Birdseye Views of Far Lands

The Land of Opposites-China

A half century ago the world laughed at Jules Verne for imagining that it would ever be possible to go around the world in eighty days. It was not until years later that Nellie Bly, a reporter, actually encircled the globe in that space of time. Now we are dreaming of making such a journey in ten days and our aeroplanes are flying at a rate of speed that would take one around the world in eight days. At this hour thousands of young men can handle these flyers as easily and with almost as little danger as they can handle an automobile. With aerial mail routes already established in many countries it will not be long until mail service by aeroplane will be established around the world.

This book is a series of Birdseye Views of Far Lands something the same as one would see on a flying visit to various countries. In this way it will be possible to get glimpses of countries on every continent in one small volume and thus give interesting and valuable information about countries and peoples in all parts of the world. Young people especially are in the mind of the writer. As most of the information was secured by rambling through these countries and rubbing elbows with the common people it will be difficult to keep from using the personal pronoun quite often.

It is fitting that our first view be of China which is one of the oldest civilizations on the earth. This great agricultural people have tilled the same soil for forty centuries and in most cases it yet produces more per acre than the soil of perhaps any other country. The Chinese are a great people. Although they are just awakening from a sleep that has lasted twenty centuries or more, yet the world can learn many valuable lessons from them. They used to embody the genius of the world and even yet have skill along certain lines that is simply amazing. Many of the great inventions that have blessed the world and which we are using today were wrought out by these people and it will not be out of place here to recount some of their achievements.

The Chinese invented printing five hundred years before Caxton was born and the Peking Gazette is said to be the oldest newspaper in the world. They invented paper nearly eighteen centuries ago and had books hundreds of years before the days of Gutenburg. They invented the compass twenty centuries before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They invented gunpowder ages ago and were the first people to use firearms. They used banknotes and bills of exchange long before other nations, and the modern adding machine is founded upon a principle which has been used by them a thousand years. They discovered the process of rearing the silkworm and they dressed in silk when our forefathers wore clothing made of the skins of animals. The writer has crossed the Atlantic more than a dozen times on ships with watertight compartments, a so-called modern safety device, but the Chinese had watertight compartments in their junks hundreds of years before modern steamships were ever dreamed about.

To the Chinese we must credit the making of asbestos, the manufacture of lacquer, the carving of ivory and many other important industries. Even today they make the finest dishes and the best pottery. At one time they built a tower two hundred and fifty-six feet high entirely of porcelain. Ages ago they dug the longest and in some respects the greatest canal ever dug on earth, the Grand Canal of China, which was a thousand miles long and some of which is in use to this day. They built the Great Wall of China which was fifteen hundred miles in length and which was a greater undertaking than the building of the Pyramids of Egypt.

The Chinese were the first people to coin money in a mint; the first to have a standard of weights and measures; the first to have a system of marking time. They had a celestial globe, an observatory, and noted the movements of heavenly bodies more than four thousand years ago. A Chinaman was the first to distill and use intoxicating liquor and for this he was dismissed from the public service by the ruler who said, "This will cost someone a kingdom some day." They are industrious, resourceful and skillful and should they become warriors and introduce modern methods and instruments of warfare the world would be up against the most frightful peril of all ages. Napoleon Bonaparte said of China, "Yonder sleeps a mighty giant and when it awakens it will make the whole world tremble."

The Chinese are one of the strongest races of people in existence. They have only been conquered twice but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors and made Chinese of them. Although old, out of date and slow, they have principles in their civilization that will last as long as time, and China will be a great nation long after some of the so-called great nations now in existence are forgotten.

With the exception of Russia as it was before the world war, the Chinese Empire is perhaps the largest the world has ever known. Its population comprises one-fourth of the human race. If the single state of Texas were as densely populated as at least one of the provinces of China, there would be living in this one state more than two hundred million people or nearly twice as many people as are now living in the whole United States. The resources of this great country are almost boundless. There is said to be coal enough in China to furnish the whole world fuel for a thousand years. While in China I was told of one mountain that has five veins of coal that can be seen without throwing a shovelful of dirt. Some years ago the German government investigated the iron resources of China and published the fact that they are the finest in the world. This no doubt explains one reason why Germany was trying to get a foothold in China.

But in agriculture the Chinese shine. As noted above they have tilled the same soil for four thousand years. Some of this soil too is very thin and poor but it produces as well today as it did a thousand years ago. While most of their methods are the oldest and crudest that can be found, yet in some other ways the whole world can learn lessons from them. They use fertilizer in the form of liquid and put it on the growing plant rather than on the soil as we do. The farmer will feed his plants with the same regularity and care that our farmers feed and care for their horses and cattle. Every drop of urine and every particle of night soil is preserved for fertilizer. This is saved in earthen jars and gathered, mostly by women, each morning. A Chinese contractor paid the city of Shanghai $31,000 in gold in a single year for the privilege of collecting the human waste and selling it to the farmers around near the city. Where a beast of burden is at work a boy or girl is near with a long handled dipper ready to catch the urine and droppings as they fall.

In China the farmers have always been held in high esteem. While the scholar is highest, the farmer is second on the list in the social scale. It is interesting to know that the soldier is fifth or last on the list because his work is to destroy rather than to build up. The hoe is an emblem of honor in China. For hundreds of years the Emperor with his nobles went every spring to the Temple of Agriculture to offer sacrifice. After this ceremony they all went to a field near the temple and paid honor to the tillers of the soil. At a yellow painted plow, to which was hitched a cow or buffalo, with a yellow robed peasant leading, the Emperor dressed as a farmer put his hand to the plow and turned nine furrows across the field while bands of musicians chanted the praises of agriculture. Even the Empress set the example of honest agricultural toil by picking the leaves from the mulberry trees, early each spring, to be fed to silk worms.

All China is a network of canals and the Chinese are a race of irrigators. Both men and women stand from daylight until dark walking on a sort of a windlass turning an endless chain with buckets on it, one end of which is in the canal and the other end up on the bank, pumping the water up to flood the rice fields or irrigate the growing crops. No people toil harder or more earnestly than do these simple people. While they grow an abundance of vegetables, yet rice and tea are the greatest products of China.

The great rivers of the empire are so liable to disastrous floods that in many of the lower lands the people content themselves with fishing and raising geese and ducks. A duck farm is most interesting. A large shed by the river, or a raft, will serve as a shelter for the night. The farmer of course sleeps in this shed. Early in the morning he opens the door and out come the ducks. At night they return from every direction scrambling over each other to get in. The Chinaman sits near the door with a long bamboo pole herding them in. He even trains drakes to assist him and they care for the flock something like a good shepherd dog will care for sheep.

The Chinese do nearly everything backward or opposite from the way we do it. The reading in their books begins at the end. Instead of across the page the lines are up and down with footnotes at the top. The Chinaman laughs at a funeral and cries at a wedding. He beckons you to come when he wants you to go away. Instead of shaking his friend's hand in greeting him he shakes his own hands. When he gets puzzled instead of scratching his head as we do he kicks off his shoe and scratches the bottom of his foot. When he gets mad at another he kills himself imagining that his dead spirit will haunt the enemy and make life miserable for him. Men often do crochet work while women dig ditches and drive piling. Men wear petticoats and women wear trousers.

The Chinese launch ships sideways. Their compass points to the south. In building a house they make the roof first and the foundation is the last thing they put in. The key in the door turns backward to lock it. The kitchen is in the front while the best room is in the back of the house. When a Chinaman sprinkles clothes for ironing purposes he uses his mouth as the sprinkler. I never had a collar washed in China that was not ironed wrong side out. He pays the doctor when he is well and stops the pay the moment he gets sick. You can almost bank on a Chinaman doing anything the opposite from the way you do it and he laughs at your way as much as you do at his.

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