10: Mings and Ch'ings, 1368-1911
<< 9: The Mongols, 1260-1368 || 11: Chinese and Foreigners >>
The first half of the fourteenth century, which witnessed the gradual
decline of Mongol influence and power, was further marked by the birth
of a humble individual destined to achieve a new departure in the
history of the empire. At the age of seventeen, Chu Yuan-chang lost
both his parents and an elder brother. It was a year of famine, and
they died from want of food. He had no money to buy coffins, and was
forced to bury them in straw. He then, as a last resource, decided to
enter the Buddhist priesthood, and accordingly enrolled himself as a
novice; but together with the other novices, he was soon dismissed,
the priests being unable to provide even for their own wants. After
this he wandered about, and finally joined a party of rebels commanded
by one of his own uncles. Rapidly rising to the highest military rank,
he gradually found himself at the head of a huge army, and by 1368 was
master of so many provinces that he proclaimed himself first emperor
of the Great Ming dynasty, under the title of Hung (Hoong) Wu, and
fixed his capital at Nanking. In addition to his military genius, he
showed almost equal skill in the administration of the empire, and
also became a liberal patron of literature and education. He organized
the present system of examinations, now in a transition state;
restored the native Chinese style of dress as worn under the T'ang
dynasty, which is still the costume seen on the stage; published a
Penal Code of mitigated severity; drew up a kind of Domesday Book
under which taxation was regulated; and fixed the coinage upon a
proper basis, government notes and copper cash being equally
current. Eunuchs were prohibited from holding official posts, and
Buddhism and Taoism were both made state religions.
This truly great monarch died in 1398, and was succeeded by a
grandson, whose very receding forehead had been a source of much
annoyance to his grandfather, though the boy grew up clever and could
make good verses. The first act of this new emperor was to dispossess
his uncles of various important posts held by them; but this was not
tolerated by one of them, who had already made himself conspicuous by
his talents, and he promptly threw off his allegiance. In the war
which ensued, victory attended his arms throughout, and at length he
entered Nanking, the capital, in triumph. And now begins one of those
romantic episodes which from time to time lend an unusual interest to
the dry bones of Chinese history. In the confusion which followed upon
the entry of troops into his palace, the young and defeated emperor
vanished, and was never seen again; although in after years pretenders
started up on more than one occasion, and obtained the support of many
in their efforts to recover the throne. It is supposed that the
fugitive made his way to the distant province of Yunnan in the garb of
a Buddhist priest, left to him, so the story runs, by his grandfather.
After nearly forty years of wandering, he is said to have gone to
Peking and to have lived in seclusion in the palace there until his
death. He was recognized by a eunuch from a mole on his left foot, but
the eunuch was afraid to reveal his identity.
The victorious uncle mounted the throne in the year 1403, under the
now famous title of Yung Lo (Yoong Law), and soon showed that he
could govern as well as he could fight. He brought immigrants from
populous provinces to repeople the districts which had been laid waste
by war. Peking was built, and in 1421 the seat of government was
transferred thither, where it has remained ever since. A new Penal
Code was drawn up. Various military expeditions were despatched
against the Tartars, and missions under the charge of eunuchs were
sent to Java, Sumatra, Siam, and even reached Ceylon and the Red Sea.
The day of doubt in regard to the general accuracy of Chinese annals
has gone by; were it otherwise, a recent (1911) discovery in Ceylon
would tend to dispel suspicion on one point. A tablet has just been
unearthed at Galle, bearing an inscription in Arabic, Chinese and
Tamil. The Arabic is beyond decipherment, but enough is left of the
Chinese to show that the tablet was erected in 1409 to commemorate a
visit by the eunuch Cheng Ho, who passed several times backwards and
forwards over that route. In 1411 the same eunuch was sent as envoy to
Japan, and narrowly escaped with his life.
The emperor was a warm patron of literature, and succeeded in bringing
about the achievement of the most gigantic literary task that the
world has ever seen. He employed a huge staff of scholars to compile
an encyclopaedia which should contain within the compass of a single
work all that had ever been written in the four departments of (1) the
Confucian Canon, (2) history, (3) philosophy, and (4) general
literature, including astronomy, geography, cosmogony, medicine,
divination, Buddhism, Taoism, handicrafts and arts. The completed
work, over which a small army of scholars—more than two thousand in
all—had spent five years, ran to no fewer than 22,877 sections, to
which must be added an index occupying 60 sections. The whole was
bound up (Chinese style) in 11,000 volumes, averaging over half-an-
inch in thickness, and measuring one foot eight inches in length by
one foot in breadth. Thus, if all these were laid flat one upon
another, the column so formed would rise considerably higher than the
very top of St. Paul's. Further, each section contains about twenty
leaves, making a total of 917,480 pages for the whole work, with a
grand total of 366,000,000 words. Taking 100 Chinese words as the
equivalent of 130 English, due to the greater condensation of Chinese
literary style, it will be found that even the mighty river of the
Encyclopedia Britannica "shrinks to a rill" when compared with this
overwhelming specimen of Chinese industry.
It was never printed; even a Chinese emperor, and enthusiastic patron
of literature to boot, recoiled before the enormous cost of cutting
such a work on blocks. It was however transcribed for printing, and
there appear to have been at one time three copies in existence. Two
of these perished at Nanking with the downfall of the dynasty in 1644,
and the third was in great part destroyed in Peking during the siege
of the Legations in 1900. Odd volumes have been preserved, and bear
ample witness to the extraordinary character of the achievement.
This emperor was an ardent Buddhist, and the priests of that religion
were raised to high positions and exerted considerable influence at
court. In times of famine there were loud complaints that some ten
thousand priests were living comfortably at Peking, while the people
of several provinces were reduced to eating bark and grass.
The porcelain of the Ming dynasty is famous all over the world. Early
in the sixteenth century a great impetus was given to the art, owing
to the extravagant patronage of the court, which was not allowed to
pass without openly expressed remonstrance. The practice of the
pictorial art was very widely extended, and the list of Ming painters
is endless, containing as it does over twelve hundred names, some few
of which stand for a high level of success.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century the Portuguese appeared
upon the scene, and settled themselves at Macao, the ownership of
which has been a bone of contention between China and Portugal ever
since. It is a delightful spot, with an excellent climate, not very
far from Canton, and was for some time the residence of the renowned
poet Camoens. Not far from Macao lies the island of Sancian, where St.
Francois Xavier died. He was the first Roman Catholic missionary of
more modern times to China, but he never set foot on the mainland.
Native maps mark the existence of "Saint's Grave" upon the island,
though he was actually buried at Goa. There had previously been a
Roman Catholic bishop in Peking so far back as the thirteenth century,
from which date it seems likely that Catholic converts have had a
continuous footing in the empire.
In 1583, Matteo Ricci, the most famous of all missionaries who have
ever reached China, came upon the scene at Canton, and finally, in
1601, after years of strenuous effort succeeded in installing himself
at Peking, with the warm support of the emperor himself, dying there
in 1610. Besides reforming the calendar and teaching geography and
science in general, he made a fierce attack upon Buddhism, at the same
time wisely leaving Confucianism alone. He was the first to become
aware of the presence in China of a Jewish colony, which had been
founded in 1163. It was from his writings that truer notions of
Chinese civilization than had hitherto prevailed, began to spread in
the West. "Mat. Riccius the Jesuite," says Burton in his Anatomy of
Melancholy (1651), "and some others, relate of the industry of the
Chinaes most populous countreys, not a beggar, or an idle person to be
seen, and how by that means they prosper and flourish."
In 1625 an important find was made. A large tablet, with a long
inscription in Chinese and a shorter one in Syraic, was discovered in
central China. The inscription, in an excellent state of preservation,
showed that the tablet had been set up in A.D. 781 by Nestorian
missionaries, and gave a general idea of the object and scope of the
Christian religion. The genuineness of this tablet was for many years
in dispute—Voltaire, Renan, and others of lesser fame, regarding it
as a pious fraud—but has now been established beyond any possibility
of doubt; its value indeed is so great that an attempt was made quite
recently to carry it off to America. Nestorian Christianity is
mentioned by Marco Polo, but disappears altogether after the
thirteenth century, without leaving any trace in Chinese literature of
its once flourishing condition.
The last emperor of the Ming dynasty meant well, but succumbed to the
stress of circumstances. Eunuchs and over-taxation brought about the
stereotyped consequence—rebellion; rebellion, too, headed by an able
commander, whose successive victories soon enabled him to assume the
Imperial title. In the capital all was confusion. The treasury was
empty; the garrison were too few to man the walls; and the ministers
were anxious to secure each his own safety. On April 9, 1644, Peking
fell. During the previous night the emperor, who had refused to flee,
slew the eldest princess, commanded the empress to commit suicide, and
sent his three sons into hiding. At dawn the bell was struck for the
court to assemble; but no one came. His Majesty then ascended the Coal
Hill in the palace grounds, and wrote a last decree on the lapel of
his robe: "WE, poor in virtue and of contemptible personality, have
incurred the wrath of God on high. My ministers have deceived me. I am
ashamed to meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my
crown, and with my hair covering my face await dismemberment at the
hands of the rebels. Do not hurt a single one of my people." He then
hanged himself, as also did one faithful eunuch; and his body,
together with that of the empress, was reverently encoffined by the
rebels.
So ended the Ming dynasty, of glorious memory, but not in favour of
the rebel commander, who was driven out of Peking by the Manchus and
was ultimately slain by local militia in a distant province.
The subjugation of the empire by the victors, who had the disadvantage
of being an alien race, was effected with comparative ease and
rapidity. It was carried out by a military occupation of the country,
which has survived the original necessity, and is part of the system
of government at the present day. Garrisons of Tartar troops were
stationed at various important centres of population, each under the
command of an officer of the highest military grade, whose duty it was
to co-operate with, and at the same time watch and act as a check
upon, the high authorities employed in the civil administration. Those
Tartar garrisons still occupy the same positions; and the descendants
of the first battalions, with occasional reinforcements from Peking,
live side by side and in perfect harmony with the strictly Chinese
populations, though the two races do not intermarry except in very
rare cases. These Bannermen, as they are called, in reference to eight
banners or corps under which they are marshalled, may be known by
their square heavy faces, which contrast strongly with the sharper and
more astute-looking physiognomies of the Chinese. They speak the
dialect of Peking, now regarded as the official or "mandarin"
language, just as the dialect of Nanking was, so long as that city
remained the capital of the empire.
In many respects the conquering Tartars have been themselves conquered
by the people over whom they set themselves to rule. They have adopted
the language, written and colloquial, of China; and they are fully as
proud as the purest-blooded Chinese of the vast literature and
glorious traditions of those past dynasties of which they have made
themselves joint heirs. Manchu, the language of the conquerors, is
still kept alive at Peking. By a fiction, it is supposed to be the
language of the sovereign; but the emperors of China have now in their
youth to make a study of Manchu, and so do the official interpreters
and others whose duty it is to translate from Chinese into Manchu all
documents submitted to what is called the "sacred glance" of His
Majesty. In a similar sense, until quite a recent date, skill in
archery was required of every Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a
great wrench when the once fatally effective weapon was consigned to
an unmerited oblivion. But though Bannermen can no longer shoot with
the bow and arrow, they still continue to draw monthly allowances from
state funds, as an hereditary right obtained by conquest.
Of the nine emperors of the Manchu, or Great Ch'ing dynasty, who have
already occupied the dragon throne and have become "guests on high,"
two are deserving of special mention as fit to be ranked among the
wisest and best rulers the world has ever known. The Emperor K'ang Hsi
(Khahng Shee) began his reign in 1662 and continued it for sixty-one
years, a division of time which has been in vogue for many centuries
past. He treated the Jesuit Fathers with kindness and distinction, and
availed himself in many ways of their scientific knowledge. He was an
extraordinarily generous and successful patron of literature. His name
is inseparably connected with the standard dictionary of the Chinese
language, which was produced under his immediate supervision. It
contains over forty thousand words, not a great number as compared
with European languages which have coined innumerable scientific
terms, but even so, far more than are necessary either for daily life
or for literary purposes. These words are accompanied in each case by
appropriate quotations from the works of every age and of every style,
arranged chronologically, thus anticipating to some extent the
"historical principles" in the still more wonderful English dictionary
by Sir James Murray and others, now going through the press. But the
greatest of all the literary achievements planned by this emperor was
a general encyclopaedia, not indeed on quite such a colossal scale as
that one produced under the Ming dynasty and already described, though
still of respectable dimensions, running as it does in a small-sized
edition to 1,628 octavo volumes of about 200 pages to each. The term
encyclopaedia must not be understood in precisely the same sense as in
Western countries. A Chinese encyclopaedia deals with a given subject
not by providing an up-to-date article written by some living
authority, but by exhibiting extracts from authors of all ages,
arranged chronologically, in which the subject in question is
discussed. The range of topics, however, is such that the above does
not always apply—as, for instance, in the biographical section, which
consists merely of lives of eminent men taken from various sources. In
the great encyclopaedia under consideration, in addition to an
enormous number of lives of men, covering a period of three thousand
years, there are also lives of over twenty-four thousand eminent
women, or nearly as many as all the lives in our own National
Dictionary of Biography. An original copy of this marvellous
production, which by the way is fully illustrated, may be seen at the
British Museum; a small-sized edition, more suitable for practical
purposes and printed from movable type, was issued about twenty years
ago.
Skipping an emperor under whose reign was initiated that violent
persecution of Roman Catholics which has continued more or less openly
down to the present day, we come to the second of the two monarchs
before mentioned, whose long and beneficent reigns are among the real
glories of the present dynasty.
The Emperor Ch'ien Lung (Loong) ascended the throne in 1735, when
twenty-five years of age; and though less than two hundred years ago,
legend has been busy with his person. According to some native
accounts, his hands are said to have reached below his knees; his ears
touched his shoulders; and his eyes could see round behind his head.
This sort of stuff, is should be understood, is not taken from
reliable authorities. It cannot be taken from the dynastic history for
the simple reason that the official history of a dynasty is not
published until the dynasty has come to an end. There is, indeed, a
faithful record kept of all the actions of each reigning emperor in
turn; good and evil are set down alike, without fear or favour, for no
emperor is ever allowed to get a glimpse of the document by which
posterity will judge him. Ch'ien Lung had no cause for anxiety on this
score; whatever record might leap to light, he never could be shamed.
An able ruler, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an
indefatigable administrator, he rivals his grandfather's fame as a
sovereign and a patron of letters. His one amiable weakness was a
fondness for poetry; unfortunately, for his own. His output was
enormous so far as number of pieces go; these were always short, and
proportionately trivial. No one ever better illustrated one half of
the cynical Chinese saying: "We love our own compositions, but other
men's wives." He disliked missionaries, and forbade the propagation of
the Christian religion.
After ten years of internal reorganization, his reign became a
succession of wars, almost all of which were brought to a successful
conclusion. His generals led a large army into Nepaul and conquered
the Goorkhas, reaching a point only some sixty miles distant from
British territory. Burma was forced to pay tribute; Chinese supremacy
was established in Tibet; Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the
empire; and rebellions in Formosa and elsewhere were suppressed. In
fifty years the population was nearly doubled, and the empire on the
whole enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 1750 a Portuguese embassy
reached Peking; and was followed by Lord Macartney's famous mission
and a Dutch mission in 1793. Two years after the venerable emperor had
completed a reign of sixty years, the full Chinese cycle; whereupon he
abdicated in favour of his son, and died in 1799.
<< 9: The Mongols, 1260-1368 || 11: Chinese and Foreigners >>
