Chinese Characteristics (5th edition)/Introduction
Confucian Analects, XII., v. 4.
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS.
INTRODUCTION.
A WITNESS when put upon the stand is expected to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Many witnesses concerning the Chinese have told the truth, but perhaps few of them have succeeded in telling nothing but the truth, and no one of them has ever told the whole truth. No single individual, whatever the extent of his knowledge, could by any possibility know the whole truth about the Chinese. The present volume of essays is therefore open to objection from three different points of view.
First, it may be said that the attempt to convey to others an idea of the real characteristics of the Chinese is vain. Mr. George Wingrove Cooke, the China correspondent of the London Times in 1857–58, enjoyed as good an opportunity of seeing the Chinese under varied circumstances, and through the eyes of those well qualified to help him to a just understanding of the people, as any writer on China up to that time. In the preface to his published letters, Mr. Cooke apologises as follows for his failure to describe the Chinese character: "I have, in these letters, introduced no elaborate essay upon Chinese character. It is a great omission. No theme could be more tempting, no subject could afford wider scope for ingenious hypothesis, profound generalisation, and triumphant dogmatism. Every small critic will probably utterly despise me for not having made something out of such opportunities. The truth is, that I have written several very fine characters for the whole Chinese race, but having the misfortune to have the people under my eye at the same time with my essay, they were always saying something or doing something which rubbed so rudely against my hypothesis, that in the interest of truth I burnt several successive letters. I may add that I have often talked over this matter with the most eminent and candid sinologues, and have always found them ready to agree with me as to the impossibility of a conception of Chinese character as a whole. These difficulties, however, occur only to those who know the Chinese practically; a smart writer, entirely ignorant of the subject, might readily strike off a brilliant and antithetical analysis, which should leave nothing to be desired but truth. Some day, perhaps, we may acquire the necessary knowledge to give to each of the glaring inconsistencies of a Chinaman's mind its proper weight and influence in the general mass. At present, I, at least, must be content to avoid strict definitions, and to describe a Chinaman[1] by his most prominent qualities."
Within the past thirty years, the Chinese has made himself a factor in the affairs of many lands. He is seen to be pressible; is felt to be incomprehensible. He cannot, indeed, be rightly understood in any country but China, yet the impression still prevails that he is a bundle of contradictions who cannot be understood at all. But after all there is no apparent reason, now that several hundred years of our acquaintance with China have elapsed, why what is actually known of its people should not be coordinated, as well as any other combination of complex phenomena.
A more serious objection to this particular volume is that the author has no adequate qualifications for writing it. The circumstance that a person has lived for twenty-two years in China is no more a guarantee that he is competent to write of the characteristics of the Chinese, than the fact that another man has for twenty-two years been buried in a silver mine is a proof that he is a fit person to compose a treatise on metallurgy, or on bi-metallism. China is a vast whole, and one who has never even visited more than half its provinces, and who has lived in but two of them, is certainly not entitled to generalise for the whole Empire. These papers were originally prepared for the North-China Daily News of Shanghai, with no reference to any wider circulation. Some of the topics treated excited, however, so much interest, not only in China, but also in Great Britain, in the United States, and in Canada, that the author was asked to reproduce the articles in a permanent form.[2]
A third objection, which will be offered by some, is that parts of the views here presented, especially those which deal with the moral character of the Chinese, are misleading and unjust.
It should be remembered, however, that impressions are not like statistics which may be corrected to a fraction. They rather resemble photographic negatives, no two of which may be alike, yet each of them may present truthfully something not observable in any of the rest. The plates on which the photographs are taken differ; so do the lenses, and the developers, and the resulting views differ too.
Many old residents of China, whose knowledge of the country is very much greater than that of the writer, have expressed themselves as in substantial agreement with his opinions, while others, whose judgment is entitled to equal respect, think that a somewhat lighter colouring in certain parts would increase the fidelity of the too "monochromatic" picture. With this undoubtedly just criticism in mind, the work has been revised and amended throughout. While the exigencies of republication at this time have rendered convenient the omission of one-third of the characteristics originally discussed, those that remain contain nevertheless the most important portions of the whole, and the chapter on Content and Cheerfulness is altogether new.
There can be no valid excuse for withholding commendation from the Chinese for any one of the many good qualities which they possess and exhibit. At the same time, there is a danger of yielding to à priori considerations, and giving the Chinese credit for a higher practical morality than they can justly claim—an evil not less serious than indiscriminate condemnation. It is related of Thackeray, that he was once asked how it happened that the good people in his novels were always stupid, and the bad people clever. To this the great satirist replied that he had no brains above his eyes. There is a wood-cut representing an oak tree, in the outlines of which the observer is invited to detect a profile of Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, standing with bowed head and folded arms. Protracted contemplation frequently fails to discover any such profile, and it would seem that there must be some mistake, but when once it is clearly pointed out, it is impossible to look at the picture and not see the Napoleon too. In like manner, many things are to be seen in China which do not at first appear, and many of them once seen are never forgotten.
While it has been impossible to introduce a qualifying clause into every sentence which is general in its form, the reader is expressly warned that these papers are not intended to be generalisations for a whole Empire, nor yet comprehensive abstracts of what foreigners have observed and experienced. What they are intended to be is merely a notation of the impression which has been made upon one observer, by a few out of many "Chinese Characteristics." They are not meant as a portrait of the Chinese people, but rather as mere outline sketches in charcoal of some features of the Chinese people, as they have been seen by that one observer. Taken together, they constitute only a single ray, of which an indefinite number are required to form a complete beam of white light. They may also be considered as studies in induction, in which many particulars taken from the experience not of the writer only, but of various other individuals at various times, are grouped. It is for this reason that the subject has been so largely treated by exemplification.
Mr. Meadows, the most philosophical of the many writers on China and the Chinese, expressed the opinion that the best way to convey to the mind of another person a correct idea of the genius of a foreign people would be to hand him for perusal a collection of notes, formed by carefully recording great numbers of incidents which had attracted one's attention, particularly those that seemed at all extraordinary, together with the explanation of the extraordinary parts as given by natives of the country.
From a sufficient number of such incidents a general principle is inferred. The inferences may be doubted or denied, but such particulars as are cited cannot, for that reason alone, be set aside, being so far as they go truthful, and they must ultimately be reckoned with in any theory of the Chinese character.
The difficulty of comparing Chinese with Anglo-Saxons will be most strongly felt by those who have attempted it. To such it will soon become evident that many things which seem "characteristic" of the Chinese are merely Oriental traits; but to what extent this is true, each reader in the light of his own experience must judge for himself.
It has been said that in the present stage of our intercourse with Chinese there are three ways in which we can come to some knowledge of their social life—by the study of their novels, their ballads, and their plays. Each of these sources of information doubtless has its worth, but there is likewise a fourth, more valuable than all of them combined, a source not open to every one who writes on China and the Chinese. It is the study of the family life of the Chinese in their own homes. As the topography of a district can be much better understood in the country than in the city, so it is with the characteristics of the people. A foreigner may live in a Chinese city for a decade, and not gain as much knowledge of the interior life of the people as he can acquire by living twelve months in a Chinese village. Next to the Family we must regard the Village as the unit of Chinese social life, and it is therefore from the standpoint of a Chinese village that these papers have been written. They are of purpose not intended to represent the point of view of a missionary, but that of an observer not consciously prejudiced, who simply reports what he sees. For this reason no reference is made to any characteristics of the Chinese as they may be modified by Christianity. It is not assumed that the Chinese need Christianity at all, but if it appears that there are grave defects in their character, it is a fair question how those defects may be remedied.
The "Chinese question," as already remarked, is now far more than a national one. It is international. There is reason to think that in the twentieth century it will be an even more pressing question than at present. The problem of the means by which so vast a part of the human race may be improved cannot be without interest to any one who wishes well to mankind. If the conclusions to which we may find ourselves led are correct, they will be supported by a line of argument heretofore too much neglected. If these conclusions are wrong, they will, however supported, fall of themselves.
It is many years since Lord Elgin's reply to an address from the merchants of Shanghai, but his words are true and pertinent to-day. "When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the country shall have been removed, Christian civilisation of the West will find itself face to face not with barbarism, but with an ancient civilisation in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claims to our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry which will then ensue. Christian civilisation will have to win its way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a faith which reaches to heaven furnishes better guarantees for public and private morality than one which does not rise above the earth."
- ↑ It is a matter of surprise, and even more of regret, that this barbarous compound seems to have rooted itself in the English language, to the exclusion of the proper word Chinese. We do not know of a foreign periodical in China in which natives of that country are not constantly called "Chinamen," nor of a single writer in the Empire who consistently avoids the use of the term.
- ↑ "Chinese Characteristics" was published in Shanghai in 1890; after being widely circulated throughout China and the East, the edition was exhausted more than two years ago.