China: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2/Chapter 1
CHINA
ITS HISTORY ARTS AND
LITERATURE
Chapter I
THE FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY
NOTHING surprises the student of Chinese history and the Chinese people more than the incomplete and uncertain character of available information. The subject is profoundly interesting. No other nation with which the world is acquainted has been so consistently true to itself; no other nation has preserved its type so unaltered; no other nation has developed a civilisation so completely independent of extraneous influences; no other nation has elaborated its own ideals in such absolute segregation from alien thought; no other nation has preserved the long stream of its literature so entirely free from foreign affluents; no other nation has ever reached a moral and national elevation comparatively so high above the heads of contemporary States. About a land thus abounding in titles to consideration it should be possible to speak with accuracy and assurance. But, on the contrary, though the literature inspired by the subject would furnish a library, its language is often speculative and its statements do not pretend to be final. Even the origin of the name "China" is conjectural. It is supposed to have been derived from the fact that at the time when Western people began to make their way overland to that part of the Orient, their first place of arrival was the kingdom of Tsin, or Chin, by which name they consequently came to call the whole country. In later days the Tsin rulers rose from the position of feudal princes to the sovereignty of the entire Empire, so that the correctness of the appellation "Tsina" or "China" received confirmation in the eyes of foreigners. But the Chinese themselves never used any such term. They originally called their country by one of three names—Tien-hia (under the heavens), Sz-hai (within the four seas), or Chung-kwoh (middle country). All these designations have been cited as evidence of the conceit of their authors. The charge is scarcely just. Sz-hai is evidently a geographical derivation; the same term (Shi-kai) was commonly applied by the Japanese to their island Empire, though they can never have laboured under any false impression as to its magnitude and relative importance. Chung-kwoh, which came into use in the twelfth century before Christ, was originally employed to designate the imperial province of Honan on account of its central situation, and if Tien-hia savours of vanity, it had the excuse of being applied to the most extensive Empire ever governed by one sovereign. On the other hand, terms are not wanting that suggest the high esteem in which the Chinese have always held themselves. Tien-chan is such a term and Chung-hwa-kwoh is another. The people of China, for whom the doctrine of the divine right of kings possessed more practical significance than it had for Occidental nations, spoke of their Sovereign as Tien-tsz, or "son of heaven," and his dominions as Tien-chan, or (the land ruled by) the "heavenly dynasty." This latter name became "Celestial Kingdom" in the vocabulary of Europeans and Americans, who supplemented it by calling the Chinese people "Celestials," a term invented in the Occident, having no equivalent in the Chinese language, and being moreover entirely inconsistent with the spirit of the Chinese polity. As for Chung-hwa-kwoh (middle flowery kingdom) and Hwa-yen (flowery language), they are frank indications of the fact that the Chinese considered their land the most civilised and their language and literature the most refined in the world; an estimate which had at least the merit of being absolutely true at the time when it was made. One other form of appellation may be mentioned, namely, that derived from the name of the reigning dynasty. It is thus that the people often call themselves "Sons of Han" (Han-tsz), "men of Tang" (Tang-jin), or "people of the Great Pure Dynasty" (the Ta-tsing, now reigning), and more rarely designate the kingdom the "flowery Hia" (Hwa-hia). Perhaps the commonest term of all is Li-min, or "black-haired people." To the earnest student of China and the Chinese it seems not inappropriate that the country and its inhabitants should have more than an ordinary allowance of appellations, and that some of them should reflect the original might and culture of so remarkable a nation.
There is uncertainty also about the area and population; not merely because these have varied within large limits from age to age, but also because neither Chinese geodesy nor Chinese statistology is altogether trustworthy. The Empire proper consists of eighteen provinces, bounded on the east and south by the ocean, on the north by the vast desert of Gobi, and on the west by the mountains of Thibet and India. The area of these eighteen provinces—called by the Chinese Shih-pah-sung (eighteen provinces) or Chung-kwoh (middle country)—has been variously estimated at from one and one fourth to two millions of square miles, and the figure now regarded with most confidence is 1,336,841. For purposes of comparison China proper has been described as seven times the size of France, fifteen times that of the United Kingdom, and one-half that of Europe. The population which Chinese annals put at 150 millions in 1743 is now believed by the best authorities to be over 400 millions.
These eighteen provinces have always been regarded as China proper. But the Empire includes also Manchuria, and has for colonial possessions Thibet, Mongolia, and Ili, in which last are included Eastern Turkestan and Sungaria (or Jungaria). If perplexity exists as to the exact area of the eighteen provinces and the number of their inhabitants, it will easily be understood that still vaguer approximations are alone possible in the case of the remote and little visited regions of Manchuria (known as the "Three Eastern Provinces") and the above colonial territories. Manchuria is believed to cover 364,000 square miles approximately, and to have a population of about thirteen millions, while the corresponding figures for the colonies are:
| Area. | Population. | |
|---|---|---|
| Mongolia | 1,288,000 square miles | 2 millions |
| Ili | 579,750 square" miles" | 1¼ millions |
| Thibet | 650,000 square" miles" | 6 millions |
Taking these figures for superficies, and assuming the area of the eighteen provinces to be one and one third million square miles, which is probably a close approximation, it would follow that the total expanse of the Chinese Empire is about four and one fourth million square miles and that its population approximates to 450 millions. Thus it stands third on the territorial schedule of the world's states, Russia being first and Great Britain second, while in point of population it easily heads the list.
It must appear singular to some readers, that after so many years of tolerably close intercourse between China and Western countries there should still be so much uncertainty about her population. But strangers are obviously incompetent to form any trustworthy estimate in the case of an empire so vast and so little accessible, while the Chinese themselves have never taken a census for its own sake. Their unique object in conducting such investigations has always been to determine the number of taxable units, and in view of that purpose the people, on their side, have naturally shown a disposition to evade enumeration. The history of the Empire records that in the ninth century before Christ, the population of China proper aggregated about twenty-two millions, and that the figure at the beginning of the Christian era was eighty millions. Thereafter great variations appear in the returns; variations which, though partially attributable to changes in the areas affected, and partially to the inclusion at one time of elements excluded at another, are still so marked as to be bewildering. Thus the eighty millions of the days of Christ fall to twenty-three millions three centuries subsequently; rise to forty-six millions after the lapse of a similar period; become 100 millions at the beginning of the twelfth century; fall again to fifty-nine millions at the end of the thirteenth; dwindle to twenty-nine millions in 1711; leap to 108 millions forty-two years later, and thenceforth grow steadily until 362 millions is reached in 1812—a figure regarded as specially trustworthy—and 420 millions at the present time. These figures have been subjected to much scrutiny by Occidental writers, many of whom have been disposed to place a minimum of faith in Chinese methods of enumeration. On the other hand, it has been pointed out with much apparent justice that there are no valid reasons to query the truth of census returns in a country where all other kinds of statistics show considerable accuracy; and, further, that the information collected during recent years by the Imperial Customs officials under the direction of Western experts, indicates a figure tallying closely with the Chinese record for the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Ming rulers, to the end of the fourteenth century, counted the population of the eighteen provinces at sixty millions, and when, in the year 1735, the Manchu sovereign, Chien-lung, demanded a return, not of "taxable units which never increase, nor of free units which pay no revenue, but of human beings," the population was declared by his officials to be 143 millions. That would be quite consistent with 420 millions at the close of the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly famines and wars sometimes caused acute fluctuations in the number of the people. It has been estimated by good authorities that the Taeping rebellion (1850-64), which was probably not more destructive of human life than some of the convulsions accompanying previous changes of dynasty, caused the population to decline by two-fifths, which would mean that during that period of fourteen years the death rate was nearly doubled throughout the moiety of the Empire affected by the outbreak. Again at the close of the thirteenth century, the Mongol invasion was attended with such slaughter that the great province of Szchuan emerged from the carnage with less than a million inhabitants, whereas it has now nearly eighty millions; and during the rebellions that preluded the fall of the Ming dynasty in the seventeenth century, the depopulation of certain parts of the Empire was on a scale which has been compared to the results of the Great Plague in England.
It appears from the above figures that the average population of the eighteen provinces is now 314 per square mile, the most thickly populated part being the nine eastern provinces, for which the ratio is 450 per square mile, and the most thinly populated the nine southern and western with a corresponding figure of 237. Great Britain is the only European country where the average (289 to the square mile) is not greatly less than that of the eighteen provinces, and Bengal alone, with 440 to the square mile, approaches the figure for the nine eastern provinces.
Statistics recently collected indicate that the area of cultivated land in China is 400 million acres, approximately, which figure bears about the same ratio to the waste land as is the case in England; and inasmuch as the Chinese do not devote any land to purposes of pasture, but employ every available spot for the production of bread-stuffs, means of subsistence for a vast population are evidently furnished by such a large expanse of cultivated fields. Yet the severity of the struggle for existence forces itself upon the attention of every observer, and would certainly be much accentuated did the people adopt meat diet. At present the staple articles of food are rice, millet, and sweet potatoes—the addition of this last in recent years having immensely augmented the nation's resources. These bread-stuffs are supplemented by vegetables of all kinds, obtained from the land and from the sea, by vast quantities of fish, by pork, by poultry, by ducks, by geese, and by game abundantly found in some districts. There is no pasture land. Oxen, horses, mules, and donkeys, used almost entirely for purposes of agriculture and transport, are fed upon grain, straw, vegetables, or grass cut from the hills. Further, unutilised refuse is reduced to a minimum by the operation of a custom, possessing almost the force of law, that every family must keep one or more pigs. In the cities the art of economising space has been fully developed: comparatively few large pleasure-grounds are to be seen, in which respect China offers a marked contrast to the neighbouring Empire of Japan. Moreover, profound as is the reverential love of the Chinese for the spirits of deceased relatives, cemeteries are not allowed to encroach unduly upon arable areas. The space allotted for graves is probably as extensive as that assigned for the purpose in any country, but it is selected on economical principles,—that is to say, in spots uninviting for culture,—and when, as is not uncommon, the tomb or burial mound stands in the ancestral field, crops are grown up to its very enclosure.[1] Further, in many parts of the Empire the land produces two crops annually, and in the loess region of the northwest a threefold return is looked for by the farmer. Estimates believed to be conservative put the districts that give a double yield at twenty-five per cent of the total arable land; and on that hypothesis the crop-producing area would be some five hundred million acres, or nearly one and one fourth acres per head of population.[2] Considering that in the neighbouring Empire of Japan, where the manner of life is very similar, the ratio does not exceed one-half of an acre per head, it is evident that if the above estimates be correct, China could support a much greater population than she has at present. Nevertheless there exists a widely prevalent idea that the country's food-giving resources are taxed to the utmost, and when the inducements to multiply are considered as well as the untiring industry of the people and the obviously severe struggle for existence in which numbers of them are compelled to engage, the accuracy of the figures upon which the above calculations are based would not be credible if the distribution of wealth and the rewards of industry were regulated by the laws prevailing in Western countries. Summarising the exceptional incentives to increase of population, there are found, first, the religious tenet that the spirits of the dead cannot obtain peace unless worship is performed at their tombs by male descendants; secondly, the ethical obligation of continuing the family;[3] thirdly, the social stigma which attaches to an unwedded marriageable girl; and fourthly, the provision of law which requires that husbands shall be furnished for females sold into service. The influence of these factors, acting through centuries, is partially mitigated by the operation of stupendous natural calamities to cope with which no adequate organisation exists, so that hundreds of thousands of lives are lost without exciting any national emotion, and by periodical émeutes which claim a scarcely smaller tale of victims. But the net result is certainly a rapid growth of population, and no one can travel through China without receiving an impression that the people are so numerous as almost to overtax the means of subsistence, and that an exceptionally large number live on the very brink of indigence.
Here it should be noted that to every impartial student of China's manners and customs the scepticism of foreigners as to the correctness of her statistics and their preference for their own rough estimates seem merely a phase of Occidental prejudice. The Chinese obtain their records of population by the aid of a registration law which requires that all the names of a house's inmates shall be inscribed on a board kept hanging in a conspicuous place. Such a system is not guaranteed against mistakes, but it deserves more credence than foreign critics are generally disposed to accord to it, and since its errors, if any, would evidently be on the side of omissions, the figures derived from it cannot be regarded as exaggerations.
The confines of China, if in that term be included Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili, and Thibet, are well defined by nature. Along the whole length of its northern frontier the Empire is conterminous with Asiatic Russia, but the two are separated by a great range of mountains which, under various local appellations, the best known being the Altai, stretch in a generally east-and-west direction through a distance of some twenty-five hundred miles, when, turning southward, they join the Tien-shan (celestial mountains), the latter passing into the Belurtag, which with the Himalayas form the western barriers of the Empire. At three points only do these natural barriers lose their definite character. These points are the southwest of Yunnan Province, where access to Chinese territory from Annam, Siam, and Burmah is comparatively easy; the northwestern border between Ili and the Kirghis steppe, and the northeastern, or Trans-Amur, district. It is worthy of note that the tide of Western aggression threatens to roll into China from these three points; Russia being the motive force in the northeast and the northwest, France and England in the southwest. Of course the whole of the eastern sea-board is a line of general invasion.
Another natural barrier which helps to segregate China on the north is the vast Desert of Gobi, having a length of 2,200 miles and varying in width from 150 to 600 miles. Over this celebrated waste, which covers nearly a million square miles, insufferable heat broods in summer and almost unendurable cold prevails in winter, and the danger of crossing the vast expanse is accentuated by shifting sand hills. It is in the western region of this desert and among the peaks of the Kwan-lun mountains that the deities and demons of Taoism and Buddhism are supposed to exercise their mystic sway. In the western section of the Gobi Desert there lies, along the southern slopes of the Celestial Mountains, a strip of arable land from fifty to eighty miles wide, watered by the Tarim River and its branches. This strip is tolerably fertile, and within it lie all the Mohammedan cities and forts of the Nan Lu, which are under the control of the Colonial Department in Peking, the Begs being kept quiet by regular payments of salaries. The road crossing the eastern section of the Desert is 660 miles between Urga and Kalgan, and there are forty-seven posts along it. During certain seasons of the year this route is sufficiently watered to be clothed with grass, and the crow, the lark, and the sand-grouse abound, but the vegetation is stunted and the water in the small streams and lakes is brackish. "The whole of Gobi is regarded by Pumpelly as having formed a portion of a great ocean, which in comparatively recent geological times extended south to the Caspian and Black Seas and between the Ural and Inner Hing-an Mountains, and was drained off by an upheaval whose traces and effects can be detected in many parts." Clouds of sand and dust carried by the wind from these extensive deserts are supposed to have raised the plains of northwestern China several hundreds of feet in the lapse of ages.
China proper—that is to say, the area comprising the eighteen provinces—has three great rivers whose valleys may be said to form the three natural divisions of the Empire, if by valley be understood drainage basin. All the streams in the northern section are affluents of the Yellow River (Hwang-ho), which carries their waters into the Gulf of Pechili. All the streams of the central section similarly fall into the Yangtse, and are borne by it to the Eastern Sea; and a majority of the streams of the southern section flow into the Pearl River (Chu-kiang) and travel with it to the China Sea. These divisions are very unequal in size, the Yangtse being about as extensive as the other two combined: which comparison, however, must be regarded as only an approximation, no accurate survey having yet been made. The usual calculation is that in the Yangtse Valley are comprised seven provinces—Szchuan, Yunnan, Hupeh, Hunan, Anhwei, Kiangsi, and Kiangsu—which would make the area 607,000 square miles and the population 224 millions, leaving 729,841 square miles and 196 millions of population to the valleys of the Yellow River and the Pearl River combined.
From the point—the "Starry Sea" (Sing-suhhai), so called because of the glittering lakes that stud it—where the Yellow River rises near the southern slopes of the Celestial Mountains, to the point where it enters the Gulf of Pechili, the distance as the crow flies is some 1,300 miles, but the sinuosities of the river double the journey it makes from source to sea. During the first 1,100 miles of its travel from the hills the translucidity of its deep waters earns for it the title of "Black River;" but when it enters the province of Shansi—in other words, when it enters China proper, of which it has hitherto helped to form the northern boundary—its stream quickly becomes impregnated with the yellow soil (loess) of that singular region, and it thenceforth receives its familiar name. Every one that has read anything about China is acquainted with the Yellow River,—"China's Sorrow," as it has been well termed,—for, owing to the unscientific creation of restraining dykes along its lower reaches, the natural levels have been disturbed, and not only has the river been constrained to excavate for itself new channels, entering the sea now on the south, now on the north, of the promontory of Shantung, but also its waters frequently burst out and distribute themselves over vast areas of country, carrying devastation and destruction far and wide. The loss of thousands of lives and millions of dollars may be attributed, every year, directly or indirectly, to floods caused by this most mischievous river. It long ago escaped the control of a nation which nevertheless produced engineers capable of building the Great Wall and planning the Grand Canal. Only the upper reaches of the Yellow River are sufficiently navigable to be useful for trading purposes. It there offers a much employed route for salt junks and for boats that carry iron and other metals from the mines of Shansi. But so soon as it enters the lowlands (near Honan city) it ceases to be serviceable for navigation, and becomes mainly remarkable for the devastation its periodical floods produce, and for the great sums of money fruitlessly squandered by the Chinese Government every year on attempts to control its overflow.
The Yangtse is a greater river than the Hwangho, having a length of some 1,900 miles from source to mouth as the crow flies, and an actual length of probably 3,000 miles. It is one of the most interesting features in China, for not only is it the main, if not the only, means of communication between the east and the west of the great Empire, but also the "Valley" to which it gives its name—that is to say, the vast area of over six hundred thousand square miles watered by itself and its affluents—constitutes the very heart of the Middle Kingdom and attracts the ambitious eyes of more than one Occidental Power. The city of Chung-king, which stands upon the Yangtse 1,800 miles from its mouth, has been called the "commercial metropolis of Western China," just as Shanghai, situated on an affluent of the same river at a comparatively short distance from the sea, is called the "metropolis of the coast." Of the long stretch of river between these two cities the first thousand miles are easily traversed by steamers in six or seven days, but the remaining four hundred miles, though navigable by specially constructed vessels, offer serious difficulties owing to rapids of a dangerous character. The term "Yangtse" is not everywhere applied to the river. It has various names. Throughout the first 1,300 miles of its course from the Tanglu and Kwanlun mountains it is called the River of the Golden Sands (Kinsha-kiang). Then, after receiving an important affluent, the Yalung, which has hitherto been running nearly parallel to it for six hundred miles in a valley further east, it takes the name of Great River (Ta-kiang), which at Wuchang in Hupeh is changed to Long River (Chang-kiang) and finally at Nanking to Willow River (Yangtse- kiang),[4] a term derived from the willows planted at the entrances and exits of the towns along its banks. The last stretch of two hundred miles from Nanking to the river's two mouths at Tsung-ming Island is navigable by ocean-going ships, and European engineers have declared that by digging a canal round the gorges and rapids between Ichang and Kweichow steamers would be able to ascend to a total distance of two thousand miles from the sea. Compared with the Yellow River, the Yangtse is a quiet stream, yet it is sometimes responsible for inundations on a vast scale; for not only has it been known to rise two hundred feet above its normal level, as in 1870, when whole cities were swept away by its raging flood, but also, like the Yellow River, its bed, owing to injudiciously planned dykes, has been gradually raised above the level of the country through which it flows, and the destruction or decay of these embankments often converts wide districts into inland seas. The Yangtse has inspired much literature and occupied the attention of many scientific observers. These have proved that in the last thousand miles of its course the river has a fall of only 163 feet; that the sediment deposited at the mouth is sufficient to create every year an island one mile square and fifty fathoms deep, and that the coast line is thus rapidly gaining on the ocean, so that Shanghai may soon become an inland city unapproachable by tidal waters, a result which the inhabitants are now strenuously endeavouring to avert. From Ichang to the source of the great river some of the grandest scenery in the world is to be witnessed, the waters having effected passages for themselves through the mountains by cutting gorges sometimes twelve or thirteen hundred feet deep and in one instance twenty-five hundred, where the ruggedness of colossal cliffs and vast piles of rock contrasts with soft woods and a dazzling profusion of flowers. Mr. A. Little, in " Through the Yangtse Gorges," writes: "A few of the most common flowers to be met within a day's walk up any of the glens are camellia, rose, larkspur, Chinese daisy, begonia, sunflower, virgin lily, begonia, wistaria, lavender, gardenia, honeysuckle, yellow jasmine, orange lily, besides many others equally beautiful which have no common English names. The cottage gardens abound with pomegranates, loquats, peaches, plums, orange and other fruit trees. On the higher slopes above the precipices we find glorious woods of walnut and chestnut trees, while the useful tallow tree, with its beautiful tinted foliage and exuberant scented blossom, grows everywhere." The same writer mentions thirteen kinds of fruit trees and several species of ever-greens found in these regions, and speaking of insect life in the upper reaches of the great river, tells of "gorgeous butterflies, fireflies the most brilliant I have ever seen, small birds innumerable (notwithstanding the numerous kites and eagles), the commonest of which are the golden oriole, the bluejay, and the ubiquitous swallow. Two kinds of little rocklets with red tails, one of them with a white top-knot, hop about the rocks by the water's edge. Back in the mountains are the golden, silvern, and Reeves' pheasants... Thrushes and minas are also common, and the cormorant, which, as well as the tame otter, is everywhere employed in fishing." These remarks apply to the upper Yangtse; that is to say, the two thousand miles of the river above Ichang. Through the last thousand miles of its course the stream runs over beds of soft alluvium, its current comparatively slow except in the season of summer flood, its limits marked by huge embankments, its bed often ten and fifteen feet above the level of the surrounding country, and its scenery uninteresting. Nothing could illustrate more vividly the defective means of communication in China than the fact that the Yangtse constitutes the only highroad from the east to the great province of Szchuan with an area of 167,000 square miles and a population of nearly eighty million souls. For the Yangtse from Ichang to Chungking is a succession of rapids and rocky gorges. No less than a thousand of such obstructions, all difficult of passage and perilous, are enumerated in the "Yangtse Pilot," so that junks and boats struggling up against the strong current have to be dragged by bands of trackers toiling with bodies bent almost to the ground and making their way over cliff paths such as no ordinary pedestrian could traverse with safety. Immense waste of labor and of time, to say nothing of cost and risk of loss, is entailed in the transport of goods by such a route, yet there is practically no other,[5] and the Chinese would apparently have remained content to suffer under these crippling conditions for all time had not foreign enterprise placed upon the river in 1899 small steamers specially built which will probably revolutionise the traffic in a few years.
The Pearl River (Chu-kiang), with its three branches, the East, the North, and the West rivers, constitutes the southern unit of the great water system of China. This, generally spoken of as the "West River" (Si-kiang), has its source in the south of Yunnan, whence, after a course of some nine hundred miles in a generally easterly direction, it enters the sea at Canton, after draining an area of about 130,000 square miles. Apart from its association with the celebrated city of Canton, which alone would suffice to make the river famous, the question of getting its waters opened to foreign navigation occupied diplomatic and commercial attention for many years, and was at length solved at the close of the nineteenth century, access being then given to the towns of Nanning, Sin-chou and, above all, Wu-chou, which, lying at the borders of the provinces Kwan-tung and Kwan-si, is the chief tradal emporium of all the Si-kiang's branches and tributaries.
As the course of China's three great rivers is from west to east, broadly speaking, and as their valleys occupy nearly the whole of the eighteen provinces, it may be inferred that China proper constitutes the Pacific slope of the Central Asian plateau. There is, however, a fourth group of rivers in the southwest of the Empire, which run in a southeasterly or due southerly direction, and have interest as forming the routes of communication between that part of China and the countries on the south, namely, Burmah, Siam, and Tonquin. These rivers are the Salween, the Meikong, and the Sonka (Red River). The Salween and the Meikong, rising in the Thibetan mountains, run in more or less parallel courses, the former into Burmah, the latter into Siam, and the Red River, a comparatively small body of water, flows from Yunnan into the Gulf of Tonquin, forming the chief tradal route between southern China and France's recently acquired possessions in Annam. If the direction of these rivers be considered, it will be understood that though the main portion of the eighteen provinces slopes eastward towards the Pacific Ocean, the extreme western part slopes southward from the tableland of Thibet.
There are, of course, many minor streams not without importance locally and historically, but reference to them can be made more intelligibly in connection with the districts to which they belong.
China proper has not many lakes in proportion to its immense area. The principal Dongting Lake is Honan, a sheet of water some 220 miles in circumference under normal circumstances but swelled to very much larger dimensions when its northern shores are invaded by floods from the Yangtse. This lake is supposed to be a favourite abode of many of the spirits of Taoism, and the scenes of innumerable legends are laid on its shores or in its waters. There are evidences that the lake once formed part of an inland sea about two hundred miles long and eighty miles broad, through the middle of which the Yangtse flowed. Gradually this wide expanse of water was filled with silt carried down by the big river and its tributaries, until now only a small portion of its bed is under water. The silting-up process continues; for two rivers of considerable magnitude, the Yuen and the Siang, flow into the lake on the south, and before their waters reach the point of exit at Yochow on the northeast shore, whence they pass into the Yangtse, much of the silt they carry has been deposited, so that the lake grows steadily shallower.
A much more picturesque and in some respects more important sheet of water is the Po-yang Lake, which receives the waters of the Kan River—also flowing into it from the south— and discharges them into the Yangtse at Kiukiang, some 320 miles below the point where the Tung-ting Lake has its exit. About ninety miles long and twenty broad, this sheet of water is studded with beautiful islets thickly peopled, and is celebrated as the chief scene of keramic manufacture in China. Jao-chou, the site of the imperial porcelain factories, lies at the eastern extremity of the lake. There, ever since the tenth century, have been produced the incomparable porcelains of China, wares which, in their own class, have never been approached by the works of any other country.
An interesting series of lakes is that used by the builders of the Grand Canal. This remarkable work, called by the Chinese Chah-ho (river of flood-gates) or Yun-ho (transit river), is generally believed to have been devised by an engineer in the service of Kublai Khan, for the purpose of connecting Peking—the "Cambaluc" of Marco Polo—with Hang-chou, the capital of China under the Sung dynasty which Kublai's ancestor had overthrown. But the fact is that the idea of constructing a water-way between the two great rivers—the Yellow and the Yangtse—was conceived and carried out under the Han dynasty in the second century before Christ, and the cutting made for that purpose was repaired and kept open by succeeding dynasties until the tenth century, when the Sung emperors, having established their metropolis at Hang-chou, excavated a water-way northward from that city to Chinkiang on the Yangtse, thus establishing connection with the Han sovereign's canal which enters the Yangtse at a point opposite to Chinkiang on the northern bank of the river. What the Mongol ruler, Kublai, did in the thirteenth century was to add the last section to the work, namely, the section from Peking to the Yellow River, the engineer being Kwoh Chou-king, reported to have been the best mathematician ever produced by China. It will thus be seen that the canal was constructed in three parts, the first and second at an interval of nearly twelve hundred years, the second and the third at an interval of about three hundred. Clever advantage was taken of all natural aids en route, so that the canal crosses no less than six lakes between Hang-chou and the Yellow River, and two streams are led into it between the latter and the Peiho, which river carries it through a distance of eighty miles to Tung-chou, a town fourteen miles from Peking. The total length of the canal is about 650 miles. In some cases its bed is raised to a height of twenty feet above towns lying along its course; in others it descends to a depth of seventy feet below the adjacent plane. At the time of its construction it ranked immeasurably above any cognate engineering work in the world, but its chief uses have now virtually disappeared, much of the tribute rice it was originally designed to convey to the metropolis being carried to-day far more cheaply and expeditiously by steamers taking the sea route.
It is notable that several European observers in former years endeavoured to depreciate the Grand Canal as a signal monument of skilled industry, their contention being that in every part of its course it passes through alluvial soil easily excavated; that in almost every district traversed it is aided by tributary rivers or lakes; that the sluices for preserving the levels are of rude construction, being simply buttresses of stone with grooves into which thick plants are fitted; and that nowhere is a mountain tunnelled or a viaduct formed. These criticisms, far from fulfilling their purpose, bear eloquent testimony to the engineering ability of the planners of the canal. It is precisely because they accomplished their object with a minimum of difficulty that they deserve the highest praise.
Marked differences of opinion have been recorded by travellers with reference to highroads in China, some describing them as execrable while others praise them warmly. The truth is that the roads are either mere tracks or elaborately paved causeways, and that although much labour and expense were occasionally lavished on their creation at the outset, no continuous system of repair was subsequently pursued. Thus, the road from Tientsin to Peking, each an immense city, is nothing more than a broad path sometimes covered with mud to a depth of three feet and sometimes abounding in ruts and holes of almost incredible dimensions, whereas the main route in Szchuan Province is paved with slabs of stone five feet wide, which is the entire width of the fair-way, and is carried over the mountains that encircle the Province by a series of steps hewn in the rocks barely spacious enough for one sedan-chair to pass. On the other hand, a stone causeway of noble dimensions leads from Peking to Tung-chou, and in Shantung the roads sometimes present the aspect of avenues. Everywhere, however, the dominant feature is neglect. On the causeways the stone slabs are wanting in some spots, and in others have been sunk or tilted so that the surface of the road suggests petrified billows. In the streets of Peking holes have been allowed to grow to the dimensions of military shelter pits, and when these are filled with mud—a common occurrence—instances are on record of draught-mules stumbling into them and being drowned. At Shasi on the Yangtse River there is a stone embankment in three tiers with a fine bund on the top, a work of the days of China's greatness; but at present the arch-crossed flights of stone steps that lead up the embankment at intervals are so deeply covered with mud that the citizens find it safer to use paths climbing over dirt-heaps which have been formed by refuse thrown from the town over the edge of the stone enbankment. In the loess regions of Shansi Province even such restorations as would have compensated the action of the wind have been neglected, so that the surface, pulverised by traffic, having been gradually blown away, the roads have ultimately been converted into immense ruts running at a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet below the level of the surrounding country. It has been justly said of some of the highways of China that, as examples of engineering skill and magnificent labour, they probably equalled, when new, the best efforts of the Romans in the same line. To believe that dictum is less difficult than to conceive any racial affinity between the men that planned and executed these fine works and the men that have suffered them to fall into ruin and decay. The Grand Canal, in itself a triumph of engineering skill and imperial enterprise, has shared the fate of the roads: both have become well nigh useless through neglect. It is not that the Chinaman's appreciation of comfortable travel and economical traffic is naturally defective, though the habit of suffering may have blunted it. The more credible explanation is that, owing to the division of society into family groups each entirely absorbed in its own welfare, public spirit has almost ceased to be operative, and combined effort for such an object as road-repairing is out of the question. There is in Peking a Board of Public Works nominally charged with the duty of attending to such matters, and admirably organ- ised for the purpose. But no practical evidences of the Board's existence are apparent in the provinces. China has had great administrative and great executive conceptions, but her social structure seems unsuited to any continuity of public effort.
In order to suggest a compendious idea of the Chinese Empire it has been spoken of above as consisting of two parts, namely, China proper and her tributary or indirectly governed states on the north and west, the whole forming an area of about 4,250,000 square miles and containing a population of some 450 millions of souls. This conception may be further defined by saying that the eighteen provinces of China proper occupy the southwestern corner of the vast area, and that, while constituting barely one-third of the total superficies, they nevertheless support nine-tenths of the aggregate population. Thus, even if China were stripped of all her outlying portions - Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili, and Thibet - the sources of her wealth and strength would still remain unimpaired, though her magnitude would be reduced by two-thirds. In fact, these outlying portions consist mainly of "poorly watered deserts or plateaux, thinly peopled by races forming majorities over the Chinese settlers."
Considered with regard to wealth and population, the eighteen provinces divide themselves into eastern and western, those in the eastern section being incomparably richer and more thickly peopled than those in the Western, with the single exception of Szchuan. If the Yellow River continued its due southerly direction from the Great Wall down to the Gulf of Tonquin, instead of turning east at the point where it receives its principal tributary, the Wei, it would divide the Empire into two groups of provinces, twelve on the east and six on the west, the eastern having a total area of three-quarters of a million of square miles, a total population of 304 millions and a total revenue of seventy-eight millions of taels, the western having an area of less than half a million square miles, a population of 117 millions and a revenue of nineteen millions. Thus, while the areas are in the ratio of seven to three, the populations are in the ratio of nine to three and the revenues in the ratio of twelve to three, approximately. For the sake of convenience the table on the following page shows the areas, populations, public revenues and capitals of the eighteen provinces.
With regard to the climate of China the isothermal lines show that the average temperature is below that of any other country in the same latitude. Thus Peking, Vienna, and Dublin are nearly on the same line (50° F.), as are also Shanghai and Marseilles (60° F.), whereas the line (70° F.) passing south of Canton runs eight degrees north of New Orleans. In other words, while Shanghai and Peking have temperatures corresponding with those of Occidental cities situated nearly on the same parallel, "Canton is the coldest place on the globe in its latitude and
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TWELVE EASTERN PROVINCES.
Area in Sq. Miles. Population. Revenue in Taels. Capital City.
Shansi 56,268 11,100,000 4,040,000 Taiyuen.
Chili 58,949 29,400,000 6,360,000 Paoting.
Honan 66,913 21,000,000 3,235,000 Kaifung.
Shantung 53,762 37,400,000 4,530,000 Tsinan.
Hupeh 70,450 34,300,000 7,320,000 Wuchang
Anhwei 48,461 35,800,000 4,033,000 Nganking.
Kiangsu 44,500 24,600,000 21,450,000 Kiangming.
Hunan 74,320 22,000,000 2,765,000 Changsha.
Kiangsi 72,176 22,000,000 4,800,000 Nanchang.
Chekiang 39,150 11,800,000 5,786,000 Hangchou.
Fuhkien 53,480 25,000,000 6,035,000 Fuchou.
Kwangtung 79,450 29,900,000 7,525,000 Canton.
SIX WESTERN PROVINCES.
Kansu 125,450 9,800,000 5,946,000 Hsian.
Shensi 67,400 8,400,000 2,380,000 Lanchou.
Szechuan 166,800 79,500,000 6,050,000 Chingtu.
Kweichou 64,554 4,800,000 1,107,000 Kweiyang.
Yunnan 107,969 6,200,000 1,985,000 Yunnan.
Kwangsi 78,250 8,730,000 1,730,000 Kweilin.
the only place within the tropics where snow falls near the sea-shore." (Williams.) Occidental visitors to China often denounce the climate as intemperate and unhealthy, but it need scarcely be observed that no general description is properly applicable to such a vast expanse of continent. On the other hand, in many cases a mere statement of mean temperature conveys little idea of the real climate. Thus in Peking the mean annual temperature is 52.3° F., or fully 9° lower than the figure for Naples. But to infer a climate resembling that of Naples would be erroneous, since in the Chinese metropolis the summer and winter extremes range from 104° F. to zero, while the mean winter range is 12° F. below freezing-point; that is to say, 18° lower than the Paris mean, and 15° lower than the Copenhagen. Yet although the temperature ranges so low in winter, snow never falls in large quantities, and in spite of the great variations of the thermometer the climate is thoroughly healthy for foreigners and natives alike. Dust storms are the most disagreeable feature. Sweeping over the great plateau on which the city stands—a plateau which seems to be growing more and more desiccated and to be losing its trees with increasing rapidity as years go by—the wind raises vast clouds of dust into the air, and millions of tons of soil are thus shifted from place to place. In Shanghai, on the other hand, which is eight and one-half degrees of latitude further south, although the maximum temperature is only 100° F. and the minimum 24° F., climatic diseases are frequent and the region bears a distinctly unhealthy reputation. On the whole, however, the climate of the immense plain stretching along the eastern side of the Empire is healthy except in the immediate neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, or marshes. Thus an European or American settling in Nanking has to expect some 
The Ordinary Method of Carrying Baggage.
According to the Chinese view, Yunnan, Kwangsi, and Kwangtung are the most unhealthy provinces in the whole eighteen, and are consequently chosen as places of banishment. The justice of this view is attested by the comparatively scant population of Kwangsi and Yunnan 112 and 60 to the square mile, respectively - but Kwangtung with its thirty millions of inhabitants-376 to the square mile-scarcely belongs to the same category.
It will be observed by looking at a map of China that there lies along the whole coast from south to north a chain of islands, the nearest link being Formosa, between which and the province of Fuhkien the distance is only some twenty miles. The well-known "Black Current" (Kuro-shiwo) being on the outside of these islands, they serve as a barrier against its warm waters, and in that fact is to be found a reason for the cold along the Chinese coast as compared with the shores of the Atlantic, a difference corresponding to nearly eight degrees of latitude. To the same cause may also be attributed the comparatively scant rainfall in the maritime provinces of China, the evaporation from the cold water being proportionately small. Thus in Hongkong, one of the chain of islands, the annual mean rainfall for twenty-one years was over eighty-six inches-as much as thirty inches sometimes falls in twenty-four hours, and in 1901 the total for the twelve months was 117 inches, whereas at Canton the average is twenty inches, in Shanghai it does not exceed forty inches, and in the province of Chili it appears to be only sixteen inches. Further west, as higher levels are approached, the precipitation becomes larger.
An important feature of Chinese meteorology is the "typhoon," or revolving storm. This term has been generally regarded as a corruption of the Chinese word ta-fong, or great wind, but the best sinologues derive it from the Formosan local term for a cyclone, namely, tai-fong. This destructive storm sweeps up the coast at intervals between the months of July and October, being most liable to occur about the autumnal equinox in September. It has its birthplace generally in the neighbourhood of Hainan Island or the Philippines, whence it advances northward, revolving on its own axis as it travels. Its track is narrow; the general direction of motion is from south to north in a more or less devious course; its approach is signalled by a rapidly falling barometer and by light airs, which, though blowing from the north, stifle rather than refresh; it is accompanied by deluges of rain; at the centre there is an area of calm, and the identity of the phenomenon is established by the fact that in passing any place the final and initial directions of the wind are found to be exactly opposite. Happily these tremendous gales usually expend their force at sea, where the laws of their behaviour are now so well understood that careful navigators usually elude them altogether or manœuvre so as not to encounter their least force. On the rare occasions of their inland travel the destruction wrought by them is tremendous, houses being overthrown, trees torn up by the roots, crops destroyed, and large areas inundated. It is recorded that in August, 1862, as many as thirty thousand people were killed by a typhoon in Canton, Hongkong, and their vicinity, and that in September, 1874, the same regions were the scene of a similarly wholesale calamity.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 1.
Note 1.—A very different account has been given by some travellers, but it would appear that the prominence and frequency of burying-places in China have misled these observers into an exaggerated estimate of the space actually devoted to purposes of sepulture.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 2.
Note 2.—In Japan the extent of cultivated land does not exceed thirteen millions of acres, whereas the population is forty-two millions. Thus, even assuming that a moiety of the land produces two crops yearly—a liberal assumption—it would follow that the ratio is not more than one-half of an acre per head. Yet in Japan there are no evidences of the grinding poverty that force themselves upon the attention of every traveller in China.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 3.
Note 3.—Dr. Wells Williams thinks that the tendency to multiply is augmented by the custom of families remaining together through several generations for the sake of the social and local importance they acquire. Cases are on record of nine generations inhabiting one house, and of a family table at which seven hundred mouths were fed daily.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 4.
Note 4.—Not really "willow," but Pterecarpa stenoptera.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 5.
Note 5.—As an example of the roads within the province of Szchuan, the highway between Chunking and Chingtu (the capital of the province) may be instanced. This, the best, in fact the only dry, road in the province has a width of five feet and is paved with heavy stone slabs laid crosswise.