CHAPTER IV.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE, CAUSES OF ITS UNITY AND GENERAL HOMOGENEITY, AND OF CERTAIN PECULIARITIES IN THE SOUTH-EASTERN CHINESE.

In order to understand aright the circumstances under which the politico-religious rebellion has come into existence and the people who originated it, we must devote a little time to a cursory view of the rise and progress of the Chinese nation as a whole; and then note some differences that, in the midst of the general and wonderful homogeneity, do nevertheless distinguish the South-Eastern Chinese from the rest of the nation.

The original seat of the Chinese people was the northern portion of Chih le, the province in which the present capital Peking happens to be situated.

How the first Chinese, the founders of the nation, came to be in that locality, is one of those questions connected with the origin and spread of the human race generally which can only receive a conjectural solution. All we do or can know positively is that the first portion of authentic Chinese history tells us that the Emperor Yaou, who reigned 4,200 years ago, had his capital at the now district city of Tsin chow, situated about 100 miles only to the south of the present capital Peking. From this most ancient location the people spread gradually westward and southward, thus steadily increasing its territory. The usual course of the process was, first colonization of the newer regions, and displacement from them of whatever aboriginal inhabitants were found; and

afterwards political incorporation with the older territory. At times however the process was reversed, and military conquest of the aboriginals preceded their displacement by an industrial occupation of their lands. Lastly I have to draw special attention to one other mode in which the Chinese have effected territorial extension, a mode which exemplifies in a striking manner the peculiarity, and the innate strength of Chinese civilization. The whole nation with its country, has been conquered by some adjacent barbarous people; has then, under cover of the political union thus effected, penetrated into, and partially colonized the original country of its conquerors; and ultimately has freed itself by force, and taken political possession of its new colonies after having previously effected a mental subjugation of its conquerors by dint of superior civilization. Something of this kind happened with the Khitan Tartars who had possession of the north of China Proper, after that with the Mongols who had the whole country, and it is well known to be the process in operation for the 200 years last past under the present rulers, Manchoos, whom the Chinese colonists are partially superseding in their own old country, Manchooria.

I have already noticed the distinction between China Proper and the Chinese Empire. Let the reader note now that the territorial distinction marked by these terms has existed in fact from the earliest periods of Chinese history. China proper means at all periods that portion of the east of the Asiatic continent which has been possessed and permanently occupied by the Chinese people. The Chinese Empire means at all periods besides China Proper, those large portions of the whole Asiatic continent occupied by Tartar-Nomads, or other non-Chinese peoples, but which have from time to time been under the sway of the Emperor of China, and more or less directly ruled by Chinese officers and armies. China Proper has at all periods been characterized by Chinese civilization; that is to say its population generally besides being physically of the same race, has always been governed in its domestic, its social, and (with

the exception of some very short periods) its political, life by the principles and rules laid down in the Chinese old Sacred Books. The non-Chinese peoples of the Chinese Empire have, on the other hand, at all periods either been destitute of anything that could be called civilization, or have been slightly tinged with Chinese civilization, or have been marked by some different civilization; as for instance, at present, the inhabitants of Turkestan by a Mahommedan civilization, the inhabitants of Tibet by one strictly Budhistic.

The Chinese Empire as thus defined has in the course of ages varied greatly in extent. It has been more than once larger than it is even now. It was so, for example, about 2,000 years ago, under the fifth Emperor of the Han dynasty; when it embraced the greater portion of inhabited Asia west of the Caspian sea, and inclusive of Siam, Pegu, Camboya and Bengal. In the intervals between these great extensions it has shrunk up to the size of China Proper, and even this latter has been occasionally subdivided for considerable periods under two or more ruling families or dynasties, each acknowledging no superior. But the Chinese people has continued the same, even when under several rulers, and has been steadily increasing its territorial possessions by the processes above described.

Starting, as said, 4,200 years ago from the country north of the Yellow river we find it spreading to, and establishing itself in the country north of the Yang tsze about 1,500 years later, or B.C. 800. In the centuries immediately succeeding this latter period, it appears to have acquired permanent possession of the whole of the great Yang tsze basin. So far its progress had been comparatively speaking unimpeded by serious geographical obstructions. But the watershed along the southern edge of this Yang tsze basin is a high and rugged mountain chain that long checked its advance. The Chinese Emperor who established himself on the throne, B. c. 221,

The accounts of that early period of its history are meagre and somewhat conflicting.

conquered the country to the south and thereby made it a portion of the Chinese Empire. After a temporary independence it voluntarily subjected itself to the Emperor who began to reign B. c. 179; but even then the bulk of the population was foreign or non-Chinese. It would be difficult to say exactly when it became a portion of China proper, the more so as even now the aboriginal population has not been displaced from certain portions of Kwang se.* We may however regard it as substantially colonized and possessed by the Chinese people under the powerful dynasty of Tang, which began A. D. 618 and ruled for 300 years.† The people in this very portion of China habitually call themselves Tang jin, men of Tang; and it was this Tang dynasty that began that system of public service examinations which has proved so powerful a bond of union. Some system of public instruction—some kind of means of at once inculcating

This region was consequently settled by the present occupants about 1,000 to 1,200 years ago, a respectable antiquity for us, whose Anglo-Saxon progenitors were about the same period coming into existence as a separate race. The following shows what the Chinese mean by old ancestry. A mandarin at Canton, himself a native of Shantung, being unpopular and subjected to what he deemed disrespectful treatment from the people, talked once to me of them in very bitter terms. They are a rough, coarse set of people; and they don't know anything about where they come from or who they are." Here seeing me stare at him, evidently at a loss how to interpret his words, he added, "These Kwang-tung men don't know who they are; they have got no for fathers." I again looked surprised, for besides having in my memory a general notion of their having been in the country for some thousand years, I recollected having seen in the neighbourhood family tablets and graves several centuries old. "Before the times of Han and Tang,” he continued, “this country was quite wild and waste, and these people have sprung from unconnected, unsettled vagabonds that wandered here from the north." This man was born a short distance from the birth-place of Confucius, and I have no doubt could, by retracing his way in succession through the genealogical registers of the different branches of his family, have produced a correct list of ancestors for 2,300 years. I had a man for some years in my employ who was one of the numerous descendants of the celebrated moral philosopher and statesman, Mencius (Mangtsze) who lived B.C. 350. My man was in the seventy-fifth generation.

The people of Central China are apt to call themselves Han jin, men of Han, after a former great dynasty, which ruled the Empire from B.C. 206 till A.D. 220.

the national principles and sifting out the "worthy and able" for administrative purposes-existed from the earliest period. But it was under the Tang dynasty that the foundations were laid of that particular system, which, developed under succeeding rulers, now exists as a carefully elaborated series of competitive examinations.

In my summary view of China Proper in its present extension I remarked that its division into eighteen provinces was purely political and administrative, the people being "the same in all, the differences in manners and dialects being no other in kind and scarcely greater in degree than exist with us between the Glasgow factory man and the Somersetshire peasant, or the Northumbrian hind and the Cornish miner." In this I have now nothing to modify: the differences in manners and dialects are no other in kind. That most remarkable political construction of a centralized autocratic government, based for long centuries on public competitive examinations, a system unparalleled in the world's history, has produced effects to which we find no parallel in the world's extent. It has induced, not compelled, the Chinese nation to devote itself to the study of the same books, and these, observe well, books directly bearing on domestic and social as well as political life, thus preserving them one nation, preserving them the same in language and social manners, above all the same in their community of fundamental beliefs on man's highest, man's nearest and man's dearest interests. After living some twelve years among them, during which I saw, conversed with, and studied men from every province and nearly every class, this fact, grand in its duration and gigantic in its extent, was to the last the cause of a constantly growing admiration. It will be seen that I call China the best misunderstood country in the world. People have talked-somebody talked first and others keep on talking after him-about the Chinese nation being the same because it has been separated from other nations by the barriers of physical geography, by mountains and rivers;