27th Feb THERE are several of the Great Powers which are said to be deeply concerned in the Problem of The Open Door in China. What they want, as we understand it, is to keep open the Door, by putting their boot inside, making it difficult for Bears or other animals to shove the door shut without having it noticed. Now there are many persons in China who are by no means Great Powers, whose problem as to The Open Door is how to keep it shut,1 especially when the thermometer} ranges from twenty to thirty degrees below the freezing point. In other lands where this temperature is common, there appears to be a slight difficulty about accomplishing the end in view, but it is but a slight one. All one has to do is conspicuously to Body Shuts The Door '5.: t You," and ithering "Notice: Every-
without seeming to take "notice" "you" find yourself closing the door as requested. Then there is a kind of patent door-spring which you are earnestly entreated to let alone and its automatic action will dispense with human agency of all sorts, and leave not so much as the smallest crack. And to supplement these various devices, some of the more retentions establishments have small lads dressed in livery, whose special function it is to open and close the door after every individual who enters or makes his exit. Ostentatious luxury can no further go than this extreme. Here in China, it is superfluous to remark, things are on a wholly different basis. The Chinese is a being whose conceptions of a door are of the most rudimentary character, corresponding to his experience. A Chinese "door" is merely two boards, or two sets of boards united by cleats, with an extension at the outer edge to serve as a rude axis of partial revolution. The wood has never been seasoned.
was sawed irregularly, and planed still more so. The inequalities of the door-frame are matched by others of the door itself, and there may be Boards some of which would easily yawning chasms between the different
admit a cat. Under the door is an opening which constantly admits a dog. Over the door is an aperture which is at times covered with oiled paper pasted on the frame, but wind, rain, swallows, and Time are generally too much for its perminence. At its best estate the average Chinese door does not exclude the currents of external air, and the exigencies of Chinese housekeeping require that it be open for a considerable part of the day. Reared under these conditions it is next to impossible for a Chinese to learn to shut; a foreign door as a matter of duty. To begin with he generally finds it almost beyond his capacity to get it open and shut. Forty and more years ago, Thomas Taylor Meadows: nentioned that his native pundit had never yet got to the point of mastering the door-handle. About fifty years of experience finds the present generation of Chinese still largely in despair over this same foreign door-knob. The struggles of the new-comer are fascinatingly amusing to behold. His first thought is that he can yell the door open, by simply bawling to whomsoever may be on the other side. Then the handle floats gently into his field of vision, and he sizes it with a firm determination to pull it out, by which means he trusts that the way will be open for additional progress, After trials more or less prolonged, anddirections repeated with more or less inter-mittens sequence, he tries to " wring" the unruly member as advised. To his extreme surprise the whole structure suddenly gives way without assignable cause, and he finds himself in another room. Then somebody calls out to him to "huan men," which he obediently essays to do. He grasps the mysterious knob with firmness, holds it in his grip until the door is almost shut, when he releases the intractable mechanism, and the wind blows open the door just as it was before. "Kwan men," he is told in stentorian tones, upon which he proceeds to business with the air of a desperado. This time he holds the knob fast even after the door is shut, and is so wary of letting it go too soon, that he inadvertently pulls the door slightly ajar when he releases it, and the former process is repeated, as well as the dreaded order to kuan men, as if he knew how to shut it! This experience may be repeated with the same individual for a term of years, and although he may frequently succeed in getting the door shut properly, there are many other occasions when despite his best efforts he has to give it up, for reasons which to him appear to be as inscrutable as the secrets of nature. To an Occidental in midwinter it is one of the inexplicable surprises of Chinese life that few Chinese seem to mind whether a door has been left open or not. There may be a crack an inch or two in width, letting in not "a thief wind" but a whole band of mounted robbers, yet the Chinese sitting next to it do not seem to be seriously inconvenienced. It is the Westerner from a remote part of the building who looks around to see whence arises the unwonted draught, and hastens to dispatch some one to: uan men once more. Wearied by incessant repetitions of this experience, he tries such door-springs as his exiguous supply of hardware may chance to al!uw, only to find that under Chinese manipulation the best and strongest of them appear to be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.