542 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
val of 1908 in the company of the German engineers who superin- 
tended a Chinese coal mine. i 
I passed the first days of the year 1909 on the sacred mountain 
Heéngshan, then journeyed overland to Kueilinfu, the capital of 
Kuangsi, and down the Kuei River; passing over 300 rapids in 
10 days, to the West River, by which I reached Canton, the imposing, 
populous, and gay city. Going by sea I reached Fuchovw, the capital 
of the Province of Fukien. I celebrated Easter in Hangchow, the 
capital of Chekiang, on the much celebrated beautiful West Lake. 
Then I hastened back to Peking, where I arrived after an absence of 
over one year, on May 1, at the time of the funeral of the deceased 
Emperor. 
In all my travels, which took me through 14 of the 18 Provinces of 
China, I followed the main highways, the ancient, much-traveled 
roads, and was constantly in the midst of Chinese life in densely popu- 
lated and mostly the richest regions. The sacred mountains, annually 
visited by millions of pious pilgrims, belong to these regions, as also 
do the imposing industrial and cultural centers and great cities where 
an enormous commerce is carried on through the countless water- 
ways and lakes where boats constantly follow each other in rapid 
succession, and the seacoast with its busy traffic from harbor to 
harbor. Industry, contentment, and order everywhere prevail among 
this 400,000,000 people, whose joy of living and contentment is 
apparent in their art. Nothing is more erroneous than to speak of 
China as fossilized and ready to fall to pieces mentally, morally, 
or even politically. The unity of the culture of yesterday and yet 
of to-day has welded the people and keeps the nation strong. 
This observation may account for the fact that no problems of 
archeology, art, religion, or general history will be discussed here, 
interesting as they may be, but the China as it is to-day will be 
described. ‘The means should not be given greater importance than 
the end. 
To introduce our subject: We stand in China contemplating a 
unity of culture which can only be dreamed of in the days of ancient 
Greece or of some other ideal period. One imposing conception of 
the universe is the mainspring of all Chinamen, a conception so com- 
prehensive that it is the key defining all expressions in life—trade, 
intercourse, customs, religion, poetry, and especially fine arts and 
architecture. They exhibit in nearly every work of art the universe 
and its idea. The visible forms are the refiex of the divine. They 
behold the divine in the various forms which they fashion to express 
it; in short, in the microcosm is recognized and revealed the ma- 
crocosm. 
This method of thinking and acting on a grand scale gave rise, and 
rightly so, to the favorite expression “ China, the land of great 
