



Produced by John Bickers and Dagny





THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA

by Herbert A. Giles


Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge,

And sometime H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo




PREFACE

The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese
civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid
and startling transition.

It has been written, primarily, for readers who know little or nothing
of China, in the hope that it may succeed in alluring them to a wider
and more methodical survey.

H.A.G.

Cambridge, May 12, 1911.




THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA



CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE

It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by
the term China?

Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as
China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths
of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a
half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking,
the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the
south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.

Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a returning traveller
the very much asked question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a
Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in England, how he liked Europe!
Peking, for instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as Madrid;
whereas Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the square
indicated by the four points enumerated above will be found variations
of climate, flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals--not to mention human
beings--distributed in very much the same way as in Europe. The climate
of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no rain, and hardly any snow,
falling between October and April. The really hot weather lasts only for
six or eight weeks, about July and August--and even then the nights are
always cool; while for six or eight weeks between December and February
there may be a couple of feet of ice on the river. Canton, on the other
hand, has a tropical climate, with a long damp enervating summer and a
short bleak winter. The old story runs that snow has only been seen
once in Canton, and then it was thought by the people to be falling
cotton-wool.

The northern provinces are remarkable for vast level plains, dotted
with villages, the houses of which are built of mud. In the southern
provinces will be found long stretches of mountain scenery, vying in
loveliness with anything to be seen elsewhere. Monasteries are built
high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there
the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the
southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are
said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which
reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their
funds by so doing.

In the north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and donkeys are
seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel, which carries heavy
loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the south, until the advent of
the railway, travellers had to choose between the sedan-chair carried
on the shoulders of stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable
house-boat. Before steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for
the doctor's degree at the great triennial examination would take three
months to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however, were
often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred miles a
day.

The market in Peking is supplied, among other things, with excellent
mutton from a fat-tailed breed of sheep, chiefly for the largely
Mohammedan population; but the sheep will not live in southern China,
where the goat takes its place. The pig is found everywhere, and
represents beef in our market, the latter being extremely unpalatable to
the ordinary Chinaman, partly perhaps because Confucius forbade men to
slaughter the animal which draws the plough and contributes so much to
the welfare of mankind. The staple food, the "bread" of the people in
the Chinese Empire, is nominally rice; but this is too costly for the
peasant of northern China to import, and he falls back on millet as its
substitute. Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow abundantly
in the north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange, the
pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of a
more tropical character.

Cold storage has been practised by the Chinese for centuries. Blocks of
ice are cut from the river for that purpose; and on a hot summer's day a
Peking coolie can obtain an iced drink at an almost infinitesimal cost.
G