The Civilization of China | Page 5

in A.D. 156
the total population of the China of those days was returned as a little
over fifty millions. In more modern times, the process of taking the
census consists in serving out house-tickets to the head of every
household, who is responsible for a proper return of all the inmates; but
as there is no fixed day for which these tickets are returnable, the
results are approximate rather than exact.

Again, it is not uncommon to hear people talking of the Chinese
language as if it were a single tongue spoken all over China after a
more or less uniform standard. But the fact is that the colloquial is
broken up into at least eight dialects, each so strongly marked as to
constitute eight languages as different to the ear, one from another, as
English, Dutch and German, or French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
A Shanghai man, for instance, is unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so
on. All officials are obliged, and all of the better educated merchants
and others endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something
of the dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is
popularly known as "Mandarin." The written language remains the
same for the whole empire; which merely means that ideas set down on
paper after a uniform system are spoken with different sounds, just as
the Arabic numerals are written uniformly in England, France and
Germany, but are pronounced in a totally different manner.
The only difficulty of the spoken language, of no matter what dialect,
lies in the "tones," which simply means the different intonations which
may be given to one and the same sound, thus producing so many
entirely different meanings. But for these tones, the colloquial of China
would be absurdly easy, inasmuch as there is no such thing as grammar,
in the sense of gender, number, case, mood, tense, or any of the
variations we understand by that term. Many amusing examples are
current of blunders committed by faulty speakers, such as that of the
student who told his servant to bring him a goose, when what he really
wanted was some salt, both goose and salt having the same sound, /yen/,
but quite different intonations. The following specimen has the
advantage of being true. A British official reported to the Foreign
Office that the people of Tientsin were in the habit of shouting after
foreigners, "Mao-tsu, mao-tsu" (pronounced /mowdza/, /ow/ as in
/how/), from which he gathered that they were much struck by the
head- gear of the barbarian. Now, it is a fact that /mao-tsu/, uttered with
a certain intonation, means a hat; but with another intonation, it means
"hairy one," and the latter, referring to the big beards of foreigners, was
the meaning intended to be conveyed. This epithet is still to be heard,
and is often preceded by the adjective "red."

The written characters, known to have been in use for the past three
thousand years, were originally rude pictures, as of men, birds, horses,
dogs, houses, the numerals (one, two, three, four), etc., etc., and it is
still possible to trace in the modified modern forms of these characters
more or less striking resemblances to the objects intended. The next
step was to put two or more characters together, to express by their
combination an abstract idea, as, for instance, a /hand/ holding a /rod/ =
father; but of course this simple process did not carry the Chinese very
far, and they soon managed to hit on a joint picture and phonetic
system, which enabled them to multiply characters indefinitely, new
compounds being formed for use as required. It is thus that new
characters can still be produced, if necessary, to express novel objects
or ideas. The usual plan, however, is to combine existing terms in such
a way as to suggest what is wanted. For instance, in preference to
inventing a separate character for the piece of ordnance known as a
"mortar," the Chinese, with an eye to its peculiar pose, gave it the
appropriate name of a "frog gun."
Again, just as the natives and the dialects of the various parts of China
differ one from another, although fundamentally the same people and
the same language, so do the manners and customs differ to such an
extent that habits of life and ceremonial regulations which prevail in
one part of the empire do not necessarily prevail in another. Yet once
more it will be found that the differences which appear irreconcilable at
first, do not affect what is essential, but apply rather to matters of detail.
Many travellers and others have described as customs of the Chinese
customs which, as presented, refer to a part of China only, and not to
the whole. For instance, the ornamental