Gems of Chinese Literature/Liang Ch‘i-ch‘ao-The Civilization of Japan
The reception of foreign learning by the Chinese people differs from its reception by the Japanese. Japan is a small country, and moreover possesses no learning which is really its own. Therefore, if such learning arrives from without, the Japanese rush to it as though on galloping horses, change as rapidly as echo follows sound, and in the twinkling of an eye the whole nation is transformed. However, a careful estimate of their capacity shows that they are really nothing more than mere imitators; they are in no sense able to add anything of their own or anything they may have themselves initiated. Now China is not like that. China is a huge country with a learning of its own, which has been handed down for several thousand years and which is so well fortified by defences that foreign ideas do not easily find their way in. Even if they do get in, for many perhaps a hundred years their influence will not succeed in rumpling the hair of one’s head. It is like throwing ink into water. If the water is in a foot-wide bowl or in a ten-foot pool, the ink will very rapidly discolour it all; but if the same ink is thrown into a mighty rushing river or into the wide and deep ocean, can these be easily stained in the same way? Again, although China is not receptive of foreign learning, from what she does receive she makes a point of extracting all the excellences and adapting these to her own advantage. She transmutes the substance and etherializes its use, thus producing a new factor of civilization which is altogether her own. Her blue is thus bluer than the original indigo-blue of foreigners; her ice is colder than their water. Ah me! Deep mountains and wide marshes give birth indeed to dragons; but the footprints of our noble representative can never have been familiar to the small-sized gentlemen of the Country of Dwarfs.