Evening star., 1898-11-09

How the Chinese Finally Get Ahead
of Their Visitors.
From the Celestial Empire.

From the Celestial Empire.
The regular practice of the Chinese has
been for centuries to conquer their con-
uuerors. not by force OF arms. but by gentle
persistence in their own course. Who does
not know charming women VINO accept all
masculine counsels or commands with
sweet smiles and ready acceptance in
words. yet never bulge from their own
line Of conduct one iota? 1t is something
after this feminine fashion that the Chi
aese have tanned the Manchus. even as long
years ago they tanned the MouEols. Nay!
have they not after this same fashion
tanned the barbarians from the west?
Shanghai is still nOminally an English set
tlrment By no force OF arms are the chi
uese recapturing it. Foreigners having
cleaned il and built houses and made roads
and introduced carriages and laid on water
and electric light. the Chinese are stcadlIy
and calmly pushing the foreigners on INTO
the outskirts by themselves. crowdIng the
roads hiring the carriages, hlllng the
houses and enjoying the wafer ana ngAt,
which they would never lay on TO one OF
their own cities-if let aIoue-bCt which
they yet are capable of enjoying when they
find them ready to their hand
Russia is now making a dangerous expert
ment. She is undertaking to build railway
lines protected by her soldiery- She Is 60
ing to officer and drill the troops of ShanS.
Of many Russians in China Russians not
always of the highest class. too And Rus
SLAMS are not of quite another race from
the Chinese like the AnglO-Saxon. They
are after all. of the same stock originally,
with many points of resemblance az first
starting. Is it not possible that by resi-
dence in China they may be rather indoc-
trinated with Chinese ways and methods OF
thought?
The French have but short time ago
acquired TOnqu.n, yet already so many of
them are said to have taken to opium
smoking to have introduced opium smok-
ing resorts into Paris for the convenience
of French officers. What will happen in
another century, if this be true already. one
hesitates even to imagine. Now appear the
Russians on the scene. men OF hne
physique. but already with an insufticiently
developed power of self-restraint, is
shown by the regime they themselves think
IL necessary to impose upon their nation
with regard to sexual vice, and also after
a less revolving fashion by the wild scenes
of drunkenness to which so many of US
have been witness Expose men OF this
character to the enervating climate OF
China and to that insidOus sapping of the
moral nature which we all who live among
Chinese are probably more or less sadly
conscious of in our natures. and are not the
results likely TO be the same as those so
often already recorded in history? China
is not likely nowadays to encounter con-
queror more dominating than Genghis. But
completely was the old MOngOl spirit eX-
tinguished in that branch of his family
tFat established itself in China. either
owiEs To climatic influences or contact with
the Chinese, that just when Timour was
about to begin in western Asia his course
Of brilliant trtumphs, his relations, e5tab-
liShed on the throne of China. vacated it
without a struggle. Yet Timour was de-
sCendant only in the sixth degree from
GenEhis himself, the Couquerrr of a very
different China from that which English
men know now.
We must never forget that just as Eng
land disarmed the Indians so the Manchn
dynasty disarmed the Chinese. and the re-
suit probably in both cas- IS has been ef-
feminacy and contempt well as dislike
for the forbidden weapons II is very hard
10 say how our characters alter by pro-
louged residence in China. We see it rath-
IT in one another than by salf-consciGas-
NJ IS II will be only what may expect
if the Russian soldiers sent to guard Rus
sian railways through China, and the Rus
sian officers sent to drill Chinese soldiery,
after few years. become almost more
Chinese than the Chinese, their own iisci-
pine undermined by the very men they
were sent to discipline.