The Awakening of China | Page 2

consigned to the limbo of abortions. Tuan Fang, one of the leaders, has just been appointed to the viceroyalty of Nanking, with carte blanche to carry out his progressive ideas; and the metropolitan viceroy, Yuan, on taking leave of the Empress Dowager before proceeding to the manoeuvres, besought her not to listen to reactionary counsels such as those which had produced the disasters of 1900.
In view of these facts, what wonder that Chinese newspapers are discussing the question of a national religion? The fires of the old altars are well-nigh extinct; and, among those who have come forward to [Page vii] advocate the adoption of Christianity as the only faith that meets the wants of an enlightened people, one of the most prominent is a priest of Buddha.
May we not look forward with confidence to a time when China shall be found in the brotherhood of Christian nations?
W. A. P. M.
_Peking, October 30, 1906._

[Page ix] INTRODUCTION
How varied are the geological formations of different countries, and what countless ages do they represent! Scarcely less diversified are the human beings that occupy the surface of the globe, and not much shorter the period of their evolution. To trace the stages of their growth and decay, to explain the vicissitudes through which they have passed, is the office of a philosophic historian.
If the life history of a silkworm, whose threefold existence is rounded off in a few months, is replete with interest, how much more interesting is that of societies of men emerging from barbarism and expanding through thousands of years. Next in interest to the history of our own branch of the human family is that of the yellow race confronting us on the opposite shore of the Pacific; even more fascinating, it may be, owing to the strangeness of manners and environment, as well as from the contrast or coincidence of experience and sentiment. So different from ours (the author writes as an American) are many phases of their social life that one is tempted to suspect that the same law, which placed their feet opposite to ours, of necessity turned their heads the other way.
To pursue this study is not to delve in a necropolis like Nineveh or Babylon; for China is not, like western Asia, the grave of dead empires, but the home of a people [Page x] endowed with inexhaustible vitality. Her present greatness and her future prospects alike challenge admiration.
If the inhabitants of other worlds could look down on us, as we look up at the moon, there are only five empires on the globe of sufficient extent to make a figure on their map: one of these is China. With more than three times the population of Russia, and an almost equal area, in natural advantages she is without a rival, if one excepts the United States. Imagination revels in picturing her future, when she shall have adopted Christian civilisation, and when steam and electricity shall have knit together all the members of her gigantic frame.
It was by the absorption of small states that the Chinese people grew to greatness. The present work will trace their history as they emerge, like a rivulet, from the highlands of central Asia and, increasing in volume, flow, like a stately river, toward the eastern ocean. Revolutions many and startling are to be recorded: some, like that in the epoch of the Great Wall, which stamped the impress of unity upon the entire people; others, like the Manchu conquest of 1644, by which, in whole or in part, they were brought under the sway of a foreign dynasty. Finally, contemporary history will be treated at some length, as its importance demands; and the transformation now going on in the Empire will be faithfully depicted in its relations to Western influences in the fields of religion, commerce and arms.
As no people can be understood or properly studied apart from their environment, a bird's-eye view of the country is given.

[Page xi] CONTENTS
PREFACE INTRODUCTION


PART I
THE EMPIRE IN OUTLINE
I. China Proper II. A Journey Through the Provinces--Kwangtung and Kwangsi III. Fukien IV. Chéhkiang V. Kiangsu VI. Shantung VII. Chihli VIII. Honan IX. The River Provinces--Hupeh, Hunan, Anhwei, Kiangsi X. Provinces of the Upper Yang-tse--Szechuen, Kweichau, Yunnan XI. Northwestern Provinces--Shansi, Shensi, Kansuh XII. Outlying Territories--Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet
[Page xii]

PART II
HISTORY IN OUTLINE, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
XIII. Origin of the Chinese XIV. The Mythical Period XV. The Three Dynasties XVI. House of Chou XVII. The Sages of China XVIII. The Warring States XIX. House of Ts'in XX. House of Han XXI. The Three Kingdoms XXII. The Tang Dynasty XXIII. The Sung Dynasty XXIV. The Yuen Dynasty XXV. The Ming Dynasty XXVI. The Ta-Ts'ing Dynasty


PART III
CHINA IN TRANSFORMATION
XXVII. The Opening of China, a Drama in Five Acts--God in History--Prologue ACT 1--The Opium War