The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1900-08-01
The MYSTERIOUS CHINESE.
No Occidental Can Understand the Work.
ings Of the Yellow Brain.


The Century Company have got out.
"China, the Long-Llved Empire" by
Eliza X. Scidmore. A couple Of cita-
tions from the first chapter will show
the authors point OF View.
No Occidental ever saw within or
understood the working of the yellow
brain. which starts from and arrives
at different point by reverse and in
verse processes we can neither follow
nor comprehend. No one knows, or
ever VIII really know the Chinese
the heart, and soul, and springs of
thought of the most incomprehensibie
unfathomablc, inscrutable contradic-
tory, logical, and illogical people OH
earth. OF all Orientals, no race Is 80
alien. Not memory nor n custom,
not tradition nor an idea, not root
word nor a symbol of any kind asso-
ciatcs our past with their past There
Is little sympathy, no kinship nor
common feeling, and never affection
possible between the Anglo-Saxon and
the Chinese. Nothing in Chinese
character or traits appeals warmly to
our hearts or Imagination, nothing
touches; and of all the people of earth
they most entirely lack soul" charm,
magnetism, attractiveness. We may
yield them an intellectual admiration
on some grounds, but no warmer pulse
beats for them. There arc chiefly
points of contradiction between them
and ourselves.
i gave up the conundrum OF this
people, abjured that oilskin mystery,
the Chinaman, more devouty each day
of six visits to China, and on the
seventh visit the questions were that
many times the more battling. One
can both agree and disagree with the
four-day tourist, who sums up the Chi
nese convincingly, with brutal. prac-
tical, skeptical common sense, and can
echo his irTevcrcnt and wholesale con-
demnatlon and contempt when he has
once seen the land and the revolving
conditions in which the people live.
One agrees and disagrees. too, with the
sinologues. who are usually sinophlles,
that the Chinese are the one great race
people the worlds greatest and earliest
teachers, its future leaders and rulers,
the chosen people; China vast reserve
reservoir of humanity TO repeople and
revive decadent, dying Europe; the
Chinese destined to underlive, override,
and outdo all the pale races; the whole
hope of humanity bound up in this
yellow people.
Everything seems dead, dying,
ruined. or going to decay in this great
est empire of one race and people.
There seems no living spring nor beat
ing heart in the inert mass. Religion,
morality, literature, the arts, and finer
industries are all mt least cOmntose.
Their three great RELIGIONS are dead;
two systems of ignoble supcrstitions
live. Literature Is fossil thing, all
hollow form and artifice, the empty
shell of dead conventions. The arts
have died, the genius of the race has
fed. They have lost the powers they
once commanded. and have acquired
no new ones. There is little joy, light
heartcdness. or laughter in the race,
and their greatest virtue, fllial piety,
is demoralized, degraded by the soul
less craven cult of ancestor-worshlp.
China in its present stage, with the
desperate problems 1t presents. is n
melancholy and depressing place. in
tensely interesting, full of questions
hut not enjoyable in enjoyments lit
eral sense.