Among the treasures of Buddhist monasteries are the stone tablets called “Pei Tze.” It used to be the custom of celebrated visitors to write an epigram, a witticism, a poem, or a sentence of philosophy, which the monks had a stone-cutter engrave as near the beautiful chirography as possible on these tablets, which constitute through the empire a great literary treasure which is not likely now to be renewed. Not a little of the sententiousness is humorous. A sign hanging up in a celebrated Buddhist monastery in the Chingtu plain, Szechuen province, makes this merry reference to fleas, which constitute the largest part of the present immense population of China: “There are animals with more legs than ponies at Inns other than this Inn.” Another popular humorous motto is: “One can carry kindness too far, such as the fisherman who had such pity for fish that he would only go fishing with straight hooks.” The idiom for inaction is: “keeping one’s hands in one’s sleeves.” For “eating crow” the Chinese say: “eating a dumb man’s bitterness.” More of their wisdom follows:

“Meekness and gentleness are the boat and the sail for crossing the rough stream of this world.”

“The truths that we least wish to hear are those which it is most to our advantage to know.” “The way to glory lies through a palace; to riches through a market; to virtue through a desert.”

“The Manchu court is like the sea, where everything depends on the wind.”

“He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.”

“The prison is shut night and day, yet is always full; the temples are always open, yet you find no one in them.”

“He who lets things be given to him is not good at taking.”

“The dog in the kennel barks at his fleas, but the dog who is hunting does not feel them.”

“The finest roads are the shortest ones.”

“Man may bend to virtue, but virtue can not bend to man.”

“The wise man does not speak of all he does, but he does nothing that can not be spoken of.”

The Occidental manner of emphasizing a plea is: “If you don’t follow this advice, look out for the consequences.” Here is the Chinese phrase, as concluding Wu Ting Fang’s plea, in December, 1911, to the Prince Regent Chun to abdicate: “Our voice is hoarse and our tears are exhausted; no more can be said.” Their idiom for: “I’m not my own boss” is: “I eat another’s bread; I watch at the door.” More of their proverbs are:

“Who is he, though he never goes out, yet has seen all that is under the sky? The scholar among his books.”

“If the ruby is unpolished, it is not a gem.”

“Age for a sharp chin, and a sharp tongue.”

“It is with human nature as with wines: age sweetens some and sours others.”

“Happiness and misery both come in doubles.” “Going through college doesn’t mean that the college has gone through you.”

“You can lead a boy to the right book, the rest depends on himself.”

“The deeper the water, the slower the stream.”

“It is easier to escape a splinter that you see, than a beam that you don’t see.”

“Familiarity takes the height off a mountain.”

“Wit may purchase wealth, but wealth can not purchase wit.”

“Originality can go so far back that it becomes aboriginality.”

“Your parents died when you were a child,” is the bitterly sarcastic way in which the Chinese express that one has no manners, or up-bringing. The following repartee is credited to almost every traveled Chinese official, but it originated in the imagination of an Occidental wit, because the Chinese consider manners and forgiveness the first rule of public conduct. Official Bu was asked by an impertinent Occidental why he wore such a ludicrous appendage as a queue. “Why do you wear a mustache?” asked the Oriental, “Because I’ve such an awful mouth.” “I thought so, from your first question,” was the Oriental’s rejoinder.

Yu Yuen, a satirist of 400 B.C., when China was divided into many states, ruled by inferior princes, wrote in defense of the able prime ministers who were trying to save the states: “I, too, am glad I can not fall to the intellect and moral level of princes.”

Chang Jo Hu, A.D. 800, with Isaiah-like emphasis reminds even long-lived proud China that

He also wrote:

Po Chuh Ih, A.D. 772, once president of the Board of War, and later an exile, wrote some Scott-like lays, including the Never Ending Wrong, and the famous Lute Girl, which is full of silver music coming over a moon-lit lake. At the lake he meets the lute-girl, once a court favorite, but now old and deserted. The poet does not try to disguise the truth. He says:

Tai Chen, a poet, speaking for the Emperor Ming Huang, who is pursued to Mount Omi, in Szechuen, by the rebel, An Lu Shen, writes: “The star of empire pales before the morning beams of conquering foes.” Some of his lyrics show pretty conceits like: “The pansies are faces of loves that have died.” His Ruined Home reads like parts of Solomon’s wisdom.

Tai Chen was preceded by the most famous poet of China, Li Po (A.D. 702). He was born in Szechuen province. His patron was the Emperor Ming Huang, then a wanderer, as we have stated. A Browning-like poet of the world, he talks of the Tang emperors of Nanking, patrons of sculptors, “calling down the dreams of the gods and imprisoning them in stone.” In an ode to Nanking, he tells about: “a woman asleep by a loom, and a beautiful dream guiding her fingers along a glorious pattern that is known only to the gods.” He believes in the high mission of the poet, for he sings of “the fadeless lines of fire, running back to the births of immortal poets, who now walk amidst the stars.” Like others of the Chinese, and many of the new race of American poets, he has a strong sympathy with trade unions. He addressed an ode To the Golden Presence of Guild Brothers. He sings mightily of war in a song To my Fatherland, and then lapses thus into a sadder note when he reflects upon whom the sorrows of war come: “The pensive washwoman sends her heart to the Tartar war in far Kansu province to find her conscript soldier husband who suffers in the snows.”

Kao Shih, a contemporary poet, was a tremendous believer in the personal soul. He wrote striking verse because of his love of the occult, and his tendency to give to natural phenomena dramatic personalities.

Ou Yang Hsiu, of the following dynasty, the Sung, 1007 A.D., himself a governor, and historian of the Tang dynasty, wrote a famous “Autumn” poem, which is truly a march of Elizabethan metaphors. He showed, too, a cynicism which was like the Elizabethan:

AbbÉ Huc’s servant, Wei Chau, picked up in the book stores of Nanchang, in Kiangsi province, pamphlets with the following brilliant epigrams, which are not surpassed in any literature, and which might have been written by Wilde:

“My books speak to my mind; my friends to my heart; all the rest speak to my ears only.”

“One needs his wits most when dealing with a fool.”

“One forgives anything to him who forgives himself nothing.” We call our printed Bible the “Word of God.” The Chinese have an expression somewhat similar. Their beautiful ideographs are delightfully called “Eyes of God.” The following is an effort of the Manchus in literature, translated idiomatically, and it shows the literary feebleness of the relapsed old conquerors. It is the national anthem which the dynasty gave by edict to the Chinese to sing at the opening of the rebellion in October, 1911:

The omnivorous Goethe made some investigation of Chinese literature, and here is his opinion of what he had read: “The people think, act and feel almost entirely as we do, although with them everything is clearer, calmer and more moral. In their arrangements everything is sensible, bourgeois, without great passion or poetry. What is moral, proper and in strict moderation is considered.” Now and then more or less distinct evidences of Chinese influence on the Greeks come to view, though the thread west of the headwaters of the Tarim is now lost. Many of the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato are similar to those of Chinese Lao Tse, and therefore they may have been instructed by the Chinese sage, whose book could have gone overland to Greece with the caravans of silk.

The advent of the many newspapers has made a great difference in the nerves and consciousness of the Chinese. From being the most stolid of peoples, indifferent to famine, flood, war, persecution by the officials or by the favored, poverty, pain, hardships physical and mental, they have become as restive, impatient, nervous and self-conscious as other races. Famine and flood used to sweep down and destroy millions. What was the use of complaining, since no one knew, nobody cared, and the victim might as well not care? Now, if disaster takes off not a million men, but one man, it is important, the newspapers chronicle it, and show how the lot of others may be the lot of the individual. The sufferer himself cries: “Woe is to me; isn’t this unendurable; help me; I can not, I WILL not bear it.” The newspaper has developed the ego. The Chinese has become self-conscious and nervous. He can not, he will not hereafter bear anything more than other peoples. In the August, 1911, floods and the October, 1911, revolution more fuss was made over the loss of a thousand men and women than over the loss of hundreds of thousands in the Taiping rebellion in the same region in 1853.

Not long ago, a weekly at Hongkong appealed to its public for a new name. I quote some of the names to reveal what the Far East thinks of itself in a humorous or serious light: “Bird of Freedom”; “Bubbles”; “China Answers”; “Cathay’s Looking Glass”; “Chop Sticks”; “East of East”; “Fragrant Waters” (the translation of Hongkong); “Fire Crackers”; “Murmurs and Funnosities”; “Mixed Pickles”; “Peak and Praya”; “Topical Tropical Times”; “The Griffin” (a beginner in the Orient); “The Gong”; “The Hit”; “Humming Top”; “Imperial Outpost”; “The Lantern”; “Merry-Go-Round”; “The Palm”; “The Pearl”; “Sun of Cathay”; “The Typhoon”; “The Ferret”; “The Colonel”; “Maskee” (the Chinese way of saying “never mind”); “Puckee” (the Oriental way of saying “O.K.”). The Chinese newspaper is a success, commercially, patriotically and educationally. Millions now read it every day. It gave the best and earliest news of the October, 1911, revolution. There are Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Penang, Hongkong, Sydney, Paris and London.

Chinese plays recite the history of the clans and early states. Even the boatman and laborer are familiar with them. Every hill, valley, and reach and fall of a river north of the Yangtze has its hero and story. This would seem to prove that the race first came through the Tarim and Kansu gates to the new land. The rich, who aim to control trade routes and privileges depending upon popular tolerance, in Roman fashion give free theatricals to the village folk. The acting is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling troupes. Guild halls and some monasteries have theaters in connection with the compound. A restaurant is run during the long series of plays. You hurry out to dine when the play you are least interested in is rung in by cymbal. Bets and lawsuits between the guilds and villages are often settled by the loser paying for the visit of a theatrical troupe. Beautiful specimens of the blue and gold gowns of the emperor-actor can be secured at the silk shops of the treaty ports, and in some of the Oriental shops of New York, San Francisco and London.

The American and British college graduate wears a hood; the Chinese wears a yellow panel on his breast and back (it may be changed under the republicans to blue). When Yuan Shih recently took the oath of office as provisional president, two bonzes of the famous Lama Temple at Peking stepped up, and presented him with honorary panels of yellow silk.

The incident will be recalled in Judges, Chapter 12, where the Gileadites slew the Ephraimites who could only pronounce the word “shibboleth” as “sibboleth”. The Manchus are thicker of tongue than the Chinese. An ingenious story got about in October, 1911, that the rebels of General Li’s army were testing some disguised Manchus with the pronunciation of the numeral six, “Liu”, before killing them in retaliation for a massacre, the Manchus being unable to get the sound far enough back in their mouths and around their tongue in the proper Chinese fashion. The proper tone, lisp and aspirate makes all the difference, for the same written word “ho” means river and fire; the word “shui” means water and sleep; “chih” means gas and red, and so on.

English, and not German, has been prescribed as the language to be used in the study of science and world politics. The Chinese idiom and ideograph could not come near enough to distinct expression. For instance, the best they could do with fire-engine, steam-roller, Elijah’s chariot of fire, and automobile, was to call them all “fire carriage”; and electricity, globe, and flash-light were all three “lightning breath”. Geography, the world, and panorama were all called “All Under Heaven” (Tien Hsia). “Heavenly Literature” (Tien Wen) represented the words theology and astronomy. Lacking pronouns, the language adopts peculiar expedients. Thus an affix meaning “near” answers to “my”, and “that side” answers to “your”. That is, “near house” is my house; “that side house” is obviously your house. If this does not clearly convey the idea, the arbitrary ideographic affix of “honorable” and “despisable” will; that is, the “honorable house” is your house of course, and the “despisable house” with so effusively mannerly a people could only be my house. On account of their experience with the difficult and beautiful Chinese character which requires accuracy, the Chinese penman who learns to write English, does it in the most beautiful Spencerian copper-plate. The same care and skill is shown in copying drawings from our modern text-books, which have been translated for their new schools. The Chinese think in pictures. The characters for “many stars, clouds wait” means a clear night, as “clouds many, stars wait” means a gathering storm. This is why they have chosen English for its exactness, as they can not well express the word gathering. “It is bad walking” is rendered by “Walk not attain” (Tsou puh te). Passenger boats or skiffs are not so named. Those in use at Hongkong are called “san pans” (meaning three boards), and the famous light boats of the Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien are called “wu pans” (five boards). The forcible etymology of some Chinese words is illustrated by the words for “fan tan” gambling, which literally means “turn and part”. The cup is turned over a lot of coins, and the rest of the heap is brushed aside. Then the cup is raised, and the croupier, with his separator-stick, parts four coins at a time from the lot, until four or a particle are left, this being the winning number of the game. That the old southern Chinese, as contrasted with the succeeding northern Mongol invaders, invented the language is shown in many of the words. For instance, the word for road or path is called throughout China a “dry way”, and not a road or street. Only the central and southern provinces flood the fields for rice culture, leaving the raised dry paths.

Samuel Pollard, a missionary working in Yunnan, is compiling an alphabet and reducing to writing the speech of the hitherto unrecorded aboriginal tribes, the Miao and Lolos. He plans then to give them some western literature in return for the ethnological riches which they give us. They are the most unique people in the world, older even than the Chinese. Their fortresses are in Szechuen, Yunnan and Kweichow provinces, and there are, perhaps, two millions of this fearless fighting race. From dimmest history they have been pressed back to the mountain tops by the Chinese, who have spread out from their original home in the Yellow River valley with four hundred million people. That the Chinese have impressed some of their language, as far as necessary trade goes, on the aborigines can be seen from the following table, there remaining only two (two and five) sounds in these eight, which have not been somewhat influenced:

The writer in the Antiquity chapter of a former book adopted the Biblical account of the creation, that the original Chinese (Chou clan’s ancestors) spread through Turkestan, along the Tarim valley, to their first known home in Shensi province. Doctor Stein has found on the site of the ruined temple of Hangayi Tuti at Khoten, in Chinese Turkestan, birchbark and other manuscript in an unknown language. These point the way to a further search. The Asiatic Society, of Bengal, Calcutta, has acquired from a Montenegrin gentleman, who traveled in Turkestan, five leaves of brownish yellow manuscripts eight by six inches, in an unknown language, which wait to reveal possible wonders of China’s prehistoric story. The pages show that they were one part of an extensive work now lost in the sands and camp ashes of central Asia. There is room for emulation by America, Britain and China of Russia’s archeological research in Chinese Turkestan, for the world wants to know more of ancient China, now that the New China has become important. The professors of the American colleges in China are sufficiently learned to make a beginning in preserving China’s antiquities, which are now in great danger of being lost forever. The rage, as far as the Chinese themselves are concerned, is altogether for the new and utilitarian. The modernized Chinese have already forgotten their conservative Hanlin Academy.