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Show 1 Great Events in I i I the History of China, j The ignorance of America as to China Is probably equal to Chinese ignorance of America. Many thousand Chinese have come and stay here. A few hundred hun-dred of our people visit China and they are often possessed with the habits of' the land where the masculinity of our i society is not seen, wh-re women are in their happy subordination to domestic do-mestic existence, where all the merchants mer-chants are honest and where the antiquity antiq-uity of a settled existence makes the immortality of man seein almost without with-out a" beginning. Missionaries to China often embrace the dress, the menage, and finally the matrimony of the Chinese. That life is eminently soft, patient, almond-eyed, and interior. The railway, which made such immediate changes in America sixty years ago, has doomed China to a ferrugination, an oxidization, a ferment which naturally exposes the foreigners there to assault and their native friends to massacre. If the-tales are but partly true which the Saints have written of the appearance ap-pearance of Christianity in Rome its advent was marked by innovation, sacrilege sac-rilege to old things, collisions and insurrections. in-surrections. Gibbon, whose position as a historian histor-ian is stronger than ever, and whose extraordinary loom of learning haa been ranked among "sacred" histories, shows -the imperializing of Christianity at Rome to have been the cause of its widespread: "The terrors of a military fcrrr ciipncod the faint and unsup ported murmurs of the Pagans." In like manner Japan threw off her feudal system at the imperial command, com-mand, otherwise its tenacity would have caused anarchy yet. The federal constitution of the United States was an imperial act, and the sectarians and dissidents are hardly quieted aov. So China is in the throes of a dynastic dynas-tic alteration, the fruit of her new contacts con-tacts and. invasions. Germany, the imitator of England, but recently seized upon a vital part of China and our occupation of the Philippines, which are very close to British Hong Kong, is another envelopment envelop-ment of China, like that of Russia, Japan, Ja-pan, or France. The old theological world is going to pieces. Its reduction to a journey of two months or six weeks to get around it, disposes of its last claim to be the warden of the stars and keeper of the seals. It is a little football of the man with physics, who walks upon its periphery like the autotype of the Chinese Chi-nese juggler, who goes up an inclined plane upon a sphere moved with his hinder paws. Wisdom has its faculty in China now. The study of that mighty as sembly of our human species is to be I like the French revolution in the original orig-inal home of man; the fiery cherubim, in the Eden of the earliest civilization, where ideas began, such as the study of the caterpillar's bowels to clothe empresses of China who lived a thousand thou-sand years before Eve. China in the Armenian . history of another named Moses was called Zenia or Zenastan, and was even then, in the time of Diocletian, characterized bf the production pro-duction of silk, by the opulence of its people and by their love of peace above all other nations of the earth: Silk, wealth, peace, a story of a Beatitudi-nous Beatitudi-nous nation. In the year 28S A. D. the emperor of China claimed a robber from the king of Persia. The Persians were the intermediaries between the unknown Chinese world and the known Roman world. The Persians afforded Marco Polo, or Mark Paul, the opportunity to visit China from Italy in the year 1271. He was the truest of all the apostles, as none of the others had heard of China, the most populous part of the only beloved world, and when Marco told them truly about it they hoodood him with prayers as the only colossal liar. He had lived twenty-four years in China, been an imperial household officer there, an ambassador and a governor. gov-ernor. In these respects he was a greater essence than Columbus, the sequel to Marco Polo, who, except in one thing (one voyage), was a failure. Marco came home in a bigger fleet than Columbus sailed with, carrying also the daughter of KublafKhan, to be married mar-ried to the king of Persia. They went, by our Philippines and the Malacca Straits, Borneo and Ceylon, to the chief port of Persia, and then crossed to the Black sea and reappeared in "Venice, 1295. in the Tartar dress and forgetting their native language. Marco there was made captive by the Genoese and used in jail as the voluminous liar. This was in the time of Italian popes and of crusades to Jerusalem, but the race which was losing its career as Mediterranean Mediter-ranean sailors could not believe their own traveler, though ready to swallow any legend or bogy.' The modern world may be said to begin be-gin with Marco Polo, who taught Europe that Somewhere heats No- where. At that time the king of England Eng-land was cudgeling a hostile knight at a tournament and expelling: and outraging out-raging the Jews. China backed in the silken sheen of an immemorial happiness, happi-ness, ascending says Gibbon, "by a probable tradition, above forty centuries cen-turies and able to verify a series of 2,000 years by the perpetual testimony of accurate and cotemporary historians." histori-ans." "Scvthia" was all the Christian earth could name China, which expelled the Huns 200 vears before Christ. At that time annual tribute of the most beautiful beauti-ful maids in China was made to the brutal and deformed forefathers Of Hungary. The Chinese in the time of Caesar were absorbing the Tartar elements ele-ments into their Flowery empire. The wave which rebounded from China nearly overwhelmed Europe, under Attila. Europe became German, or Gothic, instead of Roman, from the shoving of the Goths forward from the Danube by the Huns, who had left China. . Three hundred years before Christ the Chinese wall ran 1,500 miles, as far as from New York to the Missouri river. While the Greeks were ascribing the invention of the loom and distaff to the Gods, the Chinese were weaving from their knowledge of worms, our preparers prepar-ers of the earth's mould, the silks which Virgil mentions and which clothed Justinian's counselors. Two monks in that Greek emperor's time brought silkworms' eggs in a hollow staff to Constantinople, as the Chinese silk was traded to Persia by sea, the fashion implanted there by their Chinese royal bride. Another of those revelators whose conceit of authorship declares war against inoffensive mankind was Mahomet, Ma-homet, whose despotism was checked by China while it still holds the best corner of Europe. At the head of his Asiatic cowboys, driving the parents of the Chinese in his van, as the worshipful wor-shipful ancestors of a gentle people, Gengis, the Mogul, captured Pekin, which Kublai, his successor, rebuilt and was ruined by Japan. China, however, how-ever, conquered by her policy the conqueror, con-queror, who knelt to her idol Fo, and in 150 years his dynasty was expelled, about the year 1300. I was lately reviewing some of these ! points with a Chinese scholar at the legation, le-gation, and his conversation mr.y be put into an interview. "How did the family of Marco Polo first reach China?" "About 1255 they went to the Volga Tartars to sell jewelry, and a war ensuing en-suing between these Turkistan Tar- tars, the merchants turned the Capsian sea to the city of Kokhara, where a Mogul noble, pleased with their conversing con-versing in his language, invited them to China, which they were twelve months reaching. The grand khan sounded them, found them agreeable and honest and made them his ambassadors ambas-sadors to the pope. They reached the Mediterranean in three years; The pope having died, and after waiting two years without any successor being elected by the factions, they returned, taking along Marco, a child born after they made their first journey. The pope elected, Gregory X sent friars back with them, but these were scared by the fall of Jerusalem to the sultan of Egypt. The grand khan adopted Marco, Mar-co, the young man. The discovery of China by Europeans was the conclusion conclu-sion of the crusades, which gave new German Europe its first union." "What was the parent part of China?" "The northwest. The Chinese are of Tartar origin. Their authentic history begins 3.000 before the Christian era, or twenty-five centuries before the mythical myth-ical Rome, twenty-eight centuries before be-fore Alexander the Great. Asia has uniformly uni-formly modified her conquerors. Greece became Asiatic after Alexander. The religions are all Asiatic. The ancient records of man are all out of that vast continent of which China is the human perfection." "Are the Hindoos not of Chinese con-I con-I nection?" "In no respect, except that ' Buddha has followers in both countries. - The Chinese were Tartar herders, who ; turned their camps into cities, invented ; friction fire, cooked, counted by knots ; in cords, discovered iron and first made the plow. These instrumentalities and ; their admirable rivers, 2,500 and 3,000 miles long, formed an early society i over a land eight times the size of France, with additions four times , greater. ! "In the great plain, which is seven ! times the size of Lombardy, have long : lived 180.000,000 people in a regioa 700 ' miles by 300. A grand canal of great antiquity drains the plain. China ; taught the world canals. The raw in- stitutions of the shepherd tribes are seen and felt in the existing society, : which should have been born anew. Man is not improved by his antiquity. If it were possible to remake the Chinese Chi-nese and destroy all their knowledge it would be easier to teach them. Adam ; in his garden preserved by his Chinese obedience would have culminated an idiot. When he heard the command to : go 'he saved himself.' " ' "What is the religion of China?" I "It is divided into the state religion, ' the emperor alone worshiping for all the people, and the superstitions made by the people for themselves. In addition addi-tion is universal filial piety, or gratitude grati-tude to parents and progenitors. This, like all the virtues, has its abuses, and. looking far back with reverence, the Chinaman omits the future. Having been conquered, the political government govern-ment of China is corrupt and suspicious. sus-picious. There is no Sabbath. Taxes are light, under ?1 per head. They speak the baby monosyllables of man, 330 extended fourfold by inflections, i Low taxes and general education have kept peace in China. Too much atten-, tion is paid to mere literature. The : press is absolutely free where printing preceded all other printing. The in- .-ventors .-ventors of powder paused and rested at the firecracker." "Who was Confucius?" "He was a sort of Socrates who lived 1 ' 550 years before Christ. His mother's death caused him to study morals, and he traveled and became prime minister. By ' his one son he had in eighty generations ' some 20,000 descendants, all didactic lead- j era. He died eleven years before Socrates was born. He taught no divine revelation but the role of self-knowledge, and disciplined dis-ciplined human nature. He is the author of the rule, 'Do not unto others what you would not have them do to you.' Five hundred years afterward the 'nots' were taken out and two negatives made an affirmative." "Who is Fo?" . "Fo was a foreign god set up against the system of Confucius, an idol worship made up by grafting Buddha upon the re- , actionary superstition. Fo is worshiped by bells, beads, tapers, incense and images. Fo's priests are vegetarians, believe in -the soul migrating through animals and becoming purified to finally rejoin God. The pagodas of China represent the . stages of this ascension." :Are the Chinese found in many other countries?" . "In all. They are in Siam and Java by tens of thousands. Aguinaldo is of Chi- nese origin. They are the Germans of , Asia, ever redundant and emigrating, often of-ten guiltv of infanticide from motives of 1 mercy. So thick is life that in Canton ( alone 300,000 people live on boats, and a tenth of the Chinese are fishermen. The mountains of China carry perpetual snow. Rice is raised by irrigation on the terrac- i ed hills Tea Is the stanle. The Chinese t eat litle meat and no milk, butter or cheese. Toads, cats, mice and dogs are ' luxuries where animal food is dear. The coinage and credit are poor." . "How did China get out of its lsola- 1 tion?" . "By turning the Cape of Good Hope. , Canton, the continuous European port, ' was reached by a British vessel thirty years after the settlement of Virginia. A I A corporation of England monopolized all 1 its Chinese trade for 200 years. Then f opium from India was pressed into China A and the British captured panton and oth- J er cities, killed the Chinese admiral and f received the cession of i Hoftgkong, liv m miles from Canton, in 1841 "'We then en- J tered Into treaty with China in 1S45, hav- ing had consular relations only with her previously. China is a good- deal like the j United States, has a gulf stream of its own, has a similar climate, though farth- er south, and could exchange thermome- I ters with us. Formosa is its Florida;' the Philippines its West Indies. Its northern I rivers are like our lakes. The Chinese J raise apples north, and oranges south." "Has China any Hebrews?" A "Hebrews Fettled on the Yellow river J long before Christ. The thirteenth, cen- tury -witnessed the Tartar conquest of t China, but Gegis Khan was a benefactor, and his grandson, Kublai Khan, a statesman. states-man. In 1644 the Manchu Tartar dynasty seized China, which was in anarchy, and caused the Chinese to plait their hair like the Tartars. Russia at once began diplomacy diplo-macy with China under the father tt Peter Pe-ter the Great. In 1692 the Christian religion reli-gion was received on a law footing." i "Has Christianity been of benefit?" "Christianity made the opium war. In 1S50 an initiation of Christianity among j the Chinese led to a Cromwellian war, in i which 20,000 Tartars were murdered. In : 1S4 this rebellion was put down. In 1S5H Canton was taken, and in 1S58 Pekin. The tea thrown overboard in Boston, which j caused the American revolution, was sent I by the East India company from China. The Americans are the most respected foreigners in China, from their respect for Chinese territory." "Has the Christian religion been a blessing or a disturbance in China?" "The first requests made of China were to protect missionaries. Opium and missionaries mis-sionaries were the entering wedges. How can you except 400.000,000 people to accept ac-cept a foreign gospel under the convoy of drunkenness and puns? The trade of China, not its conscience, was the inducement in-ducement to enter it. The example of India easily conquered has operated upon the cupidity of every nation in Europe to supersede the homogeneous government of China. India was a menagerie of religions. re-ligions. China had no passion for any religion. Her great lawgiver, who lived abreast of the Prophet Daniel, did not inflict in-flict any legends or myths upon China. "The Chinese believe in dragons and signs and dreams, toys of the childish mind. Their wiser few worship what Europe is young and parvenue in ancestors. ances-tors. The modia; operandi of the missionaries mis-sionaries is to teach something sensible, like the sewing machine, and next to cut a slice out of the entity of China. This performance has been going on since l"ilH. and every European nation has brought into China some variation of the same religion. The Portuguese had piracy, the Spanish Jesuitry, the Dutch incendiarism and buccaneering, the English opium. Hatred of each other's variation of the same religion has been characteristic of all, excepting the Russians. They .are most welcome in China, because they are also a Tartar people, subject for 200 years to a Tartar conquest, and they omit the missionary pretext. They say to the Chinese, Chi-nese, 'You made your grand canal 1,000 miles long in the time of Kublai Khan; we bring you. 650 years later, the iron canal 5.000 miles in length. We do not care what you believe: believe in what you shall see.' Thus Russia is at the back of China; Japan in front: Germany gets government in general a lesson the kaiser may yet feel, that length of authority is of no reverence. America has just upset the Spanish lease in the Philippines established es-tablished in 1543. Please send us all your material ideas, but keep your hypocrisy away from China! It is older than your Genesis." "Whv are the Japanese able to whip China?" "Ion-i atmli-oe m-jr- China id On-ilior Japan whipped the grandson of Genghis Khan. Malay, Polynesian blood is in the Japanese. That little people, a twentieth part of China, threw Asia overboard some forty years ago and took on science and physics. They are a brave model to all Asia to pick up breechloaders and conauer Europe again. But Japan has not the staying powers of China. Its general gen-eral leads the European armies in uuon China, but what can melt old pigheaded-ness? pigheaded-ness? China it. the pig, Japan the cock and the weathefCock." "The young emperor, Kuang-Hau, after af-ter the Japanese war, began to study science and inventions, and they affected his brain. When he pruned down the offices of-fices a rebellion began In the palace, and Tsze-Hsi, his mother, a strong-minded womw, deposed him. Her victory was regarded as a rebuke of the foreign influence influ-ence in China, and the 'Boxers' broke forth. You will find it out yourselves when vou have female suffrage." |