SOME CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 149, 24 June 1908, Page 6

SOME CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS.

(By CAPTAIN HERBERT NOYES, late Sand Rifles.) (Concluded. Next, perhaps, in the list of disabilities associated with the Chinese, as a race, conies the vexed and delicate question of morals. • It cannot be discussed, here, at length, for many and obvious reasons; but the writer's experience differs in no way from that of Sir Richard Burton, who, as is well known, treated the subject with an utter lack of diffidence, and a freedom which, condoned in him, would inevitably bring down the condemnation of the narrow-minded—or, say, nine-tenths of the community—on the devoted head on any lesser exploiters of the unsavoury subject. Ordinarily speaking, virtue and vice are, of course, comparative terms; it is worthy of note that Exeter Hall made no protest against our allying ourselves with the Japanese, whose ethics of morality are utterly repugnant to us. But the Japaae?/>, much as I dislike and distrust them, do not practise unnatural vice to any gre?.t extent, and it is well known that in Sir Richard's map dealing with this point, the shading' is heaviest where the boundaries of the Northern Indian States impinge upon the wide territory of the "Celestial Kingdom."

One is naturally averse to expatiating at- length on the Chinese predilection for opium, a i'Jtl'mg always cited as characteristically degrading and disgraceful. The blot on our own escutcheon in connection therewith is too deeply stained.

Briefly, the matter resolves itself into one of the most glaring instances of bitterly unjust inconsistency of which the British Government has been guilty. To gratify our blantant commercialism, as conscienceless 50 years ago as it is now, we forced opium on the Chinese at the point of the bayonet, at the rifle's mouth; and, after a taste for the drug had become almost second nature with them, we hold the race up to opprobrium, abuse it without mercy, and; in some of our colonies, at least, make the use of the drug a crime. Moreover, in our frantic denunciation of the poppy, we utterly lose sight of the fact that the use of other and more deadly drugs is largely on the increase among our own people. And the vast majority of us are either ignorant of—or prefer to ignore—the fact that many Chinese use opium as we do tobacco, and with no more serious results.

The point emphasises what I have already written about their nervous systems, for the bulk of Chinese smokers have no difficulty fn limiting themselves to a certain quantity of the drug, which they rarely exceed; whereas with the European the vice becomes an obsession calling for larger and gradually increasing doses, with resultant atrophy of the moral, mental and physical sensibilities, decadence, death.

In all our hospitals in Hon"kon<* Shanghai, Singapore, Penang. and the Nativo States, indoor Chinese patients have tho quantity of opium they use

daily entered on their card, and, in most instances, that modicum is supplied them by " the hospital authorities. Notwithstanding all this there is no denying that & very real and palpable danger exists when by force of example or through association with the Chinese, weak men and unsexed women of European birth acquire a taste for opium smoking. In San Francisco, where no penalty against opium smoking exists —'beyond a crushing import duty—l have seen children of tender years being initiated into the practice; and an incredible number of white women visit the Chinese dene to indulge in the vice. I am informed —though here I speak with le3s certainty—that the Chinese camps of Australia are filled with degraded women who are not only sunk, body and soul, to the lowest depths, which sooner or later are reached by European smokers, but act as decoys for their yellow masters in procuring children for the hideous purposes for which the low-caste Chinese craves.

And as only the lowest types of Chinese appear to go so far afield as Australasia, it follows that no possible good can accrue by association with these low-caste coolies. It is a matter for wonder that with the wholesale horror of the race expressed, in Australia, the inhabitants of that continent have not legislated in the direction of prohibiting alliances —morganatic or otherwise—between their womenfolk and the hated alien. A similar law obtains in South Africa, in the Transvaal —that is, where a liaison between a white woman and a native comes under the provisions of the penal code. It is, of course, rank heresy, in the eyes of many prejudiced persons, to speak of the good qualities of the Chinese; but it must be remembered that the experience of the worthy people who are so bitter against the race is too often confined to a slight acquaintance with its coolie representatives in our. own possessions. It would be as obviously unfair to condemn the Chinese at large by the standard of these degenerate beings as it would be for foreigners to judge, or misjudge, the British nation by the blatant, loud-voiced, and self-assertive cockney tourist who occasionally riots over an astonished continent, criticising, comparing, and decrying, the bete noire of the natives, the shame of his disgusted compatriots.

In the conduct of his family life, the Chinese has few equals, and though he will view, unmoved, the sufferings and sorrows of strangers, he has nothing but consideration and regard for those of his own kith and kin. Shintoism, the real religion of nine-tenths of tKe race, inculcates, over and above putative ancestorworship, a reverence for age and one's immediate progenitors that has no counterpart in our own much-vaunted civilisation: and the deference paid to onc'3 elders in China is in startling contrast to the undisguised irreverence and thinly veiled contempt evinced towards grey ■hairs by the rising generation of . this country.

The commercial ethics of the Chinese are, I honestly believe, on a far higher plane than our own*and vastly superior to those of their immediate neighbours, , the Japanese. Throughout Japan, all positions of trust and responsibility in banks, shipping offices, and trading concerns, are filled by Chinese, their Japan- i ese employers frankly avowing that they \ \ cannot trust 'their own countrymen— I with all the more engaging candour, be- ' i cause the trading class in Japan are on • the lowest rung of the social ladder, and ] the principle of noblesse oblige finds no . i place in their philosophy. i : A Japanese will undertake a contract, ■ and so soon as he finds it a losing one, ■

will incontinently throw it up with the naive and, to hini, incontrovertible argument that he would be a fool t<s lose money for someone else's benefit. In China, on the contrary, where the pursuit of commerce i 3 a very honourable calling indeed, the contractor will beggar himself to fulfill his obligations, if, thereby, he can ''save his face" (Anglice: Preserve the good opinion of his neighbours and his own self-respect intact).

I have found in every large town in Japan the same unblushing piracy ot trade-marks; the same manufactories of spurious curios and shoddy fabrics; brown paper boots and alleged lt'at'her articles, bearing, perhaps, the name oS well-known Bond-street makers; and, withal, the same enjoyment of swindling the foreigner, and cheerful insolence when detected in instances of low chicanery. Yet you shall search China and find nothing more deceptive than the vile rice spirit, sold as whiskey to the uninitiated under the names and labels of most Scotch distillers.

And it is only fair to add that the Hylam, or servant class of Chinese coolies, is solely responsible for this method of imposition, and that in all European clubs and private houses, in the once so-called treaty ports, a practice of destroying European labels and capsules is scrupulously in force.

Lastly we come to the Chinese as fighting men, and it is with no desire to pose as an alarmist that I record my conviction that in this respect they call for special mention.. The time has.gone by when the profession of arms in China was classed very niuch the same aa commercial pursuits in Japan—thUt is to say, as the lowest of all callings.

Foreign ideas and unpleasant assocl ation with Western nations have altered all that; and the Chinese realise —no one better—that, notwithstanding Peace Conferences and Little Bethels' futile condemnation of warfare, the mighty kingdoms of the world are those that metaphorically speaking, keep their arms bright and their legions in readiness. And the realisation has gone far towards awakening a spirit of patriotism, which, till lately, was scarcely discernible in the Celestial Kingdom; it is only natural that the lirst duty of a patriot to protect his country Should appeal mostly strongly to the Chinese; with the result that militarism, for purely protective purposes, ia in great evidence at the present moment. How long it proposes to act solely on the defensive is without the scope of this article. Add, then, to this growing spirit of war-like patriotism, an utter disregard for personal inconveniences, not to say danger; a contempt for death, siich as animates any fanatical Arab listening to the preaching of a Jehad; a devotion to one's officers, euch as marked the personnel of our Wei-hai-wei regiment, and you have gone far towards the making of a first-class soldier, or. rather, fighting machine. I use the latter word advisedly, for, given a Kuropean loader in whom they have confidence, and the Chinese will follow him to Hades and back again, unquestioningly, unthinkingly, and animated with the single thought of keeping in the Jran ,of the fighting line. I have had serving under mc, in theiT order of fighting merit, Silys, Pathans, Chinese, Malays, and Madrasces, and. although I pliice the Chinese third in the list, no invidious comparison with the two preceding is intended. But, sii other things being equal, the Chinese would still have the advantagr of superior brain power, with which "vs».:eration the Northern Indians, per are not remarkably endowed. Many years ago Gordon the world of the quality of the Cuiaeee sol-

dier, and what was said in his day remains true in this. Given a leader, such as he, or any strong man who could weld the raw fighting material of the Empire into an effective weapon, backed by the almost inexhaustible resources of the country, and the might of. it would awe the world. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there are no s:gns of the coming of that man, though which of us shu.ll say that within the next few years the fiat may not go forth, "the hour has come and the man"?

' At the risk of being accused 61 the ! literary solecism of anti-climax, I cannot r refrain from glancing at one solution ' of the Yellow Peril problem, which, on . more than one occasion, has been ad- • vanced by certain well-meaning if mis- - guided persons. I refer to the sugges- ' ted Christianising of China as a means i of facing th» awkward fact of its mii .creasing strength and possible irrationJ ality. Judging by results, I do not » think for one instant that China will iftver bo converted, in the academic ; sense of the word, any more than the - professors of Mahommedanism, Buddl hism, or Brahminism. Otherwise, it - would be an excellent way out ol the : Chinese "impasse," for—l state it without i prejudice, but as an incontrovertible • fact—the only natives who evinced undisguised, unmistakable, and shameless ! cowardice, on every possible occasion, i during the siege of Pekin, were the so- ' called converted Chinese. 1