194 



CHINA 



custom-houses ; and a powerful navy of ironclads 

 was acquired. But the rottenness of the military 

 and naval systems was shown by the Japanese 

 war of 1894-5, arising out of the state of Corea 

 (q.v.). A Japanese invading force, after a battle 

 at Ping-yang and a naval battle on the Yalu 

 (17th September 1894), drove the Chinese out 

 of Corea, and, entering Manchuria, took the strong 

 naval station of Port Arthur (22d November 1894). 

 The corresponding station and arsenal south pf the 

 Gulf of Pe-chi-li, that of Wei-hai-wei, yielded to 

 the Japanese assaults on the 30th January 1895, the 

 Chinese troops having nowhere made any effectual 

 resistance. And the remaining ships of the fleet 

 which had escaped the battle of the Yalu were, 

 after some sharp righting, captured by the Japanese 

 navy. The colossal Chinese Empire was, after 

 a few months' fighting, reduced to sue for peace. 

 The Japanese terms included the cession of For- 

 mosa and the Pescadores Islands, the cession of 

 the Liaotung Peninsula, including Port Arthur, and 

 the payment of a war indemnity of thirty-three 

 millions sterling. But Russia, France, and Ger- 

 many constrained the Japanese to refrain from 

 insisting on the cession of Liao-tung, in considera- 

 tion of an increase of the war indemnity by sixteen 

 millions. By 1898 China, become the ' sick man ' 

 of the Farther East, was the object of the anxious 

 solicitude of the European powers. Russia had 

 arranged that its Siberian railway was to pass 

 through Kirin and Moukden to Port Arthur and 

 to Peking, and by help of garrisons and Cossack 

 settlers had secured military and commercial con- 

 trol of Manchuria ( q.v. ), and on an extensible lease 

 was in possession of Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan. 

 Germany had occupied, on a lease of ninety-nine 

 years, tne port of Kiao-chow in Shan-tung ; and 

 regarded the valley of the Hoang-ho as its 

 special sphere of interest. Britain, insisting on 

 full freedom of trade with China ( ' the open door'), 

 had a definite promise that no part of the Yang- 

 tsze basin (to be henceforth a British 'sphere of 

 influence') should be alienated by China, secured 

 the opening of additional treaty ports and the free 

 navigation of part of some of the great rivers, 

 and occupied Wei-hai-wei on its evacuation by the 

 Japanese on the same terms as Russia holds Port 

 Arthur. European diplomacy was entangled in 

 rival schemes for giving China loans and securing 

 (for subjects of Russia, Britain, Germany, France, 

 Belgium, and the United States) the right of 

 making railways in China, some of them of doubt- 

 ful commercial value. France secured some recti- 

 fication of the Tong-king frontier, and some trading 

 privileges in south China. Li-Hung-Chang, believed 

 to be supporting Russian interests, fell from power, 

 and the emperor started a brief and violent system 

 of reforms on Western ideas, but was summarily 

 checked in this career by the dowager empress. 

 The innovating advisers of the emperor fled or were 

 slain or imprisoned ; the emperor, found by a French 

 doctor to be in very poor health, was kept under 

 strict surveillance ; in 1900 large anti-foreign riots, 

 with loss of life, broke out, necessitating the landing 

 of foreign troops for the restoration of order. 



See works on China by Du Halde ( 4 vols. folio, Paris, 

 1735), Sir John F. Davis (1857), A. Williamson (1870), S. 

 Wells Williams ( 1883 ), Bichthof en ( 1877-83 ), E. Simon 

 ( 1887 ), Maule (1891 ), R. K. Douglas ( 1887 ), Gundry (1893 

 and 1895 ) ; and on the Chinese by Martin (1881), Doolittle 

 (1887), Coltman (1891), H. A. Giles (1876-90), A. H. 

 Smith ( 1894 ), and Holcombe ( 1895 ) ; histories by Boulger 

 $1881-84 and 1893) ; on the Manchu dynasty and govern- 

 ment by John Ross (1880) and Mayers (1887); also 

 Curzon's Problems of the Far East, TfieLife of Sir Harry 

 Parkes, Norman's Peoples and Politics of the Far East 

 (all in 1894) and J. Thomson's Through China with a 

 Camera ( 1898 ). On the physical geography, fauna, and 

 flora, see also ASIA and GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



LANGUAGE, WRITING, AND LITERATURE. 

 The speech and the written composition of the- 

 Chinese differ more widely than those of any 

 other people. The former addresses itself, like all 

 other languages, to the mind through the ear ; the 

 latter speaks to the mind through the eye, not- 

 as words, but as symbols of ideas. All Chinese 

 literature might be understood and translated 

 though the student of it could not name a single 

 character. The words and the names of the written 

 characters are all monosyllabic, and are inconju- 

 gable and indeclinable, without inflection or change 

 of any kind, and at the same time so versatile that 

 there are few of them which may not perform the 

 rdle indifferently, according to their position in a 

 sentence, of most of what we call Parts of Speech. 

 That the speech has never advanced to anything 

 like agglutination even (see PHILOLOGY) can be 

 owing only to the early origin and cultivation of 

 the written characters, referred to a reign preceding 

 that of Fu Hsi, which, on the least unlikely of the 

 chronological schemes, must be assigned to the 

 34th century B.C. We may safely say that the 

 written characters of the Chinese existed -probably 

 in a very rudimentary condition more than 5000 

 years ago. 



These characters are divided into six classes,, 

 according to the principle regulating their forma- 

 tion : (1) Pictorial characters (Hsiang hsing), 

 being originally rude pictures of objects; (2) 

 Indicative characters ( Chih shih), intended by 

 their form and the relation of their parts to suggest 

 to the reader the idea in the mind of their makers ; 

 (3) Composite characters (Hui i), made up of two 

 or more characters, the meanings of which blend in 

 the meaning of the compound ; (4) Inverted char- 

 acters (Chwan chit), formed from others by the 

 inversion of the whole, or of parts, of them ; ( 5 ) 

 Borrowed characters ( Chid tsieh), used in other 

 than their proper signification ; and ( 6 ) Phonetical 

 characters (Hsieh shang), of which one part has a 

 phonetic use, and indicates, exactly or approxi- 

 mately, the name of the compound, and the other- 

 part the category of meaning which it conveys. 



The first three classes may be called origines 

 scripturce Sinicce, but do not comprehend 2000 

 characters ; the next two are unimportant. The 

 sixth class is beyond comparison the most numer- 

 ous, and embraces well on to 40,000 of the 43,000 

 characters, or thereabouts, found in the K'ang-hsi 

 dictionary of 1704. The third class is the most 

 interesting, bringing us mind to mind abreast of 

 their framers, and showing us their ideas of the 

 things represented by the characters. For example, 

 a wife ( called fu, $ ) is denoted by nu,^, 'a 



female,' and ch'au, ~fjff t 'a broom:' she was the 

 woman that used the broom. And, again, a male 

 child ( called nan, 3^ ) is denoted by t'ien, [JJ , 

 'a field,' and li, ~ft, 'strength:' his birth was 

 welcomed as new strength for the work of the 

 field. 



The phonetical characters arose from the impossi- 

 bility of framing a sufficient number of characters 

 on the other five principles of formation to serve 

 the purpose of a written medium. A certain 

 number of characters, which has varied from 554 to 

 214 (employed in the dictionaries of the last and 

 present dynasties), were set apart as ' ideograms ' 

 or 'mothers of meaning,' and a larger and more 

 indefinite number were chosen, which in connection 

 with them might express the name or sound of 

 the compounds, and be called ' mothers of sound. ' 

 Their number altogether is large, but many are 

 derivatives of others, and not a few of the ideo- 

 grams themselves are among them. Dr Chalmers, of 



