PRESENT CONDITIONS IN CHINA* 
By Freperic McCormick 
HINA is the most interesting and 
C at the same time the most exasper- 
ating subject. No two authorities 
of our time agree about it. Among them 
a China discussion is a fine chorus of 
contradiction. 
The land ot the great wall, ancient 
porcelain, the pigtail, gunpowder, print- 
ing, jade, embroidery ; “Kitai,” or Cathay, 
the land of literature and art, the flowery 
realm of tea and silk, home of the mari- 
ner’s compass, the Celestial, or, more 
graphic, Middle Kingdom—this is the 
playground of rebellion, contagion, fam- 
ine, violence, death, change, and every 
event of universal revolution. 
Hitherto, war to this realm meant the 
rebellion of the outer barbarian, as the 
Han, or Chinese, called his foreign ene- 
mies. That is no more. The center has 
rebelled; China has war within. Such a 
land in civil strife is, indeed, the land of 
gunpowder. 
China is as large as the United States, 
lies in the same latitudes, has similar 
physical characteristics, and the same 
kind of climate. It looks the same to 
the traveler until he comes to a walled 
city, with its pagodas, or meets several 
people. And several are always to be 
met with, because there are perhaps 275 
million of them altogether. 
POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CHINA 
China is populated with human beings. 
‘The great head of them (in foreign 
minds), the late Empress Dowager, 
called them “my black-haired people.” I 
have lived intimately with them, and for 
some time was a membc: ~f a distin- 
guished Chinese family in reniuig. ~ 
never ate any rat, nor any cat, nor any 
dog, to the best of my knowledge and 
belief. I went frequently, as a dinner 
‘guest, to a fine Chinese friend, who al- 
ways told me, when we sat down at the 
table (quietly, on the side), that on his 
last visit to my house he had caught a 
perfectly bully stray dog in my street, 
and had saved it up especially for me. 
His cook, he said, who was a noted one 
in the neighborhood, had done his best, 
and the dog would be along in a few 
minutes. 
But I must say that during some years 
of campaigning in China, such as when 
the Court was driven out of Peking, 
when we took the country people by sur- 
prise and they did not have time to pre- 
pare food for us, we ate such things as 
we found, and about which I never cared 
to inquire. \And in tact, always ewes 
after, when this subject comes up, I 
think right up to that point and stop. 
Chinese are honest, like other folks. I 
always find it necessary to say this, be- 
cause in a census which I have taken I 
find it the only subject respecting China 
of positively universal concern. The 
question is always asked, and the Chi- 
nese and Japanese compared. ‘To the 
cosmopolitan and to the correspondent it 
is like asking if the people of L street are 
more honest than those of M street. In- 
wardly we know that the question of 
honesty is the same the world over, and 
comparisons are impossible. 
The Chinese do not all live on rice nor 
chop suey. More people live on chop 
suey in New York than in all the Chinese 
cities I have visited. Chop is English for 
trade-mark, or sign, and suey means 
water. J am told that the chop suey is 
the diagram at the loading line of a ship, 
and is the invention and peculiar prop- 
erty of Lloyd’s, of Great Britain. Such 
is the identity of this great common her- 
itage which, along with kerosene, ciga- 
rettes, flour and religion, and the open 
door, unites China and America. 
The Chinese do not all wear queues, 
and did not before the cutting of the 
queue was sanctioned a few years ago. 
They are not all even of the same 
* A+ address to the National Geographic Society, November 17, IQII. 
