Present Conditions in China 



655 



visit the upper world. On those three 

 days the tutelary diety of the city is car- 

 ried out from his temple in solemn pro- 

 cession to preside over the public burning 

 and the offering of food, "to keep order 

 amongst the spirits and to preserve the 

 peace amongst them." The diety is al- 

 ways accompanied by thousands upon 

 thousands of devotees of all ages and 

 sexes, in red clothes and disheveled hair, 

 as condemned criminals, in return for 

 some fancied answering of prayer. In 

 addition, similar burnings and offerings 

 of food are performed in the private 

 houses. All of these cost the people of 

 Shanghai, at a modest estimate, a quarter 

 of a million of dollars ; and to this there 

 should be added $100,000 paid on these 

 occasions to Taoist and Buddhist priests 

 for prayers to the dead. The enlight- 

 ened Chinese officials exhort their coun- 

 trymen to give up their idolatrous prac- 

 tices and apply the money thus wasted to 

 the more worthy work of educating the 

 coming generation in their duties to sov- 

 ereign and country. 



BUT SPIRIT OF SUPERSTITION NOT YET 

 OVERCOME 



It is thus seen that one of the first 

 effects of the educational movement is 

 a blow at the superstitious practices, upon 

 which vast sums of money are squan- 

 dered. The financial embarrassment which 

 retards the establishment of schools 

 would be solved at once if the advice of 

 the Tientsin and Shanghai officials was 

 followed. Many will doubtless act upon 

 the advice of the intelligent officials, but 

 the spirit of superstition will not easily 

 be overcome. The troubles which the 

 new schools encounter may be illustrated 

 by an incident which occurred a few 

 months ago in one of the most populous 

 provinces. At Kweilin a provincial col- 

 lege had been established, and its faculty, 

 possessed of a zeal for the new learning, 

 caused a school-house in foreign style 

 to be built in an adjoining district, and 

 it soon had a hundred students in uni- 

 form in attendance. In the district for 

 two months there had been no rain dur- 



ing the growing season, and, the crops 

 being threatened by the drouth, the coun- 

 try people joined in a procession to the 

 temple to pray for rain. Now, in the 

 province of Kwangsi it is thought to be 

 most unpropitious if the procession of 

 suppliants for rain should happen to meet 

 any one clothed in white or wearing a 

 hat. This procession on its way to the 

 temple had to pass by the new school- 

 house, and the boys came out to see the 

 procession, wearing their white uniform 

 and straw hats. This, combined with the 

 foreign appearance of the school-house, 

 caused angry murmurs to pass through 

 the crowd, and very soon these culmi- 

 nated in a violent attack on the school 

 and the students. Several were badly 

 beaten and all who were caught had their 

 white suits torn from their backs. The 

 town magistrate intervened to restore 

 order, but was himself severely handled 

 and knocked down with a stone. Only 

 the arrival of soldiers prevented greater 

 damage. The crowd was dispersed, leav- 

 ing the school-house in a dilapidated con- 

 dition. The head-master and teachers 

 were greatly frightened, "threw up their 

 job," and fled to the provincial college. 



"the coming of THE CIGARETTE" 



A correspondent in the same paper 

 from which the foregoing is taken gives 

 an account of an incident not entirely in 

 line with the subject I am discussing, but 

 it is illustrative of the new spirit of en- 

 terprise which is awakening the great 

 Empire and in which certain American 

 interests are taking an active part. Under 

 the heading of "The coming of the cigar- 

 ette" he writes : 



"Nanking has at length, for the first 

 time in its long history, fallen a victim to 

 Western advertisement enterprise. Two 

 agents of the American Tobacco Com- 

 pany recently spent, two weeks in this 

 city, and now about the gates of our two- 

 thousand-year-old walls and on almost 

 every other conspicious place one sees 

 flaming advertisements of American cig- 

 arettes. 



"The strangers seem also to have pre- 



