THE PASSING OF CHINA'S ANCIENT SYSTEM 117 



educational affairs will soon be confirmed under the title Wen Pu or 

 Board of Literature. 



It was rather the abuse and not the fault of this literary civil serv- 

 ice system that it compelled the mind of China to grind for ages in 

 the mill of blind imitation. A competition which excited the deep in- 

 terest of a whole nation must have exercised a correspondingly pro- 

 found influence upon the education of the people and the stability of 

 the government. The old system has cherished whatever national edu- 

 cation there has been, and when the influence of western science pre- 

 dominates, as it is beginning to do, we shall see thousands, yea hun- 

 dreds of thousands, of patient students pursuing scientific studies with 

 an ardor equal to that formerly bestowed on literary competition. 

 The problem of transition is a vast one, and not till men of modern 

 training, necessarily young men, are appointed to the literary chancel- 

 lorships of the empire, can this new and practical system be adequately 

 established. But the struggle against custom and conservatism is on 

 — probably an intense and prolonged effort, for these do not vanish in 

 a day even in the presence of a goodly band of reformers — and from 

 the struggle the rising race of modern students will come forth vic- 

 torious to lead their country into the splendid destiny that awaits her. 



It remains to be seen just what measures will be taken to establish 

 adequate and efficient modern schools throughout the empire, but 

 already the prime movers in the recent memorial have announced some 

 very ambitious schemes. The viceroy of Chihli has decided to estab- 

 lish a monster normal school at Tientsin in order to prepare men to 

 teach according to modern methods. It will be modeled after the one 

 at Nanking, and will matriculate from Fengtien, Shangtung, Honan 

 and other provinces, as well as from Chihli. The president will be a 

 returned student from Japan, Chin Pang-ping, who was recently 

 awarded the Hanlin degree after passing a special examination. At 

 Peking it is planned to erect new buildings on a site of more than 

 2,800 English acres, and to supersede the present Peking University 

 with this new Imperial Chinese University. Dormitory accommoda- 

 tions for some 20,000 students are to be provided, while a portion of 

 the grounds will be set apart for agricultural experiments. The site 

 of the present university is to be utilized for the erection of a school for 

 the daughters of princes, nobles and high ministers of state, which 

 has been sanctioned by the empress dowager in response to the recom- 

 mendations of H. E. Chang Pei-hsi, minister of education and presi- 

 dent of the Board of Bevenue, and H. E. Tuan Fang, substantive 

 governor of Hunan province and one of the five imperial commis- 

 sioners appointed to visit abroad. 



At Canton the abolition of the biennial and triennial examinations 

 causes a loss to the provincial treasury of nearly $350,000 silver an- 



