SHANTUNG— CHINA'S HOLY LAND 



231 



and died natural deaths in an age when 

 murder or enforced suicide or violent 

 death of some sort was the almost in- 

 variable end of greatness. 



After these towering personalities, 

 Capri drops out of history and for 

 some reason does not seem to have 



been patronized further by the imperial 

 family. 



But though Capri was never revisited 

 by the emperors, the Pharos still guided 

 the precious grain fleets through the 

 channel between the island and the main- 

 land for many centuries. 



SHANTUNG-CHINA'S HOLY LAND 



By Charles K. Edmunds 



President Canton Christian College 



THE ancient Kingdom of Lu, now 

 the Province of Shantung, is 

 China's Holy Land. As the scene 

 of many remarkable events in the early 

 history of the people up to 200 B. C, and 

 containing the highest of the five sacred 

 mountains of China, which for two score 

 centuries has been a great Mecca for de- 

 vout pilgrims, this region would be justly 

 famous. But it is particularly celebrated 

 as the birthplace of Confucius and Men- 

 cius, philosophers and statesmen whose 

 fame has gone over the earth. 



In ascending the sacred mountain and 

 in visiting the birthplace, temporary 

 abodes, and the final resting place of 

 Confucius, we are carried back to things 

 hoary with age, and to the sources of the 

 power that has so long held China in its 

 grip. 



The people of Shantung are, on the 

 whole, rather conservative in their atti- 

 tude toward foreigners and things for- 

 eign. The chief manufactures are strong 

 fabrics of wild silk, ornaments of a vit- 

 reous substance like strass, snuff-bottles, 

 cups, etc., straw braid, glass, and excel- 

 lent rugs of many sorts. 



The streets of Tsinan, the capital, are 

 wider than in the south of China, where 

 carts, and even barrows, are practically 

 unknown. Here the deep ruts in the 

 granite slabs of the street pavement in- 

 dicate the stream of traffic that grinds 

 along on squeaky wheels. The shops 

 all open upon the street, the fronts being 

 boarded up at night. The sign-boards, 

 in colors gay and characters large, relieve 



the monotony of gray brick and uniform 

 structure of the buildings. 



A STRANGE FORM OF CRUELTY TO 

 CRIMINALS 



One of the most striking buildings 

 which one sees shortly after leaving the 

 railway depot at Tsinan is the new police 

 station and jail. In most of the large 

 cities of China today there has been a 

 marked improvement in the police sys- 

 tem and in the treatment of criminals. 

 But on one occasion, along one of the 

 main streets of the city, we saw three 

 men exposed in a neck-stock or cangue 

 which has long been used in China as an 

 effective punishment for minor misde- 

 meanors. The culprits stood day after 

 day on a prominent street, exhibiting on 

 the cangue their names and offenses. 



H. E. Wu Ting Fang, formerly Chi- 

 nese Minister to the United States, was 

 charged on his return to China with the 

 revision of the penal code, and the more 

 cruel forms of punishment are not so 

 frequent now as formerly. Nevertheless 

 the accompanying illustration (page 

 233), secured in Tsinan, shows that the 

 terrible method of cage-executions was 

 still in use up to a few years ago. After 

 several days of public exhibition and 

 starvation in a wooden cage, the victim 

 was strangled by the removal of the 

 bricks from under his feet, so that lie 

 hung on the wooden frame about his 

 neck. Sometimes a mass of quicklime 

 was placed on the floor of the cage so 

 that the victim's feet dangled in it. 



