WHAT OF THE CHINESE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

WHAT OF THE CHINESE?

WESTERN MISCONCEPTIONS.

TRUTH ABOUT CONFUCIANISM.

SPIRIT AND TEMPER OF RACE.

The following intimate reflections on China and the Chinese are culled' from' an article in "John o' London's.Weekly" by the well-known writer Mrs. Pearl S. Buck, who has spent practically all her life in China, and whose husband is a professor of Nanking University:— I cast my ; mind over the scores of "foreign Chinese" whom I know. Some of them have spent years abroad; some of them have never left their own shore. Many of those who have returned from abroad, I find, are full of a longing, difficult to conceal, to go back to foreign lands. Those who have not gone plan with utmost zeal to go as soon as they can. Yet, despite all that, Americans and Europeans tell me that when these "foreign Chinese" are abroad, many of them give the most exalted impressions of their own countries, the profound culture, the high Confucian or Buddhist civilisation, the spiritual aspects stressed in contrast with the materialism of the West. When they write books and articles, I see for myself that they stress these aspects also. • » * * • Now, I am the last person to deny the height of the Confucian code and ethics with their perfection of selfcontrol and moral self-culture. The trouble with Confucianism is the same as with Christianity; it has never been really tried on any large scale. I think this is why when the travelled Chinese come back from Europe or America into the real life of their own country they are foreign to it; for it is not what they dreamed it was—or said it was ■until they dreamed it so. Yes, they are foreign to it. Here in Nanking I go to my friend's house next door but one. It is a foreign house, filled with foreign furniture, and the children wear foreign clothes usually and the father always wears foreign clothes. I might find a house like this in any small town in any American city. Still, I am ill at ease\there. It is "not Chinese." True, there are plenty of citizens of China. But they speak of foreign books, play foreign music on a foreign phonograph, talk of how to earn more money at teaching English or Some such employment. There are scores of j such homes in this new capital. The children in them are being reared in a 1 strange, hybrid atmosphere. ( Neither Confucianism nor Christianity is taught them. They gabble equally well in English or Chinese. Strange Forces At Work. The truth is the people of Chinp, are not tßiese. What the people Of China may $e in the future I do not know. Strange forces are working here; alieii civilisations are having a tremendous influence, not through the few Westt erners who are here in missionary work or trading business, but through, "these scores of Western-educated men and women of Chinese race who are modifying- Chinese culture. It is still true that their influence does not permeate far outside their homes, that their homes are almost without exception in port cities, and that they have little communication with the stay-at-home Chinese except for Servants dealers. • ; Their social 'life is in their own group. But their number increases, and their children must in,a generation or two do much to change the true quality, the peculiar temper, of the Chinese as a people. Obviously, human nature is human wherever it is found. It is at the root the same, and its manifestation, while varying somewhat in ways of, expression, varies not at all in essence. Chinese civilisation is a far robuster thing than the cool. classicism of Confucius. The spirit of the common people is hatdy and passionate; they are easily angered, emotional, uncontrolled in a degree. If . it had' not been so, the nation couldnever have survived the restrictions Confucianism sought and failed to lay upon it; failed, because the people have evaded them and have lived their natural life. Much as I admire Confucian ethics for the purposes of meditation for scholars, and glibly as many of lia& cayings are repeated or beautifully as they are Written as decorations upon scrolls, I must confess their chief usefulness to-day seems to be .as decorations, just >8 the sayings of Jesus in Western v countries seem to be mainly decorative. I do' not find the Chinese people any more permeated by the spirit of Confucius than I find my fellow countrymen permeated by the spirit of Jesus. The common people of China number, I suppose, at least 90 per cent of the country's population. It is generally estimated that farmers alone, the so-called "peasants," form 75 to 80 per cent of it, and besides these there are many millions of industrial workers and tradesmen in towns and cities, few of whom are literate enough to have access to the classics. The number of Confucians, then, must be very email. Natural and Individualistic. It is true that the name of Confucius Is known and revered by almost everyone except the young radicals. The common people are not able to read what he said, but they often know a few of his sayings. Yet I have seen no evidence that these few sayings influence their behaviour at all, nor do I believe they are personally affected by them five minutes in a lifetime. I am compelled to this conclusion because of the life I see around me everywhere, in which I take an active part. I am forced to take a similar view by the fact that in a comparatively literate West I do not find that Jesus and His teachings exert an influence sufficiently strong to justify calling the peoples Christian. Why, then, should I think, against the evidence of my experience, that Confucius is more of a presence among these millions Who cannot read and who have no place to which they can go to hear the classics read to them, and who may even grow up and live and die without ever hearing a word of his doctrines spoken? By their fruits are all judged.

I do not consider the Chinese people Over-sexed or sensual. But if they are not so, it is because 6ex has been x accepted as an inevitable force in their lives and without reason for repression, normal as food and dfifik. Young men are married, early so as to provide for natural impulses without demands for impossible self-control. .Chastity in women is deemed important in certain groups of Chinese society; it ia not evbn expected in others where circumstances of life make it difficult. Of course, if a learned man is questioned on these I things, he will reply with a moral principle. But we are here dealing not with moral principles, but with living people, i

After the Nanking incident of a few years ago, when my home was occupied for a considerable time by Chinese sol- j diers, I found on my return to it that i the_ walls were covered with pictures and scribbled verses and words. I took pains to read and look at all of them, and to m y astonishment there was not an obscene word or picture in the whole house, which would hardly have been true if Western soldiers had occupied it. I mentioned the fact to some of my Chinese friend?, and they said with surprise, "But what is there to say or draw about such things ? Every child even understands about sex. What is there strange in it!" Now, I maintain that this is a stout, healthy attitude, and I believe such an attitude is the outcome of no Confucian repressions. The Chinese whom I know is not self-controlled, and he brooks very ill any control from others. He is singularly individualistic, and I often wonder how lie will , endure the restrictions of a democratic government if he ever gets one. , Warlike And Quarrelsome Race. History and literature show that the have been an extremely warlike and quarrelsome people, quarrelling, it is true, mainly among themselves, because the people differ so from one another in different sections of their large country. But as the nation becomes more homogeneous through education and communications, this warlike and quarrelsome mind will inevitably tend to be manifested towards' foreign countries. Indeed, it is an open secret that some young Chinese have been. hoping for a foreign war. Anydhe who lives among the Chinese people is impressed with the frequency, length, and virulence of their quarrels and with the deep feeling of revenge with which they may become imbued. Peace is not to be found here, except as an ideal in a few old books of moral principles which the rank and file of the people do not read and never consider. And why try to shape them to these old books? They never have been shaped by books —they are far too robust and sturdy a race. I like" the Chinese as they really are. They are not more truthful than I am, or more moral or more eelf-controlled, or any of the things we ought all to be and are not. But I am sure that in circumstances such as theirs, where floods and famines and bandits and an overpowering ignorance and a struggling Government are equally oppressive, I should not do my work better than they do. They have a naive love of a good time and loud chatter; they find pleasure in wine when they can get it, and they enjoy forgetting their troubles in gambling; they take a frank delight in sex and in quarrelling and commotion. They do not, it is true, work-hard enough at anything, most of them, to "get ahead." But I share with them their feeling that a bowl of rice to' stave off hunger, and leisure, and sleep under a tree are worth more than harried for any larger material good,' especially when bandits and taxes lie ready, like the proverbial worm and moth, to consume all earthly possessions. Nor have the heavens been so kind as to make one hope for kinder gods. Even for the purposes of a so-called' "patriotism," I resent the deification of a very simple race. The glory and the strength of the Chinese people are in their humanity. Families rise and fall; their rise is from the land almost without exception,, their fall is inevitable in the very nature of their life. The romance of their life is that any man has the chance to. rise, by luck and skill, in spite of Confucian maxims to the contrary, and if a man has imagination he has the first gift. But whatever they choose to do, they have lived so lohg as a race that they know from start to finish the failings to which we ate all liable, and they accept all. They allow for all that is human, and they are not oppressed by any sense of sin. Let the bones of Coniucius lie where the common people of China have let them lie • these many centuries, cold and dead in his dust, and his spirit between the covers of his books" "I like these people as they are, common with the good-commonness of everyday things, lusty, hardy, quarrelsome,' alive 1