The entire absence of both branches of the legal profession is perhaps (be it said without disrespect to the majesty of the law) a matter on which the people of Weihaiwei are to be congratulated, for it enables them to enjoy their favourite pastime of litigation at a minimum of cost. The cheapness of litigation in Weihaiwei is indeed in the eyes of many of the people one of the most attractive features of British rule: though, if only they could be brought to realise the fact, it is also one of the most dangerous, for it tends to diminish the authority of village elders and clan-patriarchs and so to weaken the whole social structure upon which village life in China is based. The people have discovered that even their most trifling disputes are more easily, quickly and cheaply settled by going to law than by resorting to the traditional Chinese plan of invoking the assistance of "peace-talkers"; for these peace-talkers are usually elderly relatives, village headmen or friendly neighbours, who must at least be hospitably entertained, during their lengthy deliberations, with pork and vegetables and sundry pots of wine, whereas the British magistrate is understood to hanker after no such delicacies. Thus while the people recognise, with more or less gratitude, the purity of the British courts and the readiness of the officials to listen to all complaints, some of the wiser among them contemplate with some anxiety a system which is almost necessarily productive of excessive litigation and of protracted family feuds. There can be no part of the British Empire where litigation costs less than it does here, and indeed there is probably no part where it costs so little. There are no court fees, and the magistrate himself not only takes the place of counsel for both plaintiff and defendant, thereby saving the parties all legal costs, but also assumes the troublesome burden of the collection and investigation of evidence.

Until recently there existed a class of licensed petition-writers who charged litigants a small fee for drawing up petitions addressed to the court. After several of these petition-writers had been convicted of bribery and extortion and other malpractices, it was found necessary to withdraw all their licences and abolish the system. At present every litigant who cannot write and has no literary relative who will oblige him by drawing up a petition for him, simply comes into the court when and how he likes and makes his statement by word of mouth. Unlettered peasant-folk are garrulous and inconsequential all the world over, and those of Weihaiwei are not exceptional: so it may be easily understood that the necessity of taking down long rambling statements made in rustic Chinese by deaf old men and noisy and unreasonable women adds no slight burden to the labours of an English magistrate. Unnecessary litigation is indeed becoming so common a feature of daily life that the Government is at present contemplating the introduction of a system of court fees which, while not preventing the people from making just complaints before the magistrates, will tend to discourage them from running to the courts before they have made the least attempt to settle their quarrels in a manner more consistent with the traditional usages of their country. That something of this kind must be done to check the present rush of litigants to the courts is daily becoming more apparent.

In the South Division court[65] the proceedings are carried on entirely in the Chinese language. The speech of the people, it may be said, is a form of Mandarin (so called) which after a little practice is easily intelligible to a speaker of Pekingese. Colloquialisms are naturally numerous among so remote and isolated a community as the inhabitants of north-eastern Shantung, and in some respects the dialect approximates to that of Nanking rather than to the soft speech of the northern capital.

The absence of Counsel is no hardship to the people, for in China professional lawyers—as we understand the term—are unknown. "A man who attempted to appear for another in a Court of Justice," as Sir Robert Douglas says, "would probably render himself liable to a penalty under the clause in the Penal Code which orders a flogging for any person who excites or promotes litigation."[66] In Weihaiwei only once has a native—in this case a Christian convert—made the least attempt to conduct a case for and on behalf of another individual, and he, though it was impossible under British methods to have him flogged, was duly punished for this as well as for other offences. In the courts of Weihaiwei, then, as in those of China, each of the parties to a suit argues out his own case in his own way, though it is upon the magistrate himself that the duty devolves of separating the wheat from the chaff and selecting such parts of the litigant's argument as appear to have a real bearing on the points at issue. In all essentials, therefore, cases are heard and dealt with in Weihaiwei very much as they are heard and dealt with in China; thus a man from the Chinese side of the frontier who comes into court as plaintiff in Weihaiwei finds himself—especially if he is used to litigation in his own country—quite at home. As may be easily imagined, lawsuits are not conducted with the frigid decorum that usually marks the hearing of a civil case in England; the facts that plaintiff and defendant appear in person, each to conduct his own case, and that each enjoys practically unlimited freedom to say what he likes about his opponent and about things in general, introduce a dramatic element which is lacking in the more stately procedure of Western law-courts. Instead of the patient discussion of minute points of law and the careful citation of precedents and authorities, there are clamorous recitals of real or imaginary woes, bitter denunciations, passionate appeals for justice. A rather remarkable feature of all this, however, is the absence of gesturing. Hands are not clasped or raised to heaven, the movements of the body show no signs of deep feeling, even the features—though their owner is inwardly seething with emotion—seem to remain almost passive. Is this a sign of remoteness from savagery? The people of England have been singled out as examples of those who make a minimum use of gesture: but Englishmen cannot be compared in this respect with the Chinese.

The side-lights that legal proceedings throw upon the moral and intellectual qualities of the people are inexhaustible in their variety. Under the stress of a burning sense of wrong or dread of disaster, or in the intensity of his anxiety to win a lawsuit on which he has staked his happiness, the Chinese, though he still refrains from what he considers the vulgarity of gesturing, casts to the winds the reserve and ceremonious decorum of speech that on more placid occasions often seem to be part of his personality. He can tell lies with audacity, though his lies indeed are not always rightly so called, and he has the most extraordinary aptitude for simulating strong emotions with the object of enlisting judicial sympathy; but, in spite of these drawbacks, it is during the prosecution of a lawsuit that the strong and weak elements in his character stand out in strongest relief.

If the litigant can write (though comparatively few of the people of Weihaiwei can do so) he is allowed to state his case in the form of a written petition. A typical Chinese petition may be said to be divided into three parts: firstly, the "case" of the petitioner is stated in full, strong emphasis being laid on his innate love of right and his horror of people who disobey the law; secondly, his opponent, the defendant, is held up to obloquy as a rogue and a hatcher of villainies; thirdly, the magistrate himself, to whom the petition is addressed, is cunningly described as having a marvellous faculty for separating right from wrong, a highly developed sense of justice, and a peculiarly strong love for law-abiding people. The defendant, when summoned, will of course adopt similar tactics. If his case is weak and he has nothing very definite to urge in his own favour, he will try to prejudice the magistrate against the plaintiff by describing him as quarrelsome and fond of lawsuits—no small offence in China. His petition may then run somewhat in these words, which I translate from a petition recently received: "Plaintiff is an audacious fellow and cares not how often he goes to law. He is not afraid of officials and loves litigation. When he comes home from the courts he uses boastful words and says, 'What fun it is to go to law.'"[67]

Both plaintiff and defendant consider it a good plan to assume an attitude of weakness, docility, and a constitutional inability to contend with the woes thrust upon them by a wicked world. "For several years," says one, "I bore my miseries in silence and dared not take action, but now things are different, for I have heard the glad news that the Great Man[68] settles cases as if he were a Spirit."[69] One of the commonest expressions in a Chinese petition has an odd look when it is literally translated: "I the Little Man am the Great Man's baby."

When a lawsuit arises out of complicated family disputes, such as those concerned with inheritance and adoption, there are sometimes representatives of four generations in the court at the same time. Babes and small children, if their rights or interests are in any way involved, are brought into court by their mothers, not with any idea that the evidence of infants would be accepted, even if it could be intelligibly given, but merely in order that the magistrate may see that the children really exist and have not been invented for the occasion. Sometimes they appear in the court for the practical reason that all the adults of the family have come to prosecute their lawsuit and that no one is left at home to take care of them. The presence of young boys of twelve or fourteen is very useful, as they are often able to express themselves and even to state the material points of a case far more briefly and intelligibly than their garrulous elders. If the case is an important one the court is often filled by cousins and aunts and interested neighbours of the litigants, and these people are all ready to swear that plaintiff or defendant, as the case may be, is a man of pre-eminent virtue who has never committed a wrong action or entertained an unrighteous thought in his life, while his opponent is a noted scoundrel who is the terror and bully of the whole countryside. These exaggerations are merely resorted to as a method of emphasising one view of the matter in dispute, and are not, as a rule, seriously intended to mislead the magistrate so much as to give a gentle bias to his mind. If, as very frequently happens, the magistrate has occasion to ask a witness why he has made a number of obvious and unnecessary misstatements, he merely replies with childlike blandness: Ta jÊn mien-ch'ien hsiao-ti pu kan sa huang—"In the Great Man's presence the Little One would not dare to tell a lie."

When arguing out their cases in court litigants seldom lose their temper—always a sign of very "bad form" in China—but they often assail each other in very vigorous language. Men of some education often make a show of leaving it to the magistrate to unmask the evil nature of their opponent. "If the magistrate will only look at that man's face," they say, "he will see that the fellow is a rogue." The remark of course implies, and is intended to imply, that the magistrate is a man of consummate perspicacity who cannot be deceived.

What constitutes one of the gravest difficulties from a European point of view in settling civil disputes between Chinese is that the plain unvarnished truth is seldom presented, even when a recital of the bare facts would be strong enough to ensure a favourable judgment. Yet I am far from wishing to imply that the Chinese are naturally liars. An inaccurate statement unaccompanied by an intention to deceive does not constitute a lie; and many such statements habitually made by Chinese do not and are not intended to deceive other Chinese to whom they are addressed. That they often deceive a European is no doubt a fact; but the fault lies with the European's want of knowledge and experience of the Chinese character, not with the Chinese, who are merely using forms of speech customary in their country. Why should a Chinese be expected to alter his traditional way of saying things merely because it differs from the foreign way? I am not convinced that a Chinese intentionally deceives or tries to deceive his own countrymen—that is, lies to them—much oftener than the average European deceives or tells a lie to his neighbour. Before we say of a Chinese, "This man has told me a lie," it would perhaps be well to ask ourselves, "Is the statement made by this man intended to deceive me? Is it such that it would deceive one of his own people?"

Perhaps it should not be necessary to labour this point, but there is no doubt that missionaries and others who feel irresistibly impelled to emphasise the darker sides of the Chinese character are apt to make the most of the supposed national predisposition to falsehood. For instance, the Rev. J. Macgowan in Sidelights on Chinese Life[70] says, much too strongly, "It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what he actually means." On the other hand, I have known missionaries accept the word of their own Chinese converts, as against that of non-Christians, with a most astonishing and sometimes unjustifiable readiness. Some go so far as to imply that a non-Christian Chinese who speaks the truth is a person to be marvelled at. "Albeit he is a Confucianist," wrote a missionary to me, "this man may be relied on to speak the truth."

The foreigner who wished to prove that the Chinese are liars might find abundant proof ready to his hand in the false evidence that is given every day in the Weihaiwei courts. Yet the longer and oftener he watched and listened to Chinese litigants and witnesses, the less satisfied would he become as to the reliability of his "proof." The English magistrate finds that as time goes on he becomes less and less likely to be deceived or led astray about any material point owing to the direct misstatements of witnesses. It is not so much that he "sees through" them as that he understands their points of view. To say that in due time he will be totally free from any liability to be misled would, of course, be to claim for him infallibility or omniscience; but there is no doubt that as his knowledge and experience of Chinese character grows, the less ready will he be to label the Chinese crudely as "liars." For the native magistrate, who knows without special training his countrymen's character and their peculiarities of thought and speech, it is, of course, much easier than it is for the European to detect the element of truth that lies embedded in the absurd and inaccurate statements made before him in court. To say that even a Chinese magistrate can always be sure when a man is speaking the truth would certainly be ridiculous; there are accomplished liars in China as in Europe, just as there are forgers so skilful that they can deceive experts in handwriting; but he is at least able to make allowances for inaccuracy and hyperbole which, though they may deceive the foreigner, will not deceive the native, and should not therefore be condemned as deliberate falsehood.

Instances of these exaggerations and misstatements occur every day throughout China and in Weihaiwei. If A wants redress against B, who has removed a landmark and encroached upon his land, he will probably add, in his petition, that B is the author of deep villainies, a truculent and masterful dare-devil, and a plotter of conspiracies against the public welfare. One such petition contained remarks which I translate almost word for word. "After I had discovered that he had stolen some of my land I went to his house and tried to reason with him in a persuasive manner. He refused to listen, and reviled me in the most shocking terms. He then seized my mother and my children and beat them too. They are covered with wounds and unable to stand; in fact, they are barely alive. So I had no resort but to approach the magistrate and ask him to enquire into the matter so that the water may fall and the rocks appear (that is, the truth will be made manifest), justice will be done to the afflicted and the cause of the humble vindicated, and the gratitude of your petitioner and his descendants will be without limit." The real point at issue was the disputed ownership of the land. No physical wounds had been inflicted upon any member of the family, and no fighting had taken place; but hard words had been freely bandied about, and the female members of the family, as so very frequently occurs in China, had shrieked themselves into a paroxysm of rage which had left them exhausted and voiceless. To have taken the good man at his word with regard to the assault, and to have called upon him to produce evidence thereof, would have caused him pain and astonishment. All he wanted to do was to make out that his opponent was a rascal, and was therefore the kind of person who might naturally be expected to filch people's land.

But how, it may be asked, is the magistrate to know which is the true accusation and which is the false one? There are many indications to guide him, and a short cross-examination should elicit the true facts very quickly, even if the wording of the petition itself were not sufficient. In this particular instance it need only be pointed out that had a murderous assault really taken place, the victims would certainly have been brought to the court for a magisterial inspection of their wounds. Had they been unable to move they would have been carried in litters. That the wounds in an assault case should be shown to the magistrate as soon as possible after the occurrence is regarded as very necessary—and naturally so, considering how little value could be attached, in the present state of medical and surgical knowledge in China, to the evidence of a native doctor. Sometimes the court is invaded by a wild-looking creature with torn clothes and matted hair, who, judging from the blood on his face and head, must be covered with hideous gashes and gaping wounds. He begins to blurt out accusations of brutal assault against his neighbour; but before allowing him to pour forth his tale of woe, a wise magistrate will require him to be removed and well combed and washed. In all probability he will come back a new man, the picture of good health, and free from stain or bruise; and if he is asked to show his wounds, he will point to a long-healed scar, or a birth-mark, or some slight scratch that might have been, and quite possibly was, inflicted by his neighbour's wife's finger-nails. Then, not in the least degree abashed, he will proceed to tell the tale of his real woes, and will make no further reference to the little matter of his physical ill-treatment.

The causes of litigation in Weihaiwei are endless, but a large proportion of the cases are the results of more or less trivial family quarrels. When a father has resigned the family property into his sons' hands and becomes dependent on them for support, he ceases to be the active head of the family. He must of course continue to be treated with obedience and respect, and very few fathers in China have any real cause to accuse a son of unfilial behaviour. But very old men, in China and elsewhere, often become petulant and hard to please, and it is they who, perhaps in a fit of temper, are the most likely to bring actions against their sons and daughters-in-law. An apparently crazy old man came to me with this story. "I am ninety-two years old. My son Li Kuei is undutiful. He won't feed me. I have no teeth, and therefore have to eat soft things, and his wife won't cook them for me." The facts (easily ascertained by the court) were that the old man's digestive powers were failing, and that being unable to assimilate even the softest of food, he erroneously fancied himself to be ill-treated. Having discovered that he had several nephews who were ready to protect him in the case of any real grievance, I informed him that out of consideration for extreme old age the court could not allow people of over ninety years old to prosecute their suits in person when they had relatives to do it for them. But if the poor man had lost his teeth, it was clear that the court had erred in supposing that he had also lost his wits; for after acquiescing in the ninety-year rule and going away without a murmur, he reappeared two days later and explained that he had made a stupid mistake about his age: he was not ninety-two, but only eighty-eight.

The next case chosen as typical of Weihaiwei deals with a quarrel between a woman and her male cousin. "I have two houses," said the man. "I mortgaged one of them to my cousin (a woman), but subsequently redeemed it. Then I went to sea for several years. On coming home this year I found that she had treated the house as if it were her own, though I had long since redeemed it. She had also annexed some of my furniture. I told the headman. The headman said I had better let my cousin have her own way for the sake of keeping the peace. I agreed. But I have a nephew to whom I want to give the house. My cousin refuses to let him take possession." The difficulty about the house was duly settled by the court, but a few days later the plaintiff returned with further complaints. "I have now nothing to say against my cousin," he said, "except that she has stolen some more of my furniture—my cooking-pot, to be precise—and has torn down some of the thatch of my roof to light her fire with. She also reviles me in public and in private. I do not want her to be severely punished, but I should like her to be admonished by the magistrate."

Serious cases very frequently arise out of the most trumpery quarrels and differences of opinion between one villager and another. If men only are concerned in such a quarrel their own good sense, or that of their neighbours, usually prevents the matter from going to extremes, but if women are concerned, cases of homicide or suicide are sometimes the outcome. The question of the ownership of a few blocks of stone was the origin of a quarrel that might easily have had a tragic ending. The plaintiff's statement in court was as follows: "I accuse Chiang TÊ-jang of beating my wife and myself. At sunset I went home and found that defendant had beaten my wife. I went to his house, and he met me at the door. I reasoned with him, and said that if my wife had given any cause of complaint he should have told me about it. He replied that my wife deserved a beating. I asked him why he didn't beat me instead, whereupon he at once took me at my word and thrashed me soundly." In reply to questions he went on: "I did not strike him back, as I would not be guilty of a breach of the peace, and thereby appear to be holding the law in contempt. After I had been beaten I went home. My wife told me the defendant had beaten her because she refused to let him take away some stone from our backyard. The stone belonged to me." In answer to this the defendant stated: "I never struck plaintiff or his wife. The stone is my own. Plaintiff's wife was fighting with my mother, and my mother scratched her face. My mother got the worst of the fight. She is lying in a basket outside the court, as she is unable to move. I brought her here to have her wounds inspected by the magistrate."

The more intelligent members of the Chinese community of Weihaiwei soon discovered, after the arrival of the foreigners, that the British system of administration and of dealing with civil suits in the Courts differed from that of China in nothing so conspicuously as in the absence of "squeezes" and the ease with which the magistrate could be directly approached by the poorest litigant. There are always large numbers, however, who are afraid to bring their plaints direct to the court, either from a fear that they will be prevented by the police or other native employees of the Government from gaining the foreign magistrate's ear, or because they dare not openly bring a lawsuit or make accusations against some influential person or family in their own village. For the benefit of such timid individuals I long ago set up, on the roadside in the neighbourhood of the South Division court, a locked letter-box for the reception of any and every description of petition or memorial which the writers for some reason or other preferred not to bring openly to the court. Into this box, the contents of which are examined by myself alone, petitions of various kinds are dropped almost daily: and though a large majority are anonymous denunciations of the private enemies of the writers, and are immediately destroyed, a considerable number have led to some discoveries of great value from the administrative point of view, and have sometimes greatly facilitated the labours of the court in ascertaining the rights and wrongs of pending cases.

If the petition-box served no other good purpose it would still be useful as throwing interesting lights on certain aspects of the character of the people. The petitions received through this medium are so heterogeneous that it is difficult to select a typical specimen for purposes of illustration; but the following translation of a document recently found in the petition-box may give some idea of the characteristic features of a large class.

"Your Honour's nameless petitioner humbly exposes the evil deeds of a brutal robber who is headman of the village of ——. He and his son ill-treat the people shamelessly. At ploughing time he continually encroaches upon his neighbours' lands, and if they question him on the matter his mouth pours forth a torrent of evil words and he reviles them without ceasing. He says, 'I am the headman of this village and a person of importance. As for this trifling matter of your boundaries, I will treat you exactly as I please, for you are all my inferiors.' On other occasions he says, 'My family is wealthy; I have one hundred and thirty odd mu of land. In my house I have silver heaped up like a mountain.' In our village there is a right-of-way to the well, which is situated on a slope at the edge of his land; but he has forbidden us to use this path any longer. In our village there is also an old temple called the T'ai-p'ing An, and there is an ancient right-of-way to it for the use of people who wish to burn incense at the shrines. This path also he has blocked up. He declares that the spirits of the dead may use this road, but he will not allow living men to use it. Further, he says, 'If any one in the village refuses to obey me, let him beware! I am headman and have great influence, and if I were to fall upon you it would be as though the sacred mountain of T'ai were to fall and crush you.'

"Sometimes, also, he tells us that he will have us taken to the Magistrate's yamÊn for punishment. Thus we poor petitioners are afraid to put our names to this memorial. But we earnestly beg the Clear-as-Heaven Magistrate to enquire into this man's conduct and have him severely punished. Degrade him from the position of headman; lock him up in gaol for several years; inflict a fine of several thousand dollars upon him—he has plenty of money in his house. Thus will the people be made happy at last, and your petitioners' gratitude will endure through all ages to come. We implore the Clear-as-Heaven venerable Magistrate quickly to make investigations and to inflict punishment, and thus save the people and release them from their woes. Then not only through Weihaiwei will his fame roll like thunder, but the people who live in Chinese territory will all come to know how god-like are his judgments, and his reputation will shine with the combined brilliance of sun, moon and stars."

The magistrate is supposed to be a kind of living embodiment of all the Confucian virtues, and therefore to look with extreme favour on any one whose words or conduct show him to be dutiful to his father, punctilious in serving the spirits of the dead, respectful to old age, a wise and good parent, industrious, honest in his dealings with his neighbours, and law-abiding. No litigant neglects an opportunity of showing that he possesses each and all of these qualities; and sometimes it is done cleverly and with an appearance of artlessness. A man brought an action against another for debt. In the course of his statement he said: "Whenever I demand the money from him he reviles me. (Cross-examined). I never reviled him in return. I didn't dare to do so because he had a beard and I had none. How could I dare to revile a man with a beard?" This of course means in plain language, "He was my elder, and therefore I with my well-known regard for the proprieties could not presume to answer him back." It is not usual in China for a man to grow a beard or moustache until he has reached middle age.

A litigant also tries to ingratiate himself with the magistrate by an affectation of extreme humility. A villager is asked if he can write. He says no. When it is subsequently discovered that he can read and write with fluency and he is taxed with his falsehood, he merely explains that he did not dare to boast of his accomplishments in the presence of the magistrate. The meaning is that the magistrate's scholarly attainments are (theoretically) so overwhelmingly brilliant that the litigant's own poor scraps of learning sink into utter nothingness by comparison. In other words, it is politeness and humility that impel the man to say he cannot write.

Among the cases that cause the greatest difficulty and sometimes embarrassment to an English magistrate are those that turn on some foolish old custom or deeply-rooted superstition. Sometimes it happens that by deciding the case one way the magistrate may be upholding a popular view at the cost of doing violence to his own feelings of what is right and proper; by deciding it in another way he may provoke a strong local feeling of resentment against the ignorant judgments of foreigners who do not understand the ways of the people. As a rule it is best to ascertain the views of the oldest and most respectable members of the village or district concerned, and give judgment accordingly. It is interesting to observe that the old folks will not in all cases give their vote for the pro-superstition view. A lawsuit of the kind referred to arose recently out of a dispute in a village as to the digging of a well. The plaintiffs petition ran as follows:

"Near our village there is a well which supplies good water. As it was a long way to this well from the further end of the village it was decided some years ago to sink a new well opposite the house of Wang Lien-tsÊng. This was done, and unfortunately soon afterwards a man was drowned in the new well. Then the elders discussed the matter and agreed that as the spot was evidently an unpropitious one for a well it must be abandoned. A new well was sunk near my house. Soon after this well was opened for public use my eldest boy took ill. He spat blood for seven months and then died. This was not the only piece of bad luck that befell me: I got into trouble somehow and was sent to gaol. This second well was then also filled up and abandoned. No more well-boring was undertaken for a long time, but recently there has been a fresh agitation among some of the villagers who say they must have a second well. I and the best people in the village think matters had much better be left as they are, as well-boring has been proved to be highly dangerous in our village. Wang Ming-hu is the principal agitator, and he declares that the well which started my misfortunes may be safely reopened, as three years have passed since the last time it caused death."

In this case the agitator—perhaps a trifle less superstitious than his neighbours—got his way, and the results do not seem to have caused any rise in the local death-rate.

No one who has lived in China requires to be reminded of the strange pseudo-science of fÊng-shui, which includes among its various branches and subdivisions a method of divination whereby lucky sites are chosen for buildings of all kinds and especially for graves. A master-in-fÊng-shui, as one might render the term fÊng-shui hsien-shÊng, is one who gives his services, not gratuitously, to persons who wish to find a propitious spot for the erection of a new dwelling-house or (as in the case just quoted) the boring of a well or the burial of a deceased relative. The richer and more patient the client, the longer, as a rule, will the hsien-shÊng take to complete his calculations, and the larger will be his fee.

A very important point to remember with regard to the selection of lucky sites for graves is that the solicitude is not only for the deceased but for the present generation and its descendants as well.[71] A carefully-selected burial-ground brings, it is believed, peace to the ancestors down in the Yellow Springs of the Underworld and also ensures an endless progeny of descendants who will enjoy wealth, distinction and longevity. The two words fÊng-shui mean nothing more than "wind and water," but their esoteric connotation, if we were to do it justice, could hardly be elucidated in a whole chapter. FÊng-shui that was originally good may be ruined through a change in the course of a river, the erection of new buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, the opening-up of virgin soil, and through an endless variety of other causes.

The well-known Chinese dragon often plays a conspicuous part in matters relating to fÊng-shui. To the true believer, indeed, the hills and rocks are not dead things, but animated with a mysterious kind of life which is apart from and yet has strange influences over the lives of men. Threatened disturbances of fÊng-shui have frequently been the real or pretended cause of Chinese opposition to the opening of mines and the building of railways: and the popular feelings in the matter are so strong (though they are gradually weakening) that the official classes are obliged to treat the superstition with an outward respect which it is fair to say is on their part generally simulated. Yet it is by no means ignored by the highest in the land: the tombs of the Chinese imperial family are always selected after a most careful scrutiny of the spots favoured by the best fÊng-shui. The case to which I am about to allude arose out of a quarrel concerning the proposed opening of a stone-quarry in the vicinity of an ancestral graveyard. The dialogue that took place in court proceeded somewhat as follows, though the speeches are much abbreviated.

Plaintiffs.—We object to the quarry. The land is defendants' own and we do not claim any rights over it, but it is close to our ancestors' graves, and is certain to injure the fÊng-shui. We should not object to a quarry on the far side of the hill, which cannot be seen from the graveyard. Our ancestors left word that if a quarry were opened on the far side it would not matter. Why don't the defendants go to that side?

Defendants.—The land belongs to us and our deeds are in order. We assert that plaintiffs have no right to interfere with our quarry, and we do not see how the fÊng-shui of their graves can be affected. We don't go to the other side of the hill because there is no stone there.

Plaintiffs.—There is a dragon in the hill and it lives under the graveyard, and it extends to the place where the defendants have wickedly started to quarry. If the hill is cut into, the dragon will be hurt.

The Magistrate.—I do not think the dragon would raise any objections to the quarry. In fact he would no doubt feel much more comfortable if the stone were moved away. He probably finds it very heavy. In that case your fÊng-shui would be immensely improved by the opening of the quarry.

Plaintiffs (with perhaps the least suspicion of scorn at the foreign magistrate's ignorance).—The stones in the quarry are the dragon's bones.

Hardly less important than the choice of a well-situated grave is the ante-mortem provision for a becoming funeral. It is well known that among the poorest classes the most acceptable present a dutiful son can give his father is a handsome coffin; and it is a real satisfaction to a humble labourer or farmer to know that, however poor he and his family may be, there will be no doubt about his being laid to rest in a thoroughly respectable manner. The coffin—a large and most cumbersome article—is sometimes deposited during the owner's lifetime in a Buddhist temple, but this costs money; so it is frequently allowed to occupy an honourable corner in the family living-room, where it becomes the pride of the household and the envy of less fortunate neighbours. The presentation of a coffin to the head of a family by his dutiful and affectionate sons is sometimes made the occasion of an "At Home," to which are invited all relatives and friends who live in the neighbourhood. The visitors are expected to congratulate the proud father on his new piece of furniture and on his good fortune in possessing exemplary sons, to express unbounded admiration for the coffin, and to compliment the sons on the filial devotion of which they have just given so admirable a proof.

In Weihaiwei, litigation arising directly or indirectly out of disputes concerning coffins is fairly common, owing to the fact that timber is scarce and good coffins correspondingly expensive. The rights of ownership over a single tree or a group of trees are for this reason hotly contested, though the intention of using the timber for coffin-making is not always mentioned in the pleadings. One T'sung P'ei-yÜ made his complaint thus: "I was one of three sons. When the family property was divided between the three of us by our father's instructions, my eldest brother was given the house in which we had been brought up. But in the garden there was a fir-tree, and our father, before he died, specially declared that this tree was to be regarded as mine, in order that I might make myself a coffin out of it. The village headman can bear witness to this, and all the neighbours know that what 1 say is true. This happened seven years ago, and no one contested my claim to the tree until the tenth day of this moon, when I went to the garden to cut it down. To my surprise I was stopped by my elder brother's wife, Ts'ung Liu Shih, who refused to let me touch it. I am a man of peace and dared not take the law into my own hands, so I appeal to the court for help." The end of the case was that some of the neighbours—doubtless sympathising with the plaintiff in his laudable and natural longing for a good coffin—offered to "talk peace," and there was an amicable settlement out of court. The plaintiff got his tree but had to spend the amount that a good coffin would have cost in entertaining his genial neighbours at a feast. What became of the elder brother's wife did not transpire.

From coffins to ancestral worship the transition is easy. Very numerous cases might be cited in which the magistrate is called upon to decide subtle questions—such as could seldom arise outside China—connected with adoption, inheritance, the guardianship of lands devoted to sacrificial purposes, and the custody of ancestral tablets. During a journey in western China I had some conversation with a missionary on this and allied topics. When I mentioned that the ancestral tablets were frequently produced in court as part of the evidence in a lawsuit and sometimes remained in the magistrate's custody for several days, the missionary remarked that he presumed I took advantage of such occasions to talk seriously to the "heathen" on the wickedness and folly of "idolatry." The fact that the people of Weihaiwei are still in the habit of appealing to the British courts for judgments in cases of this kind, is sufficient to show that the missionary's assumption was incorrect.

The Chinese magistrate being in theory the father of his district, he must not merely hold the balance between his people when they come to him with their quarrels; he must not merely punish the offender and vindicate the cause of the oppressed: he must also instil into the minds of his "children," by word and example, a submissive reverence for the doctrines of the ancient sages, which include proper respect for tradition, a dutiful obedience to all properly-constituted authority, whether in family or in State, and the practice of courtesy and forbearance in all dealings with neighbours and strangers. Some of the most valuable of the Confucian maxims are summed up in the "Sacred Edict," which, though it only dates from the time of K'ang Hsi (seventeenth century), is entirely based on the Confucian teachings and is very well known—by name if not by its contents—to the vast majority of the Chinese people. Whether Chinese magistrates always fulfil their functions either as models or as teachers of virtue is a matter which does not concern us.

In Weihaiwei, where the King's Order-in-Council justifies a magistrate in giving effect to Chinese customs and practices, I have frequently, in delivering judgments in both civil and criminal cases, used appropriate texts taken either from the Confucian classics themselves or from the Sacred Edict, for the purpose of giving my hearers little moral discourses on points suggested by the cases before me. If, for example, two neighbours have quarrelled over some trifling matter I tell them of the wise words used by K'ang Hsi and his commentators with reference to the observance of harmonious relations among people who inhabit the same village. I remind them, perhaps, that "if fellow-villagers quarrel with one another and neither is willing to forgive, then the result will be a state of enmity which may not only last all their own lives, but may embitter the lives of their sons and grandsons, and even then peace may not ensue."

On one occasion on which I had quoted a passage from the Sacred Edict a local missionary pointed out to me that I could have found a far more appropriate text for my purpose by turning to a certain passage in the Bible to which he referred me. He was very probably quite right, though I did not verify his Biblical reference: but it would no more occur to me, in addressing a crowd of Chinese from the magisterial bench in Weihaiwei, to read them passages from the Bible than it would occur to a judge in England to entertain the jury or the prisoner at the bar with quotations from the Zend Avesta or the Institutes of Vishnu. Is it not probable that an ordinary Chinese peasant will think more of his magistrate's ethical views and be more likely to profit by them if the magistrate bases his discourses on teachings which the Chinese and his ancestors have always been taught to hold sacred, rather than on strange-sounding quotations from a book he has never heard of?

From the examples given of some of the questions that come up for decision in the courts of Weihaiwei it may be seen that in this outlying part of the British Empire, no less than in India and the rest of our Asiatic possessions, the chief qualifications necessary for a judge or magistrate are not so much a knowledge of law and legal procedure as a ready acquaintance with the language, customs, religious ideas and ordinary mode of life of the people and an ability to sympathise with or at least to understand their prejudices and points of view. Perhaps no Englishman, no European or American, can hope to administer justice or exercise executive functions among Asiatics in a manner that will win universal approval. If he becomes too fond of the natives he runs the risk of becoming de-occidentalised. Morally and intellectually he becomes a Eurasian. He is distrusted by his own countrymen, he is not respected—perhaps regarded as rather a bore—by the natives over whom he is placed. But let the European who applies to another the epithet of "pro-native" enquire rigorously of himself whether his real ground of complaint is not this: that the person whom he criticises does not in all cases support the European against the Asiatic when the interests of the two are at variance, that he does not necessarily accept the European point of view as the only possible or the only just one.

"How is it that you Government officials, as soon as you have learned the language and studied the customs of the country, become either mad or hopelessly pro-Chinese?" This is a question which in one form or another is frequently asked by unofficial European residents in China. It may be that there is something in the nature of Chinese studies that makes men mad, and indeed I have heard this soberly maintained by persons who themselves are careful to avoid all risk of contagion. But it never seems to occur to such questioners that there may be some solid reasons for the apparently pro-Chinese tendencies (they are generally only apparent) of their official friends: reasons based on the fact that the latter have discovered—perhaps much to their own astonishment—how much there is truly admirable and worthy of preservation not only in Chinese art and literature and even religion, but also in the social organisation of the Chinese people. If there is one statement about China that can be made with perfect assurance it is this: that if in the long process of reform she learns to despise and throw aside all the supports she has leaned upon for thousands of years, if she exchanges for Western substitutes all her ideals, her philosophy of life, her ethics, her social system, she may indeed become rich, progressive, powerful in peace and war, perhaps a terror to the nations, but she will have left behind her very much that was good and great, she will have parted with much that was essential to her happiness and even to her self-respect, she will be a stranger to herself. And what will be the outward aspect of the China of those days? Great industrial cities there may be; harbours thronged with ocean-liners and with great battleships flying the Dragon flag; miles of factories, barracks, arsenals and shipping-yards; railway trains, motor-cars and airships coming and going incessantly from province to province; warehouses, banks and stock-exchanges full of myriads of buyers and sellers, each straining every nerve to excel his neighbour in the race for wealth. And where, in this picture of China's possible future, are the thousands of ancestral temples where to-day the members of every family meet to do homage to their honoured dead and to renew the bonds of kinship one with another? They are to be seen no more. In their place stand thousands of village police-stations.

[65] See p. 98.