China’s Awakening by G. B. THOMPSON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 11, 1909

China’s Awakening

By G. B. THOMPSON

G. B. THOMPSON

An ancient seer, looking down through the centuries to the time when “the day of the Lord is near,” and the nations are preparing for slaughter, exclaimed, “Let the heathen be awakened.” Joel 3:12. This suggests that in the days when the final chapters in the history of the world are being written, and the drama of sin finished, there would be an awakening among the nations known as “heathen.”

For centuries these great heathen Gibraltars have lain almost dormant. The twelfth century after Christ looked back upon the twentieth century before Christ, and scarcely a ripple was seen upon the surface that indicated a breaking away from medieval habits and customs. More than half the world seemed hopelessly chained in the shackles of ignorance and superstition for all time.

But a change has suddenly come. The light of the present civilization is piercing the gloom of the ages, and the millions are waking up. In the Chicago Tribune of Oct. 3, 1909, Mr. Frank C. Carpenter, writing from Peking, gives a most interesting account of China’s awakening, from which I take the following:—

“I write of the greatest intellectual movement of all time. This nation of four hundred million is starting to school, and thousands of teachers are already at work, beginning to instruct it along the lines of our civilization. The movement was started only four years ago by the great empress dowager at the advice of Yuan Shih Kai, Chang Chi Tung, and other progressive statesmen. By an imperial edict the old system of examinations under which China has been working for centuries was wiped off the slate, and the new education was begun.

“Now there are colleges in every provincial capital, and modern schools in the four thousand walled cities. A government department of education has been instituted, and over it is one of the great imperial boards. In the new constitution which was issued last year a system of common schools was provided, and compulsory education at the earliest possible moment. By that constitution China will have its parliament within eight years from now, and the work of training the people for self-government

is to go on by fixed steps from year to year.

“The lines of the development of the new education have been carefully laid out. The composition of text-books began in 1908, and a large number of these will be published this year. In 1910 schools for easy learning will be further extended over the empire, and by 1912 they will be in all the villages and market towns. The work will go steadily on, and in 1916 one Chinese in every twenty will be able to read and write, and will have received some education in our modern civilization.

“Scholars Will Make an Army”

“One in twenty! Five per cent! It seems small, but it bulks large. Five per cent of these people means twenty million, and this will be the educational army with which China will start on its career under the new constitution.

“At present not one in a hundred Chinese can read the simplest characters of his language, and it is safe to say that not more than one in five hundred has an education along the old lines so advanced as that of our grammar schools. All this is to be changed, and by the next generation it is safe to say that the majority of the people will all have gone to school.

“I came here from Japan. It is now thirty years since that country began a constitutional movement like this which is now being inaugurated here. I doubt whether education was more advanced there at that time than in China now. To-day every boy and girl in the Japanese empire is receiving more or less education, and more than one tenth of the whole nation is going to school. No one who has not seen the educational awakening of the land of the mikado can appreciate what such movements mean. Here in China they will be multiplied many fold by the character of the race and its vast population.

“Students Are Taught Trades”

“During my stay at Tientsin I visited an industrial school, established by Yuan Shih Kai when he was viceroy there. It has about six hundred students, who are learning weaving, sewing, embroidery, porcelain making, carpentry, wood-working, and designing. In the weaving room there were forty or fifty hand and foot looms operated by Chinese boys. The work was well done, and they made beautiful cloth. Another room was devoted to match manufacture, and others to fine chinaware and glassware.

“Those boys are receiving ten cents a day during their instruction, and this is enough for their board and clothes. They have engaged to work for the government for several years after their graduation, and they will then go out to establish industries at their various homes. Such schools are being started in every part of the empire.

“Peking is not so far advanced as Tientsin in the pushing of the new education. Still it has more than two hundred new schools, and over twenty thousand children and young men are working in government institutions.

“The schools begin with kindergartens which may be attended by children from the ages of three up to seven. At the latter age they enter the second grade primary schools, where a five-year course is taken, and then the first grade primary for a four-year course. In these schools they are taught the reading and writing of the Chinese characters, and they begin arithmetic, history, and geography. In the first stages of their instruction the children study out loud, but instead of sitting on the floor and swaying back and forth, each shouting for himself, as in the past, they now sit on benches, and read together, with one of them as their leader.

“Some Schools Well Advanced”

“After the primary is passed, the students enter the grammar or intermediate grades. Here they study Chinese, foreign languages, mathematics, geography, and history, and also the natural sciences, ethics, and drawing. In some schools there are courses in law and political economy. The most of these schools are, as yet, not far advanced, but there are about ten thousand students attending them in Peking alone, and of them four or five thousand are Manchus. The Manchus have a nobles’ school for the sons of high officials who are being prepared for further education abroad.

“High schools and normal schools are now to be found everywhere. According to the regulation every town and city has to maintain one, and every provincial capital must have a normal school of the first grade.”

In the light of the past, this reads like a fairy tale. But in the light of prophecy, it records a movement which foreshadows the end of the world. The nations are awakening from the stupor of ages and preparing for Armageddon.

Takoma Park, D. C.