30 JUNE 1900, Page 6

THE YANGTSE VALLEY.*

ALTHOUGH We hear of violent changes at Pekin, the more remote provinces of China move slowly. Reaction has set in at the capital before the antecedent reforms have really begun to penetrate the kingdom. It is, therefore, not too much to say that the value of Mrs. Bishop's record of her adventurous journey through Szechuan is as great to-day as if it had been published on her return in 1897. Mr. Walton and others keep us posted as to the advance of British enter. prise on the great river, but Mrs. Bishop tells us what manner of man the Chinaman is. It is quite unnecessary to say that a book of travel from her pen is full of interest, but one may be permitted a tribute to the encyclopedic nature of her observation. She appears to be at home alike in questions of geology, politics, and native cookery. The photographs with which this book is illustrated add to its value, and this is by no means a matter of course in illustrated works. It is a pity, indeed, that her apparatus did not survive long enough to let her secure portraits of the shy aborigines of the border country, the Man-tze, but she enables the reader to learn much about the actual Chinaman and his surroundings. Most of us, if we were quite honest, would confess to enter- taining for the Chinaman that "imperfect sympathy" which ruled Elia in the case of Seotchmen. The "yellow danger" may be exaggerated, but the yellow man is not quite canny. His Empire, his systems and institutions, may be outworn, but the Chinese are not a dying people, and the future history of the world may depend very largely on their behaviour. Mrs. Bishop had no particular reason to like them ; she was on several occasions the victim of anti-foreign riots, she was once severely hurt, and was more than once in very considerable danger. She found that her coolies possessed no such qualities as loyal comradeship or compassion, and looked on kindness as unaccountable folly. She suffered inconvenience from the crass conceit and bad faith of officials. And yet she makes one think a little better of the race. They represent an inscrutable compound of jarring qualities. A Chinaman will not stay to help an injured friend, and yet the Chinese have organised a most admirable system of benevolent and charitable societies. Again, Chinese will sometimes convince a European observer that they are practically strangers to our conceptions of morality as well as of religion, despite the really noble teachings to be found here and there in their classics, and then these same Chinese will produce examples of sterling honesty in commercial dealings that should put to shame many Christian inhabitants of England. Mrs. Bishop probably knows more than any other living person about the women of various Asiatic countries, and she testifies that she likes the Chinese women better than any Oriental women she knows. It would be presumptuous to say that one can even begin to understand the Chinese character from reading any book, but from this book the reader should be able to see for himself wherein the difficulties of under- standing China lie.

Unpalatable as the conclusion is, it is certain that uneducated Chinamen look on Europeans exactly as unedu- cated Europeans look on Jews. We are considered to be mere traders, willing to undergo any humiliation for the sake of gain. We are believed to practise horrible rites, and, for some occult purpose of our own, to sacrifice children. Our acknowledged skill in the mechanical arts earns us no more respect than a Jew's commercial aptitude earns from a Russian mujik. We come where we are not wanted, and make ourselves indispensable. Of course this is to speak roughly ; a man like Gordon impressed the Chinese, and good European officers can do as much with them as with Egyptians. But Europeans are known in the inland pro- vinces mainly as traders or missionaries, agents, it is hastily assumed, either of avarice or of corruption. The missionary is, first and foremost, a man who wishes to destroy that reverence for ancestors on which the body politic is based. Viewed in the most favourable light, he is one who wishes to impose on the most utilitarian race of mankind an ideal system of metaphysics. These contentions may appear to be mere paradoxes, but we venture to think that they represent the sober convictions of many sensible Chinamen. One can The Yanotse Valley and Beyond. By Mrs. J. P. Bishop (Isabella L BINI). London: dotal Murray. rms. nes.]

realiee that to work among such a people is, to the earnest labourer, almost heart-breaking.

Unfortunately our international jealousies do us discredit. Religion at times appears as the handmaid of politics. The Chinese are a shrewd people, and there is much significance in this incident, told by a Roman Catholic priest to Mrs. Bishop :—

In a certain village "nearly, all the inhabitants placed them- selves under Christian instruction with a view to baptism. These villagers had a land. suit against another village. French influence was brought to bear, and they gained their ease, let us believe justly, after which they returned en masse to their idolatrous practices."

While European nations are wrangling, the Japanese seem to he quietly paving their way to a great commercial conquest: -- Numbers of these alert traders have come up the Yangtze, and in their practical way are spreading themselves through the country, finding out the requirements and tastes of the people, and quietly pushing their trade in small articles, while Japan is also going ahead with her larger exports."

Nor is Japan our only commercial rival in the Yangtse basin. German and Austrian firms are established in Pankow, and the local tea trade is in Russian hands. Still, we learn that in 1898 the tonnage of British shipping entering that port was 5.50,000, as against 60,624 tons of all other nationali- ties. Mrs. Bishop is naturally unwilling to criticise the British of Shanghai, who form one of the most hospitable and pleasant communities in the world, but she thinks it worth while to mention that their general ignorance of the Chinese language commits them to the mercy of Chinese clerks. It is a curious reflection that simply in the interest of good government we make our young officials learn Indian languages, whereas our young traders will not, even to push their private fortunes, learn Chinese. As for our home manufacturers, facts such as those stated by Mrs. Bishop make one despair of their learn- ing anything at all. They will not, we are told, make cottons of the right width for the Chinese market, they send out goods displaying colours that are "unlucky," and other goods too crude in colour for a cultured Chinaman to wear. Facts such as these go far to discount the incessant clamour of our merchants against the apathy of Government. Our mann- • facturers, have practically lost the market that South Africa gives for agricultural implements because they will not, while Americans will, produce ploughs suitable for the African soil. It is extraordinory that we should not have the infinite capacity for taking pains required for commercial as for all other success.

Of direct politics there is little in this book. Mrs. Bishop's latest wanderings did not bring her much into contact with Russians, though her book on Korea, of course, contains very valuable information on Russia in the Far East. Many of the Chinese she met were amazed that she bore credentials

giving her rank amongst the "literati." It is a pity that they will have no chance of reading this book. It is arranged as a diary, it is unpretentious and unsystematic, and yet, if we mistake not, it will more truly instruct the reader interested in China than the political treatise of Lord Curzon or the commercial log of Lord Charles Beresford.