ºs-sº º 2. CHINESE PIGTAILS And What Hangs. Thereby By - - - - - --------------------- -- ºr ºil --- - - A-, -, zºº CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY ** By M. v. BRANDT - office of ºublication: Rooms arºs-29-30-31, Park Row Building CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY.” There is something peculiar about pigtails. If we could believe those who write history, and who fortunately are sel- dom called upon to make it, the dawning light of the nine- teenth century should have shone on the grave of the pigtail. Only a few specimens among them—for instance, those of the blessed days of the confederacy—should have continued to lead a contemplative life in quiet seclusion, until the storms of the sixtieth year had blown out their miserable little lamp of life as well. But if you go out into life among the people who do not live in libraries, but on the streets and market- places, in the city hall and in the courts, then you hear only too often the expression, “that old fellow with the pigtail,” accompanied with an angry or despairing shrug of the shoulders. And you soon become convinced that, although the much-slandered appendage (people have forgotten that it once danced on the back of the greatest monarch Prussia ever saw, and also on the backs of the grenadiers on whose shoulders the Fatherland rested as safely as did the world on those of Atlas) has fallen a victim to the scissors externally, inter- nally its life is all the fresher, and it blossoms and prospers. - * Originally printed in the “Deutsche Revue,” April, 1900. 3 4. CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY In this matter the Chinese should be praised as being more honest and logical. That pigtail which hangs behind them has ceased to be the symbol of the victory of the Mantchurians and the defeat of the Chinese; for them it no longer symbol- izes the old régime, but a new one. What are a scant three centuries to a nation whose civilization rests on a foundation of more than three thousand years? And when, as has al- ready occurred, the British government to-day demands of the native or naturalized Chinamen in her colonies that they cut off their pigtails when they go to China, if they wish to have the benefit of the protection of the British authorities, then the pigtailed gentlemen raise a great to-do, and protest most earnestly against any such expectation. This happened as recently as the year 1898, when the Chinese merchants living in Hong-Kong objected to such a demand in a petition which they presented to the well-known Lord Charles Beresford. In view of such frank veneration for the pigtail, it is naturally not surprising that “our own correspondent’’ and the tourist—who both work with equal earnestness for the formation of public opinion–exert themselves to the best of their ability to turn the brightest light on the dreadful con- sequences of such an antiquated worship. And it naturally follows that the great public, on whom its own moral disgust about others always has a most beneficial effect, joins in the - ‘‘crucify" clamor. A lot of excellent people for whom a fly-trap is a horror, and who gladly contribute their mite to start and continue the anti-vivisection movement, see red as soon as you speak to them about China. And they would not CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY 5 only twist off one of the buttons of their dressing-gowns, but those of their whole wardrobe as well, if they could thereby exterminate the Mandarins, root and branch, in order that the seeds of the twentieth century might germinate luxuriantly in the ground fertilized by their corpses. In contrast to this view of things, it is timely to recall the old precept that the other part—that is, China—will be heard from before it is flayed alive, and its mutilated limbs, disjecta membra, divided among the butchers. On the 8th of April, 1899, the Chinese ambassador in Washington, Wu-ting-fang, who has studied law in England and speaks English better than most reformers of the world in Germany, made a speech at the yearly meeting of the Ameri- can Academy of Political and Social Sciences, in which he es- pecially emphasized the fact that western nations are too much in the habit of haughtily overlooking the services which the Orientals have rendered to aid the development of the human race. And at a banquet of the American Asiatic Association, on the 26th of January of this year, he added these words of warning, -that one should be polite and cour- teous in intercourse with the Chinese, and should not forget that the Chinese conceptions of etiquette and everything else are totally different from those which prevail in America, and also that it would be well to recollect the words of President Lincoln, who said that you “cannot fool all the people all the time.” These two speeches of Wu-ting-fang's contain the secret of the misunderstanding which now governs the relation of China 6 CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY to Europe and also to Germany. China is an agricultural land in the broadest as well as the narrowest meaning of the word, and this is the foundation of that disdain of commerce and trade which causes the Chinese merchant to be considered as belonging to the lowest class of the population. It is much the same with our agrarians, who look at the merchant with disdain and distrust, for, according to their view, he has no other endeavor, and knows no other object, than to entice money out of the pockets of the country people in a more or less honest way. But at the same time China is a country of learned men. In the majority of cases the road to an official career is open only after passing the educational examina- tions, and, as the whole official science rests on the teachings of Confucius, with ancestral worship forming an integral part of them, we are probably not far wrong in assuming that the Chinaman identifies the continuation of the empire with that of Confucianism, and cannot imagine one without the other. Into these conditions the foreign missionary on one hand, and the foreign merchant on the other, are shoved by force, and, while one of them undermines the foundations of the nation by trying to set up a strange dogma in the place of the native re- ligion, the other defies all the agricultural views of the au- thorities and the population by demanding a consideration for his wishes and needs which has never before been accorded to commerce. This is the reason for the constantly-recurring at- tacks on foreign missionaries and native Christians, and for the continued opposition to concessions to the necessities of foreign commerce. Moreover, when we take into con- CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY 7 sideration the manner in which China has been oppressed by foreign diplomacy during the last few years; how sometimes here and sometimes there a bit of its territory has been seized by some other power, and how the foreign press discusses the partition of the empire, you really cannot take it amiss, if the Chinamen, as the Frenchman says, se mettent de travers pour me passe laisser avaler. Taking these facts into consideration, the largely passive opposition China offers to the intrusion of foreign ideas and methods can be better understood and for- given than by looking down from the superiority of one’s own position and disposing of the fate of four hundred millions of people in a few words about degeneration, decay, and decline. One of the best informed persons about eastern Asia, Mrs. Bishop (formerly Miss Isabella Bird), has thoroughly dis- cussed the question of the alleged decay of the Chinese king- dom, and has come to the conviction that there is no danger of it, at least for the people. On the contrary, a new life ani- mating all classes, and filling the observer with amazement, justifies the most favorable hopes and in nowise warrants the belief in the downfall of the Chinese nation. Even for the official world, the much-slandered Mandarins, she says a reasonable word. She describes the countless duties which devolve on every one of them; the small remuneration which the State grants them, making corruption and fraud almost un- avoidable because they are forced to provide for all their subordinate officials out of their own income. . Thus she reaches the very just conclusion that the system is more to blame for the existing evil than the officials, and that the 8 CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY matter can be remedied only by reforming the former. Nei- - ther does she misunderstand the difficulties which have arisen from the long-continued duration of the evil. If the China- man does not get into the wheel-work of the administration (and the occasions for this are so rare that hundreds of thou- sands of Chinamen never come into contact with the govern- ment except when paying their light taxes and duties), he is infinitely freer and more unhampered than the freest man in the freest land in the world, in what concerns his public and family life, business, pleasures, and the necessities of body and soul. It sounds like a paradox, and is only the simple truth, that, if to-morrow in a Chinese town there should occur one-half of the interference by government, administration, and police authorities which with us is a matter of course, the inhabitants would be in open revolt within twenty-four hours. You see that the Chinese pigtail is not much worse than the European, and, like the latter, it will probably outlive many a reform, and continue to give many another proof of its ac. tivity and capability in one way or another. But what is more important than the existence of this pigtail in the de- velopment of the relations between foreign countries and China is the manner which we assume toward the wearers of the same. In the United States, where great attention is given to the political and commercial development of the country, China is considered as the market of the future, and the idea of taking possession of the Philippines was brought forth and developed for the object of securing the greatest possible share CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY 9 in the commerce of the Chinese empire. With this concep- tion, which the speeches of Carl Schurz and others will not succeed in changing, all other powers having interests in China will have to reckon. In the first place it prevents the possibility of any nation, except Russia, making an attack on the integrity of the empire, and even Russia will have to con- fine herself to a few odd conquests on the boundaries where the Mongolians offer a more easily handled material than the Chinese. On this account it will be advisable for Germany to hold fast to the plan prepared by Graf v. Bülow, which has as an object the continuation of the friendliest relations with the Chinese government, and the peaceful development of German commercial and industrial interests in China. But this de- mands the determination to offer an energetic and consistent opposition to those many organs of German public opinion which shriek for diplomatic and military intervention, for the partition of China, for acquisition of territory, and for an- nexation. To one who knows east Asiatic conditions it seems almost comical that each appearance of a band of robbers is described as the beginning of a movement directed against the reigning dynasty, and that the simple, legal, and neces- sary settlement of the question of succession gives occasion to hysterical telegrams, and statements about murder and man- slaughter in the imperial palace at Pekin. And it seems strange to think that there are still people who imagine that, in the year 1898, the empress-regent nipped vital reforms in the bud, and, after she had proven herself to be a very sensible woman for nearly forty years, she suddenly developed into an 10 CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY unreasonable tyrant. To one who knows these conditions, such statements, as I said, seem almost comical, especially if one knows the hands that pull the wires in China, to which the puppets in Europe dance. But the continued and largely un- warranted attacks directed against the Chinese government by a part of the German press have a very grave and critical side. It would be a great mistake to assume that such attacks do not reach the ears of the government in Pekin, and prob- ably they rather gain than lose keenness in transmission: in such cases there is always someone to whose interest it is to play the tell-tale; therefore these attacks certainly do not make it any easier for our diplomatic and consular representa- tives to fulfil their duties, nor are they calculated to aid the German merchant in the competition for the settlement of government affairs. And, when one notices how the Chinese ambassador in England, Sir Chichen Lofengloh, goes from town to town, and everywhere is met and honored by the rep- resentatives of commerce and industry; how the Chinese am- bassador in the United States is influenced in the same manner in the interest of American industries, then one perceives with sincere regret that the greater part of the German press continues to attack China, its government and people. And while these attacks are not entirely without foundation, they are for the most part very much exaggerated. The problem which Germany has to solve in China is a sufficiently serious and responsible one to justify the wish that the press would consider the effect of its utterances, and not strive to impair our relations with an empire with which we have every reason CHINESE PIGTAILS, AND WHAT HANGS THEREBY 11 to live in peace and friendship. Then, too, we should be able to yank a few hairs out of the Chinese pigtail, and thus help make it thinner—an affair demanding more delicate treat- ment than merely grabbing with both hands at the Chinaman’s scalplock,-treatment which will achieve better and more en- during results.