184 



CHINA 



the Sung dynasty for the supremacy of the empire, 

 then merged in the dynasty of Chin (Kin), and 

 were extinguished by the Mongol conquest. The 

 country south of the Yang-tsze River was then 

 styled Manzi or Manzy, from the old name of Man 

 for all the southern aboriginal tribes. 



The name China has come to us from India 

 through Buddhism. In a conversation ( apocryphal 

 probably), related by Nien Ch'ang in his History of 

 Buddhism, between the Han emperor who v wel- 

 comed them to his capital and the first two of the 

 Buddhist missionaries, there appear the names of 

 Chi-na and Chin-tan ( ' the Land of Chin ' ). We 

 do not know how long before our first century the 

 name had obtained in India, nor how it origin- 

 ated. If it had begun with ts instead of ch, the 

 view of many that it was derived from the great 

 state of Ts'in, whose fortunes culminated in the 

 first but short-lived imperial dynasty ( 221-209 B.C. ), 

 might have been considered as certain. This ques- 

 tion must be left as hardly capable of determina- 

 tion ; as also how it is that we find the empire 

 called by other Asiatic peoples Sin, Tsin, Tsinistan, 

 and the inhabitants Tsinistce. ' The land of Sinim,' 

 in Isa. xlix. 12, is another denomination. 



CHINA PROPER was divided in the K'ang-hsi 

 reign (1662-1722) into eighteen provinces; from 

 1887 to 1895, when it was ceded to Japan, For- 

 mosa, detached from Fu-chien, was a separate 

 province under the name of T'ai-wan ; and the 

 constitution of Sin-chiang or Sin-tsiang as a 

 new province on the extreme west of the empire 

 raised the number of provinces again to nineteen. 

 One of the easternmost portions of the Asiatic 

 continent, bordering on the Pacific Ocean, China 

 Proper lies, if we include the island of Hai-nan, 

 between 18 and 49 N. lat. , and 98 and 124 E. long. 

 Its area is given at 1,298,000 sq. m. , being more than 

 twenty-five times that of England ; but if we in- 

 clude outlying parts of Chih-li and Kan-su, the 

 total area is not much, if at all, short of 2,000,000 

 sq. m. ( The whole empire, without Corea, has an 

 area more than twice as large. ) 



On the north there are four provinces Chih-li, 

 Shan-hsi, Shen-hsi, and Kan-sft ; on the west, two 

 Sze-ch'wan ( the largest of all ) and Yun-nan ; on 

 the south, two Kwang-hsi and Kwang-tung ; on 

 the east, four Fu-chien ( Kien the initial ch used 

 to be pronounced k ), Cheh-chiang, Chiang-su, and 

 Shan-tung. The central area enclosed by these 

 twelve provinces is occupied by Ho-nan, An-hui 

 (Gan- and Ngan-hwei), Hu-pei, Hu-nan, Chiang- 

 hsi, and Kwei-chau (parts of which are largely 

 occupied by tribes of aboriginal Miao-tsze). The 

 province or Sin-chiang, Sin-kiang, or Sin-tsiang, 

 recently constituted, includes Eastern Turkistan 

 (q.v.), Western Kan-su, Hi, and Zungaria (q.v.). 

 Formosa, till then Chinese, was ceded to Japan in 

 1895 ; and Manchuria, one of the most valuable of 

 the outer provinces, is, since it came under Russian 

 supremacy in 1898, Chinese only in a very limited 

 sense. ( See below at page 194). 



The population of these provinces has been so 

 variously estimated as to justify Dr S. W. Williams 

 in holding that, ' until there has been a methodical 

 inspection of the empire ' guaranteed by the govern- 

 ment, questions concerning the population must 

 be held in abeyance. The Almanack de Gotha 

 for. 1900 gives for the provinces of China Proper 

 a population of 346| millions, and for the whole 

 empire, including Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet, 

 but without Corea, 357J millions. It is probably 

 safe to say that 400 millions is hardly an over- 

 estimate of the population of the Chinese em- 

 pire. Of the twenty-two ports open to foreign 

 commerce, only five have a population under 

 50,000. That of Canton was in 1890 estimated at 



2,500,000 ; of T'ien-tsin at 950,000 ; of Han-k'au 

 at 750,000 ; of Fu-chau at 650,000 ; of Shang-hai 

 at 450,000; of Ning-po at 250,000. The total 

 number of foreigners resident in the open ports 

 was in 1897 stated by the Customs authorities at 

 11,667, of whom 4929 were British subjects, 1564 

 American, 1106 Japanese, 975 Portuguese, 950 

 German, 698 French, 439 Swedish and Norwegian, 

 and 362 Spanish. 



As to the physical features of China Proper, the 

 whole territory may be described as sloping from 

 the mountainous regions of Tibet and Nepal 

 towards the shores of the Pacific on the east and 

 south. The most extensive mountain-range in it 

 is the Nan Ling or Southern Range, a far-extend- 

 ing spur of the Himalayas. Commencing in Yun- 

 nan, it bounds Kwang-hsl, Kwang-tung, and 

 Fu-chien on the north, and, passing through Cheh- 

 chiang, enters into the sea at Ning-po. It thus 

 forms a continuous barrier, penetrated only by a 

 few steep passes (of which the Mei Kwan is the 

 best known) that separates the coast-regions of 

 South-eastern China from the rest of the country. 

 This great chain throws off numerous spurs to the 

 south and east, which, dipping into the sea, appear 

 above it as a belt of rugged islands along the sea- 

 board. Of this belt the Chusan Archipelago is the 

 most northerly portion. 



North of this long range, and west of the 113th 

 meridian, on to the borders of Tibet, the country is 

 mountainous, while to the east and from the great 

 wall on the north, to the Po-yang lake in the south, 

 there is the Great Plain, comprising the greater 

 part of the provinces of Chih-li and Shan-tung, 

 Ho-nan, An-hui, and Chiang-sft an area of about 

 210,000 sq. m., estimated to support a population 

 of 177,000,000. 



In the provinces west from Chih-11 Shan-hsl, 

 Shen-hsi, and Kan-su the soil is formed of what 

 are called the loess beds, which extend even to the 

 Koko-nor and the head-waters of the Yellow River. 

 The name loess is adopted from that of a Tertiary 

 deposit which appears in the Rhine Valley a. 

 brownish coloured earth, extremely porous, crumb- 

 ling easily between the fingers, and carried far and 

 wide in clouds of dust. It covers the subsoil to an 

 enormous depth, and is apt to split perpendicularly 

 in clefts which render travelling difficult. And 

 yet by this cleavage it affords homes to multitudes 

 of the people, who live in caves excavated near the 

 bottoms of the cliffs. Sometimes whole villages are 

 so formed in terraces of the earth that rise above 

 one another. But the most valuable quality of the 

 loess is its fertility, the fields composed of it hardly 

 requiring any other manure than a sprinkling of 

 its own fresh loam. The husbandman in this way 

 obtains an assured harvest two and even three 

 times a year. This fertility, provided there be a 

 sufficient rainfall, seems inexhaustible. The pro- 

 vince of Shan-hsi has borne the name for thousands 

 of years of ' the Granary of the Nation ; ' and it is 

 no doubt to the distribution of this earth over its 

 surface that the Great Plain owes its fruitful ness. 



The rivers of China called for the most part ho in 

 the north, and chiang (kiang) in the south, are one 

 of its most distinguishing features. Two of them 

 stand out conspicuous among the great rivers of the 

 world ; the Ho, Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, and the 

 Chiang, generally misnamed the Yang-tsze. They 

 rise not far from each other ; the Ho, in the plain of 

 Odontala, called in Chinese the ' Sea of Stars ' i.e. 

 of springs or lakelets, in 35J N. lat. , and 96 E. long. ; 

 and the Chiang ( Kiang), from among the mountains 

 of Tibet. The Ho pursues a tortuous eastward course 

 to Kan-su, and the Chiang with a southern inclina- 

 tion enters China at Batang, in Sze-ch'wan. From 

 the prefecture of Lan-chau the Ho flows north-east 

 more or less along the Great Wall, till it arrives 



