Editorial Letter by William Warren Prescott

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 20, 1907

Editorial Letter

By William Warren Prescott

Jottings from the Editor's Note-Book

I FIND it very difficult to present on paper any adequate and correct view of China, its people, and the work in that great field. No doubt this may be largely due to my brief stay in the country, but I find, in reading the writings of those who have lived almost a generation in China, that the verbal picture needs to be supplemented by actual observation in order to understand its meaning fully. I can therefore only hope to give some imperfect glimpses of a most interesting people and a most difficult situation.

The first impression which seems to be made upon the mind of the visitor is that of unlimited numbers. There appear to be uncounted and countless Chinese everywhere. Without any implements or with implements of the crudest kind, they accomplish the largest undertakings by virtue of the sheer force of numbers, and it appears to be an economic necessity to use just as many as possible in doing any given work, so that the “cash” may be distributed as widely as possible, and thus the necessities of life be provided for the greatest number. If large excavations are to be made for docks or for other public improvements, the dirt will probably all be carried out in baskets suspended from poles carried on the shoulders of coolies. The continuous and apparently never-ending procession of these coolies insures the reasonably rapid progress of the work. If a large dike is to be built or a sea front extended, the necessary dirt will probably all be brought to the place in baskets in the same manner, rather than conveyed on dump-cars loaded by steam shovels, but the total cost of the improvement may not be more than in other countries, because coolie labor is cheap, ranging from four or five cents to twenty-five cents gold a day, according to location and circumstances.

In the cities it is people, people everywhere. The main streets (if it is really proper to call the narrow, winding passages “streets”) are thronged and almost constantly choked with people of all ages and descriptions, as the beggars and the coolies, the merchants and the teachers, the women and the children rub shoulders together, as they must of necessity do if they move at all. Even so-called villages contain as many as five hundred thousand inhabitants, and Canton is credited with two million and a half, although its territory is not large. It is doubtful whether any Chinese, even the officials, could give a correct estimate of the population, as the difficulty of numbers is complicated by a national trait of inaccuracy. It is certain, however, that a foreigner would be utterly unable to number them. To him they seem as the sand of the seashore for multitude.

A second impression made upon the mind of the visitor from the West is that of abject and widespread poverty. In the words of another: “Among a dense population like that of the Chinese empire, life is often reduced to its lowest terms, and those terms are literally a ‘struggle for existence.’ . . . The Chinese have been well said to ‘reduce poverty to a science.’ . . . A population of five hundred to the square mile, it is hardly necessary to observe, is not one of the conditions adapted to lead to practical verification of the adage that industry and economy are the two hands of fortune.”

The conditions under which the Chinese live are a constant demonstration of their poverty. Many of their homes in the country villages are not so well built or so attractive as the average stable in the West. Their clothing is of the cheapest possible material, and often limited in quantity. They use the least possible amount of fuel in winter as well as in summer, and never keep their houses comfortable in cold weather. Everything that can possibly be classed as food is eaten. “All is fish that comes to their net, and there is little which does not come there sooner or later. In the northern parts of China the horse, the mule, the ox, and the donkey are in universal use, and in large districts the camel is made to do full duty. . . . It is the general practise to eat all of these animals as soon as they expire, no matter whether the cause of death be an accident, old age, or disease. . . . Dead dogs and cats are subject to the same process of absorption as dead horses, mules, and donkeys.” The usefulness of old clothes “will not be exhausted till there is nothing left of them for a base with which other materials can unite.” These are some of the indications of the struggle for existence.

Another thing which will attract the attention of the foreigner will be the filth and the foul odors in both the villages and the cities. Pigs, dogs, donkeys, hens, geese, and people share the streets in common. There is no system of public sewers, and the public conveniences are allowed to remain in a wretchedly unsanitary condition, poisoning the air for a long distance. In many places the refuse collects and rots in the streets.

In the villages during the winter the thrifty farmer collects as much manure as possible, and makes a compost heap just in front of his house, which the frequent rains will often transform into a mass of oozing slime. The streets of such cities and villages as are unpaved with stone seem never to be repaired, and in the rainy season they become so miry as to be almost impassable, and of course a liberal quantity of this sticky mass is carried into the houses by those who venture to navigate these channels of liquid filth. If we accept the proverb that cleanliness is next to godliness, there are not lacking evidences that the Chinese are quite a distance from that most desirable possession.

Of course the outward indications of an idolatrous worship press themselves upon the attention everywhere. “Temples and pagodas are the architectural contributions of Buddhism to the community. . . . Except in cities, temples are always beautifully situated, usually in some quiet and picturesque spot. Their generous courts and capacious buildings are the resort of visitors, as well as the dwelling-place of many gods and of their human attendants. . . . The portly abbot supported by his retinue of monks, candles and burning incense, the monotonous droning of liturgies, the repetition

of merit-bringing phrases and prayers accompanied by the rattle of rosaries, the measured beating of wooden fish heads, and prostrations in an atmosphere heavy with pent-up smoke, are the prevailing impressions brought away by the visitor.” The same sights are duplicated in almost any church in a Roman Catholic country, and suggest the identity of pagan and papal worship.

One who is accustomed to the almost unlimited size of Western farms and the wasteful methods employed in their cultivation will be sure to notice the extreme subdivision of the land and the painstaking care with which every small plot is made to yield the greatest possible returns. Two crops a year are obtained from much of the land, and large tracts (cultivated by many different owners, although not necessarily fenced off) present the same appearance as the Chinese gardens in America. Some of the methods of fertilizing the growing crops show unwearied care and attention, but they can not be described here, and often render the crops unfit for consumption by foreigners. The products of the soil in inland China, generally speaking, are sold for very moderate prices, and so far as they can be used, help materially in reducing the cost of living, but the necessity of importing some foreign products makes the food bill for the missionary on the average as much or more than in America or Europe.

I do not wish to give the impression that the Chinese are a bad people, or that China is an undesirable place in which to live. On the contrary, in the face of some of the conditions which I have mentioned in trying to give a truthful account of my experiences, there is something almost fascinating about the country, the people, and the language. “China possessed culture and civilization at a time when only the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and the Hittite had risen above the level of surrounding nations. Forty centuries ago—nearly a thousand years before the earliest assured event in Greek history, the Dorian invasion, and a century before Abraham was born—we find in North China, in the modern province of Shan-si, a people with institutions, government, and religion, with a fairly well-developed literature and a knowledge of sciences and arts.” Many of the institutions and inventions of ages long since past survive to-day and form an interesting subject of study. “There is in China much civilization that is indigenous.” In spite of the fact that this remarkable people have been more or less in touch with foreigners for centuries, yet they retain to an astonishing extent their old-time ideas and customs, and in many ways constitute a world by themselves. One who becomes acquainted even to a limited degree with China can hardly fail to be possessed with a desire to know it much more fully.

In my next letter I will try to write of the situation and the outlook from a missionary standpoint. W. W. P.