[Gutenberg 42904] • China

CHAPTER I

In attempting even a slight sketch of China, its physical features, or some of the manners and customs of the various peoples whom we designate broadly as the Chinese, the writer is confronted with the difficulty of its immensity. The continuous territory in Asia over which China rules or exercises a suzerainty is over 4,200,000 square miles, but China Proper, excluding Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and Turkestan, consists of eighteen provinces, covering an area of 1,530,000 square miles, with a population of about 410,000,000, or about twelve and a half times the area of the United Kingdom, and ten times its population.

This area is bounded on the west by southern spurs from the giant mountain regions of Eastern Tibet, that stretch their long arms in parallel ranges through Burma and Western Yunnan, and whose snow-clad crests send forth the great rivers Salween and Mekong to the south, the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers to the east, to fertilize the most productive regions on the surface of the globe.

It is this conformation that has so far presented an insurmountable barrier to the construction of a railway from Bhamo in Burmese territory to the high plateau of Yunnan, from whence the province of Szechwan, richest of all the eighteen provinces in agricultural and mineral wealth, could be reached. Some day the coal, iron, gold, oil, and salt of Szechwan will be exploited, and future generations may find in the millionaires of Szechwan Chinese speculators as able and far-seeing as the financial magnates who now practically control the destinies of millions in the Western world.

The portion south of the Yangtze is hilly rather than mountainous, and the eastern portion north of that great river is a vast plain of rich soil, through which the Yellow River, which from its periodical inundations is called China's Sorrow, flows for over five hundred miles.

In a country so vast, internal means of communication are of the first importance, and here China enjoys natural facilities unequalled by any area of similar extent. Three great rivers flow eastward and southward—the Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, in the north, the Yangtze in the centre, and the Pearl River, of which the West River is the largest branch, in the south. The Yangtze alone with its affluents is calculated to afford no less than 36,000 miles of waterways. The river population of China comprises many millions, whose varied occupations present some of the most interesting aspects of Chinese life.

CONTENTS

1\. Description of China; Her Early History; Tartar Garrisons; Chinese Soldiers; Family Life; Power of Parents; Foot-Binding

2\. Marriage Customs; Ancestral Halls; Official Hierarchy; Competitive Examinations; Taxation; Punishments; Torture; Story of Circumstantial Evidence

3\. Gradations of Chinese Society; Agriculture; Fung Sui; Pawn Offices; River Boats and Junks; The Bore at Haining; Fishing Industry; Piracy on Rivers; Li Hung Chang; The West River; Temples of the Seven Star Hills; Howlick

4\. The Yangtze; Opium; Conclusions of Singapore Commission; British and German Trade in the Far East; Town and Country Life; Chinese Cities; Peking; Temple of Agriculture; Spring Ceremony of Ploughing by the Emperor and his Court

5\. Peasant Cultivators; Religious Beliefs; Theatricals; Famine; Life in Coast Cities; Canton; Guild-Houses; Beggar Guild; Official Reception by Viceroy; Chinese Writing; Life of an Official

6\. Houses of Wealthy Inhabitants; Flower-Boats; Reform Movement among Chinese Women; Shanghai Women's Convention; Women's Superstitions; Chinese Ladies; Fashions; Visiting

7\. General Description of Hong Kong; Happy Valley; Peak District; Night View of Harbour; Typhoon; Energy of Survivors; The Streets; Early Morning Life of the City; Chinese Workmen; The Barber; The Sawyer; The Stonecutter; The Coolie; Gambling; Some Street Games

8.