The Civilization of China | Page 4

are always cool; while for six or eight weeks
between December and February there may be a couple of feet of ice
on the river. Canton, on the other hand, has a tropical climate, with a
long damp enervating summer and a short bleak winter. The old story
runs that snow has only been seen once in Canton, and then it was
thought by the people to be falling cotton-wool.
The northern provinces are remarkable for vast level plains, dotted with
villages, the houses of which are built of mud. In the southern

provinces will be found long stretches of mountain scenery, vying in
loveliness with anything to be seen elsewhere. Monasteries are built
high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there the
well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the
southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are
said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which
reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their
funds by so doing.
In the north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and donkeys
are seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel, which carries
heavy loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the south, until the advent
of the railway, travellers had to choose between the sedan- chair carried
on the shoulders of stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable
house-boat. Before steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for
the doctor's degree at the great triennial examination would take three
months to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however,
were often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred
miles a day.
The market in Peking is supplied, among other things, with excellent
mutton from a fat-tailed breed of sheep, chiefly for the largely
Mohammedan population; but the sheep will not live in southern China,
where the goat takes its place. The pig is found everywhere, and
represents beef in our market, the latter being extremely unpalatable to
the ordinary Chinaman, partly perhaps because Confucius forbade men
to slaughter the animal which draws the plough and contributes so
much to the welfare of mankind. The staple food, the "bread" of the
people in the Chinese Empire, is nominally rice; but this is too costly
for the peasant of northern China to import, and he falls back on millet
as its substitute. Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow
abundantly in the north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange,
the pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of a
more tropical character.
Cold storage has been practised by the Chinese for centuries. Blocks of
ice are cut from the river for that purpose; and on a hot summer's day a

Peking coolie can obtain an iced drink at an almost infinitesimal cost.
Grapes are preserved from autumn until the following May and June by
the simple process of sticking the stalk of the bunch into a large hard
pear, and putting it away carefully in the ice-house. Even at Ningpo,
close to our central point on the eastern coast of China, thin layers of
ice are collected from pools and ditches, and successfully stored for use
in the following summer.
The inhabitants of the coast provinces are distinguished from the
dwellers in the north and in the far interior by a marked alertness of
mind and general temperament. The Chinese themselves declare that
virtue is associated with mountains, wisdom with water, cynically
implying that no one is both virtuous and wise. Between the inhabitants
of the various provinces there is little love lost. Northerners fear and
hate southerners, and the latter hold the former in infinite scorn and
contempt. Thus, when in 1860 the Franco-British force made for
Peking, it was easy enough to secure the services of any number of
Cantonese, who remained as faithful as though the attack had been
directed against some third nationality.
The population of China has never been exactly ascertained. It has been
variously estimated by foreign travellers, Sacharoff, in 1842, placing
the figure at over four hundred millions. The latest census, taken in
1902, is said to yield a total of four hundred and ten millions. Perhaps
three hundred millions would be a juster estimate; even that would
absorb no less than one-fifth of the human race. From this total it is
easy to calculate that if the Chinese people were to walk past a given
point in single file, the procession would never end; long before the last
of the three hundred millions had passed by, a new generation would
have sprung up to continue the neverending line. The census, however,
is a very old institution with the Chinese; and we learn that