Nov. 17.
A rrw days ago Dr. Mac-Gillivray sent us a charming letter describing how he had found a group of tram labourers gathered, in their luncheon hour, about a man who was_ reading to them a novel of the Ming period; also of a street watchman engrossed in a tale of a Buddhist priest and his many adventures. And commenting on this evidence of the delight of common Chinese workmen, not in modern saws and Bolshevist instances, but in "the wonderful story of their own wonderful country,'' Dr. MacGillivray wished that the word ''coolie'' were not so deeply embedded in the Shanghai vocabulary, bearing as it does the taint of race contempt. Many of us must often have wished that too. But so long og upper class Chinese continue to think, if not to speak, of their humbler fellow-nationals as ''the stupid people,'' the foreigner is not wholly to blame.
Surely no phrase could be less appropriate to the Chinese, when ther of high or low degree. Among all the characteristics with which we try to label them, only to find that every quality ascribed is no more true of them than is its exact opposite, there can at least be no disputing their marvellous cleverness. We may pass over exceptional cases like that of a Chinese professor of English literature in Edinburgh; for such as these might be paralleled in any nation, the late Mr. Cornaby, for example, who could have taught the Chinese classics to a Hanlin. It is the little ordinary every-day folk whose intelligence is so startling. Every foreign newspaper in China produced any other language. Yet there are Chinese operators who can set up copy almost as quickly and accurately as Westerners; and they are but one class of the many different skilled artisans required for the making of a newspaper, while from every industry similar instances could be quoted of the Chinese workman's teachableness, compared with which his limitations are hardly to be mentioned. Or take the ordinary Chinese servant. Consider his deft management of master's peculiar and exotic garments and, in contrast with the simplicity of his own rice bowl and chopsticks,, the numerous and confusing implements and drinking vessels which master must have at meal-time. As for Chinese cooks, their ability is famous, nor does it seem to matter much to them whether the cooking is done in one of Mr. Bland's Capuan villas of Bubbling Well or on a charpoy at the tail of a houseboat. We can all abuse the cook and boy and throw up our hands over their manifold shortcoming and perennial deterioration. But the plain fact is that they spoil us and that, if ever we retire' to the ministrations of rustic and anvthing but neat-handed Phyllis, or the execrable cookery of suburban Blowzelinda, we shall miss them sorely.
The reverse side of Chinese cleverness is obvious in the state of -China to-day. Perceiving that their country has somehow fallen behind in the international race for supremacy and convinced that they can beat the foreigner at his own game, they find the secret of his success in his political institutions and believe that if they can transplant these to their own soil, they will be able to make s much noise in the world as he' does. The fallacy of this rea Tarts 12 pBR ANNUM. soning lies in the different meaning of progress in East and West. Why should the East wish to take anything from the West, except, perhaps, some medical and hygienic knowledge? The West has added to its creature comforts, but at the expense of much nervous strain and an infinite amount of grumbling and physical afflict tion when those comforts are unobtainable. In 'The New Republic'? Mr. Saunders ''apprehendg that the generation which travels at sixty miles an hour is at least ten times as advanced as that which travels only six,'' and is rightly convicted of error by his opponent in the discussion. The indifference of Chinese to personal inconvenience, which enables them to thrive equally. at the North Pole and the Equator, is what all Westerners must often have envied; and when we get behind the shrieking of politicians and the misdeeds of officials and other bandits, it is a nice question whether China has indeed dropped so much behind the rest of the world. It all depends on whether we give first place to bodily well-being or mental poise. And when Young China can spare a moment from its civil wars to think what the country really needs, it might reflect on the parable contained in Dr. MacGillivray's story of the labourers, laying foreign tram lines for a living, but, for their relaxation, turning to the Ming fairy-tales.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.