SCIENCE AMONG THE CHINESE 29 



of a foreigner than the utter lack of accuracy among the Chinese in 

 most matters involving numerical relations. The ordinary troubles that 

 one has with careless and even dishonest workmen and contractors are 

 enhanced manyfold by reason of the discrepancies between the various 

 measures used for different purposes though called by the same name. 

 The method by which the units were adopted and fixed is lost in anti- 

 quity, and the variations in the measures now used destroy any claim 

 that there ever was a true standard recognized in any such way as the 

 standard yard and meter are recognized and employed by western peo- 

 ples to-day. It is extremely hard to secure any adequate and consistent 

 information concerning the weights and measures actually in use. 



For instance, the chih or unit of length differs according to the prov- 

 ince and the prefecture, the city and the ward, the craft and the 

 usage. There are in the " Chinese Commercial Guide " over a hundred 

 different values of the chih as actually in use. Some of these are 

 doubtless derived from ancient official chih, but the majority seem 

 rather to be the caprice of custom. The variations are by no means 

 small, the extreme values differing by more than 6 inches in a unit of 

 approximately 14 inches on the average. In Shanghai for instance, the 

 carpenter's rule is 11.14 inches long, whereas the mason's rule is as 

 short as 10.9 inches, so that in a building 100 ft. long, if this difference 

 were not realized by the architect and he furnished the same specifica- 

 tions in Chinese measure to masons and carpenters, the frame of the 

 house would overhang the stone foundations by two feet. 



The distance between two points A and B, according to Chinese 

 representation, depends not merely on the geometrical factor, but on 

 others that determine the relative facility of travel between these points. 

 It is further from A to B than from 5 to J., if 5 is upstream from A on 

 a river, or at a greater elevation on a hill road. It is further between 

 A and B at night or when raining than it is by day or when clear. 

 While of course the practical philosophy of this way of regarding dis- 

 tance is evident, it still is true that such failure to separate these 

 factors from the geometrical factor in the form of statement operates 

 to retard appreciation of accurate statement and accurate thinking. 



Paper may be sold by the hundred sheets and yet by a desire to keep 

 the stated cost per hundred uniform in spite of variations in quality, 

 the dealer will " call " a less number of sheets a hundred sheets, so that 

 when you request your servant to buy a hundred sheets of a certain 

 paper, he returns with eighty and insists that " in that kind of paper a 

 hundred sheets are only eighty!" 



Although a first impression of China and the Chinese may be that of 

 deadening uniformity, it takes but a little closer observation to show 

 that this is just the opposite of the truth. Along with the manifold 

 divergencies in speech and customs, which play a paramount part in the 



