The Civilization of China | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and Dagny,
[email protected]

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA
by HERBERT A. GILES, M.A., LL.D.
Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge, And sometime
H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo

PREFACE
The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese
civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid
and startling transition.
It has been written, primarily, for readers who know little or nothing of
China, in the hope that it may succeed in alluring them to a wider and
more methodical survey.
H.A.G.
Cambridge, May 12, 1911.

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA


CHAPTER I
THE FEUDAL AGE
It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by

the term China?
Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us
as China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-
fifths of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million
and a half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as
Peking, the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre,
in the south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.
Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a returning traveller the
very much asked question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a
Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in England, how he liked
Europe! Peking, for instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as
Madrid; whereas Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the
square indicated by the four points enumerated above will be found
variations of climate, flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals --not to
mention human beings--distributed in very much the same way as in
Europe. The climate of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no rain,
and hardly any snow, falling between October and April. The really hot
weather lasts only for six or eight weeks, about July and August--and
even then the nights