WHY CHINA ISN'T PRETTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14157, 4 September 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHY CHINA ISN'T PRETTY.

BT TOHCKGA. :

We have, lately heard a great deal about the, wonders of China and the virtues of the Chinese. The little- boy who assured his envious comrade that "there ain't going, to be no core,"' has found a diplomatic successor who tolls us that " there ain't going to be no Yellow Peril." Wo accept this, of course—diplomatically. Just as we accept the assurances that there isn't any Chinese competition and that there aren't any Boxer outbreaks, and that it is as safe for a missionary to stroll along the banks of the Yang-tse-Kiang as for a popular citizen to stroll down Queen-street. Our equanimity has not been unduly strained, for nobody has asked us to believe that the Chinaman is pretty, which is where ho 'really differs from ourselves. If wo say it ourselves, we Europeans are average] y a fairly good looking people, particularly since we have begun to patronise the dentist. But we are not as "useful" as the Chinaman. If old Father Smith pointed out to son John that Mary Brown was not much to look at but was eminently respectable and came from thrifty people, and could work as well as any two other girls open to offers, and would • save Mother Smith an immense amount of toil for which the old lady was getting too feeble—what would son .John say? Imagine eon John with his heart brimful with thoughts of pretty Polly Perkins,

whose laugh is Tike the song of the blackbird in the morning, and whose bright face shines to him from among a crowd of girls as a glint of blue sky shines in the August cloud-drifts! Why, the average son John wooes pretty Polly on bended knees and weds her if he can/with all her imperfect qualities, and—we are what we are. Whereas, the Chinese John would have thrilled in his own Mongolian way at the thought of how dearly the old gentleman loved him, and how nice it would be to have useful Mary working IV" his mother—and all the useful qualities of Mary and all the filial piety of obedient John, and all the stolid unemotional antlike virtues of all their stolid unemotional ant-like ancestors would have been continued in their next—with faces as we see them.

And so it has gone on. We build a bridge across the Cemetery Gully, disturbing in their graves the founders of Auckland, the fathers and mothers of a nation ; and our descendant boys and girls will kiss each other, in the years to come, in the wide park lands that will some day grow over the cemeteries where we in our turn will be laid awayfor thus from time immemorable has been the way of the North European, to whom the impulse of the Present has been everything, and the authority of the Past as nought. For the touch of a stranger's hand the Englishspeaking girl leaves father and mother and brothers and sisters; and the race instinct in us holds her justified. For the sake of a fair face the English-speaking man will quarrel with his nearest and his dearest, denying the right of any to deny his right to love. And thus it has ever been, from long before the time that Rowena loved the invader, as we may know from a thousand myths and ten thousand legends, and from all the deathless folk lore.that enshrines the doings of the long! dead.

But the Chinaman! "Yield or we plough up the ancestral graves." was the final word of the Allies in Pekin to the Boxer Empress— she yielded. She could be defiant with Pekin sacked and looted, with a foreign sword driven into China "as a knife into cheese," with the impotency of the mad attack upon foreigners explained in most Gothic fashion. But the ancestral graves! A Western mind simply cannot understand; the Western eye can see the result, that is all. And so the Chinaman knows nothing of the mighty instinct which dominates the Western mind, as we. in our turn, know nothing of the mighty instinct which dominates lite. He is absolutely ignorant of the supreme passion which every normal Britisher acknowledges in his heart, and which corrodes all blind reverence of the Past as acid eats away the toughest metal. He has never set himself whole-heartedlv and with single purpoee to act for himself, by himself, for himself ; to build a nest of his own; to create a home in which a selfchosen woman shall queen. He has never loved and in his inheritance there is no loving. He has married at the bidding of his revered ancestors, married always the useful girl, the worthy girl, the industrious girl, the respectable girl, the girl that suited an unemotional race; and thus it has always been. Consequently, he is as packed with all the useful virtues as an egg is packed with meat—and he isn't pretty and he isn't idealistic, and he isn't anything else that Ave are.

In all probability the average Chinese marriage is much more contentful than the average British marriage. The average Chinese life is equally probably much more satisfactory than the average British life. "So little time, so much to do,*' grumbled the great Empire Builder; and died grumpling, most, English like. And there you have it. Our Western passions drive us. Every European has ambitions, desires, aspirations, ideals, often voiced in his youth, commonly hushed as the years weigh down hie energies, always dwelling in his innermost heart—and usually we are silly enough to think ourselves alone in this. For are we not, from distant ages, the children of men and women who have loved each other, idealising and fashioning as did Jehovah when He created from common clay man and woman in His own image and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life? We have not been content, to dream of mortal cooks and housekeepers, of useful companions and of girls who will be competent servants to mother. We have won glimpse of the high gods in Olympus, and we have sought the food and drink of the gods for our daily fare, and all the magic of the gods for our constant, possession. No race can have everything. No race can be beautiful without, loving ; no race can be emotional without passion : no race can bend its head to its ancestors, and lift its fate to the stars at one and the same time. And if we want to become as Chinamen, impassioned, reverential, incomparably thrifty, pre-eminently useful, we must, begin by wedding with joy the woman that. father thinks will suit us, and by asking no deeper thrill than the knowledge thai mother will have somebody useful to order about. Even then, the road to be retraced would be long and doubtful—for father cannot forget the sweetness of the face that drew him to the. altar, nor mother the beauty that blushed in her mirror while the stars danced in the ekies, and the wind learned of her happiness from the gossiping trees. They could not think only of the useful. They could not bring themselves to buy all the virtues at the cost of all that is beautiful.

We think that love makes the world go round. We say that the human race would die out without it. We imagine that wherever man is to be found he has been made higher than the beasts that perish by the intuitions which draw lover to lover across the ages and across the seas. Yet in China are 400,000,000 people who were born of loveless marriage; 50,000.000 women who have never known what it 36 to be courted ; 60,000,000 men who have never been knighted,, humblehearted and wondering, by the free choice of the One Woman in all the world. More than true, it is, that they are old and we are young. They are born old, born of submission and of usefulness, born of customs that are as utilitarian as the breeding laws of cattle, born to accept, anv wife or husband put before them by family authority, as they accept a meal or a hat. Doubtless there is stability in the Chinese character, something adamantine in a society built up on ancestral authority and filial obedience. But can nothing be said for Western ideals that have been cradled in love-lit homes, or for the faces that by joy and sorrow, hope and fear, love and grace, sin and suffering, have been made beautiful^