224 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



State agitated, and ^50,000 expended to decide where the 

 remains of a worthless and vicious young man should be interred. 

 Owing to the necessary disturbance of the ancestral burial 

 places, much trouble has been anticipated in the construction of the 

 railways, for which concessions have now been granted to European 

 syndicates. But an Englishman long resident in the country has 

 declared that there will be no resistance on the part of the 

 people. " The dead can be removed with due regard to Fung 

 Shui ; a few dollars will make that all right." This is fully in 

 accordance with the thrifty character of the Chinese, which over- 

 rides all other considerations, as expressed in the popular saying: 

 "With money you may move the gods; without it you cannot 

 move men." But the gods may even be moved without money, 

 or at least with spurious paper money, for it is a fixed belief of 

 their votaries that, like mortals, they may be outwitted by such 

 devices. When rallied for burning flash notes at a popular shrine, 

 since no spirit-bank would cash them, a Chinaman retorted: 

 "Why me burn good note? Joss no can savvy." In a similar 

 spirit the god of war is hoodwinked by wooden boards hung on 

 the ramparts of Pekin and painted to look like heavy ordnance. 



In fact appearance, outward show, observance of the "eleventh 

 commandment," in a word "face," as it is called, is everything in 

 China. "To understand, however imperfectly, what is meant by 

 'face,' we must take account of the fact that as a race the Chinese 

 have a strong dramatic instinct. Upon very slight provocation 

 any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. 

 A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms. If his troubles are adjusted 

 he speaks of himself as having 'got off the stage' with credit, and 

 if they are not adjusted he finds no way to 'retire from the stage.' 

 The question is never of facts, but always of form. Once rightly 

 apprehended, 'face' will be found to be in itself a key to the 

 combination-lock of many of the most important characteristics of 

 the Chinese 1 /' 



1 Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, New York, 1895. The good, 

 or at least the useful, qualities of the Chinese are stated by this shrewd observer 

 to be a love of industry, peace, and social order, a matchless patience and for- 

 bearance under wrongs and evils beyond cure, a happy temperament, no nerves, 

 and " a digestion like that of an ostrich." 



