| THE FEUDAL AGE
It is a very common thing now-a-days to
meet people who are going to "China," which can be reached by the
Siberian railway in fourteen or fifteen days. This brings us at once
to the question--What is meant by the term China?
Taken in its widest sense, the term
includes Mongolia, Manchuria, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the
Eighteen Provinces, the whole being equivalent to an area of some
five million square miles, that is, considerably more than twice the
size of the United States of America. But for a study of manners and
customs and modes of thought of the Chinese people, we must confine
ourselves to that portion of the whole which is known to the Chinese
as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as China Proper. This portion
of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths of the whole, covering
an area of somewhat more than a million and a half square miles. Its
chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking, the capital, in the
north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the south; Shanghai,
on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.
Any one who will take the trouble to look
up these four points on a map, representing as they do central
points on the four sides of a rough square, will soon realize the
absurdity of asking a returning traveller the very much asked
question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a Chinaman, who had
spent a year or two in England, how he liked Europe! Peking, for
instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as Madrid; whereas
Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the square
indicated by the four points enumerated above will be found
variations of climate, flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals --not
to mention human beings--distributed in very much the same way as in
Europe. The climate of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no
rain, and hardly any snow, falling between October and April. The
really hot weather lasts only for six or eight weeks, about July and
August--and even then the nights are always cool; while for six or
eight weeks between December and February there may be a couple of
feet of ice on the river. Canton, on the other hand, has a tropical
climate, with a long damp enervating summer and a short bleak
winter. The old story runs that snow has only been seen once in
Canton, and then it was thought by the people to be falling
cotton-wool.
The northern provinces are remarkable for
vast level plains, dotted with villages, the houses of which are
built of mud. In the southern provinces will be found long stretches
of mountain scenery, vying in loveliness with anything to be seen
elsewhere. Monasteries are built high up on the hills, often on
almost inaccessible crags; and there the well-to-do Chinaman is wont
to escape from the fierce heat of the southern summer. On one
particular mountain near Canton, there are said to be no fewer than
one hundred of such monasteries, all of which reserve apartments for
guests, and are glad to be able to add to their funds by so
doing.
In the north of China, Mongolian ponies,
splendid mules, and donkeys are seen in large quantities; also the
two-humped camel, which carries heavy loads across the plains of
Mongolia. In the south, until the advent of the railway, travellers
had to choose between the sedan- chair carried on the shoulders of
stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable house-boat.
Before steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for the
doctor's degree at the great triennial examination would take three
months to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however,
were often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred
miles a day.
The market in Peking is supplied, among
other things, with excellent mutton from a fat-tailed breed of
sheep, chiefly for the largely Mohammedan population; but the sheep
will not live in southern China, where the goat takes its place. The
pig is found everywhere, and represents beef in our market, the
latter being extremely unpalatable to the ordinary Chinaman, partly
perhaps because Confucius forbade men to slaughter the animal which
draws the plough and contributes so much to the welfare of mankind.
The staple food, the "bread" of the people in the Chinese Empire, is
nominally rice; but this is too costly for the peasant of northern
China to import, and he falls back on millet as its substitute.
Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow abundantly in the
north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange, the
pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of
a more tropical character. |