INDESTRUCTIBLE CHINA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 185, 6 August 1900, Page 2

INDESTRUCTIBLE CHINA.

TIEN-TSIN MASSACRES EXPLAINED BY A CHINAMAN.

MISCHIEVOUS MISSIONARIES TO

BLAME

(From Our Special Correspondent.)

LONDON, ffune 29

Until the ardour -of the mischievous but well-meaning- missionary can be subdued in China, we shall continue to have such outbreaks as are at present horrifying Europe. The impudence of the rev. gentlemen who go out to convert the heathen has, incl^d, never really toeen. fathomed. There are few readable and reliable books on China, and not many know of them. Once in a way, however, the press capture a cultured Chinese gentleman who is over here on a visit, and who possesses dollars galore and a pedigree stretching back, not hundreds, but thousands of years. Holding forth to a few,friends the other night, after spending a pleasant time with the "Express," an eminent Celestial of this class said:—-"Europeans generally, and you Anglo-Saxons particularly, have two faults: you fire not polite, and yo\i cannot see life whole. You arc impolite because you persistently strive to force your views, practices and custome upon other peoples, to whom they are distasteful. You cannot see life whole, because you decline to regard it from any other standpoint than your own. That, believe me, is at the root of the present and of all other troubles, as between China and what you modestly call the civilised world. There is considerable presumption in your use of that phrase, by the way. Seeing that our civilisation, or as you might say, our barbarism,, is some thousands of years older than your own, how can you tell that it is not.the natural, yogical, and inevitable outcome of a similar civilisation to that you now proudly call yours? What your missionaries call the 'Good Tidings' is something we do not require in China. We have no use for these tidings in my country; and their wearisome and insistent promulgation is regarded by the educated among us as ah intolerable nuisance, and by the common herd as merely the cloak by which you hide devilish machinations, the aim and object of which are the dominance of our country, the destruction of our religion, and the shattering of our integrity. Really thoughtful and educated Chinamen are as absolutely indifferent to the religious aspect of the missionary nuisance as you* would be to the same aspect of a parallel nuisance if we sent crowds of missionaries to England to spread the teachings of pur own sacred principles. It is political and social import that the vast majority of Chinamen attach to the missionary invasion ciuestion. Now, here is a Chinese pat - .let which was very freely circulate* in my native city at the time of the deplorable Tientsin massacre. Let me read you a passage from it. Yon must know that the masses, the uneducated masses, in my country credit yovr missionaries and manufacturers with extracting medicines and silver from the eyes and hearts of Chinese children, and, in the case of the silver, from the intestines of adults also. Now listen to this, and remember that it was read and believed by millions and millions at the time of "the Tientsin massacre:—

" 'The reason for extracting- eyes is this: From 1001b of Chinese lead can be:extracted 81b of silver, and the remaining 921b of lead can be sold at nearly the original cost. But the only way to obtain this silver is by com: pounding the lead with the eyes of their, own people. Or, again, here: Therefore, these contemptible beings, having aroused our righteous wrath, we • heartily adhering to the kingdom of our sovereign, would not only give vent to"'a little of the hate that will not allow us to stand under'the same heaven with them, but would make an eternal end of the distress of being obliged to have them ever near us. If the temporising process i& adopted, this non-human species will again increase.' • ; •

"How is it that you will not be warned? (continued ' the Chinese gentleman who supplied the "Express" with the foregoing). Those passages that I quoted were not only read and •believed b} r millions and millions of the most intensely conservative people in, the world, in my country; they were even quoted in an English book, the name of which I forget, but which I bought in London because it dealt with China. No, your methods are not polite, and, therefore, not politic. Even your traders, do not work onehalf the evil which is innocently wrought by your missionaries; innocently, bxit very arrogantly. But there! It is our point of view, and .not yours 1 therefore I greatly fear you will never consider it. And I regret that, because in the end it spells killing oh a large scale. And Europe cannot kill the Chinaman. He is too many-headed. The deduction is as obvious as it is £p be regretted."