was probably next in importance. Among the laity the Pure
Land school was by far the most popular.

Buddhism in China has had a vast literature. Its canon is called in
Chinese the San Tsang (Tripitaka). In the standard collections are both
Hinayana and Mahay ana works. It is divided into Ching (Sutras); Lu
(Vinayd), largely on asceticism, ritual, and monastic discipline; Lun
(Abhidharmd) , largely philosophy; and Tsa, miscellaneous works. The
San Tsang ought probably not to be called a canon in the strict sense of
that word, but rather a collection of standard works. Twelve collections
were made by imperial order, the last in the eighteenth century, and each
differed somewhat from the others, either through the addition or through
the compression or complete deletion of works, or both. The San Tsang
contains over a thousand works. In addition there has been an extensive
literature, most of it for popular consumption and much of it ephemeral.

Buddhism owed part of its appeal to its use of specific mountains as
objectives for pilgrimages and as monastic centers. Many mountains and
hills were thus utilized by Buddhism, some of them, like T'ai Shan, re
garded as peculiarly sacred long before the coming of Buddhism. However,
four centers especially were occupied by Buddhism and were par excellence
its holy places. These were Wu T'ai Shan, in Shansi, Chiu Hua Shan, south
of the Yangtze in Anhui, P'u T'o, an island off the coast of Chekiang, and
Omei Shan, in Szechwan. On Wu T'ai Shan Lamaism was conspicuous,
for Mongolia, a stronghold of that cult, is not far away. Wen-shu was the
patron Bodhisattva. Chiu Hua Shan was sacred to Ti Tsang. On Omei, the
highest of the four, P'u-hsien was the most prominent bodhisattva. On one
side the summit of Omei breaks off into a precipice thousands of feet
deep and from its edge a circular rainbow, the "Glory of Buddha," could
sometimes be seen, most impressive to simple pilgrims. P'u T'o is a very
attractive mountainous island, held sacred to Kuan-yin.

Buddhism exerted its influence upon the laity in a variety of ways and
touched their lives at many points. That it had such a hold is obvious, for
the support of the large body of monks and the erection, maintenance, and
repair of the shrines depended ultimately upon them. There was a good
deal of education of the laity in Buddhist tenets, partly through popular

Religion 547

literature, partly through stories that gained currency as folk tales, and
partly through pilgrimages and religious ceremonies.

One source of Buddhism's power was the belief that through the friendly
offices of Buddhist divinities present evils could be avoided and desirable
goods of this life could be obtained. Such blessings as sons and recovery
from illness were prayed for. Another source of its hold was the determin
ing influence which it was held could be exerted upon the soul's lot after
death. The reincarnations and especially the heavens and hells in which
popular Chinese Buddhism believed were made graphic to the multitude
through literature, pictures, sculpture, and ceremonies, and found their
way into folklore.

The incentive to the conduct which Buddhism lauds was largely found
in the effects of good and bad deeds upon one's state in a future existence.
The acquisition of merit which might later be effective was one of the strong
inducements to the founding and maintenance of the many charitable
organizations so characteristic of Chinese life — for supporting nurseries,
building bridges, repairing roads, giving medicine to or providing coffins
for the poor, and the like.

Assurance of a happy state in the life beyond the grave was obtained
by repeating prayers and observing vegetarianism. Certificates — passports
to heaven — could be purchased from Buddhist clergy by those who per
formed these acts of devotion. Souls of the dead could be assisted by the
living. Thus services believed to be efficacious in hastening the delivery
of the dead from torment were conducted by the monks on payment of a
fee. One of the most picturesque of Chinese festivals, that of care for
departed spirits, had an especially Buddhist flavor. The belief was that
once a year, in the summer, on the first day of the seventh month, souls
are released from the Buddhist hells or purgatories and come back to earth.
In private homes food and paper money were provided and incense and
candles burned for them and public ceremonies on their behalf were
conducted by the monks. The festival culminated fifteen days after its
beginning, when the spirits were supposed to return to whatever abode
might now be appropriate for them.

Many homes had a shrine or shrines to Buddhist divinities. Pilgrimages
to Buddhist sacred places were popular, especially to the sacred mountains.
Printed directions existed for comportment while engaged in them, a special
garb might be worn, incense-burners might be carried, songs might be
sung, and in some instances the pilgrim might prostrate himself at every
step. Societies existed for the conduct of pilgrimages, aiding and directing
the pilgrims and sometimes supported by what in effect was compulsory
taxation. By a pilgrimage properly performed special merit was believed
to be acquired or a vow fulfilled for the healing of the participant or one
of his kin.

548 VOLUME II

Many of the numerous religious associations of lay people to be men
tioned later had a partially or even purely Buddhist character. Some were
vegetarian, requiring their members to abstain from the taking of life,
and as a corollary, from eating meat. Some burned incense. A few enjoined
celibacy, and others were for the reading of a particular Buddhist writing
or for the repetition of a prayer or prayers or of the name of some divinity.

It was, then, not only among the monks and nuns that Buddhism had
an influence, but also upon a large proportion of the masses of the nation.
Even those who never supported its ceremonies or read its writings were
more or less unconsciously influenced by it — possibly in their conceptions
of the life after death or in their ethical standards.

TAOISM

In many ways Taoism was not nearly so vital in the China
of the Ch'ing dynasty as was Buddhism. Its organization was not as strong,
it was much more encumbered by unintelligent superstition, and there was
not as much scholarship in the ranks of its devotees. In many ways it was
a slavish imitation of Buddhism. In its priesthood, its canon, with hundreds
of volumes written in the form of Buddhist sutras, and in its acceptance
of the idea of transmigration and of karma, Taoism had copied the foreign
faith. For all that, however, Taoism had a profound influence, an in
fluence which its embodiment of popular superstitions probably strength
ened.

As in the case of Buddhism, the only ones who could in the strict
sense be termed Taoists were the professionals, or tao shih. Soihe were
anchorites who through meditation and ascetic practices sought immor
tality. Others were celibates living in monastic communities. The number
of the latter was much smaller than that of the Buddhist monks and nuns.
Like Buddhist monks, they might have entered the community either as
children through purchase or the donation of parents, or as adults from
weariness of the world, or from the hope of escaping the consequences
of a crime, or from the desire for an assured livelihood, or from the
longing for immortality and a solution of the riddle of existence. Much
more numerous than the celibates were those who married and did not
live in communities but in their own homes and who supported their
families by fees received for saying services for the dead, writing charms,
communicating with the dead through automatic writing, or exorcising evil
spirits. Entrance to the ranks of the professionals seems usually to have
been through an apprenticeship to some accredited member.

The tao shih had a kind of national organization. At its head was
one whom foreigners usually called the "Taoist Pope" but who to the
Chinese was known by titles sanctioned by the former Emperors — Tien

Religion 549

Shih (Heavenly Preceptor), Chen Chun, or Chen Jen. The Tien Shih
claimed descent from Chang Tao4ing, a worthy of the Han dynasty
reputed to have been an outstanding expert in Taoism and a master of
its alchemy and magic. To the Tien Shih was attributed, among other
things, great power over evil spirits, and charms from him were regarded
as having extraordinary efficacy in expelling them. The guardian deities
of the province and prefecture were supposed to receive their appointment
from him. It is said, too, that in each province the tao shih had a head man.

Sometimes classified with the Taoists were witches, wu, called among
other designations tao nai nai and hsien nai nai, both showing a possible
Taoist connection. They were believed to be possessed by familiar spirits,
to fall into trances in which they held communication with spirits, and
to be able to cure disease by charms or other devices. It seems probable,
however, that they had an origin quite independent of and earlier than
Taoism and that they ought not strictly to be thought of as belonging to
it.

One of the characteristics of Taoism was the means which it prescribed
for the achievement of immortality. Here Taoism was much like Buddhism.
Primitive Buddhism could hold out hope for salvation only to those who
followed the rigorous road of the arhat. Taoism, too, in earlier days offered
blissful immortality only to the select few who were willing to pursue the
exacting course necessary to its achievement. Even up to the twentieth
century there were those who sought to follow this way. The regimen
consisted in meditation on Taoist truths, the cultivation of such Taoist
attitudes as inaction and placidity, said to be characteristic of the Tao,
carefully regulated breathing, diet, discipline, moral living, and partaking
of substances supposed to prolong life, such as seeds and resin of ever
greens like the pine and fir, products of such other trees and plants as
the plum, and certain minerals and jewels: gold, jade, and the pearl.
Yet along with the achievement of immortality went a belief in hells,
derived from Buddhism. The hells, usually closely resembling their Bud
dhist prototypes, were often vividly depicted in Taoist temples, and the
ceremonies of the tao shih were supposed to be potent in obtaining the
release from them of luckless souls.

Taoism, too, had its gods. It shared many of them with the state
cult, partly because some of them came down from the remote past of
China out of which both Taoism and the state religion arose: Its pantheon
and iconography were profoundly influenced by Buddhism. The Taoist gods
might be honored in temples, the latter probably originally suggested by
Buddhist shrines. The highest god of Taoism was usually said to be Yti
Huang ("The Jade Emperor" or, less accurately but more commonly in
English, "The Pearly Emperor") or Yii Huang Shang Ti. He was, indeed,
thought of by many of the masses as the supreme god of all the universe.

550 VOLUME ii

The Taoists also had a trinity, the San Ch'ing ("The Three Pure Ones"),
possibly suggested by the Buddhist trinities. The persons in this trinity
might vary, as they have in those of Buddhism, being sometimes Lao Tzu,
Yii Huang, and the ancient mythical ruler P'an Ku, or some other combi
nation, Another Taoist trinity called the San Kuan ("The Three Rulers"
or "The Three Officials") was variously said to be composed of Heaven,
Earth, and Water, and of the three famous legendary (or perhaps mythical)
rulers Yao, Shim, and Yii, A god sometimes ranked by the Taoists as the
Supreme Being was Yuan Shih T'ien Tsun ("The Original Heavenly
Revered One"). There was many another god, sometimes a personified
idea, such as T'ai I ("The Great Unity") to whom temples were erected,
sometimes a purely mythical being, such as the Goddess of the North
Star, and sometimes a deified human being. Then, too, the Taoists talked
of Sheng Jen, or Holy Men, who inhabited the highest heaven, of
Chen Jen, or Ideal Men, who dwelt in the second heaven, and of Hsien
Jen, or Immortals, whose customary home was the third heaven. The
Hsien Jen were also said to live in remote corners of the earth, especially
on the K'un Lun — in Taoist teaching the central mountains of the world.
They were represented as having once been real men, and were supposed
to appear at unpredictable intervals to perform deeds of mercy, such
as the healing of disease. Eight of the Immortals, the Pa Hsien, the lists of
whose names varied, were held in especial honor and provided favorite
subjects for stories and representations in art.

Taoism possessed a voluminous literature from which extensive selec
tions were published, corresponding roughly to the Buddhist San Ts'ang.
The Tao Te Ching continued to be a favorite object of study and medi
tation. Another widely revered work, of which copies were often gra
tuitously distributed, was the Kan Ying P'ien ("Book of Rewards and
Punishments"), although it must be added that many Chinese did not
connect this with Taoism. In some of this literature a standard of morality
was taught which reinforced much of that inculcated by Confucianism and
Buddhism.

THE RELIGION OF THE MAJORITY

The great majority of the Chinese, as we have repeatedly
seen, were not exclusively Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist. They were
influenced by all these systems: in ethical standards, in conceptions of the
universe and of divine beings, and in beliefs about the future life. However,
there was much more than Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in the
religious ideas and practices which prevailed among the majority: the re
ligion of the masses was not just a composite of these three faiths. The
additional elements had in them a great deal of animism. Indeed, more than

Religion 551

one foreign observer declared animism the basic and characteristic religion
of the Chinese. The religion of the majority also contained much of polythe
ism — a polytheism augmented by the state cult and by Buddhism and
Taoism, but which in its list of deities was much larger than the sum of all
three of the other pantheons. There was much of divination and of the
observance of lucky and unlucky days. It may also be proper to classify
with popular religion the pseudo science, fSng shut, although the correct
ness of this can be challenged.

The belief in spirits, and the attempt to propitiate them or in other
ways to control or ward them off, was of great antiquity in China, as in
so many other parts of the world. In popular belief kuei — evil spirits or
demons — are all about us and are of many kinds and shapes. They may
have eyes on the tops of their heads. On occasion they may take the
forms of animals or even of men and women. A kuei may be in a man-
eating tiger. Great numbers of stories were told of animals — kuei — who
could take at will the body of a man or especially of a beautiful woman and
in that guise work harm. Kuei may be in old trees, or in clothes, in objects
of furniture, or in mountains or stones. Leaves driven before the wind
may each be a kuei. Kuei are responsible for all sorts of evils and mis
fortunes. They lurk in ponds and rivers to draw people in and drown them.
Indeed, one theory had it that the kuei of a drowned person remains
in the place of the tragedy and can obtain release only by luring some
hapless wight to a similar fate. The kuei of a mother who dies in child
birth, so it was believed, wins surcease from anguish by bringing on
some other woman the same demise. Insane persons are controlled by
kuei. An epidemic of kuei may visit a city — in the old days cutting queues
and striking people on the streets. By committing suicide a man might, as
a kuei, haunt the person whom he believed to have hounded him to
the act. Kuei might be responsible for illnesses of various kinds. They
might bring bad crops and famine.

Kuei were associated with the yin principle of the universe. It will
be remembered that for many centuries — just how long is uncertain —
the Chinese identified with the yin and the yang the two elements of the
dualism which they regarded as running through all nature. The yin and
the yang pervaded much not only of popular lore but also of the phi
losophy of the learned. The yin stood for Earth, the moon, darkness, evil,
and the female sex. On the yang side were Heaven, the sun, light, fire, good
ness, and the male sex. Kuei were, accordingly, supposed to be yin. Kuei
were opposed to shen — the latter a name which included the gods — and
sMn were supposed to be associated with the yang. According to a widely
prevalent conviction, every man, or practically every man, has in him
both a kuei and a shen corresponding to the yin and the yang which
pervade men as they do the rest of nature. At death, so at least one

552 VOLUME II

conception had it, the shen goes to the skies while the kuei remains earth-
bound — patently a source of vast numbers of kuei,

Since popular belief insisted that all about us are these kuei, usually
invisible, but always a potential cause of all kinds of misfortune and evil,
it became of the greatest importance to discover and utilize means for
warding them off or expelling them. For this there were many devices.
Buddhist monks and especially tao shih could be called in to exorcise
them. For that same purpose the images of gods, particularly of some gods,
being shen and yang, might be carried in procession through the streets
or brought to a house. Some of the processions were community undertak
ings, the cost being defrayed by popular subscription which custom made
obligatory. Anything associated with yang, or in which the yang element
is strong, had potency. Firecrackers and gongs could be employed. The
cock, as the morning herald of the sun, was regarded highly and his
blood and head were utilized. The peach, as one of the earliest trees to
bloom in the spring under the impulse of the returning sun, was also
esteemed as yang. Strong and good men were regarded as full of yang,
and their pictures or images were believed to put the kuei to rout. Offi
cials were supposed to embody the yang. Good deeds were a safeguard
and passages from the Classics might be recited. Charms might prove
effective. Among the latter were papers inscribed, often by a tao shih,
with magic characters or symbols. They were to be affixed to a door
or to some other part of the house, or they could be burned and the
ashes mixed in water and drunk. Amulets were carried, perhaps made
of the stone or wood of the peach, and in manufacturing beds peach
wood was often employed. Mirrors could be worn on the forehead, espe
cially of a child, the theory apparently being that a kuei, approaching
with evil intent and seeing the reflection of its own ugly face, would be
frightened away. Copper cash strung together in the form of a sword
might be effective. Certain written characters were supposed to be particu
larly efficacious in insuring well-being. Among those frequently employed
were ju, which may be translated as happiness or good fortune, and
shou (longevity).

The customs concerned with the kuei might be described at great length,
for they entered extensively into the folklore and life of the masses. For
the average man they were probably fully as important as the more highly
rationalized and organized systems of Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Taoism.

A belief in certain mythical creatures had a large place in the popular
mind. These did not belong exclusively in the field of religion but at
times were objects of reverence and even worship. The Lung, or "dragon,"
was the most familiar. He was regarded as benevolent and was associated
with the yang and with rain, clouds, and water. As the Lung Wang, or

Religion 553

"dragon king," the Lung was very widely worshiped and temples were
built to him. There was also the Feng-huang (Feng being the male and
Huang the female), usually called in English the phoenix, a creature
some times described as having the head of a hen, the eye of a man, the
neck of a serpent, the viscera of a locust, the brow of a swallow, the
back of a tortoise, and a tail like that of a fish but with twelve feathers.
It was said that from time to time in Chinese history it had shown itself,
usually as the harbinger of some political event. It was full of yang. Then
there was the Ch'i-lin, Ctii being the male and Lin the female. Like
the Feng-huang, in appearance it presented a somewhat bizarre composite
of several creatures. Because of its single horn, it is generally called in Eng
lish the unicorn. It was believed to be gentle by disposition and as a rule
to be seen only in times of good monarchs. With the Feng-huang it was
held to have a good deal to do with the coming of children and the popular
regard for it rested largely upon this phase of its activity. All three — the
Lung, the Feng-huang, and the Ch'i-lin — came down from very early
historic and possibly from prehistoric times and so were long intimately
connected with the Chinese mind.

The Chinese had a great many divinities which did not, strictly speak
ing, belong to any one of the three major cults, although, with the eclecti
cism and syncretism so characteristic of China, they could be appropriated
by any or all of them. Some were probably of purely native origin, others
were possibly importations, and still others probably were originally local
gods in non-Chinese territory but were adopted by the Chinese as the
latter extended their domains. Their name was legion, and even to attempt
to enumerate them all would not only prolong this chapter unduly but
would result in an incomplete list. Many of them had only a local vogue,
and the representations of and stories about others varied from place to
place. Paper representations of them were popular and had an extensive
sale. Among a few that may be mentioned were the Kitchen God (prac
tically universal in the home), the Fire God, the God of Wealth, the
God of Medicine, the Goddess of Smallpox, gods adopted as patrons by
various crafts and guilds, and a god who was supposed to protect fields
against insects, and who, accordingly, could be invoked to drive away
locusts. Many of them were represented as historic personages, deified
in the course of later generations. In some parts of the country peculiar
trees or stones were worshiped.

This account may leave the impression that the religion of the majority
was chaotic, uncritical, and an inconsistent jumble of beliefs and practices
of varying origins. This is in part correct. Along with all the diversity, how
ever, went a widespread feeling of unity — that the world, both seen and
unseen, is after all a universe, and that there is one Power or Being who
ultimately controls it and to whom appeal may be made. In the will of

554 VOLUME II

this One, conceived of as righteous, there was a good deal of quiet trust.
This One was believed, in the long run, to even up the inequalities of life,
in an individual or group, averaging the bitter with the sweet. For example,
the High God of the people, known and revered all over China as Tien
Lao Yeh, or Lao Tien Fo Yeh, or Lao Tien Yeh, personalized Heaven,
God, or Providence. Moreover, there was a good deal of determinism in
the popular mind, a kind of fatalism which bowed calmly to the inevitable,
conceived of more or less dimly as the will of the inscrutable Power which
governs the affairs of men.

SHUI

Whether, as has been said, the set of beliefs and practices
called feng shut — literally, wind and water — should be classified under
religion may be a matter of debate. Whatever its pigeonhole in an orderly
account, it played an important part in Chinese life.

Feng shut was based upon the belief that in every locality forces exist
which act on graves, buildings, cities, and towns, either for the welfare
or the ill of the quick and the dead. The object of feng shut, therefore, was
to discover the sites where the beneficent influences predominated, or
so to alter, by artificial means, the surroundings of existing sites that the
same happy results could be achieved. To attain these ends advice was
sought from specialists in feng shut.

Among the factors with which f£ng shut reckoned were the yang
and the yin; the ch'i (sometimes translated breath) pervading the universe
and of which there might be two divisions, the fien ch'i, or ch'i of Heaven,
and the ti ch'i, or ch'i of Earth; the four creatures — the azure dragon, the
white tiger, the black tortoise, and the red bird — associated with the four
quarters of the heaven; wind (bearing water or drought); and the five
traditional elements (metal, earth, fire, water, and wood), especially
water. When it came to the actual choice of a site, experts in fSng shui
often differed widely as to the worth of a particular locality — a lack of
agreement which the skeptical held up to derision. There appear, however,
to have been some general principles upon which the decision was supposed
to be made. An ideal site is protected on the north (from which the yin
comes), is open to the south (associated with the yang), has water
flowing in such a way as partly to encircle it but not so directly away from
it as to drain off the good influences, and possesses some natural feature,
such as a hill or hummock, in the direction of the dragon (on the east
or left) stronger than that of the tiger (on the west or right) . Some natural
object, such as a hill, or some building, especially a high building, in
front of a site — even some distance away — could do serious damage. A
straight road, such as a railway, could work much harm by permitting

Religion 555

the good influences to drain away. On the other hand, an otherwise unpro-
pitious site could be improved by such devices as a pool, a hummock of
earth, a pagoda, charms, or the picture of a dragon.

Feng shut was especially used in determining the locations for inter
ments. Stories abounded of families that had been ruined because the grave
of an ancestor had an unfavorable feng shut and of others that prospered
because of a fortunate location of ancestral remains. Whole cities, too,
were said to have had their fortunes improved by the construction of a
pagoda on expert advice, and a neighborhood to have been badly dam
aged by some high building or flagpole, such as Westerners were wont to
erect.

DIVINATION AND FORTUNE-TELLING

It is probably also debatable whether such activities as divina
tion, fortune-telling, and the discovery of lucky and unlucky days should
be grouped under religion. Here, again, whatever their relations, they
were long prominent in Chinese life.

Each individual was supposed to have his fate in part determined by the
year, month, day, and hour, or simply the year, month, and day, on
which he was born. Each of these was indicated by a certain combination
or one of the ten "heavenly stems" and the twelve "earthly branches."
The result was either eight or six characters which must be consulted by the
fortune-teller in determining such matters as betrothals. There were lucky
and unlucky days for marriages and funerals, for commencing building op
erations, or for beginning a journey. Among the many factors that could be
taken into consideration in determining whether and when to enter upon
a particular course of action were the five elements, the animals supposed
to be identified with the twelve "earthly branches," and combinations of
the two, the calendar with its lucky and unlucky days (formerly published
by imperial authority), the pa kua (eight trigrams) which form the basis
of the / Ching and which from prehistoric times had been utilized by
diviners, and the I Ching itself. There were many ways of fortune-telling
— among them the inspection of the physiognomy, the choice of a slip
of paper by a bird and the interpretation of the picture or characters on
the slip by the soothsayer, and the casting of lots by any one of several
devices.

RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES

Societies with a religious purpose were one of the most
interesting features of Chinese life. Often they were secret — partly because
proscribed by the state — and many had a political or social objective in

556 VOLUME II

addition to their religious purpose. Some were very widespread and power
ful and broke out into violent uprisings. They were often syncretic, com
bining Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and occasionally in later years, Chris
tian elements. Some of them insisted upon a high standard of morality
for their members, and often those in which Buddhism predominated
required vegetarianism and were the expression of an earnest religious
quest. Among the many societies were the Pailien Chiao, or White Lotus
(or Lily) Society, which incorporated religious elements but was primarily
political and repeatedly gave rise to rebellions; the Tsai-li Chiao, which
forbade to its members opium, wine, and tobacco, but not meat, and which
took over many Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian features, but was also
suspected of being the Pailien Chiao under another name; the Hsien-t'ien
Chiao, or Preceding Heaven Society, which discouraged ancestor worship
and idolatry, exacted of its members a pledge to keep the five command
ments of Buddhism, including that against the taking of life, and met in
small groups for the reading or recitation of Buddhist texts; the Chin-tan
Chiao, which made much of universal love and the immortality of the
soul; and the Shen Chiao, also called the Wu Chiao, or Sect of the
Magicians, which sought to expel kuei and to perform acts of magic. Some
of them endured for centuries and others had a very short existence. In the
fore part of the twentieth century a good many were founded, flourished for
a time, and then waned. Among them were the Tao 'Yuan, for the cultiva
tion of the inner life, the reception of messages through the planchette,
and philanthropic activities, and the Tao-te-hsiieh She, which sought to
unify all religions, revered the God of All Religions, and met weekly for
worship and lectures.

MOHAMMEDANISM

Outside the main stream of Chinese religious life, form
ing separate religious communities, are the Moslems. In previous chapters
we have seen something of the history of Islam in China — that it first
entered in the T'ang but made a very slight impression, and that it became
much stronger under the Yuan, thanks largely to foreign soldiers and
commanders of that faith who were introduced by the Mongol rulers.
During the Yuan it established itself especially in Yunnan, through Mos
lem commanders. It came in from two directions — brought by way of the
sea by merchants to the coast ports, particularly in the South, and over
land through the Northwest by Moslems from Central Asia and Sinkiang.
Moslems increased greatly under the Ch'ing, perhaps because of the con
quest by that dynasty of so much of the West, where they abounded.
Just how many Moslems there are today in China is uncertain. Con
jectures have ranged all the way from three to eighty millions. What

Religion 557

appear to be conservative estimates place the total somewhere between
four and ten millions, the true number seeming to be more nearly the
latter than the former figure. Moslems are to be found in every province,
but are most numerous in Sinkiang and in the North and West of China
proper, particularly, as might be expected from their history, in Yunnan,
Sinkiang, Hopei, and Kansu.

By their fellow Chinese, Moslems are regarded as a distinct and
separate group, like the Mongols or the Manchus. They are most fre
quently called the Hui-hui, a name of debatable origin, but possibly derived
from Uighur. This classification as a distinct race is not without justifi
cation. Some of the Moslems show clearly in their features their non-
Chinese ancestry. The majority speak Chinese, but often with some
dialectical differences from non-Moslems. Some, too, have followed distinc
tive occupations. Butchers and leather-workers have often been Moslems.
However, the cleavage is by no means always distinct. Many converts have
come from among the Chinese, partly through the adoption by Moslems
of Chinese children, partly through intermarriage, and partly through
adult Chinese entering the faith under the influence of Moslem officials
and of army officers who had command over them. Nor are occupational
and dialectical differences always apparent. The process of assimilation
by which the Chinese have absorbed so many other alien elements has been
at work.

In religious practices Moslems largely preserve their separation from
those of the Chinese about them and maintain those common to their
fellow believers in other lands. Usually they do not use pork and tend
to abstain from opium, and probably to a less extent, from alcoholic
drinks. They repeat the creed, fast during the month of Ramadan, give
alms to their own poor, and some few of them make the pilgrimage to
Mecca. They refrain from the use of idols and maintain their own worship,
in Arabic (although occasionally in Chinese) in mosques. The mosques
show the influence of Arab architecture.

Yet even in their religious life the Moslems show marked effects
of their Chinese environment. Usually they are not at all fanatical. As
a rule only their religious leaders and teachers pray five times a day.
Generally, too, it is only those who understand Arabic. In many Moslem
families abstention from pork remains the one distinctive practice. A large
proportion of the mosques are without minarets and as a rule the public
call to prayer is omitted. Occasionally Moslems have made contributions
to pagan observances, such as community processions in which images
are carried through the streets. They may use incense in their services.
Those who served under the old regime often participated in the religious
ceremonies of the state cult which formed part of the duties of their office.
Even Mohammed was represented as a sage of the Confucian type and as
conforming to the Confucian virtues.

558 VOLUME ii

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE COMING OF THE OCCIDENT

These, then, are the main outlines of the religious life of
the Chinese on the eve of the impact of the Occident. That impact pro
duced profound changes.

Very important was the growing influence of Christianity. The presence
in China of thousands of Christian foreign missionaries, Roman Catholic
and Protestant — with a very few from the Russian Orthodox Church — was
one of the outstanding features of the invasion of the West. In every prov
ince missionaries were to be found, and in almost every important city and
in many villages churches were erected, schools organized, and hospitals
or dispensaries maintained. Manifold philanthropies were undertaken
and Christian literature was broadcast. In 1949 the number of professed
Christians, while above the three million mark, was less than one per cent
of the total population and was not an adequate measure of the effects
of the missionary enterprise. On the eve of the Communist mastery of
the mainland the percentage of Christians, especially of Protestants, promi
nent in the life of the nation, particularly in politics and education, was
far out of proportion to the size of the Chinese church. Through men
like Sun Yat-sen, educated at the hands of missionaries and an avowed
Christian, in the shaping of the new China Christianity exercised an influ
ence which was impossible to measure accurately and yet was certainly
very great. The new medical profession owed its foundations chiefly to
Protestant missions, and leadership in modern education, especially higher
education, was long largely in Christian hands.

Yet upon the religious life, in the strict sense of that term, of the
great masses of non-Christians, Christianity made but slight impress. Here
and there a society which sought to syncretize the various faiths included
Christianity in its purview. In Shansi an organization officially sponsored
by the "Model Governor," Yen Hsi-shan, as a substitute for the former
state cult as a means of inculcating virtue, strikingly displayed the influence
of Christianity. The New Life Movement, endorsed by Chiang Kai-shek,
arose in part at Christian suggestion. Some of the methods of the Kuomin-
tang youth corps were taken over from Christians. The impact of Chris
tianity was to some degree responsible for the decay of the older forms
of polytheism and animism. Undoubtedly there existed imponderable con
sequences of Christianity which defied measurement. But the fact remained
that Christianity did not have such large results in religion outside the
boundaries of its organization as it had in some other phases of China's
life. In these other phases — education, philanthropy, public health, physi
cal education, medicine, and moral and social reform — Christianity was
probably the most potent of the religious factors in China at the time
of the Communist conquest.

Religion 559

Another result of the coming of the West, as we have seen, was that
the state religion and with it Confucianism disintegrated. Within the brief
compass of less than a decade the abandonment of the civil service exam
inations, followed by the collapse of the monarchy, removed two of their
strongest supports. Various attempts were made to bolster the old system.
The new curricula for the schools, adopted by the state under the Repub
lic, included attention to the classical books on Confucianism. For a
time sporadic attempts were made to revive the state sacrifices that had
lapsed. Yuan Shih-k'ai, for instance, resumed the annual ceremonies on
the Altar of Heaven in Peking. For a time, too, much was made of Kuan
Yii by the military authorities. For several years private associations of
scholars maintained the accustomed ritual in many of the Confucian
temples. Vainly as it proved, an effort was made to win for Confucianism
adoption as the official cult of the Republic.

Buddhism showed some resilience. Thanks partly to impulses from
Japan, where Buddhism was not so nearly moribund as in China, for
a few years Chinese Buddhism displayed movements which sought to purify
and revive it. Many monasteries and temples were renovated; Buddhist
societies were organized; much effort was expended in circulating literature;
the ordination of monks was continued; and popular lectures were delivered.
The outstanding leader was the able and earnest T'ai Hsu.

With the coming of the Republic, China experienced a widespread
movement away from religion. Some of this was due to a general reaction
against old forms and beliefs, which is inevitable when a great group
of mankind departs from its past. Much of it was to be accounted for by
contacts with the religious skepticism and indifference of the modern
Occident. Among its leading exponents were returned students from
the West. Some of it was a continuation of the native religious skepticism
which had such a long history. Much of the neglect of religion was due to
the disintegration of the social and political institutions and the intellectual
patterns with which religion had been associated. Some was a concomitant
of the destruction wrought by civil strife and foreign invasion.

Opposition to religion came in waves. One of these, at the inception
of the Republic, was directed primarily against the native cults. Another,
in 1922, was chiefly anti-Christian. Still another came with the rise to
power of the Kuomintang, was especially sponsored by the radical ele
ments of that party, and was prominently but by no means entirely anti-
Christian.

More subtle than open opposition but no less destructive to religion
was an indifference which arose from the tacit assumption that the real
goods of life are to be won by other than religious means. In this again
China was conforming to the climate of opinion in much of the modern
West.

560 VOLUME II

The movement away from religion affected all faiths, although in
varying degrees. During the fighting of 1926 and 1927, troops occupied
many of the buildings belonging to Christian missions. Most of these were
later evacuated. The physical equipment of other faiths did not fare so
well. Beginning at least as early as the Revolution of 1911-1912, religious
properties of various kinds were secularized. The diversion of temples to
nonreligious purposes greatly increased with the political disturbances and
antireligious movement of 1926-1927 and the years immediately there
after. Some temples simply disappeared. Others were used as schools or
barracks. Still others became apartment houses, rice markets, rickshaw
stands, or auto terminals. In many the images of the gods were allowed
to remain with a few priests to serve them, although most of the building
was secularized. In one provincial capital, by 1931 out of one hundred
seventy-five temples examined only three were being used exclusively
for worship and only one temple had been erected within three years.
In some other sections a revival of religious interest came after 1927 or
1928 and expressed itself in part in the repair or building of temples.
In many districts most of the customs were observed much as they have
been for generations. The traditional religious practices persisted, espe
cially in rural areas. It was in the cities and among the intellectuals that
they were most weakened.

Feng shut suffered with the influx of Western ideas and practices.
Railways and highways were constructed, streets widened and straightened,
graves removed and placed in common cemeteries, and telephone and
telegraph poles placed and high buildings erected in utter disregard of its
principles.

The Communist domination of the mainland hastened the retreat of
traditional religion. Although in theory the People's Republic of China
tolerated religion so long as it did not interfere with the Communist pro
gram, Communism was frankly atheistic and regarded religion as "the opi
ate of the people." More and more the Communists sought to weaken and
ultimately eradicate religion. We have seen (Chap. XIII) its determined
effort to cut off all ties between Christians and their fellow believers in
the non-Communist world. When these lines were penned the Commu
nists were apparently intent on slowly strangling the Christian churches.
To them Confucianism was "feudal" and anathema. They confiscated the
endowments of Buddhist and Taoist temples and of the ancestral temples,
for in the old China these had customarily been hi land. Like the possessions
of the landlords, they were distributed among the farmers. Some of the
land was given to monks to cultivate. Monks and nuns were required to
take up what the Communists defined as useful labor. A few Buddhist
temples in Peking and elsewhere were maintained and even repaired,
presumably in an effort to ingratiate the Communists with the Buddhist

Religion 561

peoples of Southeast Asia. Some effort was put forth to preserve and
restore ancient Buddhist shrines and structures as cultural monuments.
In 1953 the Chinese Buddhist Association was organized as a means of
remolding Buddhism to conform to the government's program and to
obtain the co-operation of Buddhists. Buddhist welfare enterprises were
taken over by the state. Buddhist periodicals were greatly reduced in
number and circulation. The state cult had disappeared before the Com
munist stage of the revolution. The Communists discredited the popular
cults and the latter withered. Islam proved more resistant and survived.

In the territory held by the Republic of China and in Hong Kong
some of the older religious beliefs and practices survived, but in weakened
remnants. Christianity made gains, but only among minorities,

Both in pre-Communist and Communist stages of the revolution brought
by the impact of the West the Chinese seemed to be moving away from
religion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Many of the chief sources in Chinese for the study of the religion of the
country have already been mentioned. The main translations of the leading
Confucian Classics were given at the end of Chapter II.

Among the translations of Buddhist works are S. Beal, A Catena of Bud
dhist Scriptures from the Chinese (London, 1871), with selections chosen to
illustrate various periods in the history of Buddhism; S. Beal, Texts From the
Buddhist Canon Commonly Known as Dhammapada (London, 1878); T.
Suzuki, A'Svaghosa's Awakening of Faith in the Mahay ana Doctrine (2d edi
tion, Shanghai, 1918); W. E. Soothill, The Lotus of the Wonderful Law
(Oxford, 1930); and W. Gemmel, The Diamond Sutra (Chin-kang-chin) or
Prajna-Paramita (London, 1912). Accounts of Chinese Buddhist literature are
in Prabodh Chandra Bagchi, Le Canon Bouddhique en Chine, Vol. I, Les
Traducteurs et les Traductions (Paris, 1926): Bunyiu Nanjio, A Catalogue of
the Chinese Translations of the Buddhist Tripitaka (Oxford, 1883); E. Cha-
vannes, Cinq Cent Contes et Apologues. Extraits du Tripitaka Chinois (3 vols.,
Paris, 1910, 1911); A. von Stael-Holstein, Kagyapaparivarta, A Mahayanasutra
of the Ratnakuta Class, edited in the Original Sanskrit, in Tibetan and in
Chinese (Shanghai, 1926); R. Gauthiot, P. Pelliot, and E. Benveniste, Le
Sutra des Causes et des Effets du Bien et du Mai, edite et traduit d'apres les
Textes Sogdien, Chinois, et Tibetain (2 vols., Paris, 1920, 1926).

Translations of such basic classics of Taoism as the Tao T£ Ching and
Chuang Tzu are in James Legge, The Texts of Taoism (Oxford, 1891), in
Sacred Books of the East. There are many translations of Tao Te Ching. On
Chuang Tzii see Fung Yu-lan, Chuang-Tzu (Shanghai, 1932). H. A. Giles has
a rendering of Chuang Tzu in Chuang Tzu, Mystic, Moralist and Social
Reformer (2d ed., Shanghai, 1926), L. Wieger, Taoisme (2 vols., Hsien hsien.
1911-1913) has translations of the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzii,
and contains a list of the Taoist canon.

Many books in Western languages cover Chinese religion in general. One of

562 VOLUME II

the largest is J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, Its Ancient
Forms, Evolution, History, and Present Aspect (6 vols., Ley den, 1892-1910),
based upon a scholarly study of Chinese texts and upon observations, largely in
the vicinity of Amoy. De Groot has two much smaller books, The Religion of
the Chinese (New York, 1910) and Religion in China (New York, 1912).
There should also be noted his Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China
(2 vols., Amsterdam, 1903, 1904). A brief general survey, formerly largely
used, is W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China (London, 1913). M.
Granet, La Religion des Chinois (Paris, 1922) deals chiefly with early Chinese
religion. Under a somewhat misleading title, J. L. Stewart in Chinese Culture
and Christianity (New York, 1926) has given a good summary. Henri Dore,
Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine, is a sixteen-volume work by a
Jesuit missionary, largely on current practices of its day and profusely illus
trated, and translated in part into English by M. Kennelly as Researches into
Chinese Superstitions (8 vols., Shanghai, Tusewei Press, 1914-1926). A short
account of certain phases of popular religion by a distinguished scholar is L.
Hodous, Folkways in China (London, 1929), A valuable study of some phases
of religion in one Chinese city is J. K. Shryock, The Temples of Anking and
Their Cults. A Study of Modern Chinese Religion (Paris, 1931). E. D. Harvey,
The Mind of China (New Haven, 1933) deals largely with animism and with
popular religious sects and practices. Among other general books deserving
mention are J. Legge, The Religions of China (London, 1881), C. E. Plopper,
Chinese Religion Seen Through the Proverb (Shanghai, 1926), E. T. C. Werner,
A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology (Shanghai, ca. 1932), and E. H. Parker,
Studies in Chinese Religion (London, 1910). L. Wieger, Histoire des Croyances
Religieuses et des Opinions Philosophiques en Chine (Hochienfu, 1917), con
tains a mass of material but is lacking in critical discrimination. An English
translation appeared in 1927 at Hochienfu. See articles on China, Confucian
Religion, and Taoism in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (J. Hastings,
editor). E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China, should also be men
tioned, as must L. Wieger, Folk-lore Chinois Moderne (Hochienfu, 1909).
Other interesting studies are Feng Yu-lan, A Comparative Study of Life Ideals
(Shanghai, 1925); F. Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese (London,
1925); and H. G. Creel, Sinism. A Study of the Evolution of the Chinese
World View (Chicago, 1929). Modern Chinese mythology is treated by Henri
Maspero in J. Hackin and others, Asiatic Mythology, translated by F. M.
Atkinson (New York). A study of popular religion, partly contemporary and
from direct observation, is C. B. Day, Chinese Peasant Cults (Shanghai, 1940).

On Confucianism and the state religion, in addition to the translation of
Confucian texts mentioned above, and the accounts in the general books al
ready given, see J. K. Shryock, The Origin and Development of the State Cult
of Confucius (New York, 1932), and T. Watters, A Guide to the Tablets in a
Temple of Confucius (Shanghai, 1879). On T'ai Shan, see E. Chavannes,
Le T'ai Chan. Essai de Monographic d'un Culte Chinois. Appendice. Le Dieu
du Sol dans Chine Antique (Paris, 1910).

On Buddhism in China there is a large bibliography. Sir Charles Eliot,
Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch (3 vols., London, 1921) con
tains one of the best historical accounts. An excellent survey is Arthur F.
Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford University Press, 1959), pp.
xiv, 144). K. L. Reichelt, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism (3d edi
tion, Shanghai, 1930) is by a Christian missionary who made a prolonged and

Religion

sympathetic study of Buddhism, but in places it is uncritical. One of the best
brief accounts in L. Hodous, Buddhism and Buddhists in China (New York,
1924). Interestingly written, and by a recognized scholar, is R. F. Johnston,
Buddhist China (New York, 1913). L. Wieger, Bouddhisme Chinois (2 vols.,
Hochienfu, 1910-1913) contains a great volume of material, some of it very
useful J. B. Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism (New York, 1928) is very
readable, devotes a large part of its space to China, is chiefly valuable for
conditions current at the time, and while not by an expert on China, is by an
authority on religion. Some of the main members of the Chinese Buddhist
pantheon are described in A. Getty, Gods of Northern Buddhism (Oxford,
1914). C. H. Hamilton, Buddhism in India, Ceylon, China and Japan. A Read
ing Guide (Chicago, 1931) contains a good outline and a selected bibliography.
See also J. Prip-m011er, Chinese Buddhist Monasteries (London, 1937), by an
expert on architecture. For more technical studies there are also W. E. Soothill
and L. Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms with Sanskrit and
English Equivalents and a Sanskrit-Pali Index (London, 1937); and J. J. M. de
Groot, Le Code du Mahayana en Chine. Son Influence sur la Vie Monacale
et sur le Monde Ldique (Amsterdam, 1893). A translation of portions of a
famous popular Buddhist allegory which was put in the form of a novel is
A. Waley, Monkey. Wu Chfeng-an (New York, 1943). See also Heinrich
Dumoulin, The Development of Zen Buddhism after the Sixth Patriarch in
the Light of Mumonkan, by a Jesuit, translated by Ruth Fuller Sasaki (New
York, The First Zen Institute of America, 1953, pp. xi, 146).

Most of the material on recent Taoism is chiefly either in the general books
on religion in China, mentioned above, or in special articles. The same is true
of the religion of the masses. On T'ai Shan, see D. C. Baker, T'ai Shan (Shang
hai, 1925). See, on the Chin Tan Chiao, The Secret of the Golden Flower
(London), a translation of a German translation (1929) by R. Wilhelm of the
Tea, 1 Hwa Tsung Chih.

On Islam in China, in addition to accounts in general books on religion in
China, such as E. H. Parker, China and Religion, and L. Wieger, Histoire des
Croyances Religieuses et des Opinions Philosophiques en Chine (of which an
English translation has appeared), there are M. Broomhall, Islam in China
(London, 1910), not especially critical; d'Ollone (and others), Recherches sur
les Musulmans Chinois (Paris, 1911); I. Mason, "A Chinese Life of Mo
hammed," Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,
1920, pp. 159-180; M. T. Stauffer (editor), The Christian Occupation of China
(Shanghai, 1922), pp. 353-358; and M. Hartmann, article "China," in The
Encyclopaedia of Islam (Vol. 1, London and Leyden, 1913, pp. 839-854).

On the Jews in China the best work, containing material from many sources
and articles by several authors, is W. C. White, Chinese Jews (Toronto, 3 parts,
1942).

On Christianity, K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China
(New York, 1929) contains a comprehensive account and further references
may be found in its bibliography and footnotes. Events since the completion
of that work may be most conveniently found either in the files of The Chinese
Recorder (a monthly periodical covering all Protestant missions, published in
Shanghai into 1941), the late issues of The China Christian Year Book (pub
lished annually, with occasional gaps, in Shanghai, through 1939 (and en
deavoring to cover all Protestant work), and, for Roman Catholic activities,

564 VOLUME II

J. M. Planchet, Les Missions de Chine et du Japon (published in Peking about
every other year and Les Missions de Chine (Shanghai, 1935-1940).

A satisfactory bibliography of recent religious movements in China outside
of Christianity would be long and made up chiefly of articles in periodicals and
newspaper dispatches. A fairly well rounded picture can be obtained from
articles in The Christian Occupation of China, in the files of The Chinese
Recorder, and in the various issues of The China Christian Year Book (before
1926 The China Mission Year Book). See also J. C. DeKorne, The Fellowship
of Goodness (Tung Shan She): A Study in Contemporary Chinese Religion
(Grand Rapids, 1941).

On the situation on the eve of the Communist mastery of the mainland, see
Wing-tsit Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China (New York, Columbia
University Press, 1953, pp. xiii, 327).

On religion under the Communists see Holmes Welch, "Buddhism under
the Communists," The China Quarterly, No. 6, pp. 1-14; and Francis Price
Jones, The Church in Communist China: A Protestant Appraisal (New York,
The Friendship Press, 1962, pp. viii, 180).

For additional bibliographies, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 53-69; H. Franke, Sinologie
(Bern. A. Franke, 1953), pp. 89-109.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SOCIAL LIFE AND ORGANIZATION

One of the outstanding characteristics of Chinese civilization
has been its emphasis upon social relations. Chinese philosophy, as we have
seen, had as a leading objective the achievement and maintenance of an
orderly society. Confucianism, so long dominant in the state and in the
intellectual and moral life of the Empire, laid great stress upon right
relations among human beings. In the course of the centuries the Chinese
developed many institutions and customs to conserve and perpetuate so
ciety, to give protection to individuals, and to facilitate the intercourse of
the many millions who have formed the population of the Empire. The
most extensive of these organizations, the government, has been described
in a previous chapter. Some others, especially the guilds, have also been
portrayed. It remains to give an account of institutions which thus far have
been only mentioned. It would also seem to be in place to associate with
these some of the customs and principles of social intercourse and some of
the features of collective life, such as recreation and holidays, which are
not readily grouped elsewhere.

It must be said at the outset that it is difficult and in many instances
quite impossible to formulate generalizations that will prove applicable to
all China. In spite of the tendency to uniformity throughout the country,
amazing for so huge a mass of mankind, almost any statement may prove
to be untrue for a particular locality. This is especially the case today, for
one must reckon not only with the variations that formerly existed but also
with the changes induced by the coming of the Occident, and which have
by no means uniformly affected different districts and classes. What, there
fore, may be a correct description of one community may not fit elsewhere
and what may be an accurate picture of one class or individual may be
quite inappropriate for another.

THE FAMILY

The basic and most characteristic Chinese institution has
been the family. The family constitutes an outstanding feature of the life
of every nation. Among the Chinese, however, it has been emphasized
more than among most peoples. Until the Communist triumph, it had a
leading part in economic life, in social control, in moral education, and in
government. The members of a family were supposed to stand by one

565

566 VOLUME II

another. The indigent and the aged were expected to be cared for by their
more prosperous and younger relatives. To a greater or less extent the
family performed the functions which in the modern Occident are asso
ciated with sickness and unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and
life insurance. Magistrates held the entire family responsible for the
conduct of its members. The family was looked upon as a model for the
government, and the state was thought of as a large family. Moral edu
cation was given largely through the family, and the leading although not
the only motives appealed to were family affection, loyalty, and pride.
Through the rites in honor of ancestors the family was an important re
ligious unit.

This emphasis upon the family went back to remote ages. In historic
times much of it was due to Confucianism, for this school made much of
the institution and of the duties of relatives to one another. The organiza
tion of the family, however, did not remain constant through the centuries,
but underwent important modifications, apparently in pre-Han times es
pecially, before Confucianism became dominant. We can take the space
only to describe the main outlines of the family system as it was on the eve
of the great changes brought about by the Occident.

Under the term family were included various types of organization.
There was what might be called the small family, made up of husband,
wife, and children. In the fore part of the twentieth century it was not
much if any larger than the corresponding unit in the Occident. Also as in
the West it was not uncommon for such a group to live by itself as a
distinct household, although perhaps with one or more servants and relatives
as additional members. More generally than in the Occident, however,
the family was much larger. Several smaller families might dwell together
under one roof or in one enclosure and have a common life. Here four
generations could sometimes be found: great-grandparents with their sons,
daughters-in-law, grandsons, granddaughters-in-law, and great-grandchil
dren. In this case each of the smaller units might preserve a certain amount
of individual identity, with its own bedrooms and kitchen, but inevitably
there was a degree of community life, with a head of the whole, possibly a
common ancestral hall, and — although this was not uniform — a common
purse. The head of such a family might have autocratic power. The leader
ship normally passed to the eldest son, but by common consent it could
be entrusted to the son adjudged most worthy. Elders, including a widowed
mother or grandmother, could exert marked influence. Such large family
groups were found especially in rural areas but were by no means un
known in towns and cities. Frequently a whole village was made up of those
claiming descent from one male ancestor, and its members bore the same
surname.

In a community composed of blood relations the village government

Social Life and Organization 567

might be purely a family matter, the family elder being the chairman of
the village assembly, and other offices going to various branches of the
family in turn. In these circumstances the public endowments used for such
objects as the maintenance of roads and schools were to all intents and
purposes family possessions.

Moreover, still larger groups existed, made up of those tracing their
descent from one progenitor, having a common patronymic, perhaps united
through an ancestral temple, but not necessarily living in one community
or even in the same province.

The two latter types, and especially the last, were sometimes de
nominated clans, but from the standpoint of scientific exactitude the
definitions of this term differ so greatly that the word must be used with
caution. Each "clan" was, in turn, made up of smaller family groups.

The cohesion of the groups usually varied inversely with the size, but
even in the largest there was often a strength of co-operation, social control,
and community feeling unknown in the corresponding units of the modern
West.

Of the three characters which usually make up a Chinese name, the
one designating the family was written first, the second was frequently
identical for all cousins of the same generation, and the third was peculiar
to the individual. Sometimes the third character rather than the second
was common to the same generation. Not infrequently the individual had
only a second character in addition to his patronymic. It may be added
that a Chinese male generally bore a cognomen given him in infancy and
a number of other designations, bestowed on him or assumed by him from
time to time in a manner often most confusing to the foreigner. Placing the
family name first, rather than the "given name" as in the West, may indicate
the manner in which in the old China the family was exalted, in contrast
with the individualism of the "Occident.

It must also be noted that a large number of terms were in use corre
sponding to uncle, aunt, cousin, and the like, for the many degrees of rela
tionship. These likewise are often most mystifying to the Westerners.

The family was not of uniform strength throughout China. Nor were the
forms and customs associated with it everywhere the same. In the North,
for example, the "clan" was not, on the whole, as powerful as in the South.
Then, too, even before contact with the Occident brought the startling
changes of the past decades with their many variations from older mores,
some other differences existed. However, while uniformity was not com
plete, customs and ideals tended to be the same the country over. The
almost universal acceptance of Confucianism operated powerfully in this
direction, for Confucian standards of family ethics and relationships were
regarded as authoritative, and customs contained in the classical books
which Confucianism so highly esteemed were thought of as normal.

568 VOLUME II

The ties binding the family together were many. So numerous and so
strong were they that it is not strange that the family was prominent. First
of all, the family exercised certain important functions. Through it were
perpetuated the honors to ancestors stressed by Confucianism and ancient
custom. Upon the maintenance of these ceremonies was believed to depend
the welfare of the dead and the living. The family, too, constituted a kind
of mutual protective association. China has been a nation in which the
individual has found it difficult to stand alone. In a keenly competitive
society organized by groups the man who attempted to make his way
unassisted was more likely than not to be crushed. The family was the
most widely spread of these groups. It was especially adapted to rural
areas and to the villages and small towns whose affiliations with the soil
were very close. Since China was predominantly agricultural, it is not
surprising that the family was prominent. In the larger cities it was not
so outstanding, and other forms of association, such as the guild, tended
to take over some of its functions. When, as was often the case, a family
rose to importance in an urban center, not infrequently it continued rooted
in the soil through membership in a "clan" whose seat was in the country,
or through possession of the favorite form of investment, farming lands.
In the North, where the larger family, or "clan," generally was not as
prominent as in the South, secret societies — another form of mutual pro
tection — flourished. The family also often exercised some of the functions
that in the modern Occident are performed by the government, such as the
settlement of disputes among its members, relief of the poor, and the
maintenance of schools. In many instances, as we have said, the village
government itself was a family affair.

Ethical concepts contributed to the strength of the family. Of the five
relations emphasized by traditional moral standards and reinforced by
Confucianism — those between prince and minister, father and son, older
brother and younger brother, husband and wife, and friend and friend —
three were in the family. Hsiao, usually translated as "filial piety," was
exalted by Confucianism as one of the cardinal virtues. While it included
much more than the family, loyalty to one's parents was part of its essence.
Hsiao seems not to have been stressed in early Confucianism. It came to
prominence in the Former Han and was given currency by examples in
widely told stories and in art. Older brothers had obligations to younger
brothers, and younger brothers owed deference to older brothers. That
official Confucian tract of the Ch'ing dynasty, the so-called Sacred Edict,
was true to tradition when it made family duties primary and urged, as a
motive toward self-control and a righteous life, not allegiance to God but
to one's parents.

In such a society, the institution of marriage was of major importance.
Sons were so indispensable in carrying on the family line and in maintain-

Social Life and Organization 569

ing the honors to ancestors that failure to have them was regarded as a
serious offense against filial piety. Without sons the rites to parents could
not be continued, and not only would the living be disgraced, but the spirits
of the dead, deprived of such service, would be in misery. Marriage, accord
ingly, was practically universal except for a few of the very poor and such
special groups as Buddhist monks and nuns and Taoist ascetics. Even some
of these had been married before entering the religious life. As soon as
possible, sons were supposed to beget sons to maintain family honor and
assure parents of a continuation of the line and of proper reverence to
themselves after death.

Since marriage was so largely for the purpose of perpetuating the family
and the ancestral rites, the mating of couples was regarded as a concern
of the elders and of the family even more than of the two most immediately
involved. Betrothals were arranged by the head or other members of the
family, perhaps the oldest brother, and not infrequently as a result of
consultation among the more influential relatives. Generally the prospective
bride and groom had no voice in the arrangement and had not even seen
each other until the wedding day. Betrothals were often made when the
children were very small, and they could not easily be broken. They were
almost as binding as marriage. In the majority of instances they were ne
gotiated through go-betweens. As a rule they were contracts with pro
visions about property, such as the gifts which were to pass between the
two families, and the amount of furniture and clothing which the bride was
to bring with her. Usually, too, the gifts from the groom's family were
supposed to pay for the bride's equipment. A wealthy father might refuse
gifts from the groom's family and send his daughter to marriage with prop
erty which her husband was to manage but which was to be used toward
the support of her children, and the unconsumed balance of which was
to go to them after her death. In the case of the poor, the betrothed girl
might go to her future husband's home as a servant, her parents being
thus relieved of her support, A marriage could not be contracted between
persons of the same surname, even though no blood relationship existed.
Provided patronymics were different, a marriage could be entered into
between near relatives — for example, between a girl and the son of her
father's sister. Some types of consanguineous marriages, however, were
forbidden. For instance, even distant relatives could not marry if they
belonged to different generations, Often two influential families were allied
to e$eh other by marriage generation after generation. Usually parents
attempted to obtain for a son a wife from a family of equal or superior
social standing and wealth.

Through marriage the bride became a member of her husband's family.
She was taken to her husband's home for the wedding ceremony, and part
of the rite consisted in an obeisance by the two before the groom's ancestral

570 VOLUME ii

tablets. The two made a return visit to her home where they did reverence
to the tablets of her family's ancestors, and soon after the wedding she
made a ceremonial visit to her old home. Her relatives, too, might bring
pressure to bear upon her husband's kinfolk if she was treated with marked
injustice. For better or for worse, however, a wife was linked with her
husband's family. She was especially subject to her husband's mother.
While that rule might prove salutary, particularly in view of the immaturity
of the bride, her need of guidance and control, 'and the necessity of having
a recognized arbiter in households that might include the wives and children
of several sons, mothers-in-law could be tyrannical and make bitter the lot
of their daughters-in-law.

A husband might divorce his wife for certain specific causes: failure
to bear him a male heir, neglect of his parents, a shrewish tongue, theft,
jealousy, an incurable disease, and adultery. But restrictions placed by law
made divorce, in practice, very rare. A wife could not divorce her husband,
and divorce by her husband was regarded as deep disgrace. In case she had
living blood relatives with considerable influence, they might prevent a
divorce — perhaps often more from the fear of loss of "face" or of having
to support her than from affection. The divorced husband might remarry,
but the divorced wife seldom if ever could do so. Both widows and widowers
might remarry, but it was considered a virtue for a widow not to do so.
Then, too, a widow with sons occupied in the household a position of
especial importance and usually was not tempted to sacrifice it, except
because of poverty, by venturing again upon matrimony.

A man could have only one legal wife. However, he might take as
many concubines as he wished and could afford. Concubinage was, there
fore, frequent among the well-to-do. It seems to have been most common
in the families of merchants, at least in some localities. On occasion
officials were dismissed for concubinage. One of two motives were usually
responsible for the acquisition of a concubine: a man might take one in
case his wife failed to bear him a son or in case his wife's sons died, or,
his marriage having been a matter of family convenience and having failed
to result in binding love, he might acquire concubines because of their
personal attractiveness. Sometimes a husband took one or more of his
wife's sisters as concubines. As a rule, however, concubines were from
families socially and economically inferior to that of the wife. Many had
been prostitutes and in that capacity first attracted the attention of their
future spouse. Sometimes a concubine might be held largely as a servant.
To prevent the coming of a rival, a wife without male children might bring
about the adoption of a son. However, concubinage, while by no means
uncommon, was practiced only in a small minority of families. The ap
proximately equal number of men and women in the population and the
poverty of the vast majority would have militated against it even had

Social Life and Organization 571

public opinion been altogether favorable. Promiscuity was far more com
mon among all classes — among the humbler with women of neighbors'
families, among the prosperous with paid prostitutes.

The dissensions and jealousies that frequently accompany concubinage
were familiar features of Chinese households, even though the first and
legal wife was recognized as mistress. However, a man might maintain
entirely separate establishments in different places for his wife and each
concubine, and if all were housed within one enclosure each woman usually
had her distinct apartment and perhaps a separate menage. An able
concubine could exert a good deal of influence, especially if she bore a
son and if she had her own establishment in which she was undisputed
mistress. Usually, however, she was regarded by the community with a
certain amount of contempt, and often there was a feeling that apology
must be made for her. Concubinage was often regarded as the result of
moral weakness on the part of the husband or as a misfortune.

As has been suggested, adoption was frequently practiced as a means
of continuing the family line and perpetuating the honors to ancestors.
A device by no means unknown was to take a male child into the family
after the death of an unmarried son, to go through the form of marrying
the deceased son to a living bride, or perhaps to a dead bride, and then to
regard the adopted child as the son of the departed. In this manner the
family line could be maintained unbroken and the deceased be provided
with an heir to carry on the rites in his honor.

As in all other nations, family life in practice had both its lights and
its shadows. In many homes the pressure of convention and the fear of
public opinion kept an outward semblance of unity, but no love existed
between husband and wife, the husband was tyrannical and the wife a
dispirited patient drudge, or the wife was a termagant and luckless
daughters-in-law led a life little better than slavery. There were homes into
which the husband brought concubine after concubine, adding a fresh
one as his passion cooled toward the last, where children grew up un
disciplined and high ideals were ignored. The arranging of marriages by
the elders without consultation with the couple immediately concerned
led to unhappy situations in which the husband and wife at best never
more than tolerated each other and at the worst lived continuously at
swords' points. The practical universality of marriage forced some, as an
alternative to an unhappy and socially maladjusted celibacy, into an un
fortunate union, perhaps with a physically or mentally defective mate. The
communal holding of property by large families often led to continuous
friction, and the division of the property, when finally effected, frequently
left an aftermath of bitterness. When families made up of several smaller
ones lived together in one homestead, friction between brothers, between
sisters-in-law, and between children was almost inevitable. Moreover, not

572 VOLUME n

infrequently filial piety was scarcely rendered even lip service and parents
were neglected. The family was by no means always stable. In the case
of the very poor, a famine or some other economic calamity might scatter
its members. Civil or foreign war might lay waste whole provinces and
annihilate or break up homes. The death of a parent, especiaUy of the
father, could have something of the same effect. Among poorer families,
daughters might be sold into what is little better than slavery, or even into
prostitution.

On the other hand, there were many homes in which husband and wife
held each other in profound respect and deep affection. In a society in
which boys and girls were prepared by their rearing to expect their elders
to arrange for their mating, and in which education, especially of the girl,
fitted each to fulfill his or her part in wedded life, the existence of happy
homes is not surprising. Moreover, parents with the affection for their
children which has existed in China, probably more frequently than other
wise sought suitable and happy matches for their offspring. Filial piety, too,
had innumerable worthy exponents. The loyalty of sons to parents and
their solicitude for them in times of adversity — as, for example, when a
humble peasant, a famine refugee, was found carrying an aged father or
mother on his back, wandering from Men to Men in search of food — was
fortunately a commonplace. In normal circumstances parents enjoyed a
serene old age, honored by all, with their descendants about them, and
tenderly cared for as declining years brought physical weakness. In many
a homestead successive generations cultivated or supervised the cultivation
of the broad acres of a landed estate, children were taught to obey the
Confucian standards, and intermarriages made ties with similar families
on neighboring estates. From these homes for generations sons went forth
into the public service, winning degrees in the examinations and achieving
creditable official careers, and to them they retired in old age for a few
quiet years before they were gathered to their fathers, confident that their
memory would be kept green by their descendants and their record
emulated. In these households choice libraries were gathered and trans
mitted and works of art were collected. Frequently they had establishments
in the city, shut off by high protecting walls from the noise and dirt of the
narrow streets. Often such a family for a century or more maintained tra
ditions, of scholarship and refinement, combined with devotion to the wel
fare of the Empire and of the local community.

Some urban families largely lost direct contact with rural life, but
the majority kept their roots in the soil. The Chinese family seems to have
been made possible largely by settled agriculture. Certainly it owed much
of its strength to the fact that China's economy was predominantly rural.
The sentimental tie to the ancestral seat was very strong: in thousands of
instances those whose immediate progenitors had lived for a generation

Social Life and Organization 573

or more in another province still reckoned themselves as belonging to the
province and the hsien of their forefathers.

It must not be thought that even the best Chinese families escaped
entirely the vicissitudes which in other lands have brought sorrow and
disintegration. Here, as elsewhere, sons proved unworthy of the high
traditions of their line, families with honorable records died out through
the vices and dissipations of younger members, financial and political
reverses came, and the storm of domestic or foreign war uprooted, pauper
ized, and swept away the substantial elements of whole districts. The family,
however, displayed a remarkable ability to survive. Where else in the world
is there a grave like that of Confucius, dating back into the middle of the
first millennium before Christ and through the centuries cared for by one
claiming lineal descent from that far-off ancestor? Probably in no other
country did so large a proportion of the population take pride in maintain
ing its genealogical records and profess to trace them from so remote an
antiquity.

Manifestly an institution as strong and universal as the Chinese family
could not fail to influence profoundly the ideals and life of the nation. As
we have seen, the state was in part molded by it and was itself regarded
as a huge family, with the Emperor and his officials in loco parentis to the
multitude. In theory the people were to be treated by their political
superiors as children in a well regulated household whose bonds were those
of affection and duty, were to be reasoned with, and were to have force
applied to them only as a last resort. The family made for the rapid multi
plication of the population. The premium on male progeny, universal
marriage, and early wedlock, with the corresponding short interval between
generations, encouraged a high birth rate. Given the absence of modern
sanitation and medicine and the frequency of wars, this was probably an
advantage. Population tended to come back quickly after an epidemic,
a famine, or a war. With the removal of qpy one of these checks, however,
the high birth rate could become a distinct disadvantage. The family, too,
was a conservative institution. Ruled by its elders, it upheld the ideals of
the past and tended to transmit the customs and standards of former gen
erations. Manifestly this had both advantages and disadvantages. It was
a safeguard against disintegration and decay, but it discouraged change,
even when change meant improvement. Along with the political organiza
tion of the Empire and its maintenance of Confucian orthodoxy, the family
was a chief factor making for a relatively static civilization. The family,
moreover, discouraged individualism. Chinese life, as we have seen, was in
groups of many kinds, each of which exercised a restraining influence upon
its members. Of these none was quite so strong the country over as the
family. The contrast between the individualism of the modern Occident and
the lack of it in the old China is striking. In China the individual did not

574 VOLUME II

make his own decisions. With so much of life confined to and controlled by
the family, adjustment to the established group and to its opinion was the
supreme requirement. It was not abstract right, of which the individual
was the judge and for which he was ultimately responsible, but expediency
which governed action. The family was a major obstacle in adopting and
making effective in China some of the institutions of the modern Occident.
For example, loyalty to the family stood in the way of operating efficiently
such typical Western devices as the stock company and a strong govern
ment. The traditional ethics which stressed devotion to one's family often
made it seem natural and moral for an official in a business concern to
bring into lucrative positions as many of his relatives as possible, regard
less of whether they were fitted for them. It also made it seem right to use
public office to restore the family fortunes and appoint relatives to public
posts, even when to do so jeopardized the well-being of the state.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN AND RELATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Closely associated with the family system, and possibly as
one of its corollaries, have been the relations between men and women,
and the position of women. The ceremonies in honor of ancestors con
stituted a cornerstone of the Chinese family. Male progeny was necessary
if these were to be continued. For this reason boys were regarded as more
valuable than girls. To the high esteem for men other factors contributed.
From the economic standpoint boys were preferable. Remaining in the
family as they did, they were producers who throughout their working lives
aided its prosperity. On the other hand, after marriage a girl was lost to
the family which had been to the expense of rearing her. The centuries-old
doctrine of the yin and yang made for the higher status of men, because
the yang, associated with good fortune and all that is desirable, was
identified with the male, and tlje yin, the element of darkness and evil,
was female. Confucianism tended in the same direction, for in addition
to its emphasis upon the rites to ancestors, its world was one which men
controlled. To be sure, Confucius paid great honor to the memory of his
mother — a precedent which helped to accord to motherhood and especially
to those bearing male children a dignified status. However, his example
made for a separate social life for men and women and for confining to
men public offices and the type of education which he gave to his
disciples. It was not that he felt women to be necessarily inferior to men,
but that, conforming to the existing practices of his times, he thought of
the sexes as moving in quite different realms.

Social life knew no free mingling of the sexes on the basis of equality
and respectability. After early childhood, boys and girls did not play
together or have an opportunity to meet in any recognized and proper

Social Life and Organization 575

way. As a result, prostitutes were the only women with whom men could
have free and easy social intercourse.

Girls were generally regarded as much less valuable than boys, and
sayings in common circulation appraised sons as infinitely preferable to
daughters. One such proverb stated in effect that the most beautiful and
gifted girl is not so desirable as a deformed boy. Boys, as children, were
sometimes given girls' names to protect them from evil spirits, who, thereby
supposedly deceived into believing that the child was actually a girl and less
valuable, would pass him by. Among the very poor, the killing of female
infants was by no means unknown. Girls were formerly given a type of
education very different from that of boys. Only relatively infrequently
were they taught to read. In some families with scholarly traditions and
social and official standing a tutor might be employed for the girls and a
father might take pride in the literary attainments of a daughter. Schools,
however, were for boys. This was only natural, for they had as their
primary objective preparation for the civil service examinations, to which
girls were ineligible. The education of the daughter was given in the
home, usually, if there was time, by the mother, and consisted of such
matters as the management of a household and the duties owed to a
husband, a mother-in-law, and others of the husband's relations. Often
a girl was permitted to grow up with but very little care, and such training
as she had, even in her essential domestic duties, was acquired casually and
incidentally, through hard experience, or under the tutelage, often harsh,
of a mother-in-law. In theory the husband was the head of his wife and
the master of the home. The wife had no property of her own, except,
perhaps, some which had been assigned to her by her family at her
wedding, and even that was for the support of her offspring, was managed
by her husband, and on her death went to her children. In practice a wife
of vigorous character was often dominant. By bearing a son a woman
acquired greater importance, and when in the normal course of events she
became a mother-in-law and a grandmother, she was regarded as being
of more and more consequence and was treated with increasing respect.
After death she shared with her husband the honors paid by her sons. A
woman without a son, however, was a reproach among her neighbors and
to her husband, and often without honor or provision for support in her
old age. In ordinary homes, especially of most of the farmers and of the
poor, girls and women led a life of hard labor. In such households — the
vast majority in China — from their earliest possible years children, both
boys and girls, were trained to work at such tasks as watching the cattle
and gathering fuel. To her duties of bearing and rearing children and caring
for the home the wife often added those of helping in the heavy labor in
the fields. The wives of the well-to-do led an easier and even luxurious
existence, but were not therefore necessarily happier. Their seclusion and

576 VOLUME II

idleness encouraged them to seek solace in gambling, opium smoking, and
other vices.

A custom of the old China was binding the feet of women. The practice
was almost universal, although the Hakkas, the Manchus, non-Chinese
tribes, the boat population in the South, and some of the very poor did
not conform with it. The requirement was in no sense religious but was
purely a matter of social convention. A woman without small feet was
regarded as disgraced and it was impossible to get a desirable husband for
her. The process of binding the feet was very painful, involving as it did
the compression of those members by tight bandages into as small a
compass as possible. Infection and gangrene might set in and the girl might
even lose her life. When the binding had once been completed the pain
largely ceased, but walking was difficult, especially for those with very
small feet, and the general effect upon the health was deleterious. At least
one of the Ch'ing Emperors tried to stop the practice, but without avail.
It was not until the disintegration of old customs wrought by the coming
of the West that the foot-binding was given up.

SECRET SOCIETIES

In the old China the family was the strongest universal social
unit. However, as we have seen, it was but one of several types of units.
Another was the secret societies. These played a very important part in
the life of China, much more so than do the numerous fraternal organiza
tions in the United States. Often they were active and influential in
politics. It was estimated that as late as the 1940's about half the adult
males who could lay claim to any influence were members. Almost every
where the secret societies had to be reckoned with by those who would
understand the life of a community. Some of them claimed to have been in
existence for hundreds of years. Certainly organizations of this general
type long had a share in Chinese life. The Red Eyebrows and Yellow
Turbans, prominent in civil wars in Han times, appear to have been
fraternal bodies. Repeatedly in seasons of disorder others came to the
fore. Since the societies were secret, it is impossible to give a full and
satisfactory account of them. Sometimes they had religious features. Often
they had solemn and binding vows of brotherhood, and they might have
secret codes. Frequently, too, their discipline was very severe, exacting" of
members strict obedience to the commands of their officers. Some are still
to be found among the Chinese abroad .and fill a prominent role in the lives
of the emigrants.

One of the most famous and powerful of the secret societies was the
Ko Lao Hui, or Association of Elder Brothers. It was said to have had an
elaborate ritual and its members were reported to have taken an oath of

Social Life and Organization 577

brotherhood. It was believed to have been responsible for numerous out
breaks and riots. It was much feared, and revenge visited for any violence
to its members added to the dread felt for it. Chapters of another, the Red
Spears, were often started as a farmer's protective society. Then ruffians
frequently obtained the weapons and the power, and compelled all residents
to join and pay fees or submit to their demands; struggles ensued with
adjacent groups or with the authorities, and disorder was accentuated.
Still another was the Triad Society (San Ho /M), also known as the
Hung Society and the Society of Heaven and Earth. How far back it went
is uncertain, but it was implicated in more than one rebellion and probably
appeared under various guises and aliases. It was organized by individual
chapters as well as by a general brotherhood. Opposed to the Manchus,
it was associated with the beginnings of the T'ai P'ing Rebellion. The
White Lily and the White Cloud Societies were also famous. Both probably
originated near the beginning of the twelfth century. Both appear to have
been founded by Buddhist monks and were originally religious and
Buddhist in character. Both repeatedly fell afoul of the state and were re
sponsible for outbreaks, some of them of serious dimensions.

Secret societies played an important part in politics. In the 1930's and

1940's it was said to be impossible for an aspirant for power in the state

long to be successful without membership in one of them. As a rule a man

' joined only one. A connection with more than one was said to work dis-

advantageously for him.

At the outset numbers of the societies possessed no political purpose.
They were religious associations, or business or benevolent organizations,
for the benefit and reciprocal protection of their members. Inevitably,
however, many were sooner or later drawn into politics — perhaps captured
by an ambitious leader who wished to use them for his ends, or regarded
with suspicion by the state and proscribed and so forced into revolt, or,
wishing to protect a member or members, compelled by force of circum
stances to exert political pressure.

OTHER FORMS OF ASSOCIATION

There were associations which remained largely or entirely
nonpolitical in character. Such were the many societies where the religious
purpose continued dominant, the guilds, the groups for the co-operative
saving and lending of money (in which every member put in a sum —
perhaps in monthly installments — and the total principal was loaned to
each in turn, the order being often determined by lot), the clubs whose
purpose it was to make pilgrimages to sacred mountains and to accumulate
funds to make these pilgrimages possible for their members, the widespread
organizations of farmers for the protection of growing crops, the associa-

578 VOLUME II

tions by which farmers aided each other in the irrigation of their fields,
the co-operatives formed to assist their members in financing and perform
ing the rites connected with death and burial, and the benevolent societies
of many kinds — for maintaining soup kitchens and lodging houses for the
needy, for providing coffins and burial for the very poor, for resuscitating
drowning people, and for the relief of indigent widows. The benevolent
societies were largely, although by no means entirely, of Buddhist origin.
For instance, the Shanghai General Benevolent Society, run by Buddhists,
at one time had an annual budget of about 500,000 yuan each year, buried
about 30,000 bodies found in the streets and the river, and maintained
"homes," hospitals, and schools.

The Chinese have had a traditional capacity for organization and mass
action. Dissension there might be and often was in their many associa
tions, but co-operation was long the rule and they acted almost instinctively
in that manner. Even the thieves and the beggars possessed their groupings.
Officials, through their underlings, kept in touch with the thieves' "guild"
in each community and were able, on occasion, to exert sufficient pressure
on it to bring about the restoration of stolen property. Sometimes beggars
picketed and so prevented customers from entering a shop which refused to
contribute the customary fee to their guild. On at least two occasions the
fishermen of Ningpo were able, by blockading the river and cutting off all
entrance and egress by water, to compel the officials to withdraw a tax to
which they objected. Several times a guild used a strike or a riot to force the
public authorities to rescind a regulation or an assessment which it be
lieved was unjust. Group opinion, often general enough to deserve the
title of public opinion, repeatedly brought irresistible pressure upon the
individual or the government. At times even the throne had to bow to it.

Clearly, therefore, the individual who attempted to stand alone found
his path thorny. Chinese society was an interplay of groups, some of them
united by blood, some by economic ties, and some by political, professional,
or religious interests. By the custom of "sworn brotherhood," men not
otherwise bound to each other pledged reciprocal fidelity, perhaps pro
fessing to hark back for a precedent to the famous "Peach Garden Oath"
taken during the Three Kingdoms by Lui Pei, Chang Fei, and Kuan Yu.
It is believed that it was such a relationship which in 1898 led Yuan
Shih-k'ai to reveal to Jung Lu the Kuang Hsu Emperor's plan of action
and so precipitated the fateful coup d'etat of September of that year.

All these many kinds of associations made Chinese society extraordi
narily complex. They are one reason why the uninitiated foreigner found
particular problems and situations in politics and business so difficult to
understand. Even an intelligent Chinese frequently failed to know all the
elements involved.

Marked skill was developed in effecting compromises and adjustments

Social Life and Organization 579

among the many groups, and secret parleys and intrigues flourished, Not
only must the individual, if he were to succeed and often if he were even
to survive, associate himself with as strong a group or groups as possible,
but he had frequently to be an adept at playing off one against another and
at diplomacy, perhaps underhanded and tortuous. This may help to account
for that foreign policy for which the Chinese Government was noted in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — of seeking to save itself by pitting
powers against one another and entering into secret treaties. It was part of
the struggle for survival in which the Chinese had been drilled from in
fancy. In such a society, moreover, the forthright person was often at a dis
advantage, and he who would stand against convention and the group
might be given short shrift.

Still another side of the picture must not be forgotten. Many, both
foreigners and Chinese, regarded the Chinese as unsuccessful at co-opera
tion. They pointed out that much of existing concerted action was under
the pressure of strong necessity, that in such matters as schools, bridges,
and roads co-operation was either weak or entirely lacking, that many
associations were inaugurated only to disintegrate almost before they had
begun, that reciprocal distrust existed, that most Chinese found it impossible
to believe that the organizer was acting from sincere public spirit, that joint
action was fully as often for destruction or self-protection as for public
welfare, and that stable working-together for purposes of public value was
discouragingly rare. However, successes in co-operation were also facts.
The Chinese, like other peoples, often displayed contradictory traits.

THE STRATIFICATIONS OF SOCIETY

In spite of the strength of the family tie and of all these many
organizations, Chinese society was characterized by a remarkable minimum
of hard and fast class divisions. The sharp distinction between the aristocrat
and the commoner which seems to have existed at the dawn of China's
history largely disappeared— possibly shattered in the prolonged disorders
which brought the Chou dynasty to an end and further erased by the
autocrats who built the Ch'in and the Han. An hereditary aristocracy was
manifestly an obstacle to the absolutism which the latter sought to establish.
The bureaucracy of the Ch'in displaced the old hereditary particularism.
Semi-independent states tended to appear once more during the initial
years of the Han, but the creation by the monarchs of that dynasty of a
ruling bureaucracy, appointment to which was on the basis of worth rather
than birth, checked the movement. The continued development under later
dynasties of a system of choosing officials from those who had proven their
worth in the free competition of the public examinations militated against
the formation of an hereditary ruling caste. At least under the Ch'ing

580 VOLUME II

these tests were open to the majority regardless of birth. Only members
of a few occupations, such as actors, were excluded. Admission to the
aristocracy of intellect, which so dominated the life of the nation, could
be had by rich and poor alike. The entire family and even the city of a
successful scholar shared in his fame. Under a system by which — in theory
— wealth, social position, and power went to the ablest, a certain amount
of fluidity existed and a general and continuous leveling process was seen
which discouraged class lines. Even when, as was usually the case, the
relatives of the Emperor formed a privileged group, the whirligig of time
displaced them with another governing line. The rebellions and civil strife
so characteristic of Chinese history provided an additional avenue by which
men of force could come to the front, regardless of birth and even of
education.

The system did not entirely eliminate the divisions wrought by heredity.
Many families possessed traditions of education, good breeding, inherited
wealth, and devotion to public service from which their scions derived
a decided advantage in the competition in the examination stalls and in
obtaining office. Members of these houses naturally were inclined to inter
marry. Under the Later Han, it will be recalled, certain powerful families,
rooted in the Confucian tradition and interlocked by marriage, for a time
formed a kind of ruling class. A somewhat similar aristocracy arose in the
period of division between the Han and the T'ang. Apparently through
the centuries almost every community had its "first families" who were
looked up to and accorded leadership in local affairs. This fluctuated, as in
all countries., and it was an exceptional district or town which had not
known instances of the rise and fall of a great house. Indeed, it was so
usual as to become proverbial. On the other hand, a few paternal lines
were accorded recognition over the course of the centuries. Such was that
of Confucius. Moreover, the Han and succeeding dynasties did not entirely
abolish all hereditary rank. For example, the Ch'ing, although it made a
fairly clean sweep of claims to titles existing at its accession, had its own
nobles. A large proportion of them were Manchus, but some were Chinese.
However, apparently as a safeguard against sedition through an hereditary
caste, only some of the titles were granted in perpetuity, and most of these
were held by Manchus. While as a rule high offices in the Empire carried
with them a title or titles, and in some instances the recipient's forefathers
were made to share in the award by the posthumous grant of rank for
several generations backr the honors usually did not descend to the sons.
The heirs either were commoners or were given titles of progressively
lower degree for each succeeding generation until the family found itself
once more among the undistinguished.

Major occupational groups were accorded a traditional gradation.
Scholars came first, as might be expected in an order whose theory it

Social Life and Organization 581

was that society should be controlled by those educated in the lore and
the virtues of civilized humanity. Teachers were regarded as one of the
five objects of worship, the others being Heaven, Earth, the Emperor, and
parents. Next came the farmers, for they produced the food upon which
mankind depended for sustenance. Third were the artisans, for they also
were producers. Merchants were classified as fourth, for they made their
profits by exchanging the fruits of other men's toil. Officials belonged to
the scholar class and often felt it beneath them to intermarry with families
engaged in trade. A bourgeoisie did not develop from merchants and
employers, as in the Occident. A merchant class arose during the Sung,
especially during the Southern Sung. It seems to have been stimulated by
the opportunity for trade given by the wide-flung Mongol Empire. In Ming
times the eunuchs appear to have sought allies among the merchants to
offset the scholars who fought the control of the throne by eunuchs. Mer
chants also formed connections through marriage with scholar-officials.

The population that lived in boats on the south coast, actors, prostitutes,
eunuchs, the underlings or "runners" in official yamens, and slaves were
held to be markedly inferior socially. Eunuchs fared badly at the hands
of the scholars, who were their rivals and who wrote the histories. Many
eunuchs were highly educated and schools for them existed.

Slavery was never as extensive or prominent as in the Roman Empire.
Few if any great estates were cultivated by nonfree labor. Slaves were
used, if at all, chiefly in household service. Moreover, slavery was not
associated with a racial distinction, as in the case of the American Negro,
Most of the slaves seem to have been individuals of Chinese stock who
through some misfortune, usually economic, had fallen to that status.
The poor, for example, might sell their daughters, especially in time of
famine. Household slaves were predominantly women and girls. It was
because girls were regarded less highly than boys that they were the
members of the family sold first. They led a hard life, but public opinion
generally acted as a restraint on excessive cruelty. Slave girls might be
taken as concubines, or more frequently be married off to poorer men of
the neighborhood.

Beggars were a numerous and well recognized portion of the commu
nity. People were driven into mendicancy by a variety of causes. In the case
of many, illness or an accident incapacitated the sufferers for ordinary
employment, and in default of friends or family who could give financial
support the beggar's life offered the only escape from starvation. The
blind were peculiarly unfortunate. No public institutions cared for them
and no schools existed where they could be taught to read. It was not
until Christian missionaries devised a system for them that they could
read at all. At best they could only eke out a precarious existence as
public entertainers, storytellers, or musicians. Many beggars became such

582 VOLUME II

because of the famines prevalent in China. Sometimes mendicancy was only
temporary. In other instances it became permanent and professional.

Some other divisions there were. We have seen the distinctions between
the Hakkas and their neighbors, between Moslems and non-Moslems, and
between the Chinese and the aboriginal tribes. A great deal of local feeling
existed. Natives of one province living in another were often regarded
almost as foreigners.

In spite of all these divisions, the Chinese, as we have said more
than once, never developed such hard and fast caste lines as existed in
India. Intermarriages occurred between many of the groups. Even from
the most despised classes escape was sometimes achieved.

Some public and private attention was given to the unfortunate mem
bers of society, but philanthropy did not construct such large institutions
as in the modern West or even as in the Europe of the Middle Ages. In a
good many cities there were hospitals for foundlings, some of them sup
ported both by private subscriptions and by state funds. Soup kitchens
were frequently maintained for the destitute. Famine relief was carried
on both by private agencies and by the government. The state granaries
especially were long a means of relieving acute distress. Some refuges
were maintained where lepers could be segregated and given care. Beggars
were recognized as possessing a claim on the community, and custom
accorded their organizations a right to regular contributions from such
property-holders as shopkeepers.

On the other hand, a great deal of callousness to human suffering and
much cruelty existed, reminiscent of the West before the humanitarian
movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The motives impelling assistance in relief activities were mixed: in
part the native milk of human kindness, in part the hope of accumulating
merit in a future life (a Buddhist importation), in part the standards incul
cated by Confucianism, and in part (as in the case of payments to the
beggars' guilds) the desire to be relieved of further requests from the
unfortunate.

RULES AND PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL INTERCOURSE

The Chinese, like every other civilized people, developed con
ventions for social intercourse, for easing the jars that are inevitable
where human beings have to live with one another, and for promoting
those amenities which are among the marks of culture.

Underneath the many conventions were certain principles. One of
these was an emphasis upon correct form. We have seen that from very
early times the Chinese stressed ceremonies. Confucianism especially made
for the perpetuation and strengthening of this tradition. The Li Chi,

Social Life and Organization 583

or Book of Rites, was one of the five Ching, or Classics, most honored
by the Confucian school, and other ancient collections on ritual, the / Li
and the Chou Li, were highly esteemed. Li} which included not only
religious ceremonies but also many social conventions, was regarded
as one of the distinguishing characteristics of civilization. Right motives
in carrying out the // were looked upon as important, but careful observ
ance of form was valued fully as highly. The correct performance of the li
was believed to have important moral values and to be an indispensable
feature of education and social control. The disregard of Westerners for
Chinese li and the differences between the conventions of the Occident and
China were long among the major factors making for irritation in official
and unofficial intercourse between Westerners and Chinese.

Another important principle was "face." "Face" in the Chinese sense
was not always easy of definition. It could best be described through
specific illustrations. A servant in a foreign household was told that the
sugar under his charge was disappearing rather more rapidly than it
ought. He saw that he was being accused, very indirectly, of appropriating
it. He suggested a device for safeguarding it against possible intruders
from the street, although he knew that his master was aware that no
such pilfering by strangers was possible. Both he and his master, how
ever, acted as though the suggestion was made in good faith, and the
desired results were accomplished. The sugar no longer disappeared and
the servant's face was saved. In one of the kaleidoscopic political changes
of the twentieth century the personnel of a committee in charge of a public
fund became objectionable to a new government. To save the face of its
members, the committee was induced to meet and to offer its resignation.
Then, in open session, the official most responsible for the resignation
presided and urged the members to reconsider and retain their posts. They
insisted on adhering to their original decision, and with outward reluctance,
their resignations were accepted. Every one recognized that the procedure
was staged to save the face of those dismissed, but the amenities were
observed. A distinguished Chinese who spoke no English was unavoidably
placed at dinner next to a foreign host who knew very little Chinese. The
host did his best to maintain a conversation. The Chinese, without giving
the least appearance of amusement, annoyance, or condescension, quickly
adjusted himself to his host's limited vocabulary and spoke slowly. An
intermittent if somewhat restricted conversation was carried on, an embar-
raising situation was eased, and the host's face was saved. None of this
was so very different from what is repeatedly done in other lands. It arose
in part from a respect for personality and from the principle that an
essential of good manners is sparing one's neighbor from injured feelings
and public humiliation. In the old China, however, "face" was carried to
a greater extreme than in some other countries. Certainly it had to be

584 VOLUME ii

reckoned with as a prime factor in the intercourse between China and
the Powers. In the long controversy in the last century over the recep
tion of foreign envoys at court, the Chinese were chiefly concerned that
the appearance should be preserved of the traditional superiority of the
Emperor over all other monarchs, although all informed officials knew
it to be a fiction. In the conflicts over the "unequal" clauses in the treaties,
especially extraterritoriality, it was the loss of face involved that was
most galling to the Chinese. If only face could be preserved, all sorts of
adjustments and compromises could be privately and unobtrusively agreed
upon.

This emphasis on the face of the nation was accentuated by the intense
pride of the Chinese. They long regarded themselves as the dispensers
of civilization and most of the rest of mankind as barbarians. It entailed
much humiliation to confess, even tacitly, that the old culture had to be
modified or abandoned. Even among Western-trained men there remained
some contempt for the Westerner and a feeling that the latter could never
fully understand or rightly interpret the Chinese civilization that was
passing.

The emphasis on face may be due to the fact that the Chinese, even
more than some other peoples, have had the attitude of actors. The theatre
has long been one of their favorite recreations, and even the humblest
laborer has been skilled in assuming a role. Two laborers might have
an altercation, storming at each other and seemingly intent on flying at
each other's throats, and yet allow the bystanders to hold them back and
eventually to make peace between them.

Another possible reason for face was the fact that in a crowded
society such as was the old China a man's future depended on preserving
a satisfactory station. It was not easy for him to go elsewhere, as he might
in a fluid frontier society, to make a new start. Moreover, his family shared
in any disgrace that might come to him.

The .importance given to face may have been in part the result of
the sensitivity of the Chinese. Some observers have declared that Chinese
men seem to have many of the temperamental qualities which in the Occi
dent are deemed feminine. However, this distinction may not be so great
as appears at first sight. After all, Westerners attach an immense amount
of importance to what they call "honor."

In such a society the place of the middleman was important. A neigh
bor or a group of neighbors might tender their good offices in adjusting a
quarrel in which each antagonist would be sacrificing his face by taking the
first step in approaching the other. The wise intermediary could effect
the reconciliation while preserving the dignity of both.

It is obvious, too, that compromise had to be a major feature of the
social relations of such a people. In any dispute the reputations of both
parties must, if possible, be preserved. Public opinion would regard unkindly

Social Life and Organization 585

a contestant who caused an adversary too great loss of face. To bring a
difference into court would prove expensive and might be ruinous to
both litigants. If possible, then, a settlement had to be reached by private,
extralegal means. Several peacemakers might offer their services and the
final adjustment would probably be a modification of the original demands,
with some reward for the middleman, possibly in the form of a feast at
the expense of one of the parties.

The regard for face may have been responsible for the dislike of the
Chinese for the use of physical violence. Such violence was by no means
unknown, but it was not held in the honor that it has been in some coun
tries of the Occident. Dueling was not a polite art. Boxing and fencing
existed, but rather as forms of physical exercise for one person and as
gymnastic exhibitions than as real fighting. A man gave great offense by
laying hold on another with the object of exerting force. Two members of
the lower classes might revile each other publicly for half an hour or
more, and even spit on each other, without coming to blows.

While the Chinese regarded the use of physical violence in a quarrel
as a breach of good breeding, they thought of suicide as an honorable
means of protest. By committing suicide an aggrieved party could bring
opprobrium upon his enemy and cause the latter costly embarrassment
with officials and neighbors.

Dignity was regarded as one of the marks of a gentleman. Rapid
walking, loud talking, and violently abusive language were thought of as
derogatory to it. A Chinese might be bland and affable even to a person
whom he heartily disliked, and it was often difficult to know from his
calm or even genial exterior what were his real thoughts. However, in
this, it may be noted again, he was no different from cultivated members
of other civilized communities.

The Chinese are, as has been suggested, extremely sensitive. There are,
to be sure, phlegmatic souls. Foreign physicians in China have testified
to the relative insensitivity and physiological-neurological stolidity of
the great majority of their patients. Much cheerfulness exists, even among
the very poor, and an immense amount of patient persistence in the face of
hardship and discouragement. A vivid illustration of this has repeatedly
been seen in the return of farmers to fields wasted by flood, drought, civil
strife, or foreign invasion, and the resolute resumption of the normal
processes of cultivation. Particularly in the South, however, and among
the educated, there has been much quickness of response to an emotional
stimulus. A keen sense of humor gives a hearty reaction to the funny
or the ridiculous. There has been, also, an equally strong dislike of a loss
of face through seeming to be ridiculous. Many Chinese, moreover, have
been subject to spasms of anger. The educated might keep these under
control, but those without the restraints of convention and training not
infrequently gave way to them. Such a seizure usually vented itself in

586 VOLUME II

violently pouring forth voluble and explicit denunciations and charac
terizations of the morals and qualities of the offending party and of his or
her ancestors, and in calling down on the head of the offender the unhap-
piest and most lurid fate which the imagination of the injured could invent.
Two women or two men might thus berate each other until each was
exhausted.

Chinese have been extremely subject to mob psychology. Mass feel
ing could develop very quickly — fear, hostility, or mere excitement. Indi
viduals have often found it difficult to stand out against the crowd. Chinese,
indeed, have sometimes been accused of cowardice. However, many excep
tions to the rule could be instanced by any experienced observer. So far
as failure boldly to dissent from the group exists — and it has been
very common — it may in part arise from a lack of individual self-reliance,
from habituated fear of collective social pressure, and from the absence
of strong motives apart from conventional ones.

It may have been due to this regard for face and this sensitiveness that
another characteristic of Chinese intercourse developed, a dislike for
bluntness and abruptness and the consequent indirect approach to a subject.
A caller coming with a request to prefer or an awkward subject to broach
might talk at length about entirely irrelevant matters before stating the
main object of his visit and then perhaps leave it to be inferred by more
or less delicate hints. Or an educated man, feeling it to be beneath his
dignity to show anger at an offense, might express his displeasure or
return an insult through an obscure literary allusion. All this could prove
costly in time, but that was regarded as of small consequence. The for
eigners' directness of speech and anxious economy of hours and minutes
seemed to the Chinese crude and curious Westernisms, unless he himself
had become so Occidentalized as to have acquired them.
The etiquette which the Chinese developed for social intercourse was,
as it existed before the changes by contact with the West, elaborate and
intricate. To the uninstructed foreigner it was often bewildering. There was
the custom of speaking deprecatingly of anything connected with oneself
and in praise of everything belonging to the person with whom one was
talking. Thus in meeting a stranger it was proper to ask his "honorable
name," and in response to a similar inquiry to apprise him of one's
"unworthy name." In addressing a superior or one older than oneself,
it was good form to remove one's glasses. One did not shake hands with
those whom he met, but clasped his own hands, possibly shaking them and
making a bow— more or less profound as the occasion demanded. The
Chinese bow, especially of the more profound kind, required practice and
was a work of art. In offering or receiving objects it was proper to do so
only with both hands. The seat of honor was on the left of the host, but he
who was asked to take it, especially if others were present, did so, if at
all, only after protesting his unworthiness and after one or more refusals.

Social Life and Organization 587

So with going through doors: it was proper to urge the other to proceed
first. Affability and genial good temper were expected in social intercourse
and any departure from them was considered boorish. Self-control was
highly esteemed, even though temperamentally many of the Chinese have
been excitable. The serving of tea was part of the ritual of every call,
whether for business or pleasure. Usually a request from one's host to drink
one's tea was a sign that the interview was at an end. Certain inquiries were
considered proper which in the Occident are usually thought of as imperti
nent, such as one's age and income. In meeting a friend or acquaintance in
the street, if he was mounted or in a sedan chair, courtesy required that
recognition be avoided. Otherwise good form would necessitate his stopping,
dismounting, and going through the greetings which convention prescribed.
The giving and receiving of presents were regulated by conventions which
indicated when a gift should be offered or accepted, and if accepted, how
much of it should be sent back and what should be given in return. In
eating, spoons and what the foreigner calls chopsticks were used and the
food brought on in such a state that it could be easily handled by these
implements. To the Chinese of the old school the Western custom of
bringing meat to the table in great lumps and then dismembering it with
knife and fork must have appeared quite barbarous. Calling cards were
much larger than those now in use in the West. The possession of one by
a person other than the owner was supposed to be evidence of authoriza
tion to act as a messenger or agent. Dress was carefully regulated, various
forms of garb being prescribed for different occasions. Some of the customs
were confusing to the foreigner and even amusing, but they were means,
as are polite conventions in all lands, of keeping society moving pleasantly
and with the minimum of friction.

Perhaps here should also be mentioned the custom of gratuities to
servants and to those in other positions who had been of use to one.
Such gifts were expected. It was customary for servants and others to
take a proportion of what passed through their hands — "squeeze," as the
foreigner denominated it. The proportion was not always standardized, and
the practice easily admitted of abuses. Squeeze, however, was esteemed
a legitimate perquisite of position, from that of a servant to that of an
official high in the public service, and unless excessive was not regarded
as in any way dishonest.

RECREATION AND AMUSEMENTS

Closely associated with social intercourse and, indeed, often
as phases of it, were recreations and amusements. They profoundly affected
the characteristics of the nation — or, perhaps, they were expressions of
those characteristics or were both cause and effect.

One of the features of the life of the China of the nineteenth century

588 VOLUME II

which impressed the Westerner was the slight emphasis upon athletics.
Archery held a recognized place, especially in the preparation and drill
of the soldier. Hunting had its devotees. There were professional acrobats.
Shadow boxing was much enjoyed. Many boys displayed skill in keeping
a shuttlecock in the air with their feet, and engaged in swimming, wrestling,
boxing, flying kites, and fishing. However, archery was regarded as primarily
an occupation of the warrior. Hunting as a vigorous sport was largely
confined to the Manchus — a heritage from energetic days before their
conquest of China — and died out among them as the influence of sedentary
life and of the Chinese environment progressively became more potent.
For the great majority of the Chinese physical exertion was associated
with labor, and escape from it was deemed desirable. Games involving
vigorous physical effort were not widely approved. Sports which in the
Occident have been thought of as befitting the aristocracy — such as hunting,
football, cricket, and tennis — would have been frowned upon in China in
recent centuries. This had not always been true. In more than one dynasty
hunting constituted a favorite diversion of the court and aristocracy. Polo,
of foreign origin, in T'ang times was followed ardently in imperial circles
by both men and women. However, by the latter part of the nineteenth
century interest in such strenuous diversion had largely died out even
among the once hardy Manchus. The passion for such spectacles as the
Olympic games of Greece, the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome, the
tourneys of the European Middle Ages, and the bull fights and the foot
ball and baseball matches of modern Europe and America were quite
alien to Chinese custom.

The contrast between China and the West may have been due in part
to a difference in the ideals of the dominant classes. In the West the aris
tocracy has traditionally been the military. Preparation for fighting and
the bodily skill and fitness derived from appropriate sports have been
accepted as an essential part of the training and life of the gentleman.
The lower classes have naturally taken their cue from the aristocracy,
and the tradition has passed over to the influential middle classes and the
democracies of recent years. In China, on the other hand, it was the
Confucian scholar who set the standard, and the fighting man and his works
were at best regarded as necessary evils. By tradition the Confucian scholar
did not take kindly to vigorous physical exertion, even though Confucius
himself practiced archery and is said to have hunted. The scholar usually
confined his exercise to a slow, dignified walk, or he might engage in such
an unenergetic diversion as taking a pet bird out for an airing, possibly
throwing seeds for it to catch.

With this kind of example set from above, the amusements of the
populace tended to be of the same sort. Flying kites was popular, at
least vin certain places and seasons. Crickets were induced to fight one
another.

Social Life and Organization 589

Gambling provided one of the most prevalent forms of diversion
and for it many devices existed. The contests between the gladiatorial
crickets usually had wagers placed on the outcome. There were many
games of chance. Counters or cards roughly resembling dominoes in
size were used for several of them. In the Occident a few decades ago,
one, mah jong, enjoyed a sudden popularity and suffered almost as
sudden a demise. Sets of cards were employed for centuries and were
of several varieties. Fantan was played with coins. A pile of them was
covered with a bowl and the participants registered wagers on the remainder
— three, two, one, nothing — which would be left after the whole had been
divided by four. From time to time the government attempted to stamp
out gambling, but its efforts were in vain. All classes, from the highest
official circles to the poorest laborers, indulged in it.

A center of gossip and a place for spending the idle and lighter hours
was the tea shop. Here, over a cup of that innocuous beverage, neighbors
or casual acquaintances exchanged news. Here, too, came the professional
storyteller with his entertaining narratives.

It may be noted that the Chinese have not been so addicted to the
excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks as have been some of the
Northern European peoples. Fermented liquors have been used widely
and for centuries. That most generally seen was derived from rice and
was distilled — once, and for stronger brands twice and even three times.
Drunkenness has been by no means unknown. There even seem to have
been periods, as under the T'ang, when it was fairly prevalent. In the nine
teenth century, however, it was not nearly as common as in the England
or the United States of that time. In the nineteenth and twentieth cen
turies opium played a part in China somewhat like that which liquor
has had in Anglo-Saxon lands. Its moderate use was very widespread and
excessive indulgence in it was all too common — to the moral, physical,
and financial undoing of its victims and the sorrow and suffering of their
relatives and dependents. As has been noted in earlier chapters, the
rapid rise in the consumption of opium was due in large part to trade
with Westerners and was associated with the commercial invasion of the
Occident. Opium has been produced extensively in China, however. The
reason for the popularity of opium in China — greater than in any other
large nation — is not entirely clear. Obviously it is at least partly because
it provides a temporary escape from unpleasant realities and a surcease
from care, much as alcoholic beverages do for many other folk.

Tobacco was extensively smoked. The familiar Chinese pipe had a very
small bowl, holding only enough of the weed for a whiff or two. Men and
women, especially elderly people, formerly sat by the hour alternately
filling their pipes (or having it done for them by servants), lighting them,
smoking, and then knocking out the ashes.

Still other types of recreation have been feasting (an accompaniment

590 VOLUME II

of many social events, such as weddings, and of many business trans
actions), watching processions, reading novels and stories, singing with or
without the accompaniment of musical instruments, retailing and exchang
ing gossip, resorting to clairvoyants, watching marionettes and jugglers,
attending village fairs (at which plays have often been shown), visiting
temples, automatic writing through what corresponds to the planchette,
and simply frequenting crowded places.

THE THEATRE

The drama has had a great fascination for the Chinese and
has been and is a familiar feature of their life. We have already seen
something of its history. Pantomimes with music were in existence in early
historic times as a means of commemorating the deeds and the memory
of ancestors. There were plays in the Han, probably of a simple type,
and a further development occurred in the T'ang and the Sung. A note
worthy and rather sudden flowering of dramatic genius came under the
Mongols. Both under the Ming and the Ch'ing new styles of plays and of
the accompanying music appeared. In the nineteenth century a very large
number of plays were written.

The theatre was one of the most potent agencies for popular educa
tion. To the masses, almost or entirely illiterate, as the large majority of
them were, the written character could not provide a direct medium of
instruction. Every one, however, could see a play. In the cities and large
towns buildings were constructed specifically for the drama. These, how
ever, were not as numerous as might be supposed. In Nanking, for example,
in the twentieth century before the days of the cinema, only two theatres
existed and these were not regularly open. Temples were often used for
dramatic performances, even when the plays contained little or nothing
immediately connected with religion. Frequently a raised platform over a
street or in a field served for a stage. At the periodical fairs in market
towns and on other special occasions a performance err series of perform
ances by a dramatic troupe was a usual part of the program. Since many
of the plays had historical themes, and the great virtues, such as filial
piety, were often extolled and vividly illustrated, and vice was represented
as punished, the populace obtained some idea, even though in distorted
and more than semifictional form, of their country's past, and saw ortho
dox morals held up for praise.

The main features of the theatre can be fairly quickly described.
The buildings designed especially for the theatre were Elizabethan in
their simplicity, except when, as in some instances in recent decades,
they were affected by the modern West. At one end of the building was a
raised platform for the stage. In front of this was the main floor, with

Social Life and Organization 591

benches, or with backless chairs clustered around little tables, and on three
sides a gallery, also with seats. Formerly men and women were usually,
although not always, in different parts of the house. During the progress
of the play attendants moved about the audience with tea and food or with
towels wrung out of hot water, with which hands and face were wiped.
Individuals entered and left at will and carried on conversations during
the performance.

Very little scenery was employed — perhaps a table and a few chairs
and at times a rude painting of a city wall and gate. Much was left to
the imagination of the audience, assisted by conventional and therefore
well understood motions of the actors. As the actor stooped, the audience
perceived that he was entering a door, even though no building was
apparent. Certain gestures indicated that he was mounting his steed,
although no horse was there. In contrast with the scenery, the costumes
were often rich and elaborate, and masks were much in evidence. Here
again convention was followed. A character carrying a wand tipped with
white horse-tail hair was known to represent a supernatural being. A red
mask proclaimed the wearer to be of an upright character and a black
one was worn by those of cruel and severe dispositions. The painting of
faces was closely governed by custom and the audience resented any
departure from what was expected in the make-up of a particular charac
ter. During the course of the play attendants moved about the stage
rearranging the chairs and tables and perhaps serving the actors with
tea. Much of the acting consisted of postures and gestures which again
were governed by convention. To perform them correctly and gracefully
in a manner acceptable to a critical audience required both ability and
practice.

The themes of the plays varied greatly. They included comedy and
tragedy, avowed fiction and historical episodes. A favorite period from
which to draw stories was the Three Kingdoms, perhaps in part because
of the popularity of the famous novel with that title. Some of the plays
were long but others were very short. Performances might be given after
noon and evening and might last for six or seven hours. In both, how
ever, it was usual to present several plays, or, perhaps, famous scenes
from some of the longer ones. In a play singing, spoken dialogue, and
dancing (or posturing) might all be found. There was, too, a type of
acrobatic posturing representing fighting.

Some of the theatrical troupes were large, with fifty or a hundred
members. Others, usually itinerant, were small, sometimes with only two
members. Although actors were regarded as socially inferior and were
usually recruited from the lower classes, some achieved great popularity.
The training was prolonged and exacting. Usually it began in early youth,
and those who took it served a kind of apprenticeship. At least during

592 VOLUME II

the nineteenth century women did not customarily appear on the stage —
a ruling which was said to date from the time of the Ch'ien Lung Emperor
— and men took women's parts. Some men became extraordinarily skillful
in female roles. In the twentieth century there were companies made
up entirely of women, in which the members displayed marked talent
in portraying men.

There was a kind of little theatre in the form of puppet shows, in
which marionettes were moved about by the operator and the various
parts were spoken by the same expert individual. Some marionettes were
controlled by strings, some were costumed dolls, and others were trans
lucent and painted, a kind of "shadow doll."

The theatre has been immensely popular, and while in other days
an occasional magistrate attempted to prohibit performances, presumably
because he believed the money spent on them might more profitably have
been invested elsewhere, such efforts seldom if ever received the support
of the public. Perhaps as a result Chinese have seemed to take almost
instinctively to acting a part in social intercourse, and have had a pen
chant for dramatizing themselves and incidents in which they have been
vitally concerned.

With all this emphasis on the theatre, it must be noted that drama
in China appears never to have risen to the heights in the portrayal of
character and in dealing with some of the persistent problems of human
life and destiny that it did in ancient Greece and that it has in some
countries of the modern West. The Chinese have not been blind to these
questions and have thought on them profoundly and with acumen. For an
expression of their meditations and conclusions on these issues, how
ever, they have chosen other vehicles, notably philosophy. Drama, there
fore, did not occupy the prominent place in serious Chinese literature that
it has held in some lands of the Occident. In China the theatre remained
more exclusively a diversion.

Closely akin to the theatre was the professional storyteller. For many
centuries his was an accepted occupation. He found his audience at
tea shops, where the proprietors paid him for his services as a means
of drawing patrons, and in other places where people congregated in
streets, on market days, and in opium dens. His themes were often taken
from the famous historical romances, such as The Three Kingdoms. Indeed,
some of the greatest novels appear to have grown out of these narratives
as they were told for generations by these experts in popular entertainment.
The storyteller might accompany his recital with a musical instrument.
Along with the theatre, he was a potent if unintentional agent of popular
education in the history — highly colored and in semifictional form — •
and in the folklore of the nation.

Somewhat akin also to the theatre were jugglers and acrobats. The

Social Life and Organization 593

Chinese rejoiced in them and produced unusually skillful ones. Then, too,
the processions which were so important in funerals, weddings, and religious
festivals both gave expression and provided incentive to the passion for the
dramatic.

A regular part of the equipment of the theatre was the orchestra.
There were a number of instruments, among them flutes, balloon guitars,
drums, gongs, cymbals, one resembling a violin with two strings, another
a clarinet, still another a castanet, and pieces of hollow wood beaten with
sticks. Usually an orchestra was made up of eight or ten instruments.
Singing had a large place on the stage, for many of the parts were sung
rather than spoken. The songs heard in the theatre often caught the
popular fancy and could be heard on the streets for days after. The
singing was in a high or falsetto voice.

FESTIVALS AND SPECIAL DAYS

Before the impact of the Occident Chinese life was entirely
lacking in the week with its recurring day of rest, although the seven
day week was not unknown. Chinese routine, however, had its alternation
between days of recreation and rest and days of work. This was largely
because of the standard festivals of the Chinese year.

The most important festival was the New Year. This event did not
fall regularly on the same days with the Gregorian calendar, for the older
Chinese measurement of time was both by the lunar month and by the
solar year, and to make the two nearly coincide — since the lunar year of
twelve months is only 354 days — some years were regarded as made
up of twelve months and to others an additional or intercalary month
was added. The date did not fall earlier than January 21 or later than Feb
ruary 19. A few days before the New Year the Kitchen God was supposed
to return to heaven to report the conduct of the members of the family
since the last anniversary. This was signaled by burning the image of
the god, perhaps after smearing his lips with molasses — to insure that
the deity carried with him a final good impression of the household. On
the last day of the old year he was welcomed back and a fresh picture
of him was pasted above the kitchen stove. The New Year was the time
for the settlement of debts, and it was considered bad form to enter it
without having paid them. The day itself and the several days following
were devoted to feasting and visiting, and all but the most necessary
labor ceased. Honors were paid to ancestors and there were family reunions.
Children made their obeisances to their parents, pupils paid their respects
to their teachers, and friends called on one another and exchanged good
wishes. With the anniversary, another year was added to the reckoning of
the ages of all members of the family. While birthdays were observed,

594 VOLUME H

according to Chinese reckoning a child was one year old at its birth
and two years of age after it passed into its first New Year. Thus an
infant born in the last month of the year was in the succeeding month
said to be two years old.

For the very poor, and perhaps for the majority of the population,
the New Year's celebration lasted but three or four days. Theoretically,
however, and practically for many, the period was regarded as ending
on the fifteenth day of the first month with the Feast of Lanterns. In
some parts of the country this was a very gay occasion. Huge paper dragons
were carried about the streets, each draped over several men. In the
evening lanterns of many shapes and kinds were displayed by the populace.
There was also the inevitable firecracker, so widely employed on occasions
of jollification and worship.

Ch'ing Ming was the chief spring festival. It was especially a time for
commemorating the dead — a sort of "Memorial Day" — by repairing and
cleaning graves and placing offerings before the ancestral tablets and
on the tombs. It was also incidentally for picnicking and feasting.

What was regarded as the opening of summer was observed, although
not so prominently as some of the other great days of the year.

The Dragon Boat festival, on the fifth day of the fifth moon, may origi
nally have been associated with the summer solstice and have been for
the purpose of obtaining rain. It certainly had for one of its objectives
assistance in harmonizing the yin and the yang. The yang, it was believed,
increases between the winter and the summer solstice. With the advent
of the latter, the yin begins to grow in power. Precautions were therefore
taken against evil spirits, particularly those which cause disease, by cleans
ing the home, especially by hanging up herbs and by drinking a specially
prepared wine and sprinkling the house with it. In many parts of the
country a favorite public event of the day was races between "dragon-
boats." The craft were long and narrow and at the bow each had a dragon's
head. In theory the contests were commemorative of the search for the
dead body of Ch'u Yuan, a statesman, it will be recalled, of the third
century before Christ, who is reputed to have committed suicide by drown
ing. But it seems highly probable that the custom had its origin independ
ently of that event.

On the seventh day of the seventh month was the festival of the
weaver maid and the herdsman. The story told in connection with it was
that the weaver maid (identified with Vega and two other stars) and the
herdsman (identified with three stars in Aquila) so neglected their respec
tive duties after their marriage that they were separated by divine decree,
but that once a year, on this night, if it does not rain, magpies build
with their wings a bridge across the Milky Way, and over it the weaver
passes to her spouse and spends a day with him. It was peculiarly a
woman's festival.

Social Life and Organization 595

Also in the seventh month was the festival for the departed spirits,
mentioned in the preceding chapter.

The harvest festival was celebrated in the eighth month and culminated
on the fifteenth day of that month, at the full moon. It was a time when
debts were supposed to be paid, although this was not so necessary as at the
beginning of the New Year. It was sometimes called the moon's birthday
and at least in some parts of the country moon cakes were made, with
a crescent on them and perhaps the image of a pagoda or an effigy of
the rabbit which to Chinese imagination was supposed to be seen on the
face of the full orb. It was a time of rejoicing and feasting for all ages
and was very much a children's festival. Many quaint and pretty customs
were connected with it.

Confucius's birthday was observed, especially by the schools, on the
twenty-seventh day of the eighth month.

A festival on the ninth day of the ninth month may represent the
coming of the first frosts in the North, where the custom seems to have
originated. As a precaution against calamity (so at least some believed)
people betook themselves to a high place — the top of a hill or the city wall.
It was a time of happy excursions and picnics.

The last great festival of the year was the winter solstice. It was
devoted especially to family gatherings and honors to ancestors. It was
also the occasion for the major one of the annual sacrifices at which
the Emperor officiated, that on the Altar of Heaven.

In addition to the holidays in which the majority of the population
participated, other events brought diversion into the routine of life: birth
days, religious pilgrimages, market days in towns where these were cus
tomary, and festivals peculiar to a 'particular religion, especially those of
Buddhism.

In spite of all the many forms of diversion, for a large proportion of the
masses life was fairly circumscribed and monotonous. Particularly was
this true of women and girls, to whom many of the amusements open to
men were not available. For the farmers an interval occurred between
the harvest and the spring planting — a hiatus which was longest in the
North — when there was a good deal of enforced idleness. The monotony
was augmented for the artisan, merchant, common laborer, and many
others by the steadiness of toil. Some knew of no release from work, not
even (as in the case of food shops) on New Year's Day. Many had off
only four or five days a year. The hours of labor were usually long, and
while the pace was slow, little leisure existed for genuine rest or recrea
tion. For instance, hand looms could often be heard going at almost any
hour of the day or night.

To the Westerner of the modern rushing age much of the life of the
farm and village and even of the towns seemed peculiarly drab and
lacking in variety. It must be remembered, however, that such an observer

596 VOLUME ii

would probably have made the same comment on rural life in Europe
in the eighteenth and even in much of the nineteenth century. More
over, foreigner after foreigner commented on the cheerfulness of the
Chinese masses, and on their ability to find joy in little things, to laugh
in the face of hardship, and to be patient under crushing natural dis
asters.

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE COMING OF THE WEST

The West with which China has come into collision in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries differs radically in social organization,
ideals, and customs from the Middle Kingdom. Since the Occident has been
the aggressor, it is China that has been most affected. The change in
China has been all the more violent because the West with which the
Orient has collided in the past two or three generations is itself in rapid
transition, with institutions and customs in which every decade sees striking
and bewildering alterations.

The contrasts between the two cultures in the phases of life dealt with
in this chapter have been especially great and the results of the collision
correspondingly disruptive. The Chinese large family, with its early
marriages arranged by the elders, has been brought into touch with a
family that is small and in which the young people choose their own
mates. Moreover, the family of the Occident is itself being dealt staggering
blows, particularly by the mechanization and urbanization of modern life.
Divorce has rapidly increased, and contraceptive practices and devices
are widely, even if surreptitiously, employed. The restraint exercised on
children by elders has sharply decreased, and the family as a social and
economic unit is threatened. It is a family life with such characteristics that
has impinged upon China.

The West that China has known is one in which the relations between
the sexes are not only strikingly different from those insisted upon by older
Chinese custom, but have also been rapidly changing. Men and women
have traditionally mingled freely. There has been added in the course
of the past hundred years or so the feminist movement, with much greater
liberty for women. This has been in startling contrast with the separation of
the social life of the sexes in the traditional China and with the subordina
tion of women to men and the sharp occupational divergences between
them.

The sacrifice of the individual to the group in the older China was
quite the opposite of the individualism of the Occident of the nineteenth
and the early part of the twentieth century. That individualism is now
threatened by such systems as communism and socialism, but it still
characterizes much of the West.

Social Life and Organization 597

Moreover, the differences between the relative social status of classes
in China and the Occident has been very great. In the West, as has been re
marked, by tradition the soldier has been the ruler, and the aristocracy
has been militaristic in its traditions and moral ideals. At times that
supremacy has been challenged and modified by the Church and of late
years by democratically elected civil authorities and by merchant and
industrial magnates, especially in such newer countries as the United States,
Canada, and Australia. It still remains, however, even though shaken.
In China, in theory the scholar was the most highly esteemed and the
soldier was tolerated only as a necessary evil. It must be added, however,
that practically all Chinese dynasties were founded by successful warriors,
and that repeatedly the military were supreme.

In recreation the Occident — especially the Anglo-Saxon portion of it —
has stressed athletics, and the recent historic China did not. Western
forms of amusement in which both sexes participate, especially dancing,
are quite alien to the Chinese tradition, and to old-fashioned Chinese even
seemed immoral. Such recent Occidental inventions as the "movie" and the
"talkie" are also a marked innovation.

This Western social life, so different from that of the Middle Kingdom
of the nineteenth century, poured into China through many channels. For
more than a century foreign merchants, consuls, diplomats, and members
of the customs service lived in the great ports and in some of the smaller
ones. Christian missionaries were widely scattered, not only in the cities
but also in the towns, and in the interior as well as on the coast and along
the main rivers. In the twentieth century Chinese students went abroad by
the thousands and a large proportion of them saw Occidental life, not in
smaller university centers, where the changes affecting the West were not
so obvious, but in such cities as New York, Paris, Berlin, London, and
Moscow, where the new forces affecting the Occident are the most power
ful. It was this ultra-modern Western life which they tended to reproduce
when once more in China. Chinese emigrants to America and to the lands
to the south of China returned with new ideas. Their influence was felt
most markedly on the south coast. The "movies," especially those of
American origin, with their bizarre exaggeration of certain phases of
Western life — usually the less desirable — became immensely popular and
were an agency for the spread of Western ideals and institutions in badly
distorted forms. Translations of foreign literature of many types were
issued in quantities. Some of the large cities are centers from which the new
forces have streamed out into the surrounding country. This has been
particularly true of the commercial and financial metropolis, Shanghai —
that hybrid of the West and China, with the Occidental elements obvious
and dominant — and latterly of Peking. The result of these varied influences
from the West has been that China has been brought in touch with many

598 VOLUME II

different types of Occidental life, including, and often especially, those in
which the recent changes have been most apparent.

The revolution in Chinese social life has been hastened by the intro
duction of many of the mechanical devices that have had so large a share
in altering the West. The factory has made its appearance and industrialism
has been especially pushed by the Communists. The candle or crude oil
lamp has been widely displaced by the kerosene lamp and the electric
globe. The automobile, by drawing towns and villages nearer together, has
worked some of the alterations which rapid transportation has wrought in
the West, including the breaking down of the relative isolation and economic
and social self-sufficiency of the village and small town and the spread
of customs and ideas from the urban centers.

In view of all these factors it is not surprising that Chinese social life
and institutions have been largely overturned. Some of the innovations have
been mentioned. For the sake of a complete picture, however, the entire
range must here be summarized.

By the 1930's and 1940's marked changes were in progress in the
family. In some districts the large families, in which three generations or
even four had lived together in one compound, diminished in number, and
the small families, made up of a husband and wife and their children, in
creased. The religious functions of the family were in places disappearing,
the old forms connected with it falling into desuetude. In the cities the
economic ties that once held the family together were being dissolved.
The authority the family had over its members was also weakened.

In the 1930's and 1940's even more radical were the innovations in
the institution of marriage. Many young people insisted upon arranging
their own engagements, although probably in the large majority of in
stances these were still negotiated by parents. The object of modern youth
in marriage, moreover, was less and less the continuation of the family line
and the succession of male heirs to perpetuate the traditional honors to
ancestors and was more and more their own happiness. There entered
as a controlling factor for many the romanticism so prevalent in the modern
Occident, with its idea that marriage should be based upon reciprocal at
traction and the ability of two souls to supplement each other, that its
primary object is to satisfy the desires, both physical and spiritual, of a man
and a woman, and that children and the family line are quite secondary
and perhaps even unwelcome. Marriage ceremonies were often altered by
"modem" young people. It must be noted, however, that with all his talk
of romantic love, the young man, when he came actually to the choice
of a wife, based his selection upon such grounds as education, earning
capacity, and the ability to run a house — much as his parents would have
done.

Also in the 1930's and 1940's the relations between men and women

Social Life and Organization 599

were modified. The sexes enjoyed much freer social intercourse. The
Western dance came into some advanced groups — usually centering in
"returned students." Among students particularly a great amount of in
terest in sex was displayed, with much discussion and no little experimenta
tion. The assertive individualism which was one of the outstanding
concomitants of the disintegration of the old order insisted upon the right
of each, whether man or woman, to consult first his or her personal
interests.

Especially were women declaring that they have a right to their own
careers and to a share in occupations and diversions formerly monopolized
by men. Coeducation became the rule in higher education. The feminism
of the Occident made itself felt.

The extent of these innovations in the family in the 1930's and 1940's,
in the relations of the sexes, and in the position of women could easily
be exaggerated. Students were usually the ones most deeply involved and
they formed only a minority even of the sections of the population within
their own age groups. Factory workers were affected, but the industrial
revolution had touched only a small proportion of the Chinese. Among
the masses, particularly in the country, the old family and the old customs
and ideals were fairly generally maintained. China was still predominantly
rural, and in Chinese farming communities there remained most of the
economic, social, and religious factors which had given strength to the
traditional family. In many cities the innovations, while coming in rapidly,
had not prevailed. Even in the cities on the coast and on the main rivers
and railroads, where the changes were most marked, and among those
with a modern education, there were conservatives who clung to the old
ways.

It was inevitable that the introduction of the new mores should be
accompanied by much maladjustment and unhappiness. In breaking with
the old some men and women came to moral and physical shipwreck. Many
marriages were made unhappy. In numerous, instances a boy who received
a modern training was betrothed or married to a girl who had been reared
in the old manner, and the two not only had little in common but failed
to understand and help each other. Some such couples succeeded in making
a satisfactory adjustment and achieved a happy family life. Others simply
endured each other. Some women with a modern training failed to find a
man whom they were content to marry and lived a celibate existence — al
though that was still very much more rare, even among the most Western
ized, than in the Occident.

By the 1930's and 1940's the individualism of the nineteenth century
Occident had entered China. It was accentuated by the weakening of many
of the old forms of social control and of traditional moral standards, and
by the political and economic distress which set many adrift from their

600 VOLUME n

former moorings. The sudden release from these restraints, and the collapse
for many of the former methods of obtaining a livelihood, led to much
exaggerated and unregulated individualism. At the same time and in con
tradiction to this individualism new forms of mass action emerged. Anti-
foreign boycotts were nation-wide and very effective. Labor unions and
the strike appeared.

Following the Revolution of 1911 a modification came in the tradi
tional relative social standing of the various occupations. Under the
Nationalists the military authorities were usually dominant. Military drill
was given a place on the school curriculum and in some instances was
demanded by the students. Many students and educational authorities, see
ing their country prostrate before a militarized Occident and Japan, and
being intensely nationalistic, were convinced that salvation could come
only as China adopted the methods of the Occident and Japan and defeated
her oppressors with their own weapons.

By the 1930's and 1940's the characteristics of the intelligentsia were
changing. Scholars trained by the old methods passed off the scene and were
replaced by those educated in the Occident or Japan, or in China by
Western or semi-Western methods. Students were actively interested in
politics, both national and international. Repeatedly they joined in boycotts
directed against an obnoxious nation, especially Japan. In most of this
political activity students were manipulated by skillful agitators of more
mature years. With the decay of Confucianism, and with the smaller part
occupied by the older literature in the curriculum, the moral standards
of students tended to vary from those of earlier years. The influence of
Confucianism waned.

In the 1930's and 1940's the old forms of etiquette were passing. Those
who adhered to them were at the best thought of as gentlemen of the old
school and at the worst as hopelessly out of date. Less respect was shown
for age and for teachers. Hand-shaking after the Western fashion became
good form, and the old profound bow was replaced by a more moderate
one. The elaborate polite terminology was abbreviated. In the transition
some individuals displayed an absence of any kind of good manners and
a good deal of rudeness.

There was widespread adoption of Western dress among the upper
economic and social groups, especially for school uniforms and by the
military, although with waves of nationalism, occasional reactions toward
Chinese costumes were seen. The queue began passing before 1911, and
after the revolution of that year it rapidly disappeared. Women and
especially school girls bobbed their hair. The custom of binding the feet
of girls ceased.

By the 1930's and 1940's marked innovations came in recreation.
Athletics became good form, particularly in the schools. Such games as

Social Life and Organization 601

tennis, requiring quickness and accuracy, were popular. Soccer football and
basketball were played by even a larger number. Active sports were taken
up in the schools for girls, and the contrast was almost bewildering be
tween many of the young women who were the products of the new educa
tion, with their skill in tennis and swimming, and their mothers and
grandmothers, swaying painfully along on their bound feet.

Moving pictures achieved popularity. With their passion for the theatre,
the Chinese took quickly to the cinema. Western music came in somewhat
through the churches but chiefly through "brass bands" which often formed
a prominent feature of processions and of the entourage of high officials.
The phonograph was widely used. The Chinese themselves produced
extensively for the cinema and the phonograph, and the radio became
popular.

The old-style tobacco pipe was supplanted by the cigarette, and the
consumption of tobacco in this form enormously increased.

Change came in the rhythm of vacation and work. The Western
Sunday was usually observed as a day of rest by government offices, by
some government institutions such as post offices and state banks, by
schools, and by a few private business houses. This was not because of
the religious significance of the day, but must be ascribed to Western
secular practice. The government, too, adopted the Western solar calendar
and endeavored to discourage and even to forbid the observance of the
old New Year. But the attempt did not meet with universal success. New
holidays were brought into the calendar, such as the observance of the
"Double Tenth" — the anniversary of the first Revolution (October 10,
1911) — and of Sun Yat-sen's death (March 12). Certain "Humiliation
Days" were observed, chiefly by students, notably those in May com
memorating the forcing on China of the Sino-Japanese treaties and notes
of 1915 and the shooting of students in Shanghai on May 30, 1925. Some
of the old festival customs fell into abeyance — for example, the dragon-
boat races on the fifth day of the fifth moon.

Dislocation was brought into the routine of Chinese life by Western
mechanical inventions, such as the electric light, the automobile, the kero
sene lamp, and modern water systems, with their conveyance of a larger
supply of that commodity than formerly and by pipes and faucets rather
than by the water-carrier and his pails. The wider and straighter streets
driven through many of the cities in imitation of the Occident, and the
removal of some of the city walls, tended to produce changes in urban
customs.

The mastery of the mainland by the Communists added speed to the
changes and rapidly erased most of such remnants of the past as had
survived the earlier alterations. As we have seen, the Communists attacked
the Confucian family. They pushed industrialization. They employed the

602 VOLUME II

theatre, the cinema, the press, and the radio for propaganda and the effort
to further the adoption of their ideology. Dress of a utilitarian Western
kind was the fashion. October 1, as the day of the inauguration of the
People's Republic of China, was substituted for the "Double Tenth." The
change in the status of women was accelerated. The old individualism was
denounced as bourgeois and regimentation became the rule. Strictness in
sexual relations was encouraged. Service to the people and the nation was
inculcated. Travelers noted a prevalent courtesy to one another among
both children and adults. Prostitution and begging were for a time markedly
reduced and in some places seemingly eliminated. Yet early in the 1960's
they were again appearing.

On T'aiwan and in Hong Kong some remnants of the old China were
seen, but these, too, were passing.

SUMMARY

The social institution and the customs of the China which
entered the twentieth century had not been static. Across the centuries
they had again and again been modified. But at the close of the nineteenth
century they were the product of a long evolution and were integral parts
'of the civilization of the Middle Kingdom. In the twentieth century the
impact of the West worked on accelerating revolution. By the time of
the Communist mastery of the mainland the old was rapidly passing. The
Communists stepped up the pace. They were intent on creating a new
China and were impatient with remnants of the old, which seemed to them
to impede their program. Something of the old persisted under the Na
tionalists on T'aiwan and in Hong Kong under the deliberately neutral
British administration. But even there it was passing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A good many books contain descriptions of Chinese social institutions and
customs as they were in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first
decade of the twentieth century, before the changes produced by the West
became very apparent. Two giving an unduly pessimistic and somber picture,
but very readable and by one who had opportunity for ample and intimate
knowledge, are Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics (New York, 1894),
and Arthur H. Smith, Village Life in China (New York, 1899). At almost the
other extreme, idealizing its subject, is Y. K. Leong and L. K. Tao, Village and
Town Life in China (London, 1915). See, too, Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life in
China. A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley (London, 1939),
excellent. A description of life as it was about the middle of the last century
in and near Foochow is J. Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese (2 vols., New
York, 1867). There is a great deal of material culled from various books in
Chinese and European languages in Descriptive Sociology, or Groups of

Social Life and Organization 603

Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer, Chinese, by
E. T. C. Werner, edited by H. R. Tedder (London, 1910). A shorter work by
E. T. C. Werner is China of the Chinese (London and New York, 1919). J. H.
Gray, China, A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People (2
vols., London, 1878) contains a great deal of information on the China of the
mid-nineteenth century. T'ung-tsu Ch'ii, Law and Society in Traditional China
(Paris, Mouton & Co., 1961, pp. 304), deals with the family and class structure.
See also S. D. Gamble, "Hsin Chuang. A Study of Chinese Village Finance,"
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 8, pp. 1-33. For a survey and a bibli
ography see M. H. Fried, "Community Studies in China," The Far Eastern
Quarterly, Vol. 14, pp. 11-36.

An excellent book on Chinese women, old and new, is F. Ayscough,
Chinese Women Yesterday and Today (Boston, 1937).

Books portraying family life and customs of the old style but, in places, as
they were being altered by contact with the West are D. H. Kulp, Country
Life in South China. The Sociology of Familism (New York, 1925), a de
scription, by trained observers, one of them Chinese, of a village not very far
from Swatow; Francis L. K. Hsu, Under the Ancestors' Shadow (New York,
Columbia University Press, 1948, pp. 317), a description of a town in Yunnan;
Lady Hosie, Two Gentlemen of China (London, 1924), an account, by a
sympathetic Englishwoman, of two families, both wealthy and of high official
rank, with which she had been intimate; The Princess Der Ling, Kowtow
(New York, 1929), an autobiography of a Manchu lady of high rank, espe
cially of her childhood and youth, with charming accounts of her home; Pierre
Hoang, Le Manage Chinois au Point de Vue Legal (2d ed., Shanghai, 1916);
E. T. Williams, China, Yesterday and Today (New York, 3d ed., 1927), by
one who knew China and the Chinese well for many years and writes of them
with sympathy; Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth (New York, 1931), although
fiction, a remarkably vivid and accurate description of life on a farm and in
an old-fashioned city; Ching Ho, The Report of a Preliminary Survey of the
Town of Ching Ho, Hopei, North China (Peiping, 1931), done by members
of the department of sociology of Yenching University; Sheng-cheng, A Son
of China (translated from the French by M. M. E. Lowes, New York, 1930);
H. D. Lamson, Social Pathology in China (Shanghai, 1935); Lin Yueh-hwa,
The Golden Wing, a Family Chronicle (New York, 1944); Hui-chen Wang Liu,
The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules (Locust Valley, N. Y., J. J. Augustin, 1959,
pp. x, 264) ; Morton H. Fried, Fabric of Chinese Society. A Study of Social
Life of a Chinese County Seat (New York, Praeger, 1953, pp. ix, 243);
Chung-li Chang, The Chinese Gentry. Studies in Their Role in Nineteenth
Century Chinese Society (University of Washington Press, 1955, pp. xxi, 250);
and Han-yi Feng, "The Chinese Kinship System," Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 142-275.

On an important aspect, see Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial
China: Aspects of Social Mobility (Columbia University Press, 1962), pp.
xviii, 385), excellent.

A voluminous account of one of the greatest of the secret societies, the
Triads, largely as it was among the Chinese community at Singapore, is in
J. S. M. Ward and W. G. Sterling, The Hung Society, or The Society of
Heaven and Earth (2 vols., London, 1925).

On etiquette of the old days, a brief treatise is W. G. Walshe, "Ways that
are Dark," Some Chapters on Chinese Etiquette and Social Procedure (Shang-

604 VOLUME II

hai, 1906). Another on the same subject is Simon Kiong, Quelques Mots sur
la Politesse Chinoise (Varietes Sinologiques, No. 25, Shanghai, 1906).

There are several books on the theatre in China. Three of the best are
L. C. Arlington, The Chinese Drama from the Earliest Times until Today
(Shanghai, 1930), George Soulie de Morant, Theatre et Musique Moderne en
Chine (Paris, 1926), and R. F. Johnston, The Chinese Theatre (1921). Others,
less adequate, are Chu Chia-chien, The Chinese Theatre, translated from the
French by James A. Graham, with illustrations . . . by A. Jacovleff (London,
1922), A. E. Zucker, The Chinese Theatre (London, 1925), and B. S. Allen,
Chinese Theatres Handbook (Tientsin, no date). There is also an interesting
monograph on one phase of dramatic art, W. Gnibe, translator, Chinesische
Schattenspiele. Auf Grund des Nachlasses durchgesehen und abgeschlossen
von Emil Krebs. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Berthold Laufer (2 vols.,
Munich, 1915). See also A. C. Scott, The Classical Theatre in China (New
York, The Macmillan Co., 1957, pp. 250).

On music, see bibliography at close of Chapter XIX,

A good deal of material on Chinese festivals and leisure is in L. Hodous,
Folkways in China (London, 1929). Other books on the festivals are Juliet
Bredon and I. Mitrophanow, The Moon Year, a Record of Chinese Customs
and Festivals (Shanghai, 1927); J. J. M. de Groot, Les fetes annuellement
celebrees a Emoui (Amoy) (2 vols., Paris, 1886); and Wolfram Eberhard,
Chinese Festivals (New York, Henry Schumann, 1952, pp. 152). See also
Lien-sheng Yang, "Schedules of Work and Rest in Imperial China," Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 18, pp. 301-325.

On bathing see E. H. Schafer, "The Development of Bathing Customs in
Ancient and Medieval China and the History of the Floriate Clear Palace,"
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 76, pp. 57-82.

On fighting crickets, there is a brief popular account by Henry Peterson,
"Gladiators an Inch Long," in Asia, Vol. 30, pp. 720, 721.

Accounts of the changes during the last few decades are to be found in
many books and articles. Some of the innovations in family life and relations
between the sexes and the problems attendant on them are described in Lady
Hosie, Portrait of a Chinese Lady and Certain of Her Contemporaries (New
York, 1930); in an excellent piece of fiction by Pearl S. Buck, East Wind,
West Wind (New York, 1930); in Pearl S. Buck, "China, the Eternal," Inter
national Review of Missions, 1924, Vol. 13, pp. 573-584; in Pearl S. Buck,
"Chinese Women," Pacific Affairs, Oct., 1931, -pp. 905-909; in Pearl S. Buck,
Sons (New York, 1932); and in a short story by Pearl S. Buck, "The First
Wife," Asia, Dec., 1931, Jan., 1932. E. A. Ross, The Changing Chinese, The
Conflict of Oriental and Western Cultures in China (New York, 1911), is a
readable and discerning description by a well-known sociologist who was in
China on the eve of the Revolution of 1911. An interesting autobiography of
a young Chinese woman affected by the new ways is Helena Kuo, I've Come a
Long Way (New York, 1942). Glimpses of Chinese life in the disturbances of
the 1930's are in W. Galbraith, In China Now (New York, 1941). See also
Irma Highbaugh, Family Life in West China (New York, Agricultural Missions
Foundation, 1948, pp. xi, 240); Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Auto
biography of a Chinese Working Woman (Yale University Press, 1945, pp.
viii, 249)^ Marion J. Levy, The Family Revolution in Modern China (Harvard
University Press, 1949, pp. xvi, 390) ; Wong Su-ling and E. H. Cressy, Daughter
of Confucius: A Personal History (New York, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952,

Social Life and Organization 605

pp. 381); Liang Yen, Daughter of the Khans (New York, W. W. Norton &
Co., 1955, pp. x, 285); Loo Pin-fei, It Is Dark Underground (New York, G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1946, pp. vii, 200).

For changes under Communism see Ch'ing-k'un Yang, The Chinese Family
in the Communist Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 246);
Ch'ing-k'un Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Harvard
University Press, 1959, pp. xii, 284); Maurice Friedman, "The Family in
China, Past and Present," Pacific Affairs, Vol. 34, pp. 323-336.

For additional bibliography, see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibli
ography (University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 103-111.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ART

Contrary to an impression widespread in the West, China is a
land of beauty. Hills and mountains, valleys and gorges, some of them of
surpassing grandeur, characterize much of her landscape. For those who
have ever felt her charm, China holds an inescapable fascination. In spite
of the gray, dusty plains of her North, the dirt of many of her streets, the
poverty of her masses, and the disrepair into which the relics of her past
have often been allowed to drift, she casts her spell over those who are
long within her borders and are at all sensitive to beauty. No one who
has traveled much in China can easily escape the haunting memories of
sights and sounds that have stirred him to the depths: the glow of the
sunset on distant bare peaks, thundercaps over mountains and fertile
plains, evening twilight on a pagoda-crowned hill above the quiet reaches
of a river, the antiphonal, wordless chanting of laboring coolies in the
drowsy heat of a summer afternoon, the sweep of the Yangtze, the charm
of an old painting which a succession of faithful hands now long since
gone have handed down through many generations, the well-proportioned
contours of a garden, or the impressive courts and magnificent, time-
mellowed colors of the palaces of Peking.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

In earlier chapters we have recorded something of the history
of Chinese art and have noted how varied and rich has been that phase
of the culture of the Empire. We have seen, too, that art has by no means
been uniform either in quality or in characteristics, but that it has had
distinct periods. Here, as in so many other respects, over the course of the
centuries the civilization of China has exhibited anything but a uniform or
monotonous aspect.

There is the pottery of prehistoric times with its markings and colored
surfaces. From the Shang are "oracle bones," the writing on which shows
skill and taste, and some jade. From the Shang are also bronzes — weapons
and vessels of various kinds — and a few marble figures. While obviously
archaic, they possess vigor as well as grace of outline — the bronzes with
geometrical designs and more or less conventionalized animal forms. They
bear witness to a civilization that was no longer primitive. Under the
Shang the casting of bronze reached a level that was never surpassed.

606

Art 607

From the Chou, with its long duration and lasting into the third
century B.C., a large number of objects remain. Bronze weapons, vessels of
many shapes, and bells are fairly numerous. On some is seen the favorite
design of an ogre, or glutton, the fao t'ieh. There are pieces of jade, many
of them symbols of Heaven and Earth. For centuries the Confucian Temple
in the capital housed the famous ten stone drums, boulders roughly hewn
and bearing inscriptions in archaic characters. Much of the early art of the
Chou was a continuation of that of the Shang, but with modifications. To
ward the latter part of the dynasty new influences entered, possibly
Scythian, from that great region in Central Europe-Asia with which the
Chinese have through many centuries been in touch, even though usually
indirectly, and from which have repeatedly come contributions to Chinese
culture. Late in the Chou a wide variety developed in the many states.
Bronze casting again became superb and jade was skillfully worked. Many
luxury items have been brought to light.

Artistically the Ch'in was in large part an extension of the latter part
of the Chou, but with increasing liveliness of style and a certain exuberance
and flamboyance, which may have been due in part to the general temper
of the times and in part to contacts with the outside world. Influences may
have entered through the conquest of Ch'u, whose culture in some respects
differed from that of the North.

With the Han great changes occurred. A simplicity and severity of
decoration and of outline were often seen. A tendency was displayed to
return to the styles of the Chou, as was to be expected from the revival
and study of ancient literature. At the same time there entered much more
of movement and of the attempt to portray life and the forms of animals
and men as they really were. More was made of man than in earlier art,
possibly as a result of Confucianism. Stories of examplars of Confucian
virtues were depicted. Surviving stone sculptures portray battles and scenes
at court, hunting, processions, and animals, men, and gods in groups or
singly, with a naturalness and a freedom of action which are in striking
contrast with the work of artists of preceding centuries and which still help
to make vivid the life and the mythology of the age. A similar naturalness
and delight in action are seen in the figures on bronzes and jades and in
terra cotta funerary figurines. Marked development was registered in
ceramics, both plain and glazed. A few examples of the lacquer ware of the
dynasty survive. Painting and its closely allied art, calligraphy, were repre
sented. We begin to get some clear ideas of architecture, partly from con
temporary terra cotta models, partly from sculptures on the walls of tombs,
and partly from a few extant examples, such as walls and forts on the
western frontiers.

Some of the artistic developments and innovations of the Han can be
proved to have been due to stimulus from the outside. Certain Han motifs,

608 VOLUME II

for example, are similar to those in the central and western Asia and in the
Europe of the time. What are known as Scytho-Sarmatian influences were
present. Much of the Han artistic novelty, however, was due to that new
burst of life and that prosperity which characterized so much of the China
under the Han.

In the period of disunion and civil strife that intervened between the
Han and the Sui, art by no means disappeared. No sudden break occurred,
and it is often difficult to know whether to assign surviving objects to the
Han or to the immediate post-Han centuries.. However, modifications and
innovations were made. In the states ruled by the barbarians from the
north and west it was to be expected that new influences would be at work.
Buddhism especially brought with it much that was revolutionary. With
Buddhism came many buddhas and bodhisattvas and new gods. With it,
too, entered vivid ideas of the future life, of heavens and hells, and many
stories of the worthies of the faith, which inspired images, carvings, and
paintings. Moreover, with the foreign religion came exotic artistic tradi
tions and techniques. We have seen that much of the early Buddhist
iconography — the Gandhara School — that evolved under the influence of
Greek art was transmitted to China. Other, more distinctly Indian, in
fluences also entered — notably that of the Gupta era (fourth and fifth cen
turies). Statues and frescoes, some of gigantic proportions on cliffs and in
grottoes, and others smaller and even in miniature, were produced. Es
pecially notable were the sculptures of the Northern Wei, that state founded
by the T'u Pa (or Toba) conquerors. One of the greatest of Chinese
painters, Ku K'ai-chih, belongs to the period, and the canons of Chinese
pictorial art as then defined long remained standard. Lay as well as re
ligious subjects were portrayed. New forms of architecture appeared in
monasteries and pagodas.

Buddhism was by no means the only foreign influence that entered
during the centuries of division. In that Central Asia with which China was
in touch were other currents. For example, Persia, through the powerful
Sassanid rule, was making itself felt. While these varied strands are seen
most distinctly in remains disclosed in recent decades in the ruins on
western frontiers of the then China, in what is now Sinkiang, at least some
are distinguishable in China proper.

With the unification of China under the Sui and the T'ang, the Empire
entered upon a new period of artistic development. Again no sharp break
severed the old from the new. The T'ang saw Chinese Buddhism reach its
apex and begin its decline. The Chinese soul, stirred profoundly by the
Indian faith, expressed itself aesthetically to no small degree in Buddhist
forms, although the older Chinese tradition, represented by a vigorous
Taoism and a revived Confucianism, remained strong. Much of the impulse
seen in the Northern Wei carried over into the Sui. Chinese pilgrims, re-

Art 609

turning from their pious journeys, helped to keep their native land in touch
with the religious art of India. The wealth and power of China under the
T'ang naturally favored extensive artistic production. Tang conquests in
Central Asia strengthened contacts with the diverse artistic traditions and
movements of that region. There was much Buddhist sculpture, The
realistic reproduction of movement and of the human form contributed to
the distinctiveness of the work of the era. The depiction of actual life was
very marked in such kinds of objects as were becoming emancipated from
religious influences, notably funerary earthenware figures. From them, so
full of expression and of pulsing action, it is possible to reproduce much
of the customs and the dress of the period. Bronzes continued to be pro
duced, among them, as under the Han, decorated mirrors. The traditional
popularity of jade persisted, and many were the forms in which this
semiprecious stone was painstakingly carved. Painting flourished, with
religious (chiefly Buddhist and Taoist) and secular subjects. He who is
sometimes regarded as the greatest Chinese painter of all time, Wu Tao Tzu,
belongs, it will be remembered, to the T'ang. Marked development was
made in pottery: glazes were more skillfully used than heretofore, there
was an improvement in the forms of vases, and true porcelain appeared.

Under the Sung sculpture declined, but painting, and especially land
scapes, attained new heights. In an earlier chapter we have noted some
of the reasons for the emphasis upon this type of painting and have noticed
that the landscapes of subsequent periods have never surpassed and have
seldom if ever equaled those of the Sung masters. We may add that among
the reasons for the popularity of landscapes was the desire to escape from
the urban life that was burgeoning under the Sung and to find surcease in
mountains and streams. We have also seen that porcelains of fine quality,
predominantly with monochrome glazes, were produced in great quantities.

The Yuan dynasty, being that of Mongol conquerors who furthered
contacts with aliens, brought a fresh influx of foreign impulses. These were
especially seen in a reaction from landscapes and in a vivid portrayal of
action, notably in the horses which the Mongol riders of the steppes and
deserts so much admired. Persian influences were also present. As was to
be expected, however, older forms and schools persisted, for the rule of
the Mongols over all China spanned scarcely two generations.

Under the Ming it was secular art in which the greatest achievements
were registered. Religious art continued, but the fervor and vigor of both
Buddhism and Taoism were declining, and inspiration and creative genius
were disappearing from the portrayal of religious subjects. Painting re
mained popular, with landscapes, flowers, birds, animals, and scenes from
everyday life among its leading subjects, but while it was often elaborate
and painstaking, with a highly developed technique, it did not equal the best
of the Sung. Porcelain was made in large quantities; polychrome decora-

610 VOLUME II

tion, often rich and varied, predominated. Articles of luxury — rugs,
embroideries, bronzes, jades, lacquers, ivory, and the like — were produced
for the wealthy and powerful often with cunning and a lavish expenditure
of time and labor, for under the Ming and the Ch'ing, except for the dis
orders of the seventeenth century and the latter half of the nineteenth,
China was as prosperous as it had ever been. The Ming, too, was an
age of building, when many of the walls, bridges, and palaces were con
structed which constituted the chief architectural features of the China of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Ch'ing made no marked
departure from the Ming.

This brief sketch, inadequate though it is, will at least show that the
course of Chinese art has been marked by great periods, each with its
distinct characteristics.

Yet through all the centuries ran a continuity. With their admiration for
the past, the Chinese loved and tended to reproduce the forms of the
earliest ages. In the bronzes of the Ch'ing are objects which obviously took
their inspiration from those of the Chou and the Shang, and the porcelain
and pewter of the Ming and the Ch'ing often showed respect for antiquity.
The architecture of the Han, as we see it depicted in grave sculptures and
pottery, was obviously in the ancestral line of the palaces, walls, and
temples of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When, as often, the
Chinese accepted foreign contributions, they were seldom slavish imitators
but placed their own stamp upon them. The Chinese artistic genius has had
distinct features and characteristics.

If, as some -maintain, art is the expression of a people's soul, and if a
civilization can be epitomized in its aesthetic forms, then Chinese culture
has been most varied. The magnificence of its imperial ideal — a single
state governing all mankind — has been set forth in the imposing walls and
impressive palaces of its capital. The long struggle to defend the prosperous
plains from the barbarian is pictured by the Great Wall. The sense of mod
eration, so prized in its Confucian philosophy, has been given concrete
expression in the repose of well-proportioned courts and buildings. The
desire to be at one with the soul back of the visible universe is seen in the
landscapes of Sung masters. The vision of a life beyond the grave as given
by Buddhism and Taoism is made vivid in many paintings and sculptures.
The delicate, almost feminine sensitiveness of the race may be divined in
many a picture of flowers and animals and in intricate carving. In some
of the temple representations of hell is the coarse vigor of Chinese popular
life.

To do as we have done in several of the immediately preceding chapters,
and describe this phase of Chinese life as it was in the nineteenth century
on the eve of the great change brought by the impact of the Occident, would
scarcely be adequate. The decadence of the Ch'ing, which helped cast a

Art 611

blight over much of Chinese genius, was reflected as clearly in art as in
any phase of culture. We must, rather, attempt to show the main charac
teristics and the total achievement of the Chinese in the chief divisions of
art and then indicate something of the effect of the West upon them.

ARCHITECTURE

Although for more than two thousand years the Chinese have
been erecting buildings and walls, some of them of gigantic proportions,
surprisingly few of the existing structures are very old. A comparatively
small number go back as far as the T'ang and the Sung or even to the
Yuan. Most of those which can boast of more than a century of age were
put up, at llast substantially as they are now, only in the Ming or in the
prosperous first century and a half of the Ch'ing. To be sure, some walls
of the Han are extant, largely because they have been preserved in the
desert air of the western frontiers. There are many tombs from the Han
and even earlier. A few rock-hewn temples have come down from T'ang
and even pre-T'ang times, and a number of pagodas built under the Sung
and T'ang can still be seen. Here and there are a very few temples that
were probably erected before the T'ang. So, too, there are ancient stone
bridges. Compared with the extent and richness of Chinese culture, how
ever, the archaeologist interested in architecture has available much less
surviving material than in such sites of old civilizations as Mesopotamia,
the Nile Valley, and the shores of the Mediterranean.

This dearth of structures of pre-Ming times is not due to the absence
of building in these centuries. From books and paintings we know that the
land had palaces and temples, some of them as huge as could be found
anywhere in the world of their time. The great wall built on the northern
marches by Ch'in Shih Huang Ti must have dwarfed the seven wonders
of the Mediterranean world, and the imperial residence which he erected
at his capital was enormous. So, too, the palaces of Han and the T'ang
must have been very extensive. At the height of the T'ang, Ch'angan was
unequaled by the other metropolises of that era in the number of its
dwellings and in the spaciousness and dignity of its walls and palaces.
Marco Polo, who had been in many of the great cities of his day, saw
Hangchow only a few years after it had ceased to be the capital of the
Sung and described it as pre-eminent "to all others in the world, in point
of grandeur and beauty." From the extent of its walls, which can even now
be traced, from the accounts of contemporary travelers, and from such a
surviving monument as the Drum Tower, we can form some conception
of the extent and architectural magnificence of Cambaluc under the Mon
gols.

The lack of buildings and walls from ancient times is due largely to the

612 VOLUME II

perishable nature of the materials. Wood has been extensively employed.
As a rule, indeed, it has been the chief reliance for the framework not only
of private houses but also of palaces and temples. Brick has been utilized
to fill in walls' or for supporting platforms, and not to hold up roofs. Stone
appears chiefly in ornamental trimmings. Since the great frontier ramparts
and the walls of cities have usually been of rubble lined with brick, and
sometimes even of tamped unbaked earth, they have not stood up as well
as they would have if they had been of stone.

In spite of the paucity of ancient monuments, it is possible to learn a
good deal of the architecture of pre-Ming centuries and to know something
of the main stages of its development. Japan possesses very old wooden
buildings which have escaped the ravages of fire and war, and since some
of these caught their inspiration from Chinese models, we can form an
idea of what the latter were like. Wall sculptures from the Han and later
dynasties not infrequently portray buildings, and paintings of the T'ang
and Sung of which we have either the originals or copies often include
pictures of buildings, from simple huts to palaces and temples. The great
wealth of Chinese literature that has come down to us from previous
centuries contains useful information. There is at least one detailed treatise
on architecture from as early as the Sung.

We cannot here go into this history. It must be noted, however, that
non-Chinese influences entered, with marked results. Buddhism particularly
brought new forms, some of them Indian or of other provenance. Yet,
although factors from abroad were often potent, architecture remained dis
tinctively Chinese. Alien patterns were altered to fit the national tradition.

Without attempting to arrange them in any logical order, the main
characteristics that have run through most of Chinese architecture may be
enumerated about as follows. First may be mentioned the desire to make
the works of man accord with the universe. From early times it was felt
that if man is to prosper he must not antagonize or even strive to master
the world about him but must seek to put himself in harmony with it.
This conviction was expressed in part in feng shut. As we have seen,
f6ng shut often determined the location of houses and especially of tombs,
and the arrangement of the units of these structures.

Walls have been prominent. Every city has had one. The passion to
conform to Western example has torn down numbers of them, but some
survive, Their primary purpose was defense. Even villages might be sur
rounded by mud ramparts as a protection against robbers. The city walls
were often imposing. They were usually, as has just been said, of clay or
earth faced with brick and in some instances were trimmed with stone.
Many averaged twenty-five or thirty feet in height and at the top were
twenty feet or more in breadth. A circumference of five or six miles was
not unusual. In some of the chief cities, such as Peking, the walls were

Art 613

higher and enclosed a larger area. City walls have been pierced by gates
which usually were closed at nightfall and opened at dawn. Over the gates
rose towers, many of them several stories in height, and in front were
sometimes secondary, curtaining walls, with a gate or gates entering
obliquely. The wall was often surrounded by a moat, and its top was
crenelated.

As we have seen, the Great Wall, called by the Chinese the Wan-li-
ch'ang-ch'eng, "the Ten Thousand Li Long Wall," along the northern
frontier of China proper, has a long history. Sections of it were in existence
before Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, and that great monarch completed the barrier.
It was repaired and rebuilt again and again, sometimes not on the original
course of the old. As it exists now it dates from several periods and is of
more than one type of construction. The latest thoroughgoing repairs
seem to have been given it under the Ming, and two hundred miles or
more were added under that dynasty. The Ch'ing were masters of Man
churia and Mongolia, against inroads from which the wall had been de
signed. Accordingly, they did not have as much need for it as did the
Ming. The Wall stretches from Shanhaikuan into Kansu, a distance, with
all its windings, of over fifteen hundred miles. In several places it is double
and even triple, thus affording more than one line of defense. Sometimes
the successive barriers are many miles apart. Built with an eye for strategic
positions, the Great Wall follows mountain crests and takes advantage of
narrow gorges. In height it ranges from fifteen to fifty feet, with towers
rising at intervals above it. At its base its width is from fifteen to thirty feet
and at its top twelve feet or more. On its outer side, for much of the dis
tance, is a moat. The material varies. On the eastern reaches, where it has
been in the best repair, the Wall usually has an earth or rubble core faced
with either brick or stone, bound together by an excellent mortar. Many of
the stones are huge hewn granite blocks, some of them fourteen feet long
and three or four feet thick. In the western sections the Wall has often been
carved out of the loess and faced with stone, or made of loess watered and
tamped into wooden forms. In much of Kansu it has been simply an
earthen bank. Behind it at intervals were permanent camps for the gar
risons.

Walls have been used not only for cities and for imperial defense but
also to enclose temples, palaces, and private homes. From the outside,
nearly every such Chinese structure presented the aspect of a blank screen,
at proper places pierced by gates which in turn were often shielded by
curtaining walls. The wall might show a little variation and some of the
interior buildings might rise above the parapet, but the exterior frequently
gave little clue to the quiet courts and gardens within.

Another feature of Chinese architecture has been the enclosed court.
In temples, palaces, and dwellings of any size the individual units have as

614

VOLUME II

a rule been grouped about quadrangles, sometimes square and sometimes
elongated. Most buildings have been one or two stories in height, and
more space was usually obtained, not by adding stories, as is so often done
in the Occident, but by adding courts. The best of Chinese buildings pre
served a proportion between the width of courts and the heights and forms
of buildings that was both impressive and restful.

A characteristic already hinted at has been the extensive use of wood.
A few buildings have had stone pillars, but in the vast majority the frame
work has been timber. Wooden pillars have been used to support the roof,
and the entire structure has been tied together by beams of the same
material. The walls — of brick or wood or sometimes of plastered wattled
or tamped earth — have been simply for purposes of enclosure. In this
respect the typical Chinese house has resembled the steel construction of
a modern Occidental office building.

Many of the beams have been left exposed. The walls might be built
around the inner row of pillars, and the outer row be left unenclosed. The
supporting pillars might be painted or coated with lacquer and the beams
carved or painted in conventional designs of various colors. In this
manner the exposed wooden framework became an ornamental feature,
and the view upward, toward the beams and rafters that support the roof,
could be made very attractive.

Chinese pillars have been without capitals, in the Western sense of that
word. Often wooden brackets at the top have given the appearance of
helping to support the beam above and so prevent the transition from
seeming abrupt. Usually, too, there have been pedestals, some of them
small, but many of them large and highly ornamented.

As a rule, important buildings have been placed on platforms faced
with brick or stone. Some of the platforms have been low, requiring only
one or two steps to mount them. Many, however, have been quite high,
necessitating a dozen or more steps. The platforms and the stairways have
often been set off by balustrades of stone, brick, or wood, in numerous
instances elaborately carved. The stairways themselves might be broad,
and frequently two rows of steps have been separated by an inclined face
displaying an elaborately carved dragon. There might be three sets of
steps mounting the platform, especially if the surmounting building had
three doorways, as was so often the case.

One of the most prominent features of a Chinese building has been the
roof. It is possible that the platform was designed to preserve a balance and
to keep the roof from seeming out of proportion. Sometimes roofs have
been double or even triple, the eaves of the second and the third being set
back from the one below, and each upper one being raised above the one
underneath by a wall or a kind of clerestory with supporting pillars. They
have usually been tiled, although thatch was often employed in poorer

Art 615

houses. In many instances, especially in such structures as temples and
palaces, the tiles have been covered with a colored glaze. No one who has
seen them can forget the yellow roofs of the imperial palaces of Peking or
the blue of the Temple of Heaven. Often the main lines of the roofs have
been emphasized by tiles curiously shaped in conventional geometric pat
terns or in the form of dragons or of other animals mythical or real. Some
times the decorations have been in bronze or iron. Often the crown of
the roofs has been mounted by especially elaborate decorations of designs
of varying history and origin. The eaves have usually been prominent and
terminated by ornate tiles. The curved eaves are familiar to all who know
anything about Chinese buildings. The origin of the curve is uncertain.
The surviving representations of Han buildings do not have it, and it
seems not to have entered until the first millennium of our era. It may have
been adopted to afford relief from the severely straight lines which the
heavy projecting roof would otherwise present, or it may have been devised
to let in more light.

Not much has been made of the gable ends, although these have often
been decorated. Most Chinese buildings have been elongated rectangles
and have been intended to be viewed from the side rather than the end.
It was the broad fagade in which the door or doors were placed and from
which the sweep of the roof could be seen to best advantage.

Much color has been employed, and generally, even to the uninitiated
Westerner, with pleasing effect. When it is said baldly that the roofs of
some buildings have been yellow and their walls red, and that the timbers
have been ornamented with elaborate designs in bright and variegated
colors, to one who had never seen them the results might be thought
rather bizzare. When actually viewed, however, they usually seemed
eminently fitting and in excellent taste.

Many buildings have had a great deal of lattice-work, some of it
elaborately carved. Chinese construction lent itself to this, for since the
weight of the roof was carried by pillars the walls did not need to be
substantial but could be perforated as much as the architect desired.

Chinese buildings have displayed more variety than the preceding
account with its impressions of rectilinear courts and flanking structures
might indicate. The Chinese have often employed the octagonal pavilion,
generally for decorative purposes. Even walls of cities and rectangular
courts and buildings lend themselves to many combinations.

The architecture of much of the Yangtze Valley and the South differed
in part from that of the North. The former showed a greater tendency to
flamboyance and to exaggerated curves in the roof.

The pagoda has been prominent. As we now see it, it is a Chinese
development. It came, however, from Buddhism. It appears to have taken
its inspiration, at least in part, from the stupa, a structure which seems

616 VOLUME II

originally to have been for the housing of relics of Buddhist saints, and it is
of Indian provenance. Pagodas began to be built in China not long after
the introduction of Buddhism. Several can still be seen that were erected
during the T'ang and the Sung. Pagodas seldom have more than fifteen
stories. The total is always uneven, for popular Buddhism set more value
by odd than by even numbers. Pagodas may be very high. One is known
which towers to three hundred and sixty feet. The material varies. In some
instances it has been wood, but, naturally, the structures which survive are
mostly of brick or stone. Often they are octagonal and frequently they are
square, but the shape and size vary greatly. The pagoda largely lost its
close connection with Buddhism and came to be associated with feng shut.
It was generally under the guidance of this pseudo science and to insure
good fortune to a city or a site that the pagodas — at least the later ones —
were erected. While very few, if any, were built in the twentieth century,
hundreds of those constructed by earlier generations are still to be seen,
picturesque features of many a landscape.

Bridges have been another characteristic work of the Chinese builder.
A large proportion are of stone. Many have a single arch, some of them,
perhaps for the purpose of allowing boats to pass, made high and ascended
by steps, Others have several arches. Many are constructed of huge stones
laid longitudinally and supported by piers. There have been some sus
pension bridges, but these have usually been over the mountain torrents in
the West.

A familiar feature of Chinese cities is the p'ai lou or p'ai fang, the
memorial arch. At least under the Ch'ing, these could be erected only by
imperial permission. They were in honor of distinguished officials, of
local worthies noted for their virtue or learning, for centenarians, for fam
ilies who had lived together for several generations, for women who won
celebrity by a life of virtuous widowhood from youth to old age, or for
those memorable for other meritorious action. Sometimes they have not
been commemorative but simply decorative. As a rule they have consisted
of four pillars supporting transverse stones and presenting three passages,
the central one wider than the others. Often, however, they have had only
one passage, and a good many have had five. Some haye been of wood.

Graves are inevitable concpmitaitfs pf a Chinese landscape. Some are
quite elaborate. Imperial tombs generally cover a fairly large area. With
their great courts, their avenues, their numerous buildings, and their sense
of dignified repose, they are very impressive, even in decay.

Many travelers declare Peking to be achitecturally the most majestic
city they have ever seen. That is not solely or perhaps entirely because to
the Westerner it appears exotic. It is rather because it is so fittingly con
structed for the capital of an Empire that professed to rule all of civilized
humanity. Its high walls with the higher towers above the gates have

Art 617

seemed in themselves symbols of dignity and power. Its distances and its
broad main streets, some of them straight, so in contrast to many of the
other old cities of the world, give a sense of spaciousness. Its temples,
especially that constructed for the worship of Heaven, bespeak an order
which sought to harmonize the forces of all nature for the welfare of all
mankind. But especially do the imperial palaces, including their present
use by the Communists, create the impression of empire. Placed in the
center of a city which in itself is imposing, they symbolize a power to
which all the rest is but ancillary. In dynastic days, to the envoy bringing
the homage of a tributary state, the entire setting must have inspired awe:
the entrance through the towering city wall, the broad avenue leading to
the Imperial City, progress through an imposing gateway which formed
the main entrance to the imperial precincts, then a succession of great
courts flanked by well-proportioned buildings, resplendent in their yellow
tiled roofs and highly colored walls, and at last, after passage across a huge
court, the imperial throne room and the imperial presence. It must all have
been most telling, especially when, as on important occasions, the courts
were the scene of stately ceremonial and were flanked by the many digni
taries in their gorgeous official robes and by uniformed servants and
soldiers. Through centuries of experience the Chinese learned to construct
a capital to conform to their vision of a world-embracing rule and civiliza
tion.

GARDENS

With the Chinese, the art of garden planting has been closely
related to architecture. Not only have buildings often been designed to fit
into rather than to dominate nature, but through gardens that adjustment
has been furthered, Buddhist and Taoist monasteries and temples were often
placed in mountain valleys. Trees and shrubs were encouraged to grow
about them so that the buildings were half hidden and harmonized with
their natural surroundings. Paths made accessible the chief beauty spots
of the grounds. The Summer Palace outside Peking, although built in the
years of the decay of the Ch'ing, displays remarkable success in the arrange
ment of buildings to fit in with the landscape and in the alteration of the
landscape by roads, bridges, trees, and bodies of water in such fashion that,
without seeming to do violence to it, it was made to contribute to the
buildings and to the pleasure of the Court. So, too, the imperial palaces and
their grounds in Peking, with their pools and artificial hills and their plant
ing of shrubs, are examples of harmonious planning. The way in which
the builder utilized the West Lake at Hangchow with its guardian hills is
still another instance of Chinese skill in taking advantage of attractive
scenery and enhancing its beauty and accessibility.

618 VOLUME II

Many a private home had its gardens. These were usually formal and
numbers of them had artificial rockeries which to the uninitiated Westerner
seemed bizarre and grotesque. The garden was a miniature landscape, with
hills, grottoes, crags, streams, trees, and lakes. Frequently doorways, some
of them circular, afforded vistas of other sections of the garden. Walls with
or without lattice work were added to the picture. Water was essential and
was directed into pools, often lotus-covered, or into running streams. The
Chinese gardener was a master of the art of dwarfing trees and of training
them into shapes to suit his purposes. He rejoiced, too, in little hills
crowned with small pavilions. Summerhouses, rustic bridges, and walks
laid out in zigzag or winding designs were customary.

The range of flowers and decorative shrubs and trees utilized by the
Chinese has not been as wide as the rich flora of the country would give
reason to expect. However, the Chinese have cultivated a fairly large
variety. Even in the poorest homes a flowering plant or two could often
be seen, and the courtyards of inns and shops frequently had one or more
of them. Avenues of trees were often planted as an approach to a tomb
or a temple, many a tree was protected from the woodsman's ax by a
wayside shrine, and, as we have seen, Buddhist and Taoist monasteries
were usually embowered in groves. The Chinese have had floral calendars
and have watched eagerly for the appearance of the first blossoms on certain
trees and shrubs and might go in parties into the country to see them.
Flowers have been favorite subjects for poems and paintings.

SCULPTURE

In China sculpture has not usually been regarded so highly
as have been some other branches of art — for example, painting. Few
names of sculptors have come down to us, unless they are famous for other
reasons. Yet much of Chinese sculpture, even though the work of unknown
artisans, has been noteworthy, and the total quantity is enormous.

Chinese sculpture, as we have seen, reached its ape,x in the T'ang, under
the inspiration of Buddhism. However, it was not confined to Buddhist
subjects nor was it entirely a Buddhist creation. It was found at least as
early as the Shang and a good many examples have survived from the Han,
before Chinese art had been much affected by the foreign faith.

In themes Chinese sculptors have shown a great variety. They have
not been much interested in the human form as such. They have depicted it
extensively, and there have been many portrait statues. However, they have
taken no such joy in it as did the artists of the ancient Graeco-Roman world
and of the European Renaissance. As a rule the human body has been for
them simply a means of expressing action or an idea or has been an object
on which to drape clothing. Many Chinese sculptors, however, have re-

Art 619

joiced in depicting animals. They have shown them in motion and at rest
and have delighted in their play of muscles.

Some surviving examples of ancient sculpture are connected with
graves. From the Han we have pillars that once formed a kind of entrance
to the tomb enclosure. We have huge stone animals that were associated
with tombs, vivid carvings on the walls of the tombs themselves of scenes
from real life or from mythology, and earthen figures, some of them shaped
in molds and others fashioned directly by the hands of the craftsmen.
These general types were not confined to the Han, but persisted through
several dynasties. Such were the terra cotta figurines, of which we have
particularly beautiful examples from the T'ang. Such, too, were the mono
lithic figures, of animals and men, arranged in pairs on either side of a
"spirit way" leading southward from the tomb. Apparently they were for
the purpose of protecting it from evil influences, including malevolent
spirits.

Some of the motifs of early tomb-statues were clearly foreign importa
tions. Prominent among them was the lion, a beast which seems not to
have existed in China, at least in large numbers, for some were sent as
tribute, obviously as rarities. The idea of depicting the lion in stone appears
to have been of non-Chinese origin, There were some winged beasts,
reminiscent of the great figures in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and very
possibly historically connected with them. Central Asiatic influences, per
haps Iranian and Sarmatian, entered. We hear of huge bronze statues
under the Chin, and the Han, but all these seem to have disappeared.

Most of the greatest Chinese sculpture was produced under the inspira
tion of Buddhism. That faith, as we have repeatedly seen, first made itself
powerfully felt in the period of disunion between the Han and the Sui. With
it came a rich iconography — of buddhas, bodhisattvas, gods, the lotus,
and many another symbolic design. The impulses under which this Buddhist
art had taken form were, as we have seen, varied, Some, notably those
adopted on the northwestern borders of India, were Greek. Others were
more fully Indian. Persian art, through the Sassanian Empire, made its
influence felt, especially on minor decorations. Buddhist iconography had
conventions — among them draperies and symbolic gestures and postures —
which were rather inflexible and allowed the craftsman less freedom for
the expression of individual genius than have some other artistic traditions.
Yet the Chinese sculptor took over these alien forms and at his best
improved them. Often he seems to have been a lay artisan who worked
from a description rather than a model. Certainly he sometimes took
liberties with tradition. He more nearly humanized the revered figures and
gave them greater variety. In time, too, he made the mantle folds on the
images more flowing and graceful. At its highest, Chinese Buddhist sculp
ture was of a better quality as an expression of artistic genius and even of

620 VOLUME II

religious feeling and conviction than were Indian prototypes. The charac
teristic Buddhist statue shows repose, relaxation, meditation, and unper
turbed calm. Into it could go much of the idealism and aspiration which
Buddhism fostered.

Chinese Buddhist sculptors ventured on innovations. The stelae, for
example, which they executed either were Chinese in origin or had been
Sinicized in form and design. Memorial stelae seem first to have appeared
in Han times and were elaborated in subsequent centuries. They bore
inscriptions and sometimes figures, and often were mounted on tortoises
and crowned with entwined dragons.

Since the greatest of Chinese Buddhist sculpture was executed in the
first century of the T'ang and in pre-T'ang times, most of it has perished
There remain, however, numerous examples, notably on cliffs and in
grottoes. Prominent among them are the ones at Ta-t'ung, in Shansi, once
a capital of the Northern Wei, at Tun-huang, in Kansu, and at Lung Men,
in Honan. Through extant specimens experts trace various periods. In the
sculptures of the Northern Wei the Hellenistic influences which found such
marked expression at Gandhara are strong. Into a transitional period shortly
before the Sui and under the T'ang a new wave from India entered. The
early years of the T'ang are characterized by a strength and a richness and
exuberance of decoration in keeping with the vigorous years of that dynasty.

By the close of the seventh century Chinese Buddhist sculpture was
declining in both quantity and quality. This is probably attributable in
part to the fact that Chinese Buddhism was itself passing its zenith. Secular
influences began to make themselves felt. More portrait statues appeared,
among them those of monks and some of them obviously excellent like
nesses. Even bodhisattvas were more humanized.

Under the Five Dynasties and the Sung, painting reached its greatest
heights and absorbed much of the artistic genius of the Empire. Sculpture
responded to the change and showed the effects of the popularity of the
rival art. The sculptor worked less exclusively in stone and bronze, used
more wood, clay, iron, and lacquer, and tended to treat his images with
color. Kuan-yin, originally male, became female in form and acquired
her now characteristic expression of womanly mercy and compassion.

Under the dynasties that conquered the North during the later cen
turies of the Sung a revival of Buddhist sculpture occurred — from what
cause is uncertain. The Yuan brought modifications but no marked devel
opment or improvement.

Under the Ming quantities of religious figures were produced, for
Buddhism was still popular. Probably because the faith was largely depend
ent on the momentum acquired in earlier, more pious generations and no
longer attracted genius or quickened the imagination as it had in its
years of greatest prosperity, most of the Buddhist images were now the

Art 621

uninspired reproduction of stereotyped forms. Ming sculptors seem to
have become enthusiastic only when they dealt with real life — as they
did at times in a rather incidental fashion. They devoted much energy
to the carving of columns and of architectural details, and usually were
here at their best. Ch'ing Buddhist sculpture was chiefly a continuation of
that of the Ming.

It must again be noted that, great as was its debt to Buddhism and
the foreign influences of which Buddhism was the vehicle, Chinese sculp
ture, even in the most flourishing days of that faith, was by no means
exclusively Buddhist. Secular monolithic figures were still carved to
adorn tombs. Memorial stelae were erected for non-Buddhist as well as
Buddhist purposes. Taoism, heavily indebted to and often slavishly imi
tative of Buddhism, evolved its own more or less stereotyped iconography.
Statues of Confucius were produced. Purely secular sculpture increased
with the waning of Buddhist vitality. Naturally it never attained to the
spiritual qualities of the best of the Buddhist statues, nor did it loom
so large in creative art.

Buddhist and Taoist images, at least in later centuries, were usually in
much more perishable material than stone or bronze. Chiefly of clay,
they were molded and then painted or gilded. Moreover, as was to be
expected, even at the period of richest genius many examples of crude and
uninspired craftsmanship were perpetrated. Certainly this was true in
the centuries of decadence. For instance, the Buddhist and Taoist "hells"
whose tortures have been presented in such stark realism in some late
temples seldom display much true artistic feeling. Yet in the twentieth
century Buddhist shrines survived whose images showed religious con
viction and gave even to the non-Buddhist visitor something of an inkling
of the calmness, the repose, and the serenity which are part of the Buddhist
ideal.

Closely related to the work of the sculptor was that of the craftsmen
who carved wood or ivory. Since the supporting timbers of a Chinese
building have been so largely utilized for decorative purposes and have
often been incised as well as painted or lacquered, the Chinese wood carver
found much occupation and developed not a little skill. He had many
designs — from the flora and fauna of China, and from mythology and
religious symbolism. Wood has been carved, too, for furniture and for
ornamental objects. From early times ivory has been prized as a material
in which the skilled craftsman could work.

PAINTING

If sculpture has not been ranked high by the Chinese as an
art, that is not true of painting. The Chinese judge painting to have been

622 VOLUME II

among their greatest forms of artistic expression. In this appraisal Western
connoisseurs are more and more concurring. In the last few decades
especially, the Occident has been discovering Chinese pictures, and notable
collections have been gathered in both Europe and America. Many experts
freely assert that at its best Chinese painting is one of the outstanding
expressions of man's ability to create beauty.

Yet most of the best paintings have long since been lost. This is
partly because the most famous artists lived centuries ago, under the
Sung, the T'ang, and even earlier. It is partly, too, because the materials
employed are extremely perishable. Silk has been the favorite, although
paper has also been used, and frescoes have not been uncommon. It is
also partly due to the many wars that have swept China. Frail pictures,
usually housed in the almost equally inflammable palaces, temples, and
private homes, have been calamitously subject not only to the ordinary
vicissitudes of fire but also to the destruction wrought by civil strife and
foreign invasion.

Yet in spite of the perishability of Chinese paintings and the many
dangers to which they have been exposed, numerous examples are extant
of Sung, Tang, and even of pre T'ang masters. A very few are original
productions of these periods. Their preservation is due to the high esteem
in which they have been held and the care bestowed upon them. More
are copies, or copies of copies, for the works of the leading painters were
reproduced again and again. The copy seldom quite equals the original
and in quality is often far below it, but at least it transmits something
of the conception of the initial creator. Since the Japanese have been
warm admirers of Chinese art, many examples have been preserved in
the Island Empire, some of them originals, but more of them copies,
or themes treated in the spirit of the great Chinese artists.

This is not the place to attempt a history of Chinese painting. Several
of its epochs have been noted in our narrative chapters. It is possible,
however, to give some of the outstanding characteristics of the art, together
with the names of a few of the greatest of the masters.

Painting is with a brush and in ink and watercolors, and by the Chinese
has been regarded as closely akin to calligraphy. Since the invention of
the brush pen many centuries ago, painting and calligraphy have moved
hand in hand. The brush strokes are thought of as producing the frame
work of the picture and are viewed as of fundamental importance. Per
fect control of the brush combined with lofty and discerning thought are
held to insure a good picture. Skill in wielding the brush is generally
acquired only through prolonged practice. The correct use of the wrist
is essential. This is usually a free movement, a support being employed
only for the finer strokes.

Before the T'ang, painting was largely by artisans rather than by

Art 623

artists and its strokes lacked variety. However, some great painters emerged,
and it was in the sixth century that Hsieh Ho laid down the famous
canons which have been supposed to govern the art. Under the T'ang
both calligraphy and painting developed markedly. All the principles
of calligraphy were applied to painting and many types of strokes were
evolved. It was after the T'ang that the widest variety of strokes appeared.
Especially were the artists of the Ming and the Ch'ing masters of tech
nique. They lavished time and energy on it, and developed many schools
of employing the brush. The Ming and the Ch'ing painters are, it must be
confessed, usually adjudged to have been more expert as technicians than
great as artists. In the latter capacity they are commonly said to have been
outranked by their predecessors of the Sung and the T'ang. But they were
numerous, and many of them unquestionably deserve to be remembered.
^ There have been many mural pictures, but as a rule the work of the
Chinese painter was not intended to be displayed continuously in the home
or in a public place. It is often in the form of a scroll, which is meant
to be progressively unrolled and rolled bit by bit, and so not to be
viewed in its entirety at once. Even though many paintings have been
designed to be seen as a whole, they are usually mounted— on heavy
paper— in such a way that they can be rolled up and brought out for
display only on occasion. Often the scroll bears the seals of the various
owners and perhaps a poetic comment on the picture or a note attesting its
authenticity. In some older works of art the seals and the comments occupy
more space than the picture itself. These seals, it may be added, are
obviously one way of tracing the history of a painting, although they are
not always, genuine and may deceive even the experts.

The subjects of Chinese paintings have been many. The Chinese were
the first to paint landscapes extensively. Religious themes have been
favorites, notably in the heyday of Buddhism, and both Buddhist and Taoist
figures and mythological and historical incidents have been frequent
objects of representation. Flowers and trees have been used again and
again. Especially has the bamboo been regarded as the test of an artist's
ability. The bamboo is at once so employable by man in a wide variety
of ways, so common a feature of the Chinese landscape, and so graceful,
that it has made a marked appeal to the painter. Depicting the bamboo
calls for the utmost skill in the application of the brush strokes that
are the basis of Chinese pictorial technique. Only the master can do it well,
and naturally many have made it a starting point of their endeavors!
Birds, insects, fish, and animals have often served as models. Many, too,
have rejoiced in portraying scenes from court life, famous historical inci
dents, and views of the life of humbler folk. There has been a marked
recurrence of themes: artists have often tested themselves by treating
famous subjects and scenes.

624 VOLUME II

The purpose of the Chinese artist has not been to give a photographic
reproduction of a landscape or an object. In China poetry and painting
have been closely associated. A painter often wrote poetry, and a dis
tinguished poet was also often a painter. Buddhism and Taoism, both
of them largely subjective in their effects, have profoundly influenced
painting. Perhaps it is for these reasons that the Chinese artist has attempted
to give his own interpretation of what he has seen — to catch the spirit
of his subject and to reproduce it, or to seek to put down the impression
which has been made on his soul.

Perhaps because of the Chinese philosophic attitude, man has been
subordinated to nature, or rather, he has been conceived of as part and
parcel of the universe — not as dominating it but ideally as harmonizing
with it. Many portraits have been made, and human figures have often
been introduced into landscapes. Religious pictures have included man.
However, the attitude toward man has been quite different from that of
the art of the ancient Graeco-Roman world and of European humanism of
the Renaissance and modern times.

To some Westerners Chinese paintings at first sight seem lacking
in perspective. Judged by Occidental standards this impression is largely
justified. Any attempt to represent three dimensions on a two-dimensional
surface must have recourse to conventions. The Westerner has accom
plished this in part by reproducing lights and shadows and in part by
the use of lines. A landscape or object is represented as viewed by an
observer from a particular point. By lines and the use of shading and
colors, the attempt is made to reproduce what the eye has seen from
that point. The Chinese have not been unaware of the problem. One of
the famous six canons of Hsieh Ho was that proportion (or what may
perhaps be translated "perspective") should be correctly conceived or
observed. The Chinese painter has employed several devices to convey
perspective. Apparently he has often wished the observer to look at his
landscape from several angles. In many instances he has thought of the
observer as viewing a landscape from a height. At his best the Chinese
painter has succeeded in avoiding flatness and in conveying a sense of dis
tance. This he has achieved partly by his use of colors. Often he has
done it by reproducing the mists which in the Yangtze Valley and the South
are so frequently seen.

Color has played a large part in Chinese paintings. To be sure, there
has been much use of monochrome, but in many paintings two or more
colors have been employed, often with delicacy and feeling. One of the
six canons of Hsieh Ho was that the tints should be suitable.

Chinese paintings, like those of any other people, must be seen to
be appreciated. The best of printed reproductions cannot do them full
justice. Fortunately many examples are now in the galleries and museums

Art 625

of Europe and North America. Even the amateur cannot fail to be moved
by the best of them and finds himself returning to them again and again.
Though Buddhism and Taoism are alien to his own spiritual experience,
he is impressed by the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and immortals, or perhaps
especially by the pictures of a hermit in meditation in a mountain fastness.
The landscapes move him. The flowers, the trees, the horses, the birds,
and the other living creatures in which the Chinese artists rejoice speak
a universal language. So, too, the scenes from the life of court and of
commoners are often so full of action and so obviously have caught the
spirit of the original that the Westerner to whom the civilization depicted is
exotic finds in them the appeal which, when it is well portrayed, human
character in its varying moods always makes.

CALLIGRAPHY

As we have seen, the Chinese have thought of calligraphy
and painting as closely allied. The two have been regarded as branches
of the same art. Expertness in the use of the brush pen is basic to both.
It has been maintained that it can be better seen in calligraphy than in
painting, for in the former it is not modified or obscured by the necessity
of portraying objects. Calligraphy has been highly honored, perhaps as
much as or more so than any other branch of art.

Examples of calligraphy are more widespread than paintings. In the
old system of education specimens of the work of noted calligraphers were
reproduced in the form of copy books. Inscriptions were and are to be
found almost everywhere: in tablets over city gates, in temples, as shop
signs, on the honorary arches of p'ai Ion, on votive or memorial tablets, on
the supporting pillars of a building, and in homes. Scrolls — to be hung
in pairs and bearing inscriptions which match each other — have been
almost universal. They have been customary forms of gifts and could
be purchased, or, if he was a skilled calligrapher, written by the donor
himself. The famous or the powerful might honor their friends by pre
senting them with scrolls or tablets written by their own hand.

There have been many noted calligraphers. Probably as distinguished
as any was Wang Hsi-chih (A.D. 321-379). Much attention was paid
by T'ang scholars and artists to calligraphy, but the dynasty did not pro
duce as many outstanding masters of the art as did some others, notably
the Sung. Probably the ranking Sung experts were Su Shih (1036-1101)
and the eccentric painter Mi Fei (1051-1107). To mention even the
most noted calligraphers of the various dynasties, however, would prove
tedious.

The best examples of the calligrapher's work have been treasured as
carefully as have been great paintings. Like paintings, they have been

626 VOLUME II

copied again and again. Moreover, they have been mechanically repro
duced. The Chinese form of block printing has allowed them to be
multiplied. Some of the most famous have been transferred to stone,
and can thence be almost endlessly copied by rubbings — a practice much
employed by the Chinese.

Also, as in the case of paintings, certain themes have been treated
many times. One of the most popular has been the Thousand Character
Classic (Chien Tzu Wen). It is attributed to a scholar of the sixth century
A.D. and contains a thousand different characters, no one of which is
repeated, arranged four in a line in complete sentences. It was long used
as an elementary text in the schools. Still another has been a famous
example of Wang Hsi-chih's penmanship, the Orchard Pavilion of Ting
Wu (Ting Wu Lan Ting).

Again as in the case of painting, canons have been laid down for
calligraphy. Probably sometime in the Sui or Tang — although they were
attributed to a famous calligrapher of the Han — eight rules were set forth,
illustrated in writing the character yung. Under later dynasties these were
multiplied and elaborated.

Many styles of writing have been developed. At least ten have been
recognized, and in recent times at least six were in use — some of them
for special purposes only. The four styles most frequently seen include
that which is usually adopted for books, with each stroke clearly written,
the "pattern style" for formal and official documents, a running hand, and
the ts'ao or "grass" hand, which is even more abbreviated than the latter.

With their emphasis upon calligraphy, the Chinese have naturally given
a great deal of attention to writing material; paper, pen, ink, and inkstone.
Paper is of several grades and is made of a number of materials. Rice
straw, rags, bamboo, what is sometimes known as "paper mulberry," and
at least two other plants have been employed. In each case a different
kind of paper has been produced. Several grades are entirely of plant
fiber. Others are treated with sizing — perhaps impregnated with starch.
Some, in spite of their apparent fragility, have been very enduring. Not
only have specimens of Han times been preserved in the dry desert air of the
western frontier, but entire printed books have come down from the Sung,
and there are examples from earlier dynasties. The ink is made from
soot resulting from the burning of pine, fir, or oil, mixed with one form
or another of glutinous substance, beaten fine and then put into molds.
The better kinds might be scented and have gold leaf mixed in them. Ink
has been put on the market in cakes or cylinders inscribed with charac
ters, usually in gold. To prepare it for use by the writer it is rubbed with
water on a stone. Some of these stones have been regarded as very valuable.
Pens are made from the hair of various animals and in such form that
when moistened they can be easily pointed.

Art 627

JADE

What is collectively called jade by Westerners and yu by
the Chinese comprises more than one kind of rock. It includes nephrite
and jadeite, the former a silicate of calcium and magnesium and the latter
a silicate of aluminum and sodium. Many peoples have regarded jade as
valuable, but it has been especially prized by the Chinese. Under the
Chou and part of the Han it was quarried in what is now Shensi and
perhaps was found in other parts of the older China. As the domestic
sources became exhausted it was imported from Turkestan and later
from Yunnan and Burma.

Jade has served many purposes. Jade implements, apparently for secu
lar occupations, have come down from the Chou and perhaps from earlier
times. Out of it ceremonial utensils have been made. Under the Chou
special kinds of insignia of power were carved from it. In ancient times, too,
it was frequently employed in the worship of Heaven, Earth, and other
divinities. For instance, a circular jade disc pierced by a round hole was
a symbol of Heaven. Tablets of jade have been utilized for writing —
but apparently only for imperial purposes. They were used in the cere
monies of feng and shan, and even in the Ch'ing dynasty some important
documents were incised on them. Jade has been employed for amulets, and
jade objects have been buried with the dead, partly because they have
been supposed to protect the body from decay and partly because they
have been believed to promote immortality. Jade, it has been held by
Taoists, is the food of spirits, and at one time it was believed that one's
chances of immortality could be improved by eating from jade bowls. Jade
has been extensively employed in the manufacture of ornaments of many
kinds: earrings, hairpins, pendants, clasps, buckles, and the like. From
it have been carved vases, bells, resonant stones, ornamental screens,
and artificial flowers.

' Chinese lapidaries have shown marked skill in working in jade. They
have also applied their art to agates, rock crystals, and other stones.

CERAMICS

Another characteristic feature of Chinese aesthetic life has
been ceramics. In one form, porcelain, China long led the rest of the
world, and in common parlance China and porcelain ware have been
almost synonymous. Yet, compared with the Occident, the Chinese potters
did not become masters of their craft until comparatively late. Not before
the T'ang and Sung did they deserve high rank as artists. In this phase
the ancient Mediterranean civilizations were far ahead of the contemporary
China of the Chou and the Han.

628 VOLUME II

Something of the history of the potter's art in China has been narrated
in earlier chapters. Since, however, it there appeared in piecemeal fashion,
a brief recapitulation may help to show the main features of the develop
ment and the outstanding characteristics of Chinese ceramics.

What is probably the earliest extant pottery known in China belongs
to the Yang Shao and related cultures — that neolithic civilization which
was on the edge of the bronze age. What may be the oldest of this earthen
ware is well shaped, thoroughly baked, and painted in various designs
and colors. It is quite impossible yet to determine exact dates, but one
estimate declares that it cannot be later than 3000 B.C. Along with this
painted pottery are remnants of a gray ware of coarser texture and less
skilled workmanship and of a type which persisted into the Han. There
is also a hard, black pottery. Fragments of a white, hard, carved pottery
have been discovered which probably belong to the Shang. The surviving
pottery of Chou times is not of particularly high quality.

With the Han, glazed ware began to appear. The art of manufacturing
it may have been transmitted from the Western world. Moreover, a good
deal of attention was paid to ornamentation of other kinds, and there are
vessels whose forms show no inconsiderable taste. Most of the examples
of Han pottery which we know have been obtained from graves. As we
have seen, some of this funerary ware pictures in most interesting and
informing fashion the architecture, costumes, and customs of the time.
Men, animals, houses, implements, and even fortresses were reproduced
in miniature.

In the interval between the Han and the T'ang, pottery of Han types
persisted, much of it for funerary purposes. New designs entered, some of
them possibly of Hellenistic provenance. There appeared, too, a hard
ware which is a kind of protoporcelain. It is within the realm of possibility
that true porcelain was developed some time between the Han and the
T'ang.

It is certain that under the T'ang porcelain was being manufactured,
and from fragments discovered in western Asia we assume that it was
being exported. Moreover, in the T'ang not only were lead glazes in
vogue, but marked development was also registered in the harder, felds-
pathic glazes, whose firing requires higher temperatures, and which had
begun to appear in pre-T'ang times. Glazes of more than one color were
sometimes applied to an object, and paint might be used. Under the T'ang
several colors were employed. Improvement was made in the artistic forms
of earthenware. Numerous figures of burned clay, akin to those of pre
ceding centuries, have been recovered from T'ang tombs. Some of them
are glazed and many show marked artistic feeling and skill. The grace and
lively vigor of statuettes of dancing girls and of horses are unforgettable.

The political turmoil of the five decades that immediately followed the
downfall of the Tang did not prevent improvements in pottery. Chinese

Art 629

literature tells of a remarkably fine ware manufactured for a few years
in the present Honan and of a "secret color" made in the present Chekiang.

The Sung period, so noted for its achievements in painting and in
other refined forms of culture, is also distinguished for its ceramics. Sung
ceramics, not unnaturally, is of varying quality. Some is heavy stone
ware, some semiporcelainlike, and some the most delicate and beautiful
porcelain. A number of different types were produced. Several are peculiar
to the Sung and some were made as well under other dynasties — earlier
or later, or both — so that even experts are often at a loss to know whether
a particular specimen is of Sung or of earlier or subsequent origin. Both
state-directed and private potteries existed. Each important center of man
ufacture produced a distinct type. Among the most noted of the Sung
types is a pure white, somewhat translucent porcelain, often with carved
or incised designs, and with a cream or ivory tinted glaze. Frequently
the rim of the mouth is not covered by glaze but by a band of copper
or silver. Another class with many subdivisions is celadon. Celadon is
porcelain or porcelaneous ware, usually with a gray or grayish-white
body, covered heavily with a translucent glaze of varying shades of green:
bluish, grayish, and even grass green. Sometimes the celadon ware has
carved or incised designs, sometimes designs in relief, and sometimes figures
that were purposely left uncovered by the glaze and so in baking turned red
or reddish brown. These celadons were widely scattered by commerce and
either in Sung or in later times made their way to Mesopotamia, the
Near East, and even to western Europe and as far south as Zanzibar.
There was also crackle ware, although this was by no means confined
to the Sung. By it is meant objects whose glazes are a network of cracks,
sometimes accentuated by coloring. While the cracks were probably at
first accidental, Chinese potters learned how to produce and control them,
chiefly by modifying the components of the glaze and by methods of apply
ing it. Still another type of ware was characterized by rich and varied colors,
which were due to the changes wrought by the fire of the kilns in the
copper oxide and in the trace of iron that entered into the composition.
These by no means exhaust the kinds of pottery and porcelain of the
Sung, but they are outstanding.

In general, and somewhat regardless of the particular centers in which
they worked, the Sung potters tended to simplicity and yet elegance of
form and decoration. Occasionally they departed from these standards,
especially when copying old bronzes, but in the main they held to them.
The shapes of the vessels were graceful or at times sturdy without being
elaborate. Often only one color of glaze was used. Such figures as were
painted, incised, or embossed on the surfaces were also usually far from
being complex or multicolored. In this the Sung potters formed a strik
ing contrast to many of their successors of the Ming and the Ch'ing.

The Yuan dynasty made no noteworthy contribution to ceramics. The

630 VOLUME ii

Sung models and techniques were continued, but with diminished vigor
and skill. The Ming, however, witnessed distinct innovations and ushered
in a new period. The industry tended to center at the vast imperial works
at Ching-te Chen, in Kiangsi, not far from the P'o-yang Lake. Here
was an extensive supply of the materials most needed for the manufacture
of porcelain — kaolin and petuntse — and a cobalt-bearing manganese ore
which provided the blues in which the Ming potters delighted. More
over, Ching-te Chen was conveniently located for the transportation and
distribution of its wares. It was on a stream which communicated with
the P'o-yang Lake and thus had easy access to the Yangtze and the
vast network of China's waterways. The porcelain characteristic of Ching-
te Chen possessed a white body, and since the output was enormous and
was at the maximum in the years when the Occident was making its first
extensive contacts with China, it was this which was most widely distrib
uted, and which formed, moreover, an important item in the trade of
China with its Asiatic neighbors.

In their designs the Ming craftsmen tended to depart from the
restrained yet elegant simplicity of their Sung predecessors. Monochrome
wares were still produced — pure white, blues, celadon green, and red being
among them, and it is not always easy to tell whether a particular speci
men is of Sung or of Ming origin. However, the potters of the Ming
delighted in cobalt blue, a color which would withstand the high tempera
tures needed to melt the porcelain glaze. They also paid much attention
to elaborate scenes and designs in more than one color. Some of their
colors were applied as a kind of enamel to the surface of the glaze and
were fixed by refiring at a low temperature. In this richness of pains
taking and elaborate decoration Ming potters were but giving expression
to the artistic spirit of an age which reveled in details and technique* in
painting and in ornate sculpture of the pillars, beams, and balustrades of
buildings.

The great Emperors of the Ch'ing continued the patronage of Ching-
te Chen. Never did Chinese potters have better command of their mate
rials than in the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of
the eighteenth century. Originality may have been sacrificed to mass
production. Certainly no revolutionary departure was made from the
Ming traditions and there was some continuation of Sung forms. How
ever, toward the latter part of the eighteenth century new colors were
introduced and with them came new types of decoration. Many pieces
and sets were produced for the Occidental trade and often had Western
designs. With the decay of the dynasty in the nineteenth century the artistic
quality of the porcelain ware declined, as did so much else of China's
culture. The rebellions of the middle of the century dealt ceramics a blow
from which it never recovered. Ching-te Chen especially was ravaged
by the T'ai P'ings and its famous works were not fully restored. By no

Art 631

means all the porcelain of the Ch'ing period was produced by Ching-te
Chen. There were potteries in a number of other places, and in some of
them work of excellent quality was done. However, Ching-te Chen was
the main center and with its decay ceramics fell to a low level.

This sketch of the history of the work of the Chinese potter has inci
dentally included several of the main characteristics of the more artistically
meritorious portions of Chinese ceramics. It must be added that pottery
and porcelain have been employed in enormous quantities and for a great
variety of purposes. Utensils in daily use for common purposes have been
of earthenware, and their production has consumed much of the energy
of the potter. The prevalence of the tiled roof has given work to many thou
sands of craftsmen. Most of the tiles have been of undecorated baked clay,
but those for the more important structures have usually been glazed,
and the highly ornamental ones, some of them with grotesque figures, used
to accentuate the more prominent features of the roof, have given oppor
tunity for the craftsman to express himself with originality. The funerary
earthenware figures of earlier centuries, and especially the porcelains,
afforded scope for artistic expression which was often of a very high
order.

The work of the potter, like that of other artists and craftsmen, has
had its conventions. Folklore, mythology, and religion have had marked
effects. Designs are often highly symbolic and frequently have given oppor
tunity for that delicate expression by a donor of wishes for good fortune
in which the Chinese have been adepts. Pottery and porcelain, therefore,
have combined utility with opportunity for aesthetic and even religious
feeling and have occupied a large part in the life of the Chinese,

BRONZE

Rather more than in most peoples, among the Chinese
bronze has had an important role as a means of artistic expression. In
this there may be additional evidence of Chinese conservatism. Under
the Shang and the Chou, when bronze was the metal most commonly in
use, it naturally loomed large as an art material. Inevitably, moreover,
a larger number of objects of bronze survived than of those made of
more perishable substances. The Chinese, therefore, with their admira
tion for antiquity, highly prized the bronzes of their early centuries, devoted
much study to them, and continued to employ the metal for many of their
art objects. In numbers of these they copied ancient designs, either with
a good deal of fidelity or with more or less freedom in detail, and in
others they branched out into new forms. Artistically China continued in
no small degree to live in the bronze age.

Even in the Han the chance exhumation of an antique bronze vessel
was considered a notable event. Many books on ancient bronzes were

632 VOLUME II

written, and valued collections of the original objects were made. The
Sung is the first dynasty in which these treatises seem to have been com
posed in fairly large numbers, but we know that one was written as far
back as the sixth century of our era, and in still earlier works on ritual
the names and dimensions of many bronze vessels were carefully noted.
Chinese prized their older bronzes not only for their age and their
beauty but also because many contained inscriptions. The reverence for
the written character and the zeal for discovering its earliest forms
enhanced the value placed upon inscribed vessels.

Recent archaeology has disclosed bronzes which are indubitably from
the Shang, but many specimens attributed to that dynasty do not certainly
go back that far. Undoubtedly, however, many of the objects now in
Chinese and Occidental collections are of at least as early origin as the
Chou. These include weapons, the trimmings of chariots, and ceremonial
utensils. The vigorous, massive, dignified, and often graceful and well-
proportioned lines of many of the vessels are indicative of skill and taste of
no mean order. Shang bronzes especially give evidence of superb work
manship. Under the Han new designs entered, both in form and decora
tion, and many of the surviving examples display artistic merit of a high
level. In bronzes, as in so many other phases of Chinese art, Buddhism
was the vehicle for new motifs which were of foreign origin or showed
alien influence. Many Buddhist images, large and small, were cast in
bronze, and the metal was used in numerous objects connected with
Buddhist worship. Bells were cast, not only after the advent of Buddhism
and for Buddhist uses, but centuries earlier. The Sung workers in bronze
rejoiced in copying archaic designs, but also created forms of their own.
Under the Ming and the Ch'ing, as in so many other phases of art, the
bronzes were often characterized by elaborate decoration. Some of them,
even though huge, were vastly inferior aesthetically to the best products
of earlier dynasties. There was, too, much imitation of antique forms. The
bronzes which were being made when contacts with the West first became
important were usually much below the level of those of many of the
preceding centuries.

Bronze is not the only metal in which Chinese artistic feeling has
expressed itself. Silver has been widely used, not only for jewelry but
also for other objects. Gold has been employed, although not as lavishly
as in some other lands — perhaps because it has been relatively scarce.
Pewter has been much utilized, and iron objects have sometimes shown
aesthetic taste.

LACQUER

Lacquer was early seen in China. Examples have been
found which date from the late Chou. Because of its perishability, lacquer

Art 633

has not stood the ravages of time as well as has bronze or jade, but speci
mens of T'ang origin are preserved in Japan and we have descriptions
and specimens of it as it was handled under the Sung and know that by
then much care and artistic skill were being devoted to it. We know, too,
that it was extensively produced under the Ming and the Ch'ing.

The lacquer of China is prepared from the sap of a particular kind
of native tree. The sap is collected from incisions, darkens with exposure
to the air, is strained, and then is ground to improve its grain and to give
it uniform consistency. It is colored by mixing it with various substances.

Lacquer is applied with spatula and brush to the article to be decorated.
Several and sometimes many layers are spread, each being allowed to
dry before the next is put on. The base to be covered may be wood,
metal, porcelain, or cloth. The objects generally need preparation for
the lacquer, and the entire process, if well carried out, requires marked
skill. Succeeding layers may be of varying composition, consistency, and
color, and the drying and polishing demand experience and care. The sur
face may be decorated in a number of ways, and the designs may be very
elaborate: landscapes, groups of figures, mythological and religious inci
dents or symbols, or flowers and trees. The surface may be painted, often
with gold or silver gilt; it may have the pattern placed on it in relief; it
may be inlaid with mother-of-pearl or semiprecious stones; or it may be
carved, sometimes very deeply. For carved objects, layers of different
colors may be applied and the carving done in such a manner as to bring
out the colors. Or the lacquer may be mixed with fine particles of gold,
and the polished surface left with no other ornamentation. Many different
objects have been lacquered: boxes, screens, fans, trays, ewers, vases,
chairs and thrones, and even the pillars of buildings, large as well as small.

There have, too, been many different centers of manufacture. Often
each has been noted for a particular kind of workmanship and type of
decoration.

ENAMELS

The art of applying enamels appears to have been of non-
Chinese origin. It may have come in both by the sea and by the overland
routes. Certainly we do not hear of it much if at all before the Yuan.
Beautiful enameled ware was produced under the Ming and the great
Ch'ing Emperors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some of it
in imperial workshops at Peking.

Chinese have utilized enamel in three processes: cloisonne, champ-
leve, and painting. In cloisonne the pattern is outlined by thin metal
strips which are soldered upon the surface to be decorated. In the cells
thus formed the powdered enamel is placed and then the entire object
is fired. After firing, the surface is smoothed and polished. In champleve

634 VOLUME II

the pattern is incised, the resulting depressions are filled with the enamel,
and the whole is fired and later smoothed and polished as in the case
of cloisonne. In both cloisonne and champleve gilding has often been
applied to the exposed metal. Enamel may be spread, like paint, either
on metal or on porcelain and the whole be then heated. The Chinese have
used porcelain more than metal for this purpose. Probably the most
nearly perfect technique was attained under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor,
but somewhat at the cost of vividness in coloring and vigor of design.

GLASS

Glass is not certainly a native invention. It was imported
as early as the Han — from Ta Ch'in, as the Chinese then denominated
what we now with equal inexactness call the Near East. It was manu
factured in China as early as the fifth century and a good many artistic
objects have been made from it. The Chinese have not esteemed it as
highly as porcelain and so have not devoted the same amount of skill
to its production. They have, however, long known and practiced the
chief processes by which it is manipulated in the Occident, among them
blowing, casting, and molding. It has generally been for smaller objects
that the Chinese have employed glass. Often they have made it imitate
jade. They have known and utilized a good many colors. It is in carving
that the Chinese have been at their best in their use of glass; for this they
have brought the technique acquired in the cutting of the stones and
gems with which they have long worked. Here they have shown craftsman
ship equal to the best of its kind in any other part of the world.

JEWELRY

Like other civilized peoples, the Chinese have developed
jewelry. Jewelry has been, naturally, chiefly for purposes of ornamentation,
but, although by no means to the same extent as in India, it has also been
a means of saving capital against the proverbial rainy day. In its manu
facture, Chinese craftsmen have developed no little taste. It is interesting
that some of the stones regarded as most precious in other parts of the
world, among them the diamond, have not been esteemed very highly.

TEXTILES

It is not surprising that a people who have used silk for so
long have developed marked skill in the manufacture of textiles. Certainly
for many centuries the Chinese have been producing silk cloths of many
different kinds. They have made brocades, they have interwoven silk
with gold threads, and they have manufactured velvets and satins. They

Art 635

have incorporated many designs into their cloth: flowers, birds, elaborate
geometrical patterns, and even landscapes and scenes from life or from
mythology and religion. Embroideries, large and small, have been pro
duced, some of them for clothes and some for screens and hangings.
Portraits and congratulatory inscriptions may be embroidered. Many beau
tiful garments have been made, for, if they could afford it, both men
and women have worn silk, often of varied colors and of exquisite design.
Official robes for state occasions were especially ornate, and a formal court
gathering was gorgeous in its dress. Tapestries have been produced,
although the art of weaving them seems to have come in from abroad.
In the case of at least some kinds of carpets and rugs the methods and
models appear to have been of foreign origin.

Silk was by no means the only material utilized for textiles. The fibers
of several kinds of plants were employed. The nankeens much prized by
our great-grandparents were cotton fabrics imported from China. Wool,
too, has been woven, much of it going into rugs, and camel's hair has
been used for the same purpose. The "Peking rugs" so popular among
Westerners of late years are of wool. Peking has been a center of the
industry, but they have also been produced elsewhere.

MUSIC

The Chinese, like other peoples, have found in music an
expression of their aesthetic sense. Music in China has had a long history
and into it many influences have entered. It dates from at least as early
as the Shang. We hear a good deal of the music of the Chou. Some of it
accompanied worship, and the instruments employed in certain religious
ceremonies. of later times, notably in Confucian temples, were supposedly
modeled on those of that period, Confucius himself is said to have been
particularly interested in music. Buddhism has its special compositions.
There are folk songs. Traveling minstrels have sung their rhymes to the
accompaniment of an instrument. Singing and an orchestra are features
of the universally popular theatre. There are, then, several kinds of music,
and some of them are either of foreign provenance or show foreign influ
ence. Many different types of instruments are or have been in use —
among them drums, flutes, reeds, a variety of strings, metal bells, and
resonant stones. A number of different scales have been known. The
pentatonic, which is much heard in Chinese folk music, is only one of
several.

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE COMING OF THE OCCIDENT

Artistically, contact with the Occident has been disintegrating
and disruptive, as in many other phases of Chinese culture. Also as in

636 VOLUME ii

them, the disorder has been accentuated by the fact that the Westerner
came in force at a time when, because of the decaying vigor of the ruling
house, the processes of creative civilization were in decline.

The Occident has proved disturbing in many ways and for a number
of reasons. Several Western products have displaced those of domestic
manufacture in part or entirety. Thus cotton goods from Lancashire,
Japan, and the new factories in China have tended to drive out some of
the native cloths, and cups from Japan and teapots from Birmingham par
tially superseded the corresponding indigenous earthenware. The political
chaos resulting from the impact of the West and the collapse of the Ch'ing
weakened or eliminated several of the centers of the production of artistic
objects. Added to this was the demand in the West for certain types of
Chinese products. To meet it the handicraftsman often yielded to the
temptation to hurried and therefore careless work or to use cheap mate
rials. Probably even more devastating has been the undiscriminating
popularity in China of things Western. Thus the Chinese, and especially
the educated Chinese, has abandoned his old costume for Occidental
garb, studies Western music, attempts to paint in European fashion, and
discards his older forms of architecture for those of the West or attempts
to combine the two in strange hybrids which violate the canons of both.

The advent of Communism has hastened the disintegration of the
older art and architecture. Additional city walls have been torn down.
Those of Peking have been pierced in several places to give access to
the burgeoning suburbs of that rapidly growing capital. The new struc
tures erected, notably the factories and large apartment houses, have
usually been purely functional, with severe lines. Simple dress of Western
origin has become the pattern for all classes and both sexes. Yet the
Communists have also shown zeal and skill in preserving and restoring
ancient buildings, notably the temples and imperial palaces of Peking.

Reconstruction has only barely begun, but here and there have been
encouraging movements. Among the educated, for a time, nationalistic spirit
brought sporadic waves of return to native garb. It has also stimulated
attention to the remains of the older culture. It has accentuated an interest
in archaeology and led to the collection of some of the folk songs. The
Communists especially have patronized archaeologists. Their removal of
old tombs and buildings, and their excavations for industrial purposes
and road-building, have revealed much of antiquity and they have encour
aged archaeologists to study what has been disclosed.

In no other realm of contemporary Chinese culture is it more difficult
to forecast the future. The old traditions are being so weakened and such
scanty beginnings are being made toward something new that the friends
of China can only be patient and hope. Whether the Chinese aesthetic
sense will in time be stimulated to fresh creative expression of a high

Art 637

order no one knows. Still less ought one to essay the role of a prophet in
predicting the forms which, if it appears, the renaissance will take. One
can only express the wish that the heritage of the past will not be com
pletely abandoned and that it will form the basis and provide much of the
inspiration for whatever is to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is not the place to list even the more important works which the
Chinese themselves have written on art. Space must be taken, however, to say
that there is a voluminous literature. Some of the titles may be found in A.
Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature (New edition, Shanghai, 1902), pp. 135-
142; in George Soulie de Morant, Histoire de I' Art Chinois (Paris, 1928), pp.
283-290; in S. W. Bushell, Chinese Art (second edition, 2 vols., London, 1910);
and in B. Laufer, Jade (Chicago, 1912).

There is a large and rapidly increasing literature in European languages,
some of it in the form of sumptuous volumes, for Chinese art has aroused much
enthusiasm among Western collectors. Among the books covering all or a
large portion of the field are the two small volumes by Bushell mentioned
above, which, though now in some sections superseded by later works, are
still useful, especially because they cover so wide a scope. D. Carter, China
Magnificent (New York, 1936) is an excellent popular survey. Also of a
popular character, and by experts, are Michael Sullivan, An Introduction to
Chinese Art (University of California Press, 1962, pp. 223); Laurence Sickman
and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (Penguin Books,
1956, pp. xxvi, 318); Rene Grousset, translated by H. Chevalier, Chinese Art
and Culture (New York, The Orient Press, 1959, pp. 331), There are O.
Siren, A History of Early Chinese Art (4 vols., London, 1929-1930, and also
in French), which deals with the prehistoric and pre-Han period, the Han
period, sculpture, and architecture; M. I. Rostovtzeff, The Animal Style in
South Russia and China (Princeton, 1929), which deals with relationships of
art motifs in those regions; H. d'Ardenne de Tizac, L'Art Chinois Classique
(Paris, 1926), which brings the story down through the Han; 0. Musterberg,
Chinesische Kunstgeschichte (2 vols., Esslingen, 1910), detailed and well
illustrated; George Soulie de Morant, Histoire de I' Art Chinois (Paris, 1928),
well illustrated, short, and popular, and of which there is an English translation;
and E. F. Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (2 vols., London,
1912), much fuller for Japan than for China. There is also a series of intro
ductory sketches by several authors and with beautiful illustrations in Chinese
Art, An Introductory Review of Painting, Ceramics, Textiles, Bronzes, Sculpture,
Jade, etc. (Burlington Magazine Monographs, London, 1925). On symbolism,
see C. A. S. Williams, Outlines of Chinese Symbolism (Peking, ca. 1931).

On architecture there is an excellent sketch by Oswald Siren, "Chinese
Architecture," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, vol. 5, pp. 556-
565. There are also several substantial volumes, including Ernst Boerschmann,
Chinesische Architektur (2 vols., Berlin, 1925), most of which is illustrations;
volume four, Architecture, of 0. Siren, A History of Early Chinese Art (Lon
don, 1930, also in French, Paris, 1929-1930), profusely illustrated; A. Hu-
brecht, Grandeur et Suprematie de Peking (Peking, 1928), profusely illustrated;
O. Siren, The Walls and Gates of Peking (London, 1924); a long, detailed

638 VOLUME II

review by M. P. Demieville of a reissue of the 1925 edition of Ying-tsao~fa-shih
("Methods of Architecture") by Li Ming-chung, based on Sung wood block
editions, in Bulletin de I'tcole Francaise d' Extreme-Orient (1925, Vol. 25, pp.
213-264); and 0. Siren, The Imperial Palaces of Peking (3 vols., Paris, 1926).
A sketch of the literature, Chinese and Western, on Chinese architecture, com
piled by W. P. Yetts is in the Burlington Magazine, Vol. 50 (1927), pp. 116-
131.

On the Great Wall, there is an excellent travel article by F. G. Clapp,
"Along- .and Across the Great Wall of China," Geographic Review, 1920,
Vol. 9, pp. 221-249.

On gardens, E. H. Wilson, China, Mother of Gardens (Boston, 1929),
while dealing chiefly with the author's travels in China in search of plants, has
important information on the flora of China and a few notes on Chinese
gardens.

On Chinese sculpture, there is again an excellent summary, well illustrated,
by Oswald Siren, "Chinese Sculpture," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th
edition, Vol. 5, pp. 579-588. O. Siren has a massive work on the subject,
Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century (4 vols., of which
one is text, London, 1925). £. Chavannes, whose name guarantees work of a
high scholarly order, has Six Monuments de la Sculpture Chinoise (Brussels
and Paris, 1914) and Mission Archeologique dans la Chine Septentrionale
(Paris, 1909-1915), with two albums of plates and one volume of text in two
parts, La Sculpture a tpoque des Han and La Sculpture Bouddhique. There
is V. Segalen, G. de Voisins, and J. Lartique, Mission Archeologique en Chine
(1914 et 1917) (Paris, 1923-1924), with an atlas and two portfolios on La
Sculpture et les Monuments Funlraires (Provinces du Chan-si et du Sseu-
tch'ouen), Monuments Funeraires (Region de Nankin), and Monuments Boud-
dihiques (Province du Sseu-tch'ouen). There is also L. Ashton, Introduction to
the Study of Chinese Sculpture (London, 1924). O. Siren has Studien zur
Chinesischen Plastik der Post-Tang Zeit (1927), and a volume on sculpture
in his A History of Early Chinese Art (London, 1930. Also in French). On
ancient sculpture on the western borders of China there are P. Pelliot, Les
Grottes de Touen-Houang. Peintures et Sculptures Bouddhiques des fipoques
des Wei, des Tang et des Song (six portfolios, Paris, 1920-1924), and von Le
Coq, Die Buddhistische Spatantike in Mittel-Asien, Vol. 1, Die Plastik
(Berlin, 1922).

On figures buried in tombs, in addition to material contained in works
which do not specialize on them, there are B. Laufer, Chinese Clay Figures.
Part 1, Prolegomena on the History of Defensive Armor (Chicago, 1914); C.
Hentze, Chinese Tomb Figures. A Study in the Beliefs and Folklore* of An
cient China (London, 1928) — profusely illustrated.

Painting has called out many special works in addition to the accounts
given in general treatises on Chinese art. L. Binyon has an excellent though
brief summary in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 5,
pp. 575-579. H. A. Giles has a small volume on An Introduction to the
History of Chinese Pictorial Art (London, 1918). There are also J. C. Fer
guson, Chinese Painting (Chicago, 1927), largely a description of individual
painters and their works arranged by dynasties; F. Hirth, Scraps from a Col
lector's Notebook: Some Chinese Painters of the Present Dynasty (Leiden,
1905); Arthur Waley, An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting
(London, 1923), an historical account with excellent illustrations, some of

Art 639

which are in color; R. Petrucci, translator, Kiai-T sen-Yuan Houa Tchouan.
Les Enseignements de la Peinture du Jardin Grand comme un Grain de
Moutarde. Encyclopedic de la Peinture Chinoise (Paris, 1918); R. Petrucci,
Les Peintres Chinois (Paris, 1912), of which there is an English translation;
0. Fischer, Chinesische Landschaftsmalerei (Munich, 1921), an historical and
descriptive account with a good many illustrations in monochrome; O. Fischer,
Die Chinesische Malerei der Han-Dynastie (Berlin, 1931); L. Binyon, Painting
in the Far East. An Introduction to the History of Pictorial Art in Asia,
Especially China and Japan (London, 1908); James Cahill, Chinese Painting
(Lausanne, 1960, pp. 211); B. March, Some Technical Terms of Chinese
Painting (Baltimore, 1935); O. Siren, Chinese Painting (New York, The Ronald
Press, 6 vols., 1956); and L. Binyon, Chinese Paintings in English Collections
(Paris, 1927). See also A. C. Soper "The First Two Laws of Hsieh Ho," The
Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 8, pp. 412-4; and George Rowley, Principles of
Chinese Painting (Princeton University Press, 1947, pp. x, 111).

On calligraphy there are brief notes in L C. Ferguson, Outlines of Chinese
Art (Chicago, 1919) and in S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New
York, 1882), Vol. I, pp. 592-600, and a longer treatment in Chiang Yee,
Chinese Calligraphy (Harvard University Press, 1956),

On jade there are B. Laufer, Jade, A Study in Chinese Archaeology and
Religion (Chicago, 1912); U. B. Pope-Hennessy, Early Chinese Jades (London,
1923); and P. Pelliot, Jades Archaiques de Chine Appertenant a C. T. Loo
(Paris, 1925).

Westerners have given much attention to Chinese ceramics. Volume 9 of
F. Brinkley, China: Its History, Arts, and Literature (Boston and Tokyo, 1902)
is devoted to the subject. There are also R. L. Hobson, Chinese Pottery and
Porcelain (2 vols., New York and London, 1915); A. D. Brankston, Early
Ming Wares of Ching-te Chen (Shanghai, 1938?); R. L. Hobson, The Wares of
the Ming Dynasty (London, 1923); R. L. Hobson, The Later Ceramic Wares
of China (London, 1925); R. L. Hobson, George Eumorfopoulos Collection:
Guide of the Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain (6 vols.,
London, 1927-1928), most of which is on China; R. L. Hobson and A. L.
Hetherington, The Art of the Chinese Potter from the Han Dynasty to the
End of the Ming (London, 1923), made up mostly of illustrations; B. Laufer,
The Beginnings of Porcelain in China (Chicago, 1917); S. W. Bushell, trans
lator, Description of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, Being a Translation of Tao
Shuo (Oxford, 1910); S. W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art, Illustrated by
Examples from the Collection of W. T. Walters (10 vols., New York, 1897);
and an excellent article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, Vol. 18, pp.
360-369.

On bronzes there are C. K. Kelley in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edi
tion, Vol. 4, pp. 245-249; E. A. Voretzsch, Altchinesische Bronzen (Berlin,
1924); A. J, Koop, Early Chinese Bronzes (London, 1924); and W. P. Yetts,
The George Eumorfopoulos Collection: Catalogue of the Chinese and Corean
Bronzes, Sculpture, Jades, Jewellery and Miscellaneous Objects (2 vols., Lon
don, 1929, 1930); B. Laufer, Archaic Chinese Bronzes of the Shang, Chou
and Han Periods in the Collection of Mr. Parish-Watson (New York, 1922);
Max Loehr, Chinese Bronze Age Weapons (University of Michigan Press,
1956, pp. 233); Noel Barnard, "Bronze Casting and Bronze Alloys in Ancient
China" (Monumenta Serica, Monograph XIV Canberra, Australian National
University and Monumenta Serica, 1961), dealing with pre-Han times.

640 VOLUME II

On lacquer there are E. F. Strange, Catalogue of Chinese Lacquer (London,
1925); E. F. Strange, Chinese Lacquer (London, 1926); and A. A. Breuer,
"Chinese Inlaid Lacquer," and "Chinese Incised Lacquer," in Burlington
Magazine, 1914, vol. 25, pp. 176-182, 280-285.

On enamels, jewelry, and textiles, see Bushell, Chinese Art, where there are
short sketches of each.

On music there are J. A. Van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai, 1884); L.
Laloy, La Musique Chinoise (Paris, 1910); M. Courant, Esscd Historique sur
la Musique Classique des Chinoise avec un Appendice Relatif a la Musique
Coreenne (Paris, 1912); G. Soulie de Morant, Theatre et Musique Modernes
en Chine avec un ttude Technique de la Musique Chinoise et Transcriptions
pour Piano by Andre Gailhard (Paris, 1926); R. Wilhelm, Chinesische Musik
(Frankfurt am Main, 1927); £. Chavannes, Les Memoires Historiques de Se-
ma Ts'ien, Vol. 3 (Paris, 1898), pp. 230-319, 630-645; A. C. Moule, "A
List of the Musical and Other Sound-Producing Instruments of the Chinese,"
Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1908, pp. 1-
160; and T. W. Kingsmill, "The Music of China," ibid., 1910, pp. 25-56.

See also S. H. Hansford, A Glossary of Chinese Art and Archeology (Lon
don, The China Society, 1954, pp. 96).

On the twentieth century changes see Michael Sullivan, Chinese Art in the
Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 1959, pp. 110).

For additional titles see C. O. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibliography (Uni
versity of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 73-79, and H. Franke, Sinologie (Bern, A.
Francke, 1953), pp. 183-189.

CHAP TER TWENTY

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EDUCATION

One range of topics remains to be treated in our survey of
Chinese history and culture — namely, language, literature, and education.
Part of the proper contents of this chapter has been included earlier, under
other subjects. More than one phase of literature has already been dis
cussed, and education has been touched upon both in the chapter on
government, where the civil service examinations, the goal of much of the
educational system, were described, and in that on religion, where the
preparation given Buddhist monks was briefly summarized. The present
chapter, therefore, will describe only those features of the subjects that head
it which have not been covered elsewhere.

THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE

The Chinese language is the mother tongue of more people
than is any other on the face of the earth, and, indeed, of more than have
spoken any other language at any one time in the history of the race. Even
its most prevalent form, Mandarin, probably surpasses all other tongues
in the number of those who employ it in the daily affairs of life. English,
French, and possibly Russian have a wider geographic spread, but none
is the primary language of so large a proportion of the world's population.

To the Westerner the Chinese language is at the outset most dis
concerting, for it does not fit into many of the patterns to which he is
accustomed. One of the most striking of the dissimilarities is that which
exists between the spoken and much of the written language. The vernacular
may be and more than once has been reduced to writing. Interesting and
influential movements of the present century, as we have seen, are toward
the production of a literature in a standardized form of the most widely
spoken of the colloquials. On the other hand, since some time before the
Christian Era most of that which has been esteemed of high quality has
differed markedly in style from ordinary conversation.

Chinese is often regarded as one of a group of which Siamese, Tibetan,
and Burmese are other important representatives. However, today Chinese
differs so greatly from these other tongues that if it was ever identical or
nearly identical with them the separation must have occurred very long ago.

The history of the Chinese spoken language capnot be clearly traced,
partly because of the fact that during most of its course, due to differences

641

642 VOLUME II

between the usual written and spoken forms, it was not reduced to writing.
However, a good deal of evidence has been amassed which gives either
clues or exact information about it in various stages of its existence. Some
of the dialects now spoken in the South are usually considered to be more
archaic than those in the North. The Japanese have taken over many
words from the Chinese. There were periods when this borrowing was on a
larger scale than at others. Chinese entered by various routes, so that the
two major forms in which its pronunciation survives represent chronological
and regional variations. Japanese is fundamentally different from Chinese,
and Chinese words were modified when spoken with the inevitable Japanese
accent. However, the alterations are often detectable. Korean and Anna-
mese, too, borrowed wholesale from Chinese and are of help to the
philologist who wishes to reconstruct earlier stages of the colloquial. More
over, the Chinese sometimes wrote in the vernacular. Pre-Sung examples
of the colloquial are rare, but we have a few from the T'ang. The rhyming
dictionaries, as they are called, give important information. A famous one,
surviving only in fragments, was composed in the sixth century of our era,
and another in the eleventh century. Characters were grouped according
to the sounds with which their pronunciations began and ended. By com
parison with modern pronunciations of the same characters it is possible
in many instances to know what values were given them at the time the
dictionaries were compiled. The transliteration of Indian Buddhist terms
and names, a large amount of which was made in T'ang times on a large
and accurate scale (and previously somewhat casually), also affords useful
evidence.

It is clear that extensive changes have taken place in the colloquial In
many instances final consonants have been elided and initial consonants
altered. It is possible, too, that at one time the Chinese language possessed
some inflections, at least with differences in case.

The causes for the changes are at least four. Chinese has not been
recorded by a type of writing fitted to preserve existing sounds. The in
vasions which periodically overwhelmed the North and left more or less
permanent deposits of immigration led to the kind of alterations that occur
when foreigners acquire a new tongue. The migrations of the Chinese
themselves, principally southward, made for variation. For instance, the
Hakkas, settlers in the South from the North, have kept themselves
distinct in dialect from those around them. Then there are the modifications
which the years seem always to bring in a living language, just from the
fact that it is being spoken.

It was to be expected that a language used by so many people over
so wide an area and over so many centuries would develop dialects. Chinese
has a great many of them, of which numbers are mutually unintelligible.
They are especially prevalent in the coast provinces from Shanghai south.
A man from Canton, for example, who knows only his own dialect, cannot

Language, Literature, and Education 643

understand a man from Peking or Nanking. The dominant form is that
called Mandarin by foreigners and known in Chinese as kuan hua, literally
"the official speech." Technically kuan hua is the language of the court and
its capital — Pekingese under most of the Ming and all of the Ch'ing. How
ever, while the Peking dialect was long standard, variations of the
Mandarin are spoken over the major portion of China proper and
Manchuria and by a large majority of the Chinese. While some of the patois,
especially in rural districts, may be almost or entirely incomprehensible to
one who knows only the standard Pekingese, most of its forms are mutually
intelligible — at least with a little practice. A foreigner who learned spoken
Chinese toward the extreme south-central limits of the Mandarin area,
could understand and make himself understood as far east as Nanking and
even in Hangchow (but not in the rural districts around Hangchow), as
far west as the western borders of Szechwan or Kansu, and as far north as
Heilungchiang. It is a form of Mandarin, (utilizing expressions from a num
ber of Mandarin-speaking areas), the kuo yu, or "national speech," it will
be recalled, which the Chinese have recently been trying to make standard
and to spread throughout the country, especially in non-Mandarin speaking
sections.

We have said that the Chinese spoken language differs in several ways
from the tongues of the Occident. In addition to the sharp distinction be
tween it and what until recently was the most esteemed and generally used
form of the written language, and to the fact that it is without inflections
of case or tense, it is without words formed by derivative affixes, such as
teach-er, coward-ice, and strict-ness. In a sense it is monosyllabic. The
number of vocables, moreover, is greatly limited. There are no consonant
groups, such as scr in screech, but only single consonants. Moreover, in
Mandarin words can be ended only with vowels and a limited number of
the consonants — roughly, n, ng, and r. This means that the number of
vocables is very small — in Peking Mandarin only about four hundred
thirty and in other forms, such as the dialects of Canton and Amoy, where
k wider range of final consonants permits a greater variety, less than a
thousand.

With this exclusive use of uninflected monosyllables and this paucity of
available vocables, it is obvious that much confusion might arise, for many
quite diverse objects and ideas must be represented by the same vocable.
Precision is sought by several devices. Auxiliary words, both in the written
and in the spoken language, when added to other words, make clear the
case or the sense and so give the effect of inflection. Sentences have a fixed
word order, such as subject, verb, and object. Then there is the use of tones.
Peking Mandarin has four, some other types of Mandarin five, and other
dialects still more — Cantonese nine. A given syllable may be pronounced
in any one of the tones permitted by the particular dialect of the region.
This, therefore, at once multiplies by four or more the number of vocables.

644 VOLUME II

Moreover, any given meaning has only one appropriate tone (although in
speaking, the sound may, in actual practice, be varied) and the tone is an
integral part of the word. Here, however, room exists for confusion between
dialects : although the Chinese have names for each of the tones and a given
word is pronounced with what the Chinese call the same tone, even in
different varieties of Mandarin the musical representations (so far as that
is possible) of the four or five tones differ.

Another effective device for avoiding confusion — as in many other
languages — is the context. Still another is the use of what are sometimes
known as classifiers. Thus in Mandarin one never speaks of "a man" as
i jen, but as i ko jen, i being "one," ko the classifier, and jSn "man." There
are a number of classifiers, often a special one being inseparable from a
certain type of object, somewhat as we say "a strip of paper" or "a chunk
of wood." The classifier frequently gives a clue to the nature of the noun
which follows. Thus k'ou, or "mouth," is used before words meaning "well"
and "pot" and some other objects having a round opening.

The Chinese often use together two words of approximately or exactly
the same meaning. Thus, k'an, meaning "see," and chien, also meaning
"see," are combined into Kan chien. While k'an and Men each has several
meanings, there is slight likelihood of ambiguity when the two are joined.
Little misunderstanding arises if the phoenix is called feng huang, feng
being the male and huang the female, for while fSng and huang separately
have several meanings, the combination is not likely to be mistaken for
something else.

A descriptive word may be prefixed. Thus a tiger is not called simply
hu, for many meanings attach to that vocable, but lao hu, an "old tiger."
Or a descriptive word may be added. Thus shih, meaning "stone," could be
very readily confused with several other widely different meanings for the
same vocable and tone. To it, however, is added t'ou, meaning "head,"
and one has shih t'ou, which is less easily mistaken. "A stone" in transla
tion becomes z k'uai shih t'ou, i being "one" or "a" and k'uai the classifier.

The Chinese employ what in effect are compound words. For example,
this is seen when, as in late years, they have been under the necessity of
finding terms for new ideas and objects. Thus electricity is tien ch'i, the
"breath of lightning," an electric car tien ch'e, "lightning carriage," an
automobile ch'i ch'e, "breath carriage," and a steamboat huo lun ch'uan,
"fire wheel boat," or "fire turn boat." Indeed, a case has been made by
an eminent expert that Chinese is polysyllabic.

THE WRITTEN CHARACTER

If the spoken language of China is, as we have said, the
native tongue of more people than any other used by mankind, the written

Language, Literature, and Education 645

language is the acceptable literary medium of an even larger proportion
of the world's population. It is employed not only by the Chinese but also
by the Japanese and Koreans. The Japanese have, to be sure, usually put
into it only their more erudite productions, but even in such ephemeral
publications as newspapers they resort to Chinese characters to express part
of their ideas. The Koreans, too, although they have their own phonetic
form of writing, until the close of the nineteenth century thought of the
Chinese character as the only dignified literary medium. Geographically
some other written languages have been more widely spread, notably Latin
and English, and the forms of the alphabet used most generally in the mod
ern Occident are probably understood by more millions of people — although
this may be debatable. However, measured by the population 'for whom
it is the sole literary vehicle, the Chinese written language outranks all
others.

Moreover, as we shall shortly see, both in quantity and in quality the
literature produced in the Chinese written character stands well when
compared with that in other languages. In sheer bulk it is possible that in
1700 and even in 1800 more pages, written and printed, existed in Chinese
than in all other languages put together. For grace and skill in literary
expression the choicest of Chinese poetry and prose can be placed, un
ashamed, beside the rest of the world's best.

The Chinese characters seem to have been an indigenous invention.
Certainly in spite of theories to the contrary, no conclusive proof has yet
been given of a foreign origin. We have seen that primitive types were in
use as far back as the Shang and that the precursors of these characters
have been found, and as purely autochthonous.

It is usually impossible to ascertain the most archaic form of a given
character, for in the early days of the script a character was often written
in a variety of ways and it is not feasible to determine the original with
certainty. However, at least some of the methods in which characters were
created seem clear.

A number of characters are conventionalized pictures of objects. It is
not difficult to see in the present 0 and an older predecessor 0, a por
trayal of the sun, and in |f, in an older form j , the moon for which it
stands. So, too, {$( is not unlike a fish, If formerly %, suggests a horse,
and in :=£, earlier ? and T, meaning "sheep," the horns and legs of a
ram are clearly seen. H is a little less obviously a field, and even the
present character for door or gate P3 shows the two leaves and posts of
that useful object. Some hundreds of characters could and did come into
existence in this way.

Some are attempts to put ideas into picture form. Thus rft is a con
venient representation of "middle" or "center," and H is obviously the
numeral "three." Often abstract ideas were presented to the eye by

646 VOLUME II

combining characters which originally were pictures of objects. Thus
the verb "to sit" is written 5?, which is probably two men *A on the
ground dh , although in some early forms this is not indisputable. fp§ ,
"bright" or "brilliant," is a combination of characters for the sun and moon.
Sometimes the scribes employed the picture for an object with which the
abstract idea was associated. Thus "high" is fir, apparently in an early
form meant to portray a tower. It seems probable, too, that in some in
stances the spoken word for an abstract idea which had the same sound as
a word for a concrete object might be written with the character which
had been devised for the latter. Thus one authority accounts for wan M,
meaning "ten thousand," on the theory that the character was originally the
picture of a scorpion (one older form being ? , a picture of that trouble
some insect) and that the word for scorpion once had the same pro
nunciation as the present wan.

While by these methods many characters could and did come into
existence, the majority were brought into being through a form of phonetic
writing. This at once took advantage of the fact that Chinese possesses
many words having the same sound but different connotations and framed
a device for preventing confusion between the written representations
of these words. Thus in the early days there were a number of words with
quite diverse meanings which have come down to us under the common
pronunciation of fang. There is an ancient symbol j§f, apparently once
a picture, meaning "square" and now pronounced fang. When one wished
to write the word fang meaning "to ask" it seemed simple and logical to
preface jjjr by a character for "words," H and so to obtain fjfr. When it
was desired to write the name of a particular kind of wood pronounced
fang it was not unnatural to prefix 3j with the character for tree ^C,
which in an early form was $ (the picture of a plant with its roots and
branches) and so to obtain ffi. Fang, meaning "kettle" was written §5,
which is % prefaced by ^, an ancient symbol for "metal." Similarly,
"spin" was written $£, a combination of jff and 7^, meaning "silk." It
it clear that in this fashion one part of the character gives a clue to the
pronunciation and another to the meaning. One Occidental terminology
calls the former the "phonetic" and the latter the "radical."

Is is on this principle of the composition of characters by phonetics
and radicals that some Chinese and many Western dictionaries of Chinese
have been compiled. The Chinese have enumerated and placed in a fixed
order, in accordance with the number of strokes of the pen which it takes
to write them, two hundred fourteen radicals. Theoretically each character
in the language either is a radical or contains a radical. Each character,
therefore, is listed under its appropriate radical in the order of the number
of strokes of the brush pen required to write it. It must be noted that the
number of radicals has not always been the same. The earliest etymologi-

Language, Literature, and Education 647

cal dictionary, the Shuo Wen, of the Han, had five hundred forty. In the
sixth century there were over five hundred, and later three hundred sixty.
It was not until the latter part of the Ming that the most frequently used
present list of two hundred fourteen was established.

It is not always that the phonetic gives so exact a clue to the modern
pronunciation as in the case of the various characters for jang. This may in
part be due to failures to abide by the principle when the characters were
first formed and so at times to use a phonetic to write sounds that were
similar but not identical. It is certainly largely attributable to the fact that
in the course of the centuries words once identical in pronunciation have
come to differ, in some instances only slightly but in others almost past
recognition.

The changes in pronunciation result to no small extent from an out
standing feature of the written character — its appeal to the eye rather
than to the ear. While a phonetic quality entered into the origin of
most characters, it is not inseparable from the character. A given
character may be pronounced in any one of many quite different ways
and its meaning be unaffected. It can thus be used to write dialects
and even widely different languages. For example, the character tfj, in
any early form ./& (apparently the picture of three peaks) may be called
shan, as in modern Mandarin, or sang as in Foochow, or sa as in Wenchow,
or san and yama as in Japanese, without altering the meaning which it
conveys to the eye. Similarly the $f mentioned a few lines above has the
same connotation to the eye whether it be called fang as in Mandarin,
hwong as in Foochow, foa as in Wenchow, or ho as in Japanese.

Given the various ways in which characters can be created, it is not
strange that the number has been greatly multiplied. The Shuo WSn
contains slightly over ten thousand, and the K'ang Hsi Tzu Tien, the dic
tionary compiled by order of the K'ang Hsi Emperor, and long standard,
has about forty-nine thousand. A large proportion of these, however, are
mere variants of other characters, for it must be noted that many can be
written in more than one way.

Reverence for the classical literature and for the characters in which it
was written discouraged for many centuries the creation of fresh characters.
New ideas and objects have been customarily represented by what are in
effect compound words.

The burden imposed on students by having to learn the characters may
seem unnecessarily onerous. However, the task is by no means so formid
able as at first appears. Only slightly more than four thousand characters
are in common use; few scholars are said to cumber their memories with
more than six thousand; radicals and phonetics afford mnemonic assistance;
and even the uninitiated foreigner can, with diligence, commit two or
three thousand to memory in the course of a year's time.

648 VOLUME II

THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

The characters can be used to write any of the dialects of
the vernacular, although in some of the latter are words for which no
special written equivalents exist. However, the larger proportion of Chinese
literature has been composed in what may be called the classical style —
that which foreigners, with scant Chinese precedent, denominate wen li.
It is not certain that this ever exactly reproduced any form of the spoken
language. Some maintain that, for the sake of economy in the labor of
writing, especially before the days of the invention of paper and the brush
pen, it was always more condensed than the vernacular. There seems to
have been a time in the Chou when it at least approximated to the
colloquial. Even today it is obviously related to the vernacular in structure
and form. It has greatly influenced the latter, especially by contributing
to it in quotations, words, and phrases. But it has marked contrasts with
the speech of every day. Several of its auxiliary words differ from those
of Mandarin, some of its characters, among them the pronouns, are
not the same as those commonly used to write the vernacular, and the
two are often at variance in the rules of composition. The most striking
dissimilarity is in the fact that the literary language employs fewer words
to express the same thought. It can do this because it is meant for the eye
and not for the ear. While it may be and is read aloud, even a scholar
usually cannot understand an unfamiliar passage when it comes only
through the ear.

It may seem that so artificial a language has been an unmitigated handi
cap and that the Chinese would do well to abandon it for one more nearly
in accord with the colloquial. However, much can be said for it. Being
independent of any one form of the vernacular it has been understood by
scholars all over the country and so has helped to give unity to the Chinese.
Then, too, although "classical style" should be written "classical styles,"
for there have been various forms of it, a scholar who has mastered it has
opened to him all the literature of past generations. It has not changed as
rapidly as have the vernaculars.

Still, the Chinese classical language presents difficulties. It is highly
artificial. It is often replete with allusions and quotations, and to appreciate
and even to understand much of it the reader has to bring to it a vast
store of knowledge of existing literature. Many individual characters have
several widely different meanings, and frequently in a particular passage
only the context determines which one is intended. Although there are
initial, terminal, and transitional words and phrases, the paucity of other
punctuation in most of the texts is often confusing. The presence of proper
names with nothing to distinguish them as such except the context and the
knowledge of the reader not infrequently leads to ambiguity. The confusion

Language, Literature, and Education 649

is heightened by the fact that a Chinese often has a number of given names
or designations. It is only by going through a prodigious amount of litera
ture and especially by memorizing quantities of it that the scholar obtains
a kind of sixth sense which enables him to divine which of several readings
is correct. The perusal of the classical language, therefore, requires long
preparation.

Composition is an even greater task. Few Occidentals have achieved an
acceptable style, and many a Chinese who has been the finished product
of recent curriculums has been far from adept. Composition in the literary
language is so difficult partly because of the skill required in the use of the
various auxiliary particles, partly on account of the fine distinctions which
must be made in the choice of words and phrases, partly because of the
wealth of quotation and allusion which it has been necessary to have at
one's command, and partly by reason of the requirement that the accepted
order of words be followed intelligently and with taste. To achieve a worthy
style it has been necessary not only to possess a certain amount of native
ability but also to have mastered the needed technique. This latter could
be acquired only through long and concentrated practice and discipline.
In the new age, when the Chinese student must familiarize himself with so
many different fields of knowledge, very few if any find the time to become
really proficient in the older methods of writing. The literary language,
except in vastly simplified forms, must inevitably pass out of general use
even by scholars. The modern emphasis on literature in the vernacular is
the logical and unavoidable concomitant to the influx of Western branches
of learning.

It may be added that the different styles in which the literary language
has been written number about thirty. One group is denominated the
ku -wen, or "ancient literature." In general it has sought to follow the terse,
antithetical models found in the Chou Classics. Han Yii of the T'ang was
a master of it and it was used extensively by the great authors of the Sung,
although possibly with less originality than under the T'ang, It was also
employed in other dynasties. As it came from the pens of its most dis
tinguished exponents it had vivacity, brevity, energy, and grace. Another
group of literary forms includes what may be called rhythmic prose — from
the Western standpoint about halfway between poetry and prose.

LITERATURE

The greater part of the voluminous literature in Chinese has
been written in the classical style. Literature in the vernacular has not been
lacking. Not only has a good deal of it appeared in print, but there has
been much of what may be called unwritten literature, in the form of folk
lore and multitudinous proverbs. Until the twentieth century, however,

650 VOLUME II

composition in the speech of every day was considered beneath the dignity
of scholars. When men of scholarly training wrote in the colloquial
they often did so anonymously or pseudonymously lest their standing in
the world of 'letters be impaired. Until after 1911, any work that would
lay claim to serious consideration as a piece of literature and worthy of any
other purpose than of whiling away a leisure hour or of educating the
masses had to be in wen li.

This literature dealt with many kinds of subjects and can be placed
under several headings. First in order of esteem by the Chinese have been
the classical books. They are popularly supposed to come down from Chou
and pre-Han times, although, as we have seen, large portions of them
originated in the Han. The list of those regarded by Confucianism as of
highest worth — to which the term "canonical" may be applied — varied at
different times. Beginning with the great neo-Confucian scholars of the
Sung the Classics par excellence were nine in number and in two groups.
The Wu Ching or Five Classics were the 7 Ching, or Classic of Changes,
the Shu Ching, or Classic of History, the Shih Ching, or Classic of Poetry,
the Li Chi, or Record of Rites, and the Ch'un Ch'iu, or Spring and Autumn
(Annals). All of these, it will be recalled, were described in the second
chapter. The Ssu Shu, or Four Books, the second group, were the Lun Yu,
or Analects, containing many of the sayings attributed to Confucius and
his immediate disciples, the Ta Hsiieh, or Great Learning, ascribed to a
disciple of Confucius, the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of the Mean, sup
posedly by a grandson of Confucius, and Meng Tzu, or the discourses of
Mencius. Both the Ta Hsiieh and the Chung Yung are sections of the
Li Chi, but were singled out from it by the Sung scholars of the dominant
school as of especial importance.

In addition to these, other early works were highly regarded. Some of
them were included in the canonical lists of pre-Sung dynasties. The most
important are the Chou Li, or Rites of Chou, the 7 Li, another collection
of rites, the £rh Ya, an early dictionary, and the Hsiao Ching, or Classic of
Filial Piety, held to be the record of a conversation between Confucius and
one of his disciples.

We need not enter into the moot question of the authenticity, dates, and
authorship of these various works. Something of that has been touched
upon earlier. Here it need only be said that none of the Classics has es
caped searching critical tests and that the traditional ascriptions of author
ship and accounts of composition or compilation have all been challenged,
some of them successfully.

As we have noted, numerous dictionaries have been compiled and
under various dynasties. In some of them the characters are classified
according to their initial and final sounds, in others according to radicals,
and in still others by subjects. The Chinese have devoted much attention

Language, Literature, and Education 651

to philology, including the study of ancient pronunciations and forms of
characters.

The Chinese have been historically minded. Indeed, no other people in
the history of the human race has over so long a period displayed so much
zeal for recording in detail the events which it has deemed important. As
a result, no other nation possesses such voluminous records of so long a
past. We have seen something of the dynastic histories, which, beginning
with the Shih Chi of Ssu-mu Ch'ien, continued the chronicles of the Empire
through the Ch'ing. In a certain sense, each is a continuation and is built
on the general plan of Ssii-ma Ch'ien's magnum opus.

The Ch'un Ctiiu, including the work traditionally associated with it,
the Tso Chuan, provided the model for another type of history, largely in
the form of a chronicle by years. This was in large part due to the prestige
which its reputed Confucian authorship gave it. Perhaps the most famous
of the group is the Tzu Chih Tung Chien, by Ssu-ma Kuang, of the Sung,
with supplementary compilations by the same author. It covered the course
of China's development from late in the Chou to the beginning of the
Sung, and, condensed by Chu Hsi and his disciples as the Tung Chien
Rang Mu and continued by later pens, became the best known and most
highly esteemed single history of the Empire. The Tung Chien Kang Mu
was the subject or the incentive of a number of studies, some of them
supplementary and some critical. There have been many scores of other
historical studies, a number of them extensive and displaying a high order
of ability and originality of plan and conception. Some cover long periods
and others only a comparatively brief time. Many specialize on particular
phases of history. Collections have been made of state papers, among them
compilations of memorials to the throne. There are hundreds of biograph
ical works, some of them of single individuals, others bringing together
the lives of several scholars and statesmen, and still others travel diaries and
journals of thrilling events. Accounts have been written of particular sec
tions of China, especially of the states that have been more or less
independent of the dynasties considered legitimate. Of these states there
have been a large number. Some, as we have seen, were very important.

China possesses an extraordinarily voluminous group of what may be
called local histories or gazetteers. A few of them cover the entire Empire
and are in the nature of descriptive and statistical geographies. More treat
of special sections of the Empire. Each of the major subdivisions of the
country — the provinces, the /w, the hsien, and the main cities — has nor
mally been provided with a work that is both a local history and a descrip
tion, often very minute, of the region as it was at a particular time. Many
of the chief hills, mountains, and monasteries of the country have been
made the subject of similar works. There are accounts, too, of some of the
main rivers and of the engineering measures that have been taken to con-

652 VOLUME ii

trol their waters. Treatises exist on the outlying dependencies of the Empire,
on several of the non-Chinese peoples within the Empire, and on what the
Chinese of a particular time knew of one or more of the foreign countries.
Of the gazetteers about five thousand are still in existence. Many of them
are very detailed and extend to large dimensions.

China also has numerous descriptions of her governmental machinery.
Some portray the entire imperial structure by which the country was ruled
and others only certain phases or functions of the state. Some are historical
and others are chiefly or entirely devoted to what was contemporary with
the author.

The Chinese have long been attracted by certain phases of archaeology.
Inscriptions have absorbed much attention, and numerous collections of
transcriptions or exact reproductions of them by rubbings have been
compiled and treatises written on them.

There have, too, been essays and more extensive treatises of what may
be called historical criticism, a large proportion of them dealing with in
dividual works or series of histories. The Chinese have also written a good
many books in which prodigies and the marvelous have held the chief place
and which to the modern historian are of interest mainly because of the
light they shed upon the beliefs of the writers and their contemporaries.
Many catalogues of existing works have been produced, usually in the
form of lists of private or imperial collections, which possess great value
for the historian.

Much of the historical writing of the past was of excellent quality, even
when judged by the exacting standards of modern scholarship. On the other
hand, a large proportion of it was of lesser worth. The student of China's
history, therefore, is confronted by an embarrassment of riches. His plight
is made worse by the absence of adequate guides through the huge maze.
Indices and other implements indispensable to him who would find all the
material pertinent to a given subject are largely lacking. Since each genera
tion tends to write history from its own standpoint, to a historiographer of
our times much of the information contained even in the standard works
seems trivial and uninteresting, and the number of volumes which must be
gone through to glean what is germane to one's special interest is often
discouraging. To huge masses, too, must be applied the tests for accuracy
and dependability without which no writing can be done that will satisfy
the historical conscience. All this prodigious body of records, then, is at
once the despair and the joy of the scholar.

The Chinese have what they call lei shu, often rather loosely translated
as "encyclopedias." Some cover only a limited range of subjects, such as
the origin and history of family names, and others embrace the entire
scope of Chinese knowledge. Usually, instead of being, like Western
encyclopedias, made up of articles written especially for them, the lei shu

Language, Literature, and Education 653

are composed of longer or shorter excerpts from existing works. Some lei
shu have attained huge proportions. The largest was the Yung Lo Ta Tien,
although it is said not to fall under the lei shu in the strictest sense of that
term. It was compiled by order of the third Emperor of the Ming, ran to
nearly twelve thousand volumes (each, moreover, in two separate fascicles),
and since the expense of printing was discouraging even to the exchequer
of one of the most powerful and energetic rulers of China's history, it
existed only in three manuscript copies, now represented by a few widely
scattered folios. Others of the lei shu were printed, and some were very
voluminous. Often they have preserved more or less extensive fragments
of works which except for them have entirely disappeared. The Ssu K'u
Ch'uan Shu, compiled under the Ch'ien Lung Emperor, existed in seven
manuscript copies. It was utilized in the compilation of the Ssu K'u Ch'uan
Shu Tsung Mu, Chin Ting, an important annotated bibliography. The
latter also included thousands of titles not represented in the former.

The ts'ung shu must also be mentioned. The term does not exactly fit
into any Western category but it may be translated as "collectanea."
Ts'ung shu are made up of works, usually on several subjects and by several
authors, some of which may have appeared elsewhere and others of which
were here printed for the first time. The effort was made to cover the entire
range of knowledge treated by them: geography, philosophy, agriculture,
medicine, history, et cetera.

So much has been said in earlier chapters of the development of
philosophic and religious thought that not much space need be given to
it here. Each of the great schools produced a literature. Confucianism,
Buddhism, and Taoism were responsible for adding thousands of volumes
to the libraries of the land. All three treated of morals, and Confucianism
naturally also spread into the field of political science. Buddhism developed
its own logic and technical terms. Its literature, therefore, is one through
which only the expert can hope to thread his way with any assurance of
understanding. This is particularly so since there have been many Buddhist
schools, some of which have delved with profundity and acumen into the
issues that perennially perplex the thoughtful mind, and since a knowledge
of Indian thought and some of the Indian languages is prerequisite to a
full comprehension of them. Much of Taoist literature, too, cannot be
understood without a knowledge of Buddhism, so that any extended re
search in it is not for the amateur. In spite of much which is shallow and
trivial, in these three great philosophies the Chinese at their best displayed
a variety and a quality of thought and insight which can be compared
without apology with the intellectual product of any other people.

We have also spoken so frequently of poetry and have given the names
of so many of the chief poets that this important branch of literature need
here be but little more than mentioned. It must be noted, however, that

654 VOLUME II

from the earliest times the Chinese have been greatly interested in verse.
Some of the resulting collections are those of a particular author. Others
are anthologies of the poems of many writers.

What we in English would classify under poetry occurs in Chinese
under many forms. Ballads have been multitudinous. Much of the text
of plays for the theatres is in what we would call verse. Many historical
romances, some of which run to great length, are in rhythmic style. Mosaics
of characters have been put together in such fashion that when read in
different directions they form poems. The characters contained in the
Thousand Character Classic have been arranged into verse by several
different authors. There is rhythmic prose which from the Western stand
point is really poetry, and a whole division of literature is made up of
poems of irregular lines and of many patterns.

What the Chinese themselves have included under shih — usually trans
lated as "poetry" — is much more limited. It has embraced, however, a
number of forms. Some of these, in the so-called "ancient" style, have
allowed a good deal of latitude. Others, in what has been denominated the
"modem" style — really many centuries old — has been more fixed. In
poems of the "modern" style the length of line, the arrangement of char
acters by tones and rhymes, and the parallelism of characters have followed
strict conventions, although even here many patterns have been used. The
"modern" style, for instance, . has permitted verses of four lines of five
characters each, of four lines of seven characters each, of eight lines of
five characters each, and of eight lines of seven characters each. In this
style characters must be made to fit particular tone patterns — that is to
say, only characters of a given tone can be put in a particular place in a
line, and must be matched by the tones of the characters in the succeeding
line. For this purpose the five tones of Mandarin have been divided into
two groups, the first two being called "even" and the other three "uneven."
An "even tone" in one line must be countered by an "uneven tone" in the
corresponding character in the line with which it is paired. Rhymes must
also be observed, a frequent rule being that the final characters of every
other line must match. They have been regulated by a standard rhyming dic
tionary, compiled more than a millennium ago, so that, owing to changes
in pronunciation wrought by the centuries, according to the present pro
nunciation rhyme may often seem absent. Then, too, another form of
parallelism must be observed, by which parts of speech — adjectives,
verbs, and nouns — must be matched by the same parts of speech in the
next line. Moreover, a given character must not be used twice in the same
poem. Obviously such forms are much less elastic than those of most
other peoples. A genius is able to express himself through them with
beauty, but for the majority who have conformed to them — as have a large
proportion of Chinese scholars — they have led to somewhat mechanical
results.

Language, Literature, and Education 655

Fiction has been mentioned more than once in preceding chapters
and, accordingly, requires here no elaborate description. Since stories were
usually written in the vernacular, the Chinese scholar, with his exclusive
esteem for the classical style, formerly did not regard them worthy of
admission to the ranks of literature. Of late years, however, with the use
of the vernacular for all literary purposes, an increasing interest has devel
oped in fiction and its history, especially since in some of it are to be
found examples, rare elsewhere, of the colloquial of past centuries. At least
as early as the Sung stories were being composed in the language of every
day. Under the Mongols what are usually called novels were written in
large quantities, and the output continued under the Ming and the Ch'ing.
Some fiction is made up of short stories. Much of it, however, is in long
narratives. Part of it is in the form of historical romances, of which the
San Kuo Chih, or the "History of the Three Kingdoms," is probably
the most famous. The San Kuo Chih arose out of tales which must have
been related for centuries, somewhat like the Arthurian legends, before
they were put in their present standard literary dress. Historical romances
have been made the basis of many plays and from them was drawn much
of the repertoire of the strolling storytellers. Several of the novels, among
them the Hung Lou Meng, are of high literary quality, with excellent
delineation of character and with intimate and informing pictures of
Chinese life and customs. Fiction was sometimes made the vehicle
for portraying Utopias and advocating reform. It also contained much
of the supernatural, with a good deal about the actions of spirits. The love
that was exalted was usually extramarital. Some stories belonged as much
to pornography as to fiction, but that criticism cannot be leveled against
most of the best novels. To the Westerner one of the great values of
Chinese fiction is the insight which much of it gives into the folklore and
mores of the days of its composition.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE

One of the interesting characteristics of the older Chinese
culture was the rudimentary nature of most of the knowledge that was
accumulated in the field of mathematics and the natural sciences. The
hypothetical visitor from Mars might well have expected the Industrial
Revolution and the modern scientific approach to have made their first
appearance in China rather than the Occident. The Chinese long directed
so much of their energy toward this-worldly ends, have been so indus
trious, have shown such ingenuity in invention, and by empirical processes
have forestalled the West in arriving at so much useful agricultural and
medical lore that they, rather than the nations of the West, might have
been looked to as the forerunners and leaders in what is termed the
scientific approach toward the understanding and mastery of man's natural

656 VOLUME II

environment. It is little short of amazing that a people who pioneered in
the invention of paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass — to speak
only of some of their best-known innovations — did not also take prece
dence in devising the power loom, the steam engine, and the other revo
lutionary machines of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The reason for the failure to achieve this priority must be in large meas
ure a matter of conjecture. It may have been because under the Con
fucian state, with its system of education and its civil service examinations,
the best of the trained minds were absorbed in government, ethics, history,
and belles-lettres. It may have been that China failed to develop a system
of logic the equal of that which Western Europe owes to the Greek mind.
The cause may need to be sought in obscure and debatable climatic factors
or in biological and racial inheritance. It is conceivable that it can be
discovered in differences of religious background. One suggestion has it
that the Chinese are practical and that science is first of all theoretical,
as in Copernicus and Newton. One thoughtful modern Chinese attributes
it to the fact that, under the influence of Taoism, Buddhism, and Con
fucianism, especially as seen in the Sung philosophers, Chinese thinkers
devoted their attention to developing techniques for knowing and con
trolling the mind — in contrast with the West, which has sought techniques
for knowing and controlling matter. To this generalization exception can
easily be taken, but it may well be that in the subjectivity of so much of
Chinese philosophy, particularly after the advent of Buddhism, is to be
found the secret of the arrested development in the mastery of nature.

An important question is not, why did the Chinese not develop science
as we know it today, but, why did the West create science and inaugurate
the Industrial Revolution? Not only the Chinese, but also the Indians,
the Arabs, and other highly civilized peoples failed to be pioneers in
these phases of civilization.

Whatever the cause, the backwardness of the Chinese in the mathe
matical and the natural sciences and in mechanical devices when com
pared with the western Europeans and Americans of the past century
and a half is indisputable. In mathematics, astronomy, and in some mechan
ical appliances, indeed, China was notably behind the Europe of even the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Quite a literature was produced on
mathematics and astronomy, but much of the knowledge that lies back
of it originated in other peoples. This was true before the great enrich
ment which came through the Jesuits in the late Ming and the early
Ch'ing. Moslems were responsible for some of it and there may have
been importations as early as the Chou.

However, in some phases of what may be called scientific literature
there was a large output — apparently chiefly and perhaps almost entirely
independent of stimulus from abroad. This was particularly marked in
agriculture and medicine. Agriculture has a very extensive literature: some

Language, Literature, and Education 657

of which survives dates back as far as the T'ang. Many phases of the subject
have been dealt with, such as the implements utilized, fruits, vegetables,
bamboo, plowing, sowing, hydraulics, the planting of mulberry trees, the
rearing of silkworms, and the breeding of cattle. The Chinese had here
acquired a vast amount of information and had developed many ingenious
devices.

We know that medical literature existed as early as the Han, and
it is probable that some was written before that time. The Nei Ching,
said to be the oldest Chinese medical classic, is ascribed to the end of the
Chou or the beginning of the Ch'in, and some other works are reputed to
be fully as ancient. A number of extant treatises were composed by Sung
physicians, a voluminous literature, including a famous materia medica,
dates from the Ming, and Ch'ing physicians were prolific authors.

The traditional Chinese medical lore compares favorably with that
of the pre-nineteenth century West. In it has been much of superstition,
but that was also the case in the Occident. Charms have been extensively
employed and gods have been asked to indicate which of several medi
cines should be taken. Dissection was not practiced, at least of late
centuries,. and the knowledge of anatomy was correspondingly imperfect.
Anesthetics are said to have been used in surgery as early as the Han.
For centuries, what is known as acupuncture was widely applied — a pro
cedure by which the flesh was pierced with needles for many different ill
nesses. Massage has long been employed. Inoculation against smallpox
(not vaccination) is said to have been known as early as the Sung. The
yin and the yang permeated both theory and practice. So also did the
theory of the five elements. Much, too, was made of the pulse in obtaining
a diagnosis, the belief being that by taking it in different ways the state
of the principal internal organs of the body could be determined. Certain
readings would be taken from the pulse in the left wrist and others from
that in the right wrist. At least in the Sung and the Yuan imperial medical
colleges were conducted. As a rule, however, medical education was by
apprenticeship, and no state or privately administered examinations existed
to standardize the profession. Practitioners, accordingly, varied widely
in preparation, traveling quacks abounded, and the patient often suffered
more from the treatment than from the disease. The pharmacopoeia
included many remedies which depended for their supposed efficacy upon
thoroughly fanciful theories. It is highly doubtful, for example, whether
the much esteemed ginseng had any value beyond that of mental suggestion.
But for the fact that the Chinese, by long contact with many virulent
diseases, had developed a partial immunity to some of them, the death
rate would have been much higher than it was. Yet when all is said
which can be brought as an indictment against the traditional medical prac
tice, and it is much, the fact remains that the Chinese acquired and trans
mitted a great deal of valuable lore. Their pharmacopoeia contained many

658 VOLUME ii

useful drugs, and their methods of treatment not infrequently produced
excellent results. It was not uncommon after the introduction of modern
Western medicine for the Chinese to acknowledge the superiority of Occi
dental surgery, but for internal remedies, to prefer practitioners trained
in the native fashion. Western physicians reported remarkable cures
wrought by old-style Chinese physicians.

In other phases of science the Chinese could point to major achieve
ments. Among them were recording astronomical phenomena and forms
of animal and plant life, cartography, and mineralogy.

PRINTING

For centuries the normal process by which literature has
been reproduced in the Middle Kingdom has been printing. We have
seen that this epoch-making invention was developed in China hundreds
of years before it was known in Europe. Indeed — although as yet this
is unproved — it may have been transmitted from China to the West. Print
ing from movable type was known, but the preferred method and the one
most extensively employed was by incised wooden blocks. These blocks
or plates were usually the size of two pages. The surface was prepared
by smoothing it and then spreading over it a paste. While this surface
was still moist there was placed on it, face down, a sheet of thin paper
on which had been previously written the passage to be reproduced. The
paper was rubbed off, leaving, in reverse form, the ink of the text. An
artisan with a sharp tool cut away all the surface but that marked by the
characters, and the result was a woodcut of the double page. Ink was then
applied with a brush; a piece of paper was placed on the block, was made
to lie smoothly and take the impression by the application of a dry brush to
its back, and was removed; the block was re-inked, and the operation
was repeated. The paper was usually thin and printed only on one side. In
binding, the leaves were folded and stitched together. The process could
be very rapidly carried out, and the most skillful products have been
beautiful examples of the printer's art. A cheaper form of block printing
was the use of clay or wax blocks, on which the text was incised. The clay
or wax could be remolded and used again and again. The resulting product
was artistically less desirable than that of the wood blocks and so was used
chiefly for inexpensive editions of the Peking Gazette and the correspond
ing provincial sheets, and for placards.

LIBRARIES

The Chinese have valued books very highly, and libraries,
some of them of vast extent, have been assembled. The largest have been

Language, Literature, and Education 659

collected under official auspices. We have repeatedly seen how the destruc
tion of successive imperial libraries in the vicissitudes of civil war and
foreign invasion has been one of the main sources of loss to scholarship.
Buddhist monasteries often had considerable libraries, but these specialized
in the literature of that faith. Many private collections were also assem
bled and some of them handed down for generations. Again the hazards
of war and of changing family fortunes sooner or later led to their destruc
tion or dispersion. But for the art of printing, which made possible 'the
production of many copies of a single edition, most of the ancient books
would long since have disappeared. Even as it is, a large proportion of
the literary treasures of the past have vanished in whole or in part,
leaving at most no traces but a title and perhaps a few quotations. How
ever, fragile though Chinese paper may appear to be, Sung editions are by
no means unknown, and many examples have come down to us of the
work of Yuan and Ming printers.

EDUCATION

Before the close of the nineteenth century formal educa
tion in China was dominated by the preparation for the two chief learned
professions: the service of the state and the Buddhist priesthood. The
training for the latter was conducted only in monasteries and for the novi
tiate which led to membership in a monastic community. Except indirectly,
through the instruction which the monks gave the laity and through
Buddhist services and literature, it exerted no influence upon the life of
the Empire as a whole. On the other hand, the type of education which
in theory led to the civil service examinations, and which was controlled
by the requirements for these ordeals, was entered upon by many who
either did not aspire to compete or who were never successful. The large
majority of those who received some training in the elementary schools
remained outside the charmed circle of the holders of degrees.

It would, however, give an incomplete picture of the older educational
system of China to focus attention exclusively on the instruction imparted
in monasteries and schools. Much was acquired in other ways. Guilds,
through their apprenticeships, conducted a good deal of what would now
be called vocational education. It was largely thus that skill in handi
crafts and in commercial methods was transmitted. In the course of their
training apprentices often picked up a knowledge of the written characters
most necessary to their occupations. Fanners passed on to their sons such
lore in agriculture as they possessed. Women, although not eligible for
public office and hence not admitted either to the civil service examinations
or to the schools that prepared for them, were by no means always
uneducated. Illiterate most of them were, but in better families a very

660 VOLUME II

considerable number were initiated by private tutors into the mysteries of
the printed page. China was not without women who were noted for their
literary attainments. In well-regulated homes, moreover, the daughters
were given a careful education by their mothers in the management of
a household, in courtesy and the ceremonial and proprieties that helped
to make Chinese society run smoothly (if and when it did), and in their
duties toward their future husbands and parents-in-law. Woman's sphere
was believed to be the home, and the training deemed proper for that
sphere was often very conscientiously conducted.

The schools that led to the civil service examinations had a long history
and may go back to Chou or even Shang prototypes. It is clear that
schools existed in Chou times. Certainly, too, in the Han there were schools,
both government and private. Institutions for the study of the recognized
classics were an essential corollary of the Confucianism then being adopted
by the state, for if, as it demanded, the Empire was to be governed
through educated men, centers must be maintained where this training
could be given. Han Wu Ti did much to inaugurate an imperial system
of education, and government schools were multiplied under the Later
Han. In the years of disunion between the Han and the Sui mention is
made, at intervals, of government schools in some of the states that
flourished in that kaleidoscopic era. Under the Sui the imperial system
was renewed and under the T'ang it was reorganized and greatly extended.
It is not surprising that during the Sung, with its Confucian revival, a struc
ture existed which constituted — at least on paper — a kind of pyramid begin
ning with a school in each administrative subdivision and culminating in
institutions in the capital. Private schools exerted much influence. Even un
der the Mongols there were government schools. The Ming, with its
emphasis upon Confucianism and its thoroughgoing strengthening of the
civil service examinations, not unnaturally still further elaborated the edu
cational program. In theory its system contemplated a school in each vil
lage, hsien, chou, and fu, and a national institution in the capital. Some of
the students were to be subsidized from the public revenues. The Ch'ing
followed the Ming, with modifications, and had a paper plan which
called for schools of several kinds in the capital, including those for the
Manchu nobles and Bannermen and what might loosely be termed a
national university, a college in each of the provinces, and a school in
every fu, chou, hsien, and village.

In practice the system outlined by the Ch'ing was only imperfectly put
into operation. To be sure, several schools existed in the capital. There
were, too, provincial and some prefectural colleges. The majority of the
students in these institutions were supported at public expense, the income
to maintain them coming from endowments or from official subsidies. Vil
lage schools were largely left to local initiative. For the most part the

Language, Literature, and Education 661

Imperial Government contented itself with conducting the civil service ex
aminations and with maintaining a few schools in Peking and the provinces
(often halfheartedly), and left the student, with such aid as the local author
ities or the village or family might give him, to obtain his preparation where
and as he could. The high esteem in which degrees were held prevented
any dearth of candidates for the examinations. The central and pro
vincial governments could be sure that an ample number of aspirants would
appear, well equipped in the type of education demanded by the tests,
without much, if any financial aid from imperial officialdom. At least
under the Ch'ing, and possibly through most of China's history, primary
education was left to local and private initiative.

When they could afford it, families seem usually to have employed
private tutors for their children. Often, too, a scholar father or grand
father himself undertook the task of guiding the studies of the youths of
the household. Almost if not quite invariably, however, this was only
after the primary stages had been passed, for classical precedent frowned
upon a father teaching his own son. Often a large family or clan maintained
a school for its boys, housing it in the ancestral temple. Frequently
several families in a village joined in hiring a teacher, or a benevolent
person or persons of means financed a free school. Almost never was a
building erected for the purpose, but a temple or the room of a house
was borrowed or rented.

The teacher had no special training in pedagogy. Books existed which
held up standards for the conduct of the pupil but the instructor received
no formal preparation in his art. He tended to follow rather slavishly the
methods by which he himself had been taught. In theory teachers were
highly respected, but in practice the majority suffered from poor pay
and precarious tenure. Often they were recruited from among the unsuc
cessful aspirants for the civil service examinations, and the training of
many had not proceeded far enough to warrant even the attempt to com
pete in them. Here and there, however, men in the profession could show
respectable scholarly attainments or display skill in instruction.

The method of the primary school consisted largely of committing
to memory texts that were beyond the comprehension of the child, and
which were not explained to him until after the process of memoriza
tion had stored his mind with quite an array of literature. Even then
the interpretation vouchsafed was either in the form of traditional com
mentaries or in a style more calculated to display the teacher's erudition
than to enlighten the student. The pupil repeated aloud after the instructor
the text to be learned. Then, at the top of his voice, he went over the
passage again and again until he had fixed it in mind. He was tested
by being required to recite the lesson with his back to the teacher and
without looking at his book. Thirty or forty boys thus engaged sounded

662 VOLUME ii

like bedlam. The student was also taught to write characters. The hours
were long, from early morning until late in the afternoon, and the inter
missions were not for recreation of even unorganized forms. Discipline
was supposed to be strict and the teacher was generous in his use of the
ferule.

The texts memorized were designed to fit the pupil for the state
examinations. For the beginner they included first the San Tzu Ching, or
"Three Character Classic," a short compendium in rhymed lines of three
characters each of standard Confucian philosophy and ethics and of
Chinese history, concluding with incentives to study in the form of note
worthy examples of past ages. Then followed the Pat Chia Hsing, or "Hun
dred Family Names" (in reality more than four hundred surnames),
the famous Ch'ien Tzu Wen, or "Thousand Character Essay," in which
none of the thousand characters occurred twice, a series of "Odes for
Children," and the Hsiao Ching, or "Classic of Filial Piety." These were
succeeded by the Four Books and Five Classics of the Confucian Canon.
Poetry might also be studied, perhaps as copy for learning to write the
characters.

By no means all who entered the elementary schools remained long
enough to complete the curriculum. The majority usually dropped out
after a year or two. They had acquired the ability to read and to write
a number of characters and returned to the fields or went into a store
or a handicraft. It was only the rare lad who possessed the ability or
whose family could provide the means to pursue the course long enough
to be prepared to compete in the state examinations.

The secondary schools gave their students additional training in
composition and literature and in the study of essays selected from
those which had won recognition in the civil service examinations.

In addition were higher schools. In some dynasties these proved very
influential as centers of constructive or critical thought.

The faults of the system are obvious. A curriculum designed to pre
pare applicants for the government examinations was pursued by all,
even though only a minority of those who began it had any serious thought
of qualifying for these tests. It was confined to limited phases of human
knowledge. The lack of physical education and of training in hygiene
took a heavy toll in life and health. The method of instruction emphasized
memory and discouraged independent thought. Even the finished prod
ucts were very limited in their range of information and were inclined to
be blind to the existence of other realms of knowledge and to have
a bigoted pride in their own attainments and in the finality and suffi
ciency of the literary culture of their class. Little or no preparation was
given for meeting the problems with which most of the pupils would later
be confronted. Many were actually unfitted for life and eked out an

Language, Literature, and Education 663

uncertain living, too proud to demean themselves by manual labor and
unadapted to most remunerative occupations. The program had glaring
deficiencies even as a training for the task of the government adminis
trator — the profession to which it was supposed to lead. Much of the
political weakness of China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
can be traced to it.

Yet the system also had its virtues. Although the majority of those
who entered upon it never reached the examination stalls, a fairly large
proportion of the male population acquired through it some knowledge
of the written character. No comprehensive statistics for literacy are
available. The proportion varied between town and country and from
district to district. In some cities, however, nearly if not fully half of the
adult men could read some characters. Although in other places, particu
larly in rural sections, the proportion was very much smaller, it was a rare
community which did not contain some one who could read and write.
The emphasis upon memory had its faults, but at least it supplied those
who had gone far in the course with the command of the text of a large
body of literature, much of it of high quality, and so helped to maintain
standards of taste. Even though the system did not give direct training in
the technique of government, it grounded future officials in the principles
which Confucianism held to underlie ordered society, and trusted the
individual, with the assistance of laws and precedents, to apply them. Its
purpose was the growth of men and not the impartation of information.
Its aim was cultural, not utilitarian — the self-development of the indi
vidual, who was supposed to set an example. Then, too, education of
the traditional type proved of immeasurable assistance in perpetuating
Chinese culture and in promoting the unity of the Empire. We have
repeatedly seen that the remarkable coherence of China and the ability
of the country to come together after periods of civil strife and division
were due not primarily to force, although that nearly always was an im
portant factor, but to a uniformity in social institutions and the general
acceptance of basic ethical, political, and social ideals. This universality of
cultural forms and principles must be ascribed largely to an education
which inculcated a common body of literature and a particular philosophy
of life. The establishment and maintenance of the system, chiefly through
the device of the civil service examinations, constituted one of the most
noteworthy achievements of the Chinese.

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE COMING OF THE WEST

In no other phase of Chinese life has the revolution wrought
by the impact of the Occident been more thoroughgoing than in what may
be called the realm of the intellect: language, literature, and education.

664 VOLUME ii

The old depended for its continuance upon a type of political organization
that could not survive in the modern world. When the Confucian imperial
state system collapsed, as it did early in the twentieth century, its asso
ciated institutions and ideals were dealt a staggering blow. Moreover,
under the new circumstances the specialization and rigidity that were part
of the strength of the accepted forms of literature and thought proved a
weakness. The Chinese had to acquire competency in fields of learning
in which the Occident led and through which it had overwhelmed them.
To do so they were compelled to give over concentrating on their older
literature and to reorganize their education entirely. Many of the result
ing changes have been recounted earlier. They must, however, be sum
marized here, in somewhat different form but with a certain amount of
repetition.

The language has undergone great modifications. The many new
ideas and objects introduced in the past generation have had to be named.
Usually this has been done by coining compound words out of existing
vocables and characters — a process to which Chinese readily lends itself.
Thus a telegram is tien pao — "a lightning report." In this the Japanese
led the way. Many of the new terms, indeed, were made in the Island
Empire, where Chinese characters have been used for centuries and
where the wholesale adoption of Western culture preceded the correspond
ing movement in China by a generation. Some terms were taken over
almost bodily from foreign tongues by transliteration. English was long the
chief source of such loan words, for until the Communists took possession
of the mainland it was the Western language most widely studied. So
many educated Chinese used it readily and so much of the teaching
in higher schools had English as a medium and employed English texts
that it was not surprising to find English words in Chinese speech. Such
terms as "democracy" and "dictator" were among them.

That strange hybrid, "pidgin English," which arose as a lingua franca
for foreign commerce, gradually disappeared. It was made up largely of
English words arranged in the order of Chinese idiom.

Although the taboo was removed from the invention of characters,
not a great many new ones appeared. It was simpler and less confusing
to make compound words or to transliterate foreign terms than to devise
characters. However, a few were coined. For instance, the pronoun
of the third person was formerly written by a character which did not
have any variation for gender. New ones were framed to make possible
a differentiation between "he," "she," and "it." So, too, punctuation was
more freely used than formerly: several marks of Western origin were
adopted.

Attempts have not been lacking to do away entirely with the old
written characters and to substitute for them a small number of phonetic

Language, Literature, and Education 665

signs. Some of these experiments were by Protestant missionaries in their
zeal to teach Christians to read — a desire actuated by the purpose of
making the Bible an open book to every church member. Missionaries
often employed the Roman letters and in a few instances invented new
scripts. Their use did not extend outside the Christian communities or
beyond those who otherwise would be illiterate. A few phonetic systems
were devised by Chinese, but these met the fate of those originated by
foreigners. Any attempt to substitute a phonetic script for the time-hon
ored forms must face the fact that the larger part of the existing literature
would be unintelligible if transcribed in an alphabet or syllabary. If one
were ever adopted by the entire nation, most of the literary treasures of
the past would be closed to all except a few specialists. Yet the Commu
nists sought to introduce a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters. Under
Communist auspices simplified forms of the traditional characters were
devised and propagated.

We have noted that about 1917 a dignified form of the Mandarin,
as the pat hua, began to be prominent. It was written with the old char
acters, but it much more closely approximated the speech of every day
than did the classical style. Such a change was obviously necessary.
Imported Western political and social ideals and the progress of indus
trialization demanded that the masses be educated, and this would be
impossible if all scholarly writing were to continue in wen li. Moreover,
with the many new subjects with which youth had to become acquainted,
for most students time did not permit the attainment of a facility in the
classical forms of composition. It was a choice between a debased or
greatly simplified wen li and a worthy vernacular. The latter alternative
was chosen.

If, however, this pai hua was to be easily intelligible throughout the
nation, it was obvious that there must be a general understanding of the
vernacular upon which it was based. It was clear, too, that this type
of linguistic unity would have to be achieved if that reinforcement to
cultural and national unity heretofore given by the Empire-wide use of
the classical language was not to be lost. Accordingly a vigorous effort
has been made to have a form of Mandarin adopted as the kuo yu, or
"national speech." It has been taught in the schools and has made head
way in the non-Mandarin speaking areas on the south coast. The local
dialects persist, but the standard national vernacular is spreading.

In literature the changes wrought by the coming of the West have
been especially marked. Not only has it become good form to write in the
pai hua, but the scope of literature has been modified and widened. In
scholarly circles historical criticism became popular. The Han School
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its courageous and
original investigation of the authenticity of the accepted texts of the

666 VOLUME II

ancient Classics, once more came into vogue and was reinforced and
enriched by contact with the historical methodology of the modern West.
Aided by the tools thus made available, stimulated by the efforts of
Western Sinologists, and freed from the shackles of the older state-sup
ported orthodoxy, Chinese scholars eagerly investigated afresh the records
of antiquity. Much attention was devoted to the Chou and pre-Chou
period, and the books ascribed to those centuries were subjected to
critical scrutiny, with conclusions that were often very skeptical. A record
of the Ch'ing was compiled on the general pattern of the other dynastic
histories. As was natural in a time of energetic agitation to rid China
of the "unequal treaties," much attention was given to the history of the
nation's diplomatic relations with the Occident.

Under the Communists the study of China's past was made to con
form to Marxist interpretations of the past. Western imperialism was
bitterly denounced. Some revolts of the past were declared to be popular
uprisings against "feudalism." The Tai P'ing movement was viewed as
an early stage of the proletarian revolution which culminated in the
triumph of Communism: methods of land reform which it projected were
praised.

The range of Chinese literary forms was extended by contact with
the West. Poetry, drama, and fiction often showed the effects of Occi
dental influence. Newspapers and magazines were issued in great quanti
ties. Perhaps in part as a development from the placards that for years
were employed to arouse public opinion, propagandists, notably the
Communists, made extensive use of cartoons and printed slogans, which,
often in glaring colors, were affixed to walls in public places.

The scope of Chinese thought was broadened. Western books covering
a wide range of subjects were translated in large numbers. Natural science
especially became popular. At first sight it may seem strange that the
Chinese, who for a highly civilized people were long so backward in
mathematics and the natural sciences, suddenly adopted with enthusiasm
scientific processes and results. Indeed, large numbers of the younger
men quickly displayed marked skill in scientific research. However, the this-
worldly attitude encouraged by Confucianism, the practical outlook of
much of Chinese philosophy, and the ingenuity long displayed in the
invention of mechanical appliances were a preparation for the scientific
approach. The Communists greatly stimulated it, but it had begun inde
pendently of their regime.

Printing was more and more by movable type. Great publishing
houses arose, the Commercial Press being long the most notable. The
Communists nationalized publishing, as they did other aspects of economic
and intellectual activity.

In an earlier chapter something has been said about the history of

Language, Literature, and Education 667

the education of the new type. It will be recalled that Protestant mission
aries were its leading pioneers. Before the China-Japanese War of 1894-
1895 their schools enjoyed no wide patronage, for they were not of the
kind to which boys would go for preparation for the civil service exam
inations. Their students were recruited largely from church members
or from those too poverty-stricken to afford an education elsewhere.
Their graduates usually found employment either in the service of a Chris
tian mission or in business houses engaged in foreign trade. With the
"reform movement*' which began about 1895, mission schools, as the
best places in China in which the new, highly desired Western education
could be acquired, rose quickly to popularity. In the twenty-five years
after the defeat of China by the Powers in 1900 they had a very rapid
growth, for in mental and moral discipline, and as a place in which to
acquire Western learning, the best of them, especially the secondary and
higher institutions, were equal and usually superior to the non-Christian
ones in their communities. Private and government schools of the new
type increased even more rapidly. The growth was retarded by civil strife
and foreign invasions, but it had a phenomenal expansion in "free" China.
The Nationalists continued it on T'aiwan. On the mainland the Communists
gave it major attention. After 1949 new Christian schools were begun
on Taiwan. But on the mainland the Communists took over all the plants
of the Christian institutions of learning. As we have seen, the Communists
have stressed education and have multiplied schools of all grades.

It will be recalled that thousands of Chinese youth studied abroad —
in Japan, Europe, and Aiiierica, and latterly in Russia — as large a stu
dent migration from any one country as the world has ever seen.

It will be remembered, too, that students took an active part in
politics, sometimes as the tools of older manipulators, and more than once
prominently and decisively. On the mainland that was ended by the Com
munists, for with the exception of the brief "blooming of the hundred
flowers," they insisted that all students and other intellectuals conform to
the party line.

Associated with the extension of formal education to groups for which
it was not traditionally designed has been the inclusion of girls in the
schools. The beginnings must be ascribed to the Protestant missionary,
as must so many other features of education and social reform. In gov
ernment schools coeducation of the sexes has become common. The
Communists especially have promoted it.

The curriculum has been broadened. Not only does that of ordinary
primary and secondary schools include many subjects undreamed of
two generations ago, but technical schools have been founded to give the
training which, if available at all, was formerly to be had only through
the apprentice system or in the home. All this, it will be observed, is of

VOLUME II

Occidental provenance. So, too, is the idea of a university as known
among European peoples. Numbers of institutions have been founded
which seek, some of them with increasing success, to be true universities
in the Western sense of that term. Such Western devices as laboratories
and playing fields have been installed.

The intellectual atmosphere of China has, then, been profoundly
altered. The scholar of the old school, thoroughly drilled in the Classics
but knowing little else, has all but disappeared. The product of the new
education knows much less of the ancient literature than did his predeces
sor. At his worst he is shallowly trained in Western subjects as well.
At his best he has at least some familiarity with the older literature of
his country, uses easily one or more foreign languages, is acquainted
with the broad range of ancient and modern Western knowledge, and is
a specialist in some one segment of it. The typical product of the new
age is intensely nationalistic and has an almost naive confidence in the
findings of modern science and in the scientific method. More than in any
other time in recorded history, the Chinese educated classes have moved
out of one age into another.

Nowhere has the sharp transition been more vividly seen than in the
realm of fiction. The writing of fiction became a major occupation of
many of the intellectuals. For the most part they were rebels against
the existing social order, including the family and the sex mores. A
pioneer, Chou Shu-jen, who wrote under the pen name of Lu Hsiin, had
wide popularity and eventually was lauded by the Communists. After
the Communists became masters of the mainland they constrained the
writers of fiction to become propagandists for their ideology, and originality
declined. Some authors were highly critical of Communism and took
refuge in Hong Kong or T'aiwan or became silent,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Good introductory handbooks to the nature and history of the Chinese
language, written and spoken, are B. Karlgren, Sound and Symbol in Chinese
(London, 1923) and B. Karlgren, Philology and Ancient China (Oslo, 1926).
A longer work by the same author is Etudes sur la Phonologic Chinoise (Leiden
andUpsala, 1915-1926).

Standard Chinese-English dictionaries of the older Chinese vernacular are
H. A. Giles, A Chinese-English Dictionary (2d edition, revised and enlarged,
Shanghai and London, 1912) and S. W. Williams, A Syllabic Dictionary of the
Chinese Language (Shanghai, 1874), the former being usually considered the
better.

Many handbooks have been prepared for the purpose of introducing the
foreigner to Chinese. On the language from a historical viewpoint, see R. A. D.
Forrest, The Chinese Language (London, Faber and Faber, 1948, pp. 352).
For the literary language there are J. Brandt, Introduction to Literary Chinese

Language, Literature, and Education 669

(Peking, North China Union Language School, 1927); F. W. Bailer, Lessons
in Elementary Wen-li (Shanghai, 1912); and H. G. Creel, T. C. Chang, and
R. C. Rudolph, Literary Chinese by the Inductive Method (Chicago, 2 vols.,
1938, 1939). Selections from various types of Chinese prose in the literary
language, together with translations and notes, are in Evan Morgan, A Guide
to Wenli Styles and Chinese Ideals (London, 1912). The entrance of the
United States into the Far Eastern war in 1941, and subsequent developments,
made necessary the introduction of hundreds to Chinese. For this many new
methods and textbooks were devised. These have been so numerous that no
attempt has here been made to list and evaluate them.

On one of the most widely used forms of the literary prose style, see G.
Margoulies, Le Kou-Wen Chinois. Recueil de Textes avec Introduction et
Notes (Paris, 1926), and G. Margoulies, Evolution de la Prose Artistique
Chinoise (Munich, 1929), On poetic forms see G. Margoulies, Le "Fou" dans
le Wen-Siuan, ttude et Tex tes (Paris, 1926), Hellmut Wilhelm, "A Scholar's
Frustration: notes on a type of Fu," in J. K. Fairbank, editor, Chinese
Thought and Institutions (The University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 310-
319, and the introduction in Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu, The Jade
Mountain. A Chinese Anthology, Being Three Hundred Poems of the Tang
Dynasty, 618-906 (New York, 1929).

The standard book on printing in China is T. F. Carter, The Invention of
Printing in China and Its Spread Westward (revised edition, New York, 1931).
See also B. Laufer, Paper and Printing in Ancient China (Chicago, 1931).

Of general works on Chinese literature one of the most useful is A. Wylie,
Notes on Chinese Literature (new edition, Shanghai, 1902). Excellent intro
ductions are Ssu-yii Teng and K. Biggerstaff, An Annotated Bibliography of
Selected Chinese Reference Works (Peiping, 1936) and James Hightower,
Topics in Chinese Literature (Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. ix, 130).
See the old H. A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (New York, 1901).
R. Wilhelm, Die Chinesische Literatur (Wildpark-Potsdam, 1930) is semi-
popular and with translations of many selections. On the ts'ung shu A. W.
Hummel has a short but important article, "Ts'ung Shu," Journal of the
American Oriental Society, Vol. 51, March, 1931, pp. 40-47.

Translations have been made of a number of Chinese works, in whole or
in part, although, of course, by far the greater proportion of Chinese literature
has not been put into any European language. The most notable translations of
the classical works of the Chou period have been given in the bibliography at
the end of chapter two, and of the Han works at the end of chapter three.
Several others have been mentioned at the end of chapters five to nine in
clusive. Among those covering more than one period are H. A. Giles, trans.,
Gems from Chinese Literature (second edition, two vols., Shanghai, 1923);
A. Wiley, trans., A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (second edition,
London, 1923); A. Wiley, More Translations from the Chinese (New York,
1919); A. Waley, The Temple and Other Poems (London, 1923); H. H. Hart,
The Hundred Names. A Short Introduction to the Study of Chinese Poetry and
Illustrative Translations (Berkeley, 1933); Florence Ayscough and Amy
Lowell, trans., Fir-Flower Tablets, Poems (Boston, 1921); G. C. Stent, En
tombed Alive and Other Songs, Ballads, Etc. (From the Chinese) (London,
1878); Robert Payne, The White Pony (New York, John Day, 1947), a
useful anthology with interpretative essays; C. C. Wang, translator, Con
temporary Chinese Stories (New York, 1944); C. C. Wang, translator, Tra-

670 VOLUME II

ditional Chinese Tales (New York, 1944); and Ts'ai Ting-kan, Chinese Poems
in English Rhyme (Chicago, 1932). See also Selections from the Work of Su
Tung Po, by C. D. Le Gros Clark (London, 1932). See as well P. S. Buck,
All Men Are Brothers [Shut Hu Chuan] (New York, 2 vols., 1933), a transla
tion of a famous novel of the Ming dynasty, and E. Clement, The Golden
Lotus, A Translation from the Chinese Original of the Novel Chi'n Ping Mei
(London, 4 vols., 1939).

Some Chinese proverbs are in H. H. Hart, translator, Seven Hundred
Chinese Proverbs (Stanford, 1937), W. Scarborough, A Collection of Chinese
Proverbs (Shanghai, 1875); and A. H. Smith, Proverbs and Common Sayings
from the Chinese (new edition, Shanghai, 1914).

Some of the material in Western languages on Chinese medicine is in Fr.
Hlibotter, Die Chinesische Medizin zu Beginn des XX Jahrhunderts und ihr
historischer Entwicklungsgang (Leipzig, 1929); Fr. Hiibotter, A Guide through
the Labyrinth of Chinese Medical Writers and Medical Writings and Bibli
ographical Sketch (Kumamoto, Japan, 1924); H. A. Giles, "The Hsi Yuan Lu,
or Instructions to Coroners," Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine,
Vol. 17, pp. 59-107; A. G. Vorderman, "The Chinese Treatment of Diph-
theritis," T'oung Pao} 1890, pp. 173 ff., 349 ff.; K. C. Wong and Wu Lien-teh,
History of Chinese Medicine (Tientsin, 1932); E. H. Hume, The Chinese Way
in Medicine (Baltimore, 1940); I. Snapper, Chinese Lessons to Western
Medicine (New York, 1941); P. Huard and M-Wong, Evolution de la Matiere
Medicate Chinoise (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1958, pp. 67).

On the backwardness of natural science in China, see Fung Yu-lan, "Why
China Has No Science," International Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1922, Vol. 32,
pp. 237-263. But, on Chinese achievements, see Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilization in China (Cambridge University Press, to be in 7 vols., of which
the first four were published in 1954-1962). See also Kiyoshi Yabuuchi, "The
Development of the Sciences in China from the 4th to the End of the 12th
Century," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, IV-2 (1958), pp. 330-347; Sidney
Henry Gould, ed., Sciences in Communist China, a Symposium (Washington,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1961, pp. xii, 872).

On the older education in China, the standard history in a Western language
is E. Biot, Essai sur THistoire de ^Instruction Publique en Chine et de la
Corporation des Lettres depuis les Anciens Temps jusqu'a Nos Jours (Paris,
1847). The old style village school is graphically and somewhat pessimistically
described in A. H. Smith, Village Life in China (New York, -1899), pp. 70-
110. Much information concerning education in the T'ang is contained in
Robert de Rotours, Le Traite des Examens Traduit de la Nouvelle Histoire de
Tang (Paris, 1932). On the passing of the old examinations see Wolfgang
Franke, The Reform and Abolition of the Traditional Examination System
(Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. viii, 99).

On the Chinese writing of history see C. S. Gardner, Chinese Traditional
Historiography (Harvard University Press, 2nd ed., 1961, pp. xi, 124); W. G.
Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank, editors, Historians of China and Japan (Oxford
University Press, 1961, pp. viii, 351); Han Yu-shan, Elements of Chinese
Historiography (Hollywood, Calif., W. M. Hawley, 1955, pp. 246); Lien-sheng
Yang, Topics in Chinese History (Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. ix, 57);
S. Y. Teng, "Chinese Historiography in the Last Fifty Years," The Far Eastern
Quarterly, Vol. 7, pp. 131-156; and A. Feuerwerker, "China's History in
Marxian Dress," American Historical Review, Vol. 66, pp. 323-353.

Language, Literature, and Education 671

Some of the new terms in the Chinese language are in Evan Morgan,
Chinese New Terms (Shanghai, 1926). A brief account of the movement to
write in the pai hua by the one who is credited with having more influence in
initiating it than any other is Hu Shih, "The Literary Renaissance," in Sophia
H, Chen Zen, editor, Symposium on Chinese Culture (Shanghai, 1931).

There is an account of changes in the theatre in George Kin Leung, "Hsin
Ch'ao (The New Tide). New Trends in the Traditional Chinese Drama,"
Pacific Affairs, 1929, pp. 175-183.

A popular description of some of the attempts to find a simpler way of
writing Chinese than the traditional characters is C. C. Wang, "A Roman
Alphabet for Modern China," Asia, June, 1930, pp. 437-439, 459-464. See
also John De Francis, Nationalism and Language Reform in China (Princeton
University Press, 1950, pp. xi, 306); Tao-tai Hsia, China's Language Reform
(Yale University, The Institute of Far Eastern Languages, 1956, pp. 200);
Harriet C. Mills, "Language Reform in China: Some Recent Developments,"
The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, pp. 517-540; and Yuen Ren Chao, "What
is Correct Chinese?" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 81, pp.
171-177.

A good deal has been written on modern education in China. P. W. Kuo,
The Chinese System of Public Education (New York, 1915), tells of the
earlier years of the changes. So, too, for education for girls, does Ida Belle
Lewis, The Education of Girls in China (New York, 1919). A somewhat later
account of women's education is Lin Paotchin, Lf Instruction Feminine en Chine
(Apres la Revolution de 1911) (Paris, 1926). D. H. Kulp, Country Life in
South China (New York, 1925), has a chapter on education valuable for its
description of a particular community. Paul Monroe, the distinguished Ameri
can educator who was an adviser of the Chinese authorities, has a chapter on
modern education and the student movement in his China, A Nation in
Evolution (New York, 1928). There is also a summary in one chapter of H. A.
Van Dorn, Twenty Years of the Chinese Republic (New York, 1932). The
various issues of The China Mission Year Book (beginning with 1926 The
China Christian Year Book) and The China Year Book usually contain sum
maries of education and often statements about the New Tide Movement.
Bulletins on Chinese Education, 1923 (Shanghai, 1923) contain a number of
informing papers. Educational Review, a quarterly published in Shanghai by
the China Christian Educational Association, contains information on secular
as well as Christian education. Christian Education in China (Shanghai, 1922)
is the report of an important educational commission and is very compre
hensive. C. H. Peake, Nationalism and Education in Modern China (New
York, 1932), is partly a brief historical account of educational changes since
1860 and partly a summary of the nationalistic program of that education.
See also The Reorganization of Education in China, by the League of Nations
Mission of Educational Experts (Paris, 1932), a volume which has been
commented on unfavorably by several reviewers. See also Leo A. Orleans,
Professional Manpower in Communist China (Washington, Government Print
ing Office, 1961, pp. xii, 260); and C. T. Hu, editor, Chinese Education under
Communism (New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1962),
documents.

On the press, see Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public Opinion
in China (Chicago, 1936).

On aspects of twentieth century development in fiction, before and after

672 VOLUME II

the Communist mastery of the mainland, see C. T. Hsia, A History of Modem
Chinese Fiction (Yale University Press, 1961, pp. ix, 662).

For additional titles see C. 0. Hucker, China: A Critical Bibliography (Uni
versity of Arizona Press, 1962, pp. 80-93, and Herbert Franke, Sinologie
(Bern, A. Francke, 1953), pp. 157-182, 190-205.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BY WAY OF SUMMARY

The outstanding characteristic of the China of today is, as
we have seen, the clash of two cultures, with the partial and progressive
disintegration of the one which we think of as traditionally Chinese.

The civilization which at present seems in process of disappearing was
the product of a long evolution. Its development was marked by great
stages, each with its distinct characteristics, In spite of the fact that certain
features occur again and again through much of its course, Chinese history
is by no means, as some would have us think, a repetition of movements
identical except for the names of the actors.

As is the case with most cultures of ancient origin, the beginnings of
that of the Chinese are veiled in obscurity. We first catch glimpses of its
outlines sometime in the second millennium before Christ, in what is
known as the Shang dynasty. There was then living on the fertile plains
of North China, on the lower course of the Yellow River, a race whose
blood appears to be the dominant strain in the population that still inhabits
that region. It had written characters (an archaic form of the present
script), depended upon agriculture for subsistence, used bronze for some
of its weapons, implements, and utensils, had a vigorous and by no means
crude art, and already possessed a political organization of some com
plexity. How much of the culture was autochthonous and how much an
importation from the west or south is still a matter of conjecture and debate.
We know that many centuries and perhaps millenniums before the Shang,
primitive man inhabited what is now North China, and that at a time not
very remote from and contemporary with the Shang, men on the edge of
the bronze age and using polished stone implements and pottery of various
kinds lived in the valley of the Yellow River and in Manchuria.

The Shang was replaced by the Chou. The latter triumphed in a trial of
arms, the traditional date being toward the close of the second millennium
before the Christian Era. The Chou was possibly a new invader from the
west, seeking control of the fertile North China plain and differing some
what in culture from the Shang. Apparently the advent of the Chou was
accompanied by no marked revolution in culture. However, in the course
of the centuries in which the Chou supplied the titular rulers, striking
developments occurred. The area within the purview of the Chinese political
organization expanded, reaching south into the valley of the Yangtze and
north into the highlands of Shansi. The authority of the Chou monarchs

673

674 VOLUME ii

diminished almost to the vanishing point, although long after they ceased
to have an effective military control those who inherited the Chou title of
wang continued to hold a religious pre-eminence and by a convenient
fiction were still the fountain of titles and of legitimacy. The actual power
passed more and more into the hands of a varying number of territorial
magnates. Much of the time the rival magnates waged war on one another
and on the neighboring non-Chinese peoples. There were cities, commerce,
money, art, and a certain degree of luxury for the ruling classes. A sharp
distinction existed between the aristocracy and the proletariat. Original
thinking emerged, some of it profound, and the second half of the first
millennium before Christ spanned one of the most creative periods in the
intellectual history of China. The philosophers centered their attention
chiefly, but by no means exclusively, upon the achievement of an ideal
human society. Political and economic theories were, accordingly, warmly
debated. The chief schools were four in number. The Confucianists insisted
upon the maintenance of the traditional religious and political ceremonies
and organization, but purified and kept just, through the example of edu
cated and righteous rulers and officials who had the welfare of the populace
at heart. The Taoists believed in having mankind conform to what was
denominated the Tao. The Tao, as they conceived it, may be defined as
the way of the Universe. This they thought to be simplicity itself. Accord
ingly they wished to reduce government and economic organization to the
minimum. To them the elaborate ceremonies and meticulous ethics of the
Confucianists were anathema. Then there were the Mohists. Mo Ti, their
founder, was intensely religious. He believed that Tien, or Shang Ti, the
traditional Supreme God of his day, loved all men. All men, therefore, so
he held, should love one another and should seek one another's welfare.
He condemned aggressive war as contrary to love and held that costly
funerals were wasteful of materials needed for the living and should be
discouraged. His followers divided into two groups, one emphasizing his
religious views and the other stressing his dialectic. A fourth main school,
the Legalists, or Administrators, sought to create economically self-sufficient
states with autocratic monarchs — each a centralized fighting machine in
command of a ruler who strictly controlled his subjects through impartially
administered law. In and out of these four schools a good deal of religious
and metaphysical speculation went on, some of it marked by daring and
acute skepticism and some of it by reasoned faith.

In the fifth century before the Christian Era the wars between the states
that made up the then China increased in intensity. Eventually, out of the
sorrows of these years, in the middle of the third century B.C. a decisive
transition occurred. The old order passed away and a new China emerged,
more widely extended, but with a culture largely based on that of the past.
Ch'in, with its seat in the valley of the Wei in the Northwest, conquered

By Way of Summary 675

its rivals and founded the Chinese Empire, Its great leader and autocrat,
Shih Huang Ti, extended his rule over the major portion of what is now
China proper, sought to stamp out the remnants of the decentralized par
ticularism of the Chou, and administered his realm through a centralized
bureaucracy, which, under rulers and ministers who had adopted the
Legalist theory, had been developed in his native state of Ch'in. To make
his power secure, Shih Huang Ti endeavored to curb the non-Legalist
philosophic schools which criticized the political theory and the attendant
organization on which he depended.

The structure through which Ch'in Shih Huang Ti governed was dis
rupted shortly after his death. A successful warrior, however, soon suc
ceeded in founding a new dynasty, the Han, under which, with one
interruption about the time of Christ, the Empire was ruled from the close
of the third century B.C. to the beginning of the third century A.D. While
for a time the Han reverted in part to the decentralized forms of the Chou,
it increasingly governed through a bureaucracy, some of whose main prin
ciples it derived from the Ch'in. Instead of Legalism, the Han eventually
adopted Confucianism as the theory on which to build the state. The Con
fucianism that prevailed was a syncretism in which the Confucianism of
the Chou was the dominant element. It was on the basis of the Confucian
principle that the realm should be governed by the ablest and the best,
regardless of birth, that, after the first few reigns, the Han rulers more
and more recruited the members of the bureaucracy. To this end they estab
lished educational institutions in which Confucianism was dominant and in
stituted the beginnings of a system of civil service examinations through
which some members of the bureaucracy were chosen. The structure
so erected provided machinery by which autocratic Emperors could govern
their vast domains without recourse to an hereditary nobility and the
consequent threat of decentralizing particularism. This Confucian state
system, elaborated and modified by later dynasties, persisted until in the
twentieth century it collapsed under pressure from the Occident.

The other main philosophic schools of the Chou left their impress on
the dominant school and did not immediately die out as separate entities.
Taoism, greatly changed, continued popular. Some Legalist measures of
state control of phases of economic life were warmly debated and adopted,
and the Mohists did not at once disappear. Yet philosophic speculation
became less original and the debates over it less marked. The intellectual
ferment of the Chou was passing.

Territorially the Han was characterized by expansion. The Han arms
were carried southward into the present Vietnam, northward into the
present Korea, and westward into Central Asia into what is now Russian
territory. Contacts with foreign peoples multiplied, and more or less indirect
intercourse was had even with the Roman Empire. Art was profoundly

676 VOLUME II

altered, in part because of influences from abroad. Its figures became more
lifelike and showed more vigorous action. There arrived, too, the first
waves of Buddhism — that faith which was to be the vehicle for more pro
found foreign influences on the Chinese than came from any other single
source in historic times until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

With the end of the Han, in the third century A.D., a period of political
disunion began which lasted for not far from four centuries. During much
of this time non-Chinese peoples from the north and west ruled great
sections of the North. Numbers of families claimed imperial power, but no
one of them was able to command the allegiance of as much of the country
as had acknowledged the Han, although in the third century one nearly
succeeded in doing so. Most of them ruled over what were only fragments
of the former Han domains. Thanks in part to the weakening of the ad
ministrative system inherited from the Han and the consequent feebleness
of its accompanying Confucianism, Buddhism made great headway and
established itself as a major religion of the land. With it came new and
varied art forms, some of Greek origin, and it inspired marked artistic and
literary activity. By the end of the period the Chinese had begun to make
Buddhism their own and to think it through in terms of their experience.
The result was Buddhist schools of thought and practice which, although
some claimed Indian nativity, usually displayed marks of the Chinese en
vironment. Yet the older religious systems — Confucianism and Taoism —
did not disappear, even though both, especially Taoism, were profoundly
modified by competition with their rival.

In spite of the nearly four centuries of division, the dream of political
unity for all the inheritors of Chinese culture did not die. At the close of
the sixth century it was once more realized by the Sui dynasty. The Sui was
quickly followed by the T'ang. During the T'ang, which led China from
early in the seventh to early in the tenth century A.D., the Empire reached
a new level of power and prosperity, but with a culture which in some re
spects differed decidedly from that of its great predecessor, the Han. Like
the Han it extended the geographical boundaries of the Empire toward
the south and north, and especially toward the west. The outer limits of
the two were not far from the same. Like the Han it built its political struc
ture on the Confucian theory. Indeed, it carried still further the system
which the Han had originated of recruiting the staff of its bureaucracy
through civil service examinations based largely although not entirely
upon Confucian literature. To prepare for these examinations it expanded
the state system of schools. Under the T'ang Confucianism revived and
once more became powerful. Taoism, modified by Buddhism, was popular.
Yet the T'ang showed marked contrasts with the Han, and under it fresh
advances were made. In its later years China entered upon a new cultural
era. Chinese Buddhism attained the height of its vigor and entered upon

By Way of Summary 677

a slow decline. Sculpture reached its apex and there were noted painters.
Many of the art motifs were very different from those of the Han, Subse
quent generations regarded the poetry and the calligraphy of the T'ang as
the finest the Chinese have produced. Printing and porcelain appeared,
probably for the first time. Other foreign faiths — Christianity, Zoroastrian-
ism, Manichaeism, and Islam — entered, and one of them, Islam, persisted.
More than at any previous time, Japan was brought within the circle of
Chinese cultural influence.

Following the T'ang, after a half-century or so of disorder, came the
Sung. During much of its course the North was ruled by aliens, but the
native culture of the period was rich and had its distinct developments,
For many years debate over a political experiment somewhat akin to the
modern state socialism of the Occident disturbed the realm. Buddhism,
while still strong, gave additional evidences of decay. Confucianism, al
though more than ever the accepted philosophy of the educated and ruling
classes and enforced through a further development of government schools
and civil service examinations, was extensively modified. It was thought
through afresh and restated, and much of Taoism and Buddhism were
more or less consciously incorporated in it. The form then given it re
mained orthodox until the twentieth century. Landscape painting was the
crowning achievement of the art of the Sung, and the best of it has never
been equaled in China before or since. Printing and porcelain were im
proved. Sung editions are valued for their beauty as well as their antiquity,
and Sung porcelains, largely monochrome and simple of design, are highly
esteemed. Cities based on commerce and industry multiplied and urban
life became prominent.

In the fourth quarter of the thirteenth century the last of the Sung
Emperors succumbed to the rising tide of foreign conquest, and for nearly
a century all China submitted to the Mongols. However, the latter did not
seek to displace Chinese culture and ruled largely under the accustomed
machinery and in the guise of Chinese Emperors, with the dynastic name
of Yuan. Many foreigners entered China as merchants, soldiers, and offi
cials. Western Europeans reached the Empire for the first time, most of
them as merchants and missionaries, and carried back glowing reports of
the wealth and culture of Cathay. Novels and the theatre became prominent.
In the second half of the fourteenth century Chinese armies drove out
the Mongols, and one of their generals placed his family on the throne as
a dynasty, the Ming, which ruled the Empire until the middle of the seven
teenth century. The Nee-Confucianism of the Sung remained the official
philosophy in which the educated were drilled and on which the state con
tinued to be based. The administrative machinery and the civil service
examinations, which had come down from the Han, were further elaborated
and strengthened. Yet even the Ming, which sought earnestly to restore

678 VOLUME II

the traditional culture, saw distinctive developments. Buddhism became
more somnolent, and art, deprived in part of its inspiration, grew more
secular. Landscape painting declined in quality, but the technique was
elaborated. Porcelains were enriched by the use of more colors and poly
chrome designs. There were even revolts (although affecting only a few)
against the dominant Neo-Confucianism of the Sung, partly in the school
of Wang Yang-ming and partly in the beginnings of the attempt to get back
of the interpretations of the Sung philosophers to the primitive documents
of the accepted Classics before they had been altered by the Han editors.

In the seventeenth century the native Emperors gave way before another
group of foreign conquerors. These, the Manchus, established the Ch'ing
dynasty and held the throne until 1912. Under the rule of the greatest of the
Ch'ing, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the territory controlled
reached the widest extent in the history of the Empire. Population attained
new high levels and the Chinese race spread over a larger area than ever
before. In culture, however, the Ch'ing era was almost entirely a con
tinuation of the Ming. Important innovations from within in art, literature,
religion, philosophy, and political organization were lacking. To be sure,
the Han school of literary and historical criticism came to fruition, but it
had begun in the Ming. Until the Ch'ing the course of Chinese cultural
development, while marked by certain fairly constant factors and charac
teristics, had shown progressive change. One dynasty was by no means a
complete repetition of its predecessor. Within some dynasties important
transitions were seen. Ever since the Yuan, however, creativity and orig
inality had been slowing down and the Chinese were more and more content
to repeat old customs and forms. For this the enforced conformity to
Sung Neo-Confucianism and the lack of stirring contacts with other cultures
seem to have been at least in part responsible.

Under the Ming and the Ch'ing those intimate contacts with an ex
panding Occident began which in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
were to have revolutionary sequels. The comparatively brief touch of a
few Europeans with China under the Yuan had its main permanent results
in kindling in the hearts of adventurous Westerners the desire to reach
the rich and populous Cathay of which Marco Polo wrote. Not until the
sixteenth century were those relations established which have continued
and grown. Moreover, not until nearly the middle of the nineteenth cen
tury was China seriously affected by them. The collapse of the structure of
Chinese life before the invasion of the West was more overwhelming than
it otherwise would have been and the ensuing chaos more marked because
the increasing pressure of that invasion synchronized with the decline in
vigor of the Ch'ing rulers. It was a China with incompetent and decadent
leadership at the top which had to face the most serious combination of
crises in its history.

By Way of Summary 679

The contrasts between the Chinese culture whose disruption the present
generation has witnessed and the civilization of the West which brought
about the revolution are numerous and striking. Both are notable achieve
ments of the human genius and it would be difficult to decide which is the
more admirable. However., since it is the West which has conquered,
Chinese rather than Occidental civilization has suffered, and the disintegra
tion in the former is greater than would have been the case had the back
ground of the two been more nearly similar. On the one hand was a culture
where changes, once frequent, were occurring more and more slowly. On
the other was a civilization in which a machine age and applied science
were working alterations with constantly accelerated speed. New social
theories, including especially communism, were becoming widespread. The
Chinese idea of the state was that of an empire embracing all civilized
mankind, owing allegiance to one sovereign Son of Heaven, and governed
through scholars' trained in the Confucian theories of life. Unity was as
much cultural as political and wide variations from Confucianism were
decried. The Western conception has been a commonwealth of nations,
each theoretically sovereign in its own territory and guided in its relations
to others by an international law. This difference was the cause of frequent
misunderstandings and friction. For instance, the signature of a treaty did
not have the same connotation to Chinese as to Occidentals. Such political
theories as democracy and latterly socialism and communism have trans
formed political institutions. In China a people that has been culturally
but not nationally self-conscious has collided with a West in which the
tides of nationalism are running strong. Chinese currency had not been
uniform throughout the country and had been based on copper and silver.
Western currencies usually employed the gold standard and the central
government established uniform measures of fineness and weight. Chinese
industry was in the handicraft stage. By the time it began seriously to affect
China that of the Occident had been made over by the Industrial Revolu
tion and had entered the factory era. The transportation of China had been
by the sailing craft, the wheelbarrow, the cart, and on the backs of men
and beasts of burden. That of the West is by the steamship, the railway, the
automobile, and the airplane. The Occident which has forced itself on
China is in possession of the ocean cable and the telegraph and of nationally
and internationally organized postal systems and has added the radio and
the cinema. A China primarily agricultural and rural has been forced into
a world which is increasingly industrial and urban. Religiously China had
been Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist, with strong admixtures of animism
and polytheism and with occasional skepticism. It has had to face an
Occident which in philosophy and religion is the heir of Greek, Hebrew,
and Christian traditions, and which at present displays a strong tendency
to discredit and discard all religion. A people organized in part on the

680 VOLUME II

patriarchal basis, and in which the individual and even the state have been
subordinated to the family, has been invaded by mores from a huge section
of the world where the individual has been exalted, where the family is
disintegrating, and where subordination of the individual, when it occurs,
as it does increasingly, is to the state. An intellectual culture of a very high
order, but in which literary form, ethical and social content, and a
subjective philosophy — which looks within "to the human spirit — have been
the chief preoccupations, has had to face a world which has created the
scientific method, is in possession of an amazing and rapidly growing knowl
edge and control of its physical environment, and in which the premium
is upon discoveries in the natural sciences. A people among whom the
education of the schools was the privilege of the few and was primarily
for the purpose of training state officials has been thrown into competition
with a world in which the ideal is education for all. Artistic traditions
hallowed by centuries of development and of high achievement have been
rudely challenged by the products of quite different historical processes.
A people whose socially dominant classes have been uninterested in the
development of the body and in athletic sports has been forced into an
age whose standards are set by those who rejoice in a sound body and in
games involving physical competition. The contrasts between the two
civilizations could be multiplied. One world of traditions and customs has
been violently entered by another with a quite different background.

Some similarities, to be sure, exist between the old China and the
modern West. The Chinese have been this-worldly and interested in con
structing a civilization that will bring physical comfort and cultural welfare
to all its members. So, increasingly, is the Occident. By tradition the
Chinese are disposed to take kindly to the scientific processes and the
mechanical devices of the West and to enter into successful competition in
its commercial life. It seems fairly clear that the Chinese have more in
common with the modern West than they have hacl with India.

When the similarities between the old China and the Occident have
been pointed out, however, the fact remains that in many basic character
istics the two civilizations have been antipathetic. As a consequence the old
Chinese culture has been disrupted, with great suffering to millions of
Chinese and with danger to the rest of the world. The triumph of the
Communists on the mainland and the persistence of the Republic of China
on T'aiwan when these lines were penned, for the time were bringing an
approach to order. But they were only the latest stage in the revolution and
presumably were far from the final outcome. Here is a spectacle the like
of which in sheer magnitude human beings have never before seen. The
largest fairly homogeneous group of mankind is experiencing the most
thoroughgoing revolution in its history. The outcome remains uncertain.
The Chinese may be stimulated to fresh originality and build a civilization

By Way of Summary 681

that will integrate in partially or entirely new forms some of the old with
many of the features of the Occident. On the other hand they may sink
more or less permanently into chaos and retain only enfeebled remnants
of their older culture, unsuccessfully combined with unintelligently adopted
institutions and ideas from the Occident. There is every indication that the
full outcome will not be clearly discerned for at least a generation and
probably very much longer. So shattering an experience to so large a body
of mankind cannot be passed through quickly.

The world should not lose faith in China even if the process requires
centuries. Many of us who have loved the Chinese have a hopeful con
fidence in the ultimate result and base it upon what we know of Chinese
history and of individual Chinese of today. We see no clear signs of
degeneration in the native capacity of the race. Remembering as we do
the ability which the Chinese have Shown in the past to construct a
civilization, we believe that they will ultimately recover from the stunning
blows dealt them and will once more create a worthy culture. It is im
probable, however, that we or our children's children will live to see our
faith fully justified. The next century or more probably has in store
sufferings as intense as the Chinese have ever known. Some of us, however,
are not without faith that these will prove the birth pangs of a new and
greater China, even though we cannot now clearly forecast its features.

PROPER NAMES AND CHINESE WORDS
USED IN THE TEXT
AND THEIR CORRESPONDING
CHINESE CHARACTERS

Achmach (in Chinese A-ho-ma

Ahmad (in Chinese A-ho-ma

A-lo-han pPjUllt

A-lo-pen |5Jf|;£

Amban (Chinese An-pan ft|$0

(Manchu word meaning Ta Ch'en

A-mi-t'o (same as 0-mi-t'o)
A-mi-t'o-fo (same as 0-mi-t'o-fo)
Amoy (Hsia m£n) UP3
Amur (Heilungchiang HHil)
Amursana (Chinese A-mu-6hr-sa-

Anfu (Club)

Anhsi

Anhui

An Lu-shan

Annam (also Annan)

Anpei g Jt

An Shan ^[
An-shih-kao
Antung
Anyang

Burma (Chinese Mien ;
tien

or Mien-

Canton (Kwangchow)

Ch^ahar ^^

Champa (in Chinese formerly Lin-i

rf^B

and later Chan-ch'eng

Ch'an (sect of Buddhism) jp$
Ch'ang-an S^
Chang Ch'ien ?ft^
Ch'ang Chien ^ji
Chang Chih-tung
Ch'angchow
Ch'angch'un
Chang Fei j

Chang Hsien-chung
Chang Hsiieh-cheng
Chang Hsiieh-liang §|
Chang Hsiin ^tffjj
Chang I «
Chang Ling $1$
Chang Pang-ch'ang
Changsha HjfcJ?
Chang Tao-ling $
Chang Tsai ggfg

Chang Tso-H'

Chan Kuo ("Contending States")

Ch6n Jen

Chan Kuo Tse l^git

Chao (dynasty) jjg

Chao (state in Chou dynasty, for

merly part of Chin ff ) j|
Ch'aochow
Ch'aohsien :
Chao-hui

Chao KJuang-yin

Chao meng-fu

Chefoo £jp

Chekiang g(f JQ

Ch'Sn (dynasty) Pf

Chen Chiin ^g

ChSng (Shih Huang Ti) ®[

Cheng Ch'eng-kung jUSj^Jg;

Cheng Ch'iao %$,

Ch'eng Hao gg

Cheng Ho ff^

Ch'eng Huang Miao j^^^g

Ch'eng I gg|

Ch'eng I-ch'uan

Ch'^ng Ming-tao i

Ch'Sng Tsu j^jja

Chengtu jgjSP

Ch'en Huan-chang

Ch^en Shu {ft£

Ch'te Tu-hsiu

Ch^en Tzu-ang

Ch'en Wang

Chen-yea (Buddhist sect) Jf H

ch^i (in Sung philosophy and in

feng-shui) 1

Ch'i (state in Chou dynasty) pf
Ch'i (dynasty) ^

Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chieh-

shih) ^^5
Chia Ssu-tao RjJM
Chieh %

Ch'ien Chao (dynasty) |if J|
Ch'ien Ch'in (dynasty) |ff^
Ch'ien Han Shu gJ'SI^
Chien-k'ang (later Nanking) ^^
Ch'ien Liang (dynasty)
Ch^ien Lung fgg
Ch'ien-t'ang

Chien-yeh

chih chou

chih chiin

chih fu

chih hsien

Chih I §i|

Chihli

Chji Hsiung ("seven martial"

[states] of Chou dynasty) -fc$|
chih t'ai §IJ^
Ch'i-lin 1H
chin (catty) ff
Ch'in (dynasty, 3d century B.C.)

Chin (dynasty, 3d and 4th cen
turies A.D.) ff
Chin (state of — in Chou dynasty)

Chin (dynasty, izth and i3th cen
turies A.D.) jj£
Ching (Classic or Sutra) g
Ch'ing (Manchu dynasty) fl$
Ch'ing Hai (Kokonor) flf j§
Ch'in-ling

Ch'ing ming (festival) */f §)§
Ching Pao 1^;$$
Ch'ing Shih Kao vf fcflf
Ching Te § H
Ching-te Chen $3Kft
Ching Ti JR#
ching t'ien ("well field" system)

Ch'ing T'u (sect of Buddhism)

Chinkiang
Ch'in Kuei f|{f
chin shih (literary degree) %£-±
Chin Shih (History of the Chin
dynasty i2th and I3th centuries

Chou Hsin

Chou Kuan

Chou Kung jf £

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Chou Shu

Chou Shu-jen

Chou Tun-i

Ch'u (state of— in Chou dynasty)

Ch'u (state at beginning of Sung)

Ch'iianchow Jf^H

Chuang Tztt |g J

Chu Chiu-t'ao

Ch'u fou

Chu Hsi

chii jen $X

Chu-ko Liang HM^^

chiin (provinces in Ch'in dynasty)

Chin Shu (History of the Chin
dynasty 3d and 4th centuries

A.D.) 9*
Chin-tan Chiao
Chin Wu Ti
Ch'i-tan (Khitan)
Chiu Hua Shan
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Ch'ungfirh Jig

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Chung-kuo Li-shih Yen-chiu Fa

Chung Yung if ff
chiin tzu g -^
Chusan (archipelago)
Chu Shu Chi Nien
Chu Tao-sheng ^
Chu Ti
Chu Wen
Ch'u Yuan Jgjg
Chu Yuan-chang

Chu Yun-wen
Co-hong £ff
Confucius (K'ung Fu

Dairen, see Talienwan ^C^l^
Dalai Lama (Chinese ta-lai-la-ma

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Eleuths (Chinese 0-lu-t'e jatff )
Erh-Shih Huang Ti nj&lft
firhYa

Fukien jj
Fulin ^
Fushun
fu t'ai $

Fa Chia

Fa-hsiang (Buddhist sect) g

Fanch'&ig jfe$

Fan Chung-yen

fang chang

fan t'ai $£•£

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Fan Yeh

fa-shili

Fa Tang $|f '

Fen (River) ft

feng (a sacrifice) $

Feng-huang jRJft

Feng Kuo-chang /|f|

Feng Tao !£

Fengt'ien (Mukden)

Feng Yii-hsiang

Feng Yiin-shan ?HSI(U

Foochow jp§^

Formosa (T'aiwan H$f)

fu (administrative division) 0

fu (good fortune or happiness) jjg

Fu Chien ^pg

FuHsi

Galdan (Chinese Ka-ehr-tan
Gobi j$^ (also called Sha Mo

and Han Hai ^$|
Golden Sand, River of the (upper

reaches of the Yangtze) Chin-

sha Chiang £$>£H
Gurkhas (Chinese K'uo-ehr-k'o

Hainan
Hakka
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Han (dynasty) ^
Han (state in Chou dynasty, for
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Han (state) f|

Han (River in Kwangtung) ^
Han (River in Hupeh) g|
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Hou Liang (dynasty, loth century)

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Japan (in Chinese Jih-pen) 0 if*
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Jenghiz Khan (in Chinese Ch'eng-
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Ju Chia |

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Kachin (Chinese Yeh-jen

Shan t'ou iLj§f)
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kjang ^
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kaoliang

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Kashgar (in Chinese K'o-shih-ka-

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Keh-Lao (Ch'i-lao
Keng Ching-chung
Khalkhas (Chinese K'o-ehr-k'o

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Khubilai (in Chinese Hu-pi-lieh
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li (law) 0j

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Li Fan Yuan
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Li Kuang-li
Li Kuang-pi
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Li Lin-fu

Li Lung-mien
Lin-an g^
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Li Pu (Board

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Liu (ruling family of Han dynasty)

Liu An aS
Liu Chih-chi
Liu Chih-yuan
Liu Ch'iu (Islands)
Liu Hsiang
Liu Hsin

Liu Pang

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Liu Shao-ch'i

Liu Sung (dynasty)

Liu Ts*ung fj^

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Liu Yii (founder of Liu Sung

dynasty) gj^
Liu Yii (i2th century)
Liu Yuan gi|^
Li Yen-shou
Li Yuan $!
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Lohan (arhat)
Loi (li »)
Lo-lo pp Also written Lao-lao

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Lii (Empress of Ch'ien Han

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lung f|
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Lun Yu ^
Lii Pu-wei
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Three Eastern Provinces, or
simply Tung sheng ^^ The
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Mangu (in Chinese Meng-ko gjflf )

Man Tzii gf-

Mao Tse-tung 3^^

Ma Tuan-lin J^JJHJg

Ma Yuan (ist century B.C.— ist
century A.D.) Hjg

Ma Yuan (Sung dynasty artist) Hjg

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Miao (aboriginal people)

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Mi-Chiao

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Min (River, in Fukien) P5

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Min (state at beginning of Sung) $

Ming (dynasty) [$

Ming Chia £|?

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Ming Shih 0J^

Ming Ti Rj§p|

Mongol (Meng ku) ^*£

Mongolia (Meng ku)

Mo-so ^^

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mou (measure of land)

Mu (prince of Chjin)

Mu Chyi

Mu-jung

Mukden. See Fengt'ien

Mu Wang ^^

Nan Chao
Nan Ch'i Shu
Nan Han
Nanking

Nan P'ing

Nan Shan

Nan Shih

Nan T*ang ^Jg

Nan Wang ffi£

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Nayan (in Chinese Nai-yen

Nei Ching

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Newchwang ^ffi

nieh t'ai

Nienfei J

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Ninghsia ^ J

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Ningpo ^fe

Nonni (nen-kiang

Niichen ^cg (better Juchen)

Nil Kua ^

Nurhachu (in Chinese Nu-ehr-ha-

His dynastic title was T'ai Tsu
Kao ^CIEit and his reign title
T'ien Ming

Ogotai (in Chinese Wo-k'uo-t'ai
IKBS-&) His dynastic title was
T'ai Tsung ££)

0 Mei Shan f$j| ^4

Omi-t'o
0-mi-t'o-fo
Ordos (Ho t'ao)
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p'ai fang

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p'ai lou

pa kua

Panch'an Lama

Pan Chao

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Panghu W

Pan Ku

Fan Ku

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Pan Yung $1

pao chia ffiVp

Pel Ch'i (dynasty, 6th century

A.D.) dt»
Pel Ch'i Shu Jt^f^
Pei Chou (dynasty, 6th century

A.D. jtl)

Pei Han (dynasty)

Peip'ing

Pei Shih

Peit'ing

Peking

P^n-t'sao-kang-mu

Petuntse g^-?

Pien Liang f(^^

P'ien tji (a style of writing) ^|§

P'ingyang
Po Chu-i
P'o Hai
P'o-yang (Lake)

p'u-sa

p'u-tji-sa-to

p'u-fo t pe

P'u-fo Shan
P'u-yi (Pyu-i), Henry ^Lf| (the last
Manchu Emperor)

Quemoy (Kinmeng)

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Shan (a sacrifice) f|

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shih (poetry)

shih (stone) ~

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Szechwan

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Talai Lama

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tan (picul) $|

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Tao (of Taoism) jiH

tao (provinces under T'ang T'ai

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Tao-t6-hsiieh-sh6
t'ao t'ieh

Tat'ung
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TS (virtue) $
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Ti(Earth)^
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Tung Yo ^^
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Turfan (T'u-lu-fan t'ing) tt&tt
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Tu Wen-hsiu

Tu Yu frffc

Tzii Chih T'ung Chien

Tz'ii-6n-tsung

Tz'tt Hsi $£

Tzii Ying

T'ung Ch'eng

T'ung Ch6ng Ssu

T'ung Chien Chi Shih Pen Mo

T'ung Chien Rang Mu 3
T'ung Chih (a history) M/S
T'ung Chih (Ch'ing Emperor)

t'ung chih (sub-prefect)
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Uighurs (Chinese Hui-ho ^^ or

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Ussuri (Wu-su-li

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Wang 5

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Wu Ti (title of several emperors)

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Wen (personal name Ch'ung £hr

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Yarkand (in Chinese Yeh-ehr-
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Yeh Ming-shen

Yen (state in the North in 4th and

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Yen Hui H[D|

Yen, James Y.C. (Yen Yang-ch'u)

Yen J

Yen Li-pen
i^en Li-te
yen Yuan HTU
yin (of Yin Yang)
(dynasty) Jg

yo Fei
fu (jade)

(founder of the Hsia dynasty)

¥uan (dollar) jc
yiian (dynasty) JG
ytian Chao Pi Shih
Ch'u gH

Yiian Shih

Yiian Shih-k^ai

Yiian Shih T*ien Tsun

Yiian Wei (dynasty in 4th to 6th

centuries A.D.) TcSI
Yiian Yu
Yiian Yiian
Yu Ch'ao »

IJ fST*~

Yiieh (state in Chou dynasty) H
Yiieh (peoples on the south coast

in Ch'in and Han times and

earlier) j||
Yiieh Chih £ ft
Yu Hsien if
Yii Huang 5M
Yii Huang Shang Ti
Yii Men

Yung Cheng ^|iE
Yung Lo g<^
Yung Lo Ta Tien
Yung Wing g^fl
Yunnan j|^f
Yiinnanfu 5SW
Yu Wang iJ3E

INDEX

Abacus, 200
Adoption, 571
Agriculture, 485-496

under the Chou Dynasty, 43, 44
Aigun, treaty of, 284
Albazin, 253
A-lo-pen, 155
America; see United States
Amida, 132
Amitabha, 132
Amur, 15
Amursana, 257
Amusements, 587-596
An Lu-shan, 149, 150
Analects, 55, 102
Ancestors, honors to, 537-540
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 319, 320
Animism; see Religion
Annam, 81, 258, 297
An-shih-kao, 98
Anyang, 31

Arable land, China proper, 13
Arabs, 145, 153
Archaeology, 415

Communist, 636
Architecture, 611-617

bridges, 616

city walls, 612, 613

Peking, 616, 617
Arrow, 281
Art, 606-637

under the Ch'ing, 261-262

under the Han, 95, 103

under the Ming, 241-242

under the Sung, 201-203

under the T'ang, 164-166

see also Painting; Sculpture
Associations, 577-579

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Full text of "THE CHINESE THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE"

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