Ancient China Simplified Part 5

CHAPTER XIX

CONFUCIUS AND LITERATURE

Let us return for a moment to the history of China's development.

Confucius was born in the autumn of 551, B.C., and he died in 479.

If we survey the condition of the empire during these seventy years, we may begin to understand better the secret of his teachings, and of his influence in later times. When he was a boy of seven or eight years, the presence in Lu of Ki-chah, the learned and virtuous brother of the barbarian King of Wu, must have opened his eyes widely to the ominous rise, of a democratic and mixed China. Lu, like Tsin, was now beginning to suffer from the "powerful family" plague; in other words, the story of King John and his barons was being rehea.r.s.ed in China. Tsin and Ts'u had patched up ancient enmities at the Peace Conference; Tsin during the next twenty years administered snub after snub to the obsequious ruler of Lu, who was always turned back at the Yellow River whenever he started west to pay his respects. Lu, on the other hand, declined to attend the Ts'u durbar of 538, held by Ts'u alone only after the approval of Tsin had been obtained. In 522 the philosopher Yen-tsz, of Ts'i, accompanied his own marquess to Lu in order to study the rites there: this fact alone proves that Ts'i, though orthodox and advanced, had not the same lofty spiritual status that was the pride of Lu. In 517 the Marquess of Lu was driven from his throne, and Ts'i took the opportunity to invade Lu under pretext of a.s.sisting him; however, the fugitive preferred Tsin as a refuge, and for many years was quartered at a town near the common frontier. But the powerful families (all branches of the same family as the duke himself) proved too strong for him; they bribed the Tsin statesmen, and the Lu ruler died in exile in the year 510. In the year 500 Confucius became chief counsellor to the new marquess, and by his energetic action drove into exile in Tsin a very formidable agitator belonging to one of the powerful family cliques. In 488 the King of Wu, after marching on Ts'i, summoned Lu to furnish "one hundred sets of victims" as a mark of compliancy; the king and the marquess had an interview; the next year the king came in person, and a treaty was made with him under the very walls of K'uh-fu, the Lu capital (this shameful fact is concealed by Confucius, who simply says: "Wu made war on us"). In 486 Lu somewhat basely joined Wu in an attack upon orthodox Ts'i. In 484-483 Confucius, who had meanwhile been travelling abroad for some years in disgust, was urgently sent for; four years later he died, a broken and disappointed man.

Now, it is one thing to be told in general terms that Confucius represented conservative forces, disapproved of the quarrelsome wars of his day, and wished in theory to restore the good old "rules of propriety"; but quite another thing to understand in a human, matter-of-fact sort of way what he really did in definite sets of circ.u.mstances, and what practical objects he had in view.

The average European reader, not having specific facts and places under his eye, can only conceive from this rough generalization, and from the usual anecdotal t.i.t-bits told about him, that Confucius was an exceedingly timid, prudent, benevolent, and obsequious old gentleman who, as indeed his rival Lao-tsz hinted to him, was something like a superior dancing-master or court usher, But when the disjointed apothegms of his "a.n.a.lects" (put together, not by himself, but by his disciples) are placed alongside the real human actions baldly touched upon in his own "Springs and Autumns," and as expanded by his three commentators, one of them, at least, being a contemporary of his own, things a.s.sume quite a different complexion, Moreover, this last-mentioned or earliest in date of the expanders (see p. 91) also composed a chatty, anecdotal, and intimately descriptive account of Lu, Ts'i, Tsin, CHeNG, Ts'u, Wu, and Yiieh (of no other states except quite incidentally); and we have also the Bamboo Books dug up in 281 A.D., being the Annals of Tsin and a sketch of general history down to 299 B.C. Finally, the "father of history," in about go B.C., published, or issued ready for publication, a _resume_ of all the above (except what was in the Bamboo Books, which were then, of course, unknown to him); so that we are able to compare dates, errors, misprints, concealments, and so on; not to mention the advantage of reading all that the successive generations of commentators have had to say.

The matter may be compendiously stated as follows. Without attempting to go backward beyond the conquest by the Chou princ.i.p.ality and the founding of a Chou dynasty in 122 B.C.

(though there is really no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the vague "history" of patriarchal times, at least so far back beyond that as to cover the 1000 years or more of the two previous dynasties' reigns), we may state that, whilst in general the principles and ritual of the two previous dynasties were maintained, a good many new ideas were introduced at this Chou conquest, and amongst other things, a compendious and all- pervading practical ritual government, which not only marked off the distinctions between cla.s.ses, and laid down ceremonious rules for ancestral sacrifice, social deportment, family duties, cultivation, finance, punishment, and so on, but endeavoured to bring all human actions whatsoever into practical harmony with supposed natural laws; that is to say, to make them as regular, as comprehensible, as beneficent, and as workable, as the perfectly manifest but totally unexplained celestial movements were; as were the rotation of seasons, the balancing of forces, the growth and waning of matter, male and female reproduction, light and darkness; and, in short, to make human actions as harmonious as were all the forces of nature, which never fail or go wrong except under (presumed) provocation, human or other. The Emperor, as Vicar of G.o.d, was the ultimate judge of what was _tao_, or the "right way."

Now this simple faith, when the whole of the Chinese Empire consisted of about 50,000 square miles of level plain, inhabited probably by not more than 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 h.o.m.ogeneous people, was admirably suited for the patriarchal rule of a central chief (the King or Emperor), receiving simple tribute of metals, hemp, cattle, sacrificial supplies, etc.; entertaining his relatives and princely friends when they came to do annual homage and to share in periodical sacrifice; declaring the penal laws (there were no other laws) for all his va.s.sals; compa.s.sionating and conciliating the border tribes living beyond those va.s.sals.

But this peaceful bucolic life, in the course of time and nature, naturally produced a gradual increase in the population; the Chinese cultivators spread themselves over the expanse of _loess_ formed by the Yellow River and Desert deposits and by aeons of decayed vegetation in the low-lying lands; no other nation or tribe within their ken having the faintest notion of written character, there was consequently no political cohesion of any sort amongst the non-Chinese tribes; the position was akin to that of the European powers grafting themselves for centuries upon the still primitive African tribes, comparatively few of which have seen fit to turn the art of writing to the practical purpose of keeping records and cementing their own power. Wherever a Chinese adventurer went, there he became founder of a state; to this day we see enterprising Chinamen founding petty "dynasties"

in the Siamese Malay Peninsula; or, for instance, an Englishman like Rajah Brooke founding a private dynasty in Borneo.

Some of these frontier tribes, notably the Tartars, were of altogether too tough a material to be a.s.similated. They even endeavoured to check the Chinese advance beyond the Yellow River, and carried fire and sword themselves into the federal conclave.

Where resistance was _nil_ or slight, as, for instance, among some of the barbarians to the east, there the Chinese adventurers, either adopting native ways, or persuading the autochthones to adopt their ways, by levelling up or levelling down, developed strong cohesive power; besides (owing to the difficulties of inter-communication) creating a feeling of independence and a disinclination to obey the central power. The emperors who used in the good old days to summon the va.s.sals--a matter of a week or two in that small area--to chastise the wicked tribes on their frontiers, gradually found themselves unable to cope with the more distant Tartar hordes, the eastern barbarians of the coast, the Annamese, Shans, and other unidentified tribes south of the Yang- tsz, as they had so easily done with nearer tribes when the Chinese had not pushed out so far. Moreover, new-Chinese, Chinese- veneered, and half-Chinese states, recognizing their own responsibilities, now interposed themselves as "buffers" or barriers between the Emperor and the unadulterated barbarians; these hybrid states themselves were quite as formidable to the imperial power as the displaced barbarians had formerly been.

Hence, as we have seen, the pitiful flight from his metropolis of one Emperor after the other; the rise of great and wealthy persons outside the former limited sacred circle; the pretence of protecting the Emperor, advanced by these rising powers, partly in order to gain prestige by using his imperial name in support of their local ambitions, and partly because--as during the Middle Ages in the case of the Papacy--no one cared to brave the moral odium of annihilating a venerable spiritual power, even though gradually shorn of its temporal rights and influence.

Lu was almost on a par with the imperial capital in all that concerns learning, ritual, music, sacrifice, deportment, and spiritual prestige. Confucius, in his zeal for the recovery of imperial rights, was really no more of a stickler for mere form than were Tsz-ch'an of Cheng, Ki-chah of Wu, Hiang Suh of Sung, Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and others already enumerated; the only distinguis.h.i.+ng feature in his case was that he was not a high or influential official in his earlier days; besides, he was a Sung man by descent, and all the great families were of the Lu princely caste. Thus, for want of better means to a.s.sert his own views, he took to teaching and reading, to collecting historical facts, to pointing morals and adorning tales. As a youth he was so clever, that one of the Lu grandees, on his death-bed, foretold his greatness. It was a great bitterness for him to see his successive princely masters first the humble servants of Ts'i, then buffeted between Tsin and Ts'u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office, was to checkmate Ts'i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous state feared that Lu might, under Confucius' able rule, succeed in obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious design to dethrone the legitimate Ts'i house. The wily Marquess of Ts'i thereupon--of course at the instigation of the intriguing "great families"--tried another tack, and succeeded at last in corrupting the vacillating Lu prince with presents of horses, racing chariots, and dancing women. Then it was (497) that Confucius set out disheartened on his travels. Recalled thirteen years later, he soon afterwards began to devote his remaining powers to the Annals so frequently referred to above, and it was whilst engaged in finis.h.i.+ng this task that he had presentiments of his coming end; he does not appear to have been able to exercise much political or advisory power after his return to Lu.

During his thirteen years of travel (a more detailed account of which will be given in a subsequent chapter), he found time to revise and edit the books which appear to have formed the common stock-in-trade for all China; one of his ideas was to eliminate from these all sentiments of an anti-imperial nature. They were not then called "cla.s.sics," but simply "The Book" (of History), "The Poems" (still known by heart all over China), "The Rites" (as improved by the Chou family), "The Changes" (a sort of cosmogony combined with soothsaying), and "Music."

CHAPTER XX

LAW

Let us now consider the notions of law as they existed in the primitive Chinese mind. As all government was supposed to be based on the natural laws of the universe, of which universal law or order of things, the Emperor, as "Son of Heaven," was (subject to his own obedience to it) the supreme mouthpiece or expression, there lay upon him no duty to define that manifest law; when it was broken, it was for him to say that it was broken, and to punish the breach. Nature's bounty is the spring, and therefore rewards are conferred in spring; nature's fall is in the autumn, which is the time for decreeing punishments; these are carried out in winter, when death steals over nature. A generous table accompanies the dispensing of rewards, a frugal table and no music accompanies the allotment of punishments; hence the imperial feasts and fasts. Thus punishment rather than command is what was first understood by Law, and it is interesting to observe that "making war" and "putting to death" head the list of imperial chastis.e.m.e.nts, war being thus regarded as the Emperor's rod in the shape of a posse of punitory police, rather than as an expression of statecraft, ambitious greed, or vainglorious self-a.s.sertion.

Then followed, in order of severity, castration, cutting off the feet or the knee-cap, branding, and flogging. The Emperor, or his va.s.sals, or the executive officers of each in the ruler's name, declared the law, _i.e._ they declared the punishment in each case of breach as it occurred. Thus from the very beginning the legislative, judicial, and executive functions have never been clearly separated in the Chinese system of thought; new words have had to be coined within the last two years in order to express this distinction for purposes of law reform. Mercantile Law, Family Law, Fishery Laws--in a word, all the ma.s.s of what we call Commercial and Civil Jurisprudence,--no more concerned the Government, so far as individual rights were concerned, than Agricultural Custom, Bankers' Custom, Butchers' Weights, and such like petty matters; whenever these, or a.n.a.logous matters, were touched by the State, it was for commonwealth purposes, and not for the maintenance of private rights. Each paterfamilias was absolutely master of his own family; merchants managed their own business freely; and so on with the rest. It was only when public safety, Government interests, or the general weal was involved that punishment-law stepped in and said,--always with _tao_, "propriety," or nature's law in ultimate view: "you merchants may not wear silk clothes"; "you usurers must not ruin the agriculturalists"; "you butchers must not irritate the G.o.ds of grain by killing cattle":-- these are mere examples taken at random from much later times.

The Emperor Muh, whose energies we have already seen displayed in Tartar conquests and exploring excursions nearly a millennium before our era, was the first of the Chou dynasty to decide that law reform was necessary in order to maintain order among the "hundred families" (still one of the expressions meaning "the Chinese people"). A full translation of this code is given in Dr.

Legge's Chinese cla.s.sics, where a special chapter of The Book is devoted to it: in charging his officer to prepare it, the Emperor only uses the words "revise the punishments," and the code itself is only known as the "Punishments" (of the marquess who drew it up); although it also prescribes many judicial forms, and lays down precepts which are by no means all castigatory. The mere fact of its doing so is ill.u.s.trative of reformed ideas in the embryo.

There is good ground to suppose that the Chinese Emperor's "laws,"

such as they were at any given time, were solemnly and periodically proclaimed, in each va.s.sal kingdom; but, subject to these general imperial directions, the _themis_, _dike_ or inspired decision of the magistrate, was the sole deciding factor; and, of course, the ruler's arbitrary pleasure, whether that ruler were supreme or va.s.sal, often ran riot when he found himself strong enough to be unjust. For instance, in 894 B.C., the Emperor boiled alive one of the Ts'i rulers, an act that was revenged by Ts'i 200 years later, as has been mentioned in previous chapters.

In 796 B.C. a ruler of Lu was selected, or rather recommended to the Emperor for selection, in preference to his elder brother, because "when he inflicted chastis.e.m.e.nt he never failed to ascertain the exact instructions left by the ancient emperors."

This same Emperor had already, in 817, nominated one younger brother to the throne of Lu, because he was considered the most attractive in appearance on an occasion when the brethren did homage at the imperial court. For this caprice the Emperor's counsellor had censured him, saying: "If orders be not executed, there is no government; if they be executed, but contrary to established rule, the people begin to despise their superiors."

In 746 B.C. the state of Ts'in, which had just then recently emerged from Tartar barbarism, and had settled down permanently in the old imperial domain, first introduced the "three stock" law, under which the three generations, or the three family connections of a criminal were executed for his crime as well as himself. In 596 and 550 Tsin (which thus seems to have taken the hint from Ts'in) exterminated the families of two political refugees who had fled to the Tartars and to Ts'i respectively. Even in Ts'u the relatives of the man who first taught war to Wu were ma.s.sacred in 585, and any one succouring the fugitive King of Ts'u was threatened with "three clan penalties"; this last case was in the year 529. The laws of Ts'u seem to have been particularly harsh; in 55 the premier was cut into four for corruption, and one quarter was sent in each direction, as a warning to the local districts. About 650 B.C. a distinguished Lu statesman, named Tsang Wen-chung, seems to have drawn up a special code, for one of Confucius' pupils (two centuries later) denounced it as being too severe when compared with Tsz-ch'an's mild laws--to be soon mentioned. Confucius himself also described the man as being "too showy." This Lu statesman, about twenty years later, made some significant and informing observations to the ruler of Lu when report came that Tsin (the Second Protector) was endeavouring to get the Emperor to poison a federal refugee from Wei, about whose succession the powers were at the moment quarrelling. He said: "There are only five recognized punishments: warlike arms, the axe, the knife or the saw, the branding instruments, the whip or the bastinado; there are no surrept.i.tious ones like this now proposed." The result was that Lu, being of the same clan as the Emperor, easily succeeded in bribing the imperial officials to let the refugee prince go. The grateful prince eagerly offered Tsang W&n-chung a reward; but the statesman declined to receive it, on the ground that "a subject's sayings are not supposed to be known beyond his own master's frontier." About, a century later a distinguished Tsin statesman, asking what "immortality" meant, was told: "When a man dies, but when his words live; like the words of this distinguished man, Tsang W&n-chung, of Lu state." This same Tsin statesman is said to have engraved some laws on iron (513), an act highly disapproved by Confucius. It is only by thus piecing together fragmentary allusions that we can arrive at the conclusion that "there were judges in those days." Mention has been several times made in previous chapters of Tsz-ch'an, whose consummate diplomacy maintained the independence and even the federal influence of the otherwise obscure state of Cheng during a whole generation. In the year 536 B.C. he decided to cast the laws in metal for the information of the people: this course was bitterly distasteful to his colleague, Shuh Hiang of Tsin (see Appendix I.), and possibly the Tsin "laws on iron" just mentioned were suggested by this experiment, for it must be remembered that Tsin, Lu, Wei, and Cheng were all of the same imperial clan.

Confucius, who had otherwise a genuine admiration for Tsz-ch'an, disapproved of this particular feature in his career. In a minor degree the same question of definition and publication has also caused differences of opinion between English lawyers, so far as the so-called "judge-made law" is concerned; it is still considered to be better practice to have it declared as circ.u.mstances arise, than to have it set forth beforehand in a code. The arguments are the same; in both cases the judges profess to "interpret" the law as it already exists; that is, the Chinese judge interprets the law of nature, and the English judge the common and statute laws; but neither wishes to hamper himself by trying to publish in advance a scheme contrived to fit all future hypothetical cases.

About 680 B.C. the King of Ts'u is recorded to have pa.s.sed a law against harbouring criminals, under which the harbourer was liable to the same penalty as the thief; and at the same time reference is made by his advisers to an ancient law or command of the imperial dynasty, made before it came to power in 1122 B.C.-"If any of your men takes to flight, let every effort be made to find him." Thus it would seem that other ruling cla.s.ses, besides those of the Chou clan, accepted the general imperial laws, Chou- ordained or otherwise. Although it is thus manifest that the va.s.sal states, at least after imperial decadence set in, in 771 B.C., drew up and published laws of their own, yet, at the great durbar of princes held by the First Protector in 651 B.C., it is recorded that the "Son of Heaven's Prohibitions" were read over the sacrificial victim. They are quite patriarchal in their laconic style, and for that reason recall that of the Roman Twelve Tables. They run: "Do not block springs!" "Do not h.o.a.rd grain!"

"Do not displace legitimate heirs!" "Do not make wives of your concubines!" "Do not let women meddle with State affairs!" From the Chinese point of view, all these are merely a.s.sertions of what is Nature's law. In the year 640, the state of Lu applied the term "Law Gate" to the South Gate, "because both Emperor and va.s.sal princes face south when they rule, and because that is, accordingly, the gate through which all commands and laws do pa.s.s." It is always possible, however, that this "facing south" of the ancient ruler points to the direction whence some of his people came, and towards which, as their guide and leader, he had to look in order to govern them.

In the year 594 there is an instance cited where two dignitaries were killed by direct specific order of the Emperor. In explaining this exceptional case, the commentator says: "The lord of all below Heaven is Heaven, and Heaven's continuer or successor is the Prince; whilst that which the Prince holds fast is the Sanction, which no subject can resist."

Not very long after Confucius' death in 479 B.C., the powerful and orthodox state of Tsin, which had so long held its own against Ts'in, Ts'i, and Ts'u, tottered visibly under the disintegrating effects of the "great family" intrigues: of the six great families which had, as representatives of the earlier eleven, latterly monopolized power, three only survived internecine conflicts, and at last the surviving three split up into the independent states of Han, Wei, and Chao, those names being eponymous, as being their sub-fiefs, and, therefore, their "surnames," or family names. In the year 403 the Emperor formally recognized them as separate, independent va.s.saldoms. Wei is otherwise known as Liang, owing to the capital city having borne that name, and the kings of Liang are celebrated for their conversations with the peripatetic philosopher, Mencius, in the fourth century B.C. In order to distinguish this state from that of Wei (imperial clan) adjoining Lu and Sung, we shall henceforth call it Ngwei, as, in fact, it originally was p.r.o.nounced, and as it still is in some modern dialects. The first of the Ngwei sovereigns had in his employ a statesman named Li K'wei, who introduced, for taxation purposes, a new system of land laws, and also new penal laws. These last were in six books, or main heads, and, it is said, represented all that was best in the laws of the different feudal states, mostly in reference to robbery: the minor offences were roguery, getting over city walls, gambling, borrowing, dishonesty, lewdness, extravagance, and transgressing the ruler's commands--their exact terms are now unknown. This code was afterwards styled the "Law Cla.s.sic," and its influence can be plainly traced, dynasty by dynasty, down to modern times; in fact, until a year or two ago, the principles of Chinese law have never radically changed; each successive ruling family has simply taken what it found; modifying what existed, in its own supposed interest, according to time, place, and circ.u.mstance. Li K'wei's land laws singularly resembled those recommended to the Manchu Government by Sir Robert Hart four years ago.

CHAPTER XXI

PUBLIC WORKS

It is difficult to guess how much truth there is in the ancient traditions that the water-courses of the empire were improved through gigantic engineering works undertaken by the ancient Emperors of China. There is one gorge, well known to travellers, above Ich'ang, on the River Yang-tsz, on the way to Ch'ung-k'ing, where the precipitous rocks on each side have the appearance and hardness of iron, and for a mile or more--perhaps several miles-- stand perpendicularly like walls on both sides of the rapid Yang- tsz River: the most curious feature about them is that from below the water-level, right up to the top, or as far as the eye can reach, the stone looks as though it had been chipped away with powerful cheese-scoops: it seems almost impossible that any operation of nature can have fas.h.i.+oned rocks in this way; on the other hand, what tools of sufficient hardness, driven by what great force, could hollow out a pa.s.sage of such length, at such a depth, and such a height? It is certain that after Ts'in conquered the hitherto almost unknown kingdoms of Pa and Shuh (Eastern and Western Sz Ch'wan) a Chinese engineer named Li Ping worked wonders in the ca.n.a.lization of the so-called CH'eNg-tu plain, or the rich level region lying around the capital city of Sz Ch'wan province, which was so long as Shuh endured also the metropolis of Shuh. The consular officers of his Britannic Majesty have made a special study of these sluices, which are still in full working order, and they seem almost unchanged in principle from the period (280 B.C.) when Li Ping lived. The Chinese still regard this branch of the Great River as the source; or at least they did so until the Jesuit surveys of two centuries ago proved otherwise; it was quite natural that they should do so in ancient times, for the true upper course, and also Yiin Nan and Tibet through which that course runs, were totally unknown to them, and unheard of by name; even now the so-called Lolo country of Sz Ch'wan and Yiin Nan is mostly unexplored, and the mountain Lolos are quite independent of China. The fact that they have whitish skins and a written script of their own (manifestly inspired by the form of Chinese characters) makes them a specially interesting people. Li Ping's engineering feats also included the region around Ya-thou and Kia- ting, as marked on the modern maps.

The founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) is supposed to have liberated the stagnant waters of the Yellow River and sent them to the sea; as this is precisely what all succeeding dynasties have tried to do, and have been obliged to try, and what in our own times the late Li Hung-chang was ordered to do just before his death, there seems no good reason for suspecting the accuracy of the tradition; the more especially as we see that the founder of the Chou dynasty sent his chief political adviser and his two most distinguished relatives to settle along this troublesome river's lower course, as rulers of Ts'i, Yen, and Lu; the other considerable va.s.sals were all ranged along the middle course.

The original Chinese founder of the barbarian colony of Wu belonged, as already explained, to the same clan or family as the founder of the Chou dynasty, and in one respect even took ancestral or spiritual precedence of him, because the emigrant had voluntarily retired into obscurity with his brother in order to make way for a third and more brilliant younger brother, whose grandson it was that afterwards, in 1122 B.C., conquered China, and turned the Chou princ.i.p.ality, hitherto va.s.sal to the Shang dynasty, into the Chou dynasty, to which the surviving Shang princes then became va.s.sals in the Sung state and elsewhere. Even though the founder of Wu may have adopted barbarian ways, such as tattooing, hair-cutting, and the like, he must have possessed considerable administrative power, for he made a ca.n.a.l (running past his capital) for a distance of thirty English miles along the new "British" railway from Wu-sih to Ch'ang-shuh, as marked on present maps; his idea was to facilitate boat-travelling, and to a.s.sist cultivators with water supplies for irrigation.

In the year 485 B.C. the King of Wu, who was then in the hey-day of his success, and by way of becoming Protector of China, erected a wall and fortifications round the well-known modern city of Yangchow (where Marco Polo 1700 years later acted as governor); he next proceeded for the first time in history to establish water communication between the Yang-tsz River and the River Hwai; this ca.n.a.l was then (483-481) continued farther north, so as to give communication with the southern and central parts of modern Shan Tung province.

His object was to facilitate the conveyance of stores for his armies, then engaged in bringing pressure upon Ts'i (North Shan Tung) and Lu (South Shan Tung). He succeeded in getting his boats to the River Tsi, running past Tsi-nan Fu, and to the River I, running past I-thou Fu, thus dominating the whole Shan Tung region; for these two were then the only navigable rivers in Shan Tung besides the Sz. The River Tsi is now taken possession of by the Yellow River, which, as we have shown, then ran a parallel course much to the westward of it; and the River I then ran south into the River Sz, which, as already explained, has in its lower course, in comparatively modern times, been taken possession of permanently by the Grand Ca.n.a.l; but the upper course of the Sz, now, as then, ran past Confucius' town, the Lu metropolis, of K'uh-fu. In 483 B.C. the same king cast his faithful adviser (of Ts'u origin) into the ca.n.a.l by which the waters of lake T'ai Hu now run to modern Soochow, and thence to Hangchow. Ever since that date the unfortunate man in question has been a popular "G.o.d of the waters" in those parts. It follows, therefore, that the Wu founder's modest ca.n.a.l must have been from time to time extended, at least in an easterly direction. It was only after the conquest of China by Ts'in, 250 years later, that the First August Emperor extended this system of ca.n.a.ls northwards and westwards, from Ch'ang-thou Fu to Tan-yang and c.h.i.n.kiang, as marked on the modern maps. Thus the barbarian kings of Wu have found the true alignment of our "British", railway for us; and, so far as the northern ca.n.a.l is concerned, have really achieved the task for which credit is usually given to Kublai Khan, the Mongol patron of Marco Polo.

Kublai merely improved the old work. The ancient Wu capital was 10 English miles south-east of Wu-sih, and 17 miles north of Soochow, to which place the capital was transferred in the year 513 B.C., as it was more suitable than the old capital for the a.r.s.enals and s.h.i.+p-building yards then, for the first time, being built on an extensive scale by the King of Wu.

The first bridge over the Yellow River was constructed by the kingdom of Ts'in in 257 B.C., on what is still the high-road between T'ung-thou Fu and P'u-chou Fu. Previous to that date armies had to cross the Yellow River at the fords; and, as an instance of this, it may be stated that the founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. summoned his va.s.sals to meet him at the Ford of Meng, a place still so marked on the maps, and lying on the high-road between the two modern cities of Ho-nan Fu and Hwai- k'ing Fu; thus there was no excuse for the feudal princes failing to arrive at the rendezvous. It was not far from the same place, but on the north bank of the river, that Tsin in 632 B.C. held the great durbar as Second Protector, on the notorious occasion when the puppet Emperor was "sent for" by the Tsin dictator. To conceal this outrage on "the rites," Confucius says: "The Son of Heaven went in camp north of the river." To go on hunt, or in camp, is still a vague historical expression for "go on fief inspection,"

and it was so used in 1858, when the Manchu Emperor Hien-feng took refuge from the allied troops at Jehol in Tartary.

The first thing Ts'in did when it united the empire in 221 B.C.

was to occupy all the fords and narrow pa.s.ses, and to put them in working order for the pa.s.sage of armies. As even now the lower Yellow River is only navigable for large craft for 20 miles from its mouth (now in Shan Tung), it is easy to imagine how many fords there must have been in its shallow waters, and also how it came to pa.s.s that boats were so little used to convey large bodies of troops with their stores.

The great wall of China of 217 B.C. was by no means the first of its kind. A century before that date Ts'in built a long wall to keep off the Tartars; and, half a century before that again, Ngwei (one of the three powerful families of Tsin, all made independent princes in 403) had built a wall to keep off its western neighbour Ts'in; both these walls seem to have been in the north part of the modern Shen Si region, and they were possibly portions of the later continuous great wall of the August Emperor, which occupied the forced energies of 700,000 men. There is a statement that the same Emperor set 700,000 eunuchs to work on the palaces and the tomb he was constructing for himself at his new metropolis (moved since 350 B.C. to the city of Hien-yang, north of the river Wei, opposite the present Si-ngan Fu). This probably means, not that eunuchs were common in those times as palace _employes_, but that castration still was the usual punishment inflicted throughout China for grave offences not calling for the penalty of death, or for the more serious forms of maiming, such as foot- chopping or knee-slicing; and that all the prisoners of that degree were told off to do productive work: although humiliatingly deformed, they were still available for the common purposes of native life, and their defenceless and forlorn plight would probably make it an easier matter to handle them in gangs than to handle sound males; and if they died off under the rough treatment of task-masters, they would have no families to mourn or avenge them in accordance with family duty; for a eunuch has no name and no family. The palaces in question were joined by a magnificent bridge on the high-road between Hien-yang and Si-ngan. This very year a German firm has contracted to build an iron bridge over the Yellow River at Lan-thou Fu, where crossed by Major Bruce.

CHAPTER XXII

CITIES AND TOWNS

There are singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese history, but here again we may safely a.s.sume that most of them were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Sul, the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago, probably then closely resembled an ancient va.s.sal Chinese prince's capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is responsible for the wealthy commercial streets now to be found in all large Chinese cities; but a small _hien_ city in the interior--and it must be remembered that a _hien_ circuit or district corresponds to an old marquisate or feudal princ.i.p.ality of the va.s.sal unit type--is often a poor, dusty, dirty, depressing, ramshackle agglomeration of villages or hamlets, surrounded by a disproportionately pretentious wall, the cubic contents of which wall alone would more than suffice to build in superior style the whole mud city within; for half the area of the interior is apt to be waste land or stagnant puddles: it was so even in Peking forty years ago, and possibly is so still except in the "Legation quarter."

In 745 B.C., when the Tsin marquess foolishly divided his patrimony with a collateral branch, the capital town of this subdivided state is stated to have been a greater place than the old capital. They are both of them still in existence as insignificant towns, situated quite close together on the same branch of the River Fen (the only navigable river) in South Shan Si; marked with their old names, too; that is to say, K'iih-wuh and Yih-CH'eNg. It was only after the younger branch annexed the elder in 679 that Tsin became powerful and began to expand; and it was only when a policy of "home rule" and disintegration set in, involving the splitting up of Tsin's orthodox power into three royal states of doubtful orthodoxy, that China fell a prey to Ts'in ambition. _Absit_ omen to us.

In 560, when the deformed philosopher Yen-tsz visited Ts'u, and entertained that semi-barbarous court with his witticisms, he took the opportunity boastfully to enlarge upon the magnificence of Lin-tsz (still so marked), the capital of Ts'i. "It is," said he, "surrounded by a hundred villages; the parasols of the walkers obscure the sky, whose perspiration runs in such streams as to cause rain; their shoulders and heels touch together, so closely are they packed." The a.s.sembled Ts'u court, with mouths open, but inclined for sport at the cost of their visitor, said: "If it is such a grand place, why do they select you?" Yen-tsz played a trump card when he replied: "Because I am such a mean-looking fellow,"--meaning, as explained in Chapter IX., that "any pitiful rascal is good enough to send to Ts'u." Exaggerations apart, however, there is every reason to believe that the statesman- philosopher Kwan-tsz, a century before that date, had really organized a magnificent city. A full description of how he reconstructed the economic life of both city and people is given in the _Kwoh-yu_ (see Chapter XVII.), the authenticity of which work, though not free from question, is, after all, only subject to the same cla.s.s of criticism as Renan lavishes upon one or two of the Gospels, the general tenor of which, be says, must none the less be accepted, with all faults, as the _bonafide_ attempt of some one, more or less contemporary, to represent what was then generally supposed to be the truth.

Ts'u itself must have had something considerable to show in the way of public buildings, for in the year 542 B.C. after paying a visit to that country in accordance with the provisions of the Peace Conference of 546, the ruler of Lu built himself a palace in imitation of one he saw there. The original capital of Wu (see Chapter VII.) was a poor place, and is described as having consisted of low houses in narrow streets, with a vulgar palace; this was in 523. In 513 a new king moved to the site now occupied by Soochow, and he seems to have made of it the magnificent city it has remained ever since--the place, of course it will be remembered, where General Gordon and Li Hung-chang had their celebrated quarrel about decapitating surrendered rebels. There were eight gates, besides eight water-gates for boats; it was eight English miles in circuit, and contained the palace, several towers (paG.o.das, being Buddhist, were then naturally unknown), kiosks, ponds, and duck preserves. The extensive a.r.s.enal and s.h.i.+p- yard was quite separate from the main town. No city in the orthodox part of China is so closely described as this one, nor is it likely that there were many of them so vast in extent.

Judging by the frequency with which Ts'in moved its capitals (but always within a limited area in the Wei valley, between that river and its tributary the K'ien), they cannot have been very important or substantial places; in fact, there are no descriptions of early Ts'in economic life at all; and, for all we know to the contrary, the headquarters of Duke Muh, when he entered upon his reforms in the seventh century B.C., may have resembled a Tartar encampment.

The _Kwoh-yu_ has no chapter devoted to Ts'in, which (as indeed stated) for 500 years lived a quite isolated life of its own. In later times, especially after the reforms introduced by the celebrated Chinese princely adventurer, Wei Yang, during the period 360--340, the land administration was reconst.i.tuted, the capital was finally moved to Hien-yang, and every effort was made to develop all the resources of the country. Ts'in then possessed 41 _hien,_ those with a population of under 10,000 having a governor with a lower t.i.tle than the governors of the larger towns, Probably the total population of Ts'in by this time reached 3,000,000. A century later, when the First August Emperor was conquering China, armies of half a million men on each side were not at all uncommon. When his conquests were complete, he set about building palaces on both banks of the Wei in most lavish style, as narrated in the last chapter. It is said of him that, "as he conquered each va.s.sal prince, he had a sketch made of his palace buildings," and, with these before him as models, he lined the river with rows of beautiful edifices,--evidently, from the description given, much resembling those lying along the Golden Horn at Constantinople; if not in quality, at least in general spectacular arrangement.