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OUR CHINESE
NEIGHBORS |
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Harper’s
Weekly, May 15, 1886, page 315 (Article) |
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Chinese
exclusiveness—a Chinese policy—was once almost a by-word; like
many other Chinese productions and ideas far less hurtful, it has
been imitated in American and Australia. Chinese are driven from San
Francisco, and massacred in Washington Territory. They are suffering
from unjust and illegal discriminations under both the English and
American governments. Chinese merchants of high standing complain
that they have difficulty in entering American harbors, and that our
national prejudices place an unnatural limit upon the course of
trade. Their protest is well founded. The civilized races of the
West now practice the policy once held peculiar to China or Japan. |
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Yet the Chinese
writers deny that in the earlier period of their history they were
ever opposed to free intercourse with other nations. With the Arabs
and the Hindoos they long held an extensive trade. It was only, they
assert, when the Portuguese and the Dutch visited their coast as
robbers and pirates that the imperial government closed its ports to
the ships of the West. The lawless cruelty of the first foreigners
who penetrated the Eastern seas was certainly a sufficient excuse
for Chinese retaliation and contempt. But with the Arabs and the
Hindoos it was different. The first account we have of China is that
of an Arab traveller in the ninth century. Ibn Wahab, or whatever
was the traveller’s name, found the Chinese in a high state of
civilization. Their cities were splendid; their harbors crowded with
ships. Commerce was active, the people prosperous. They wore rich
coverings of silk; every one learned to read and write, and schools
abounded; they drank the infusion of leaves called Tteha and lived
in health and ease. Their officials were chosen for their
intelligence and worth; their judges were noted for their integrity. |
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A thousand years
ago the Chinese our traveller describes almost as the Chinese of our
own day. The potter produced his rare porcelain, transparent as
glass. The farmer cultivated his mulberry-trees, his tea-plant, and
his rice. The Chinese scholars filled the countless schools. The
Chinese painters excelled in that fine technique that marks
the painters of modern Paris. Politeness was a national trait. The
bankrupt was punished with extreme severity. The sick poor were
aided from the public dispensary. The aged were pensioned. The
Chinese, said the Arab, are generally fine-looking, of good height,
fair complexion, their hair blacker than that of any other people.
The women, he adds, wear it curled. Marco Polo and all later
travellers confirm the story of the Mohammedan. |
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The early
Chinese showed nothing of that hostility to strangers that has
marked their later policy. All sects and creeds flourished under the
liberal emperors. Christians (chiefly Nestorians), Jews,
Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians, were mingled together in the
Chinese cities. Good roads, canals, and bridges abounded. In Europe
all was savage waste when our record begins. China was the land of
toleration and philosophy, poetry and art, when our ancestors were
rude barbarians. Captain Gill, in his recent travels, relates that
in the interior of the empire he found in some districts a generous
welcome and a happy and prosperous people. The hostility to
foreigners was strongest near the coast. |
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Seated on the
opposite shores of the Pacific, American and China would seem
natural friends and allies. The immense empire, just awakening to
the value of Western progress, will afford the most extensive market
for American trade. American railroads, steamers, and telegraphs
should give life to its hundreds of millions of people. American
farming implements—ploughs, reapers, mowers—might be spread over
its immense territory. Its teas and silks should be paid for with
American goods. England and Germany are already reaching forward
toward that extensive traffic which China offers in the future,
while we are driving it from us. The Chinese adopted their exclusive
policy only to shut out Western pirates and robbers. They may be won
by justice and conciliation. |
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Harper’s
Weekly, May 15, 1886, page 315 (Article) |
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