The Civilization of China | Page 9

prefix the name of the place, Cambridge, where he
was born, and call himself Cambridge Welcome, the surname always
coming first in Chinese, as, for instance, in Li Hung- Chang. The
Manchus, it must be remembered, have no surnames; that is to say,
they do not use their clan or family names, but call themselves by their
personal names only.
Chinese surnames, other than place names, are derived from a variety
of sources: from nature, as River, Stone, Cave; from animals, as Bear,
Sheep, Dragon; from birds, as Swallow, Pheasant; from the body, as
Long-ears, Squint-eye; from colours, as Black, White; from trees and
flowers, as Hawthorn, Leaf, Reed, Forest; and others, such as Rich,

East, Sharp, Hope, Duke, Stern, Tepid, Money, etc. By the fifth century
before Christ, the use of surnames had definitely become established
for all classes, whereas in Europe surnames were not known until about
the twelfth century after Christ, and even then were confined to persons
of wealth and position. There is a small Chinese book, studied by every
schoolboy and entitled /The Hundred Surnames/, the word "hundred"
being commonly used in a generally comprehensive sense. It actually
contains about four hundred of the names which occur most frequently.
About two hundred and twenty years before Christ, the feudal system
came to an end. One aggressive state gradually swallowed up all the
others; and under the rule of its sovereign, China became once more an
empire, and such it has ever since remained. But although always an
empire, the throne, during the past two thousand years, has passed
many times from one house to another.
The extraordinary man who led his state to victory over each rival in
turn, and ultimately mounted the throne to rule over a united China,
finds his best historical counterpart in Napoleon. He called himself the
First Emperor, and began by sending an army of 300,000 men to fight
against an old and dreaded enemy to the north, recently identified
beyond question with the Huns. He dispatched a fleet to search for
some mysterious islands off the coast, thought by some to be the
islands which form Japan. He built the Great Wall, to a great extent by
means of convict labour, malefactors being condemned to long terms of
penal servitude on the works. His copper coinage was so uniformly
good that the cowry disappeared altogether from commerce during his
reign. Above all things he desired to impart a fresh stimulus to literary
effort, but he adopted singularly unfortunate means to secure this
desirable end; for, listening to the insidious flattery of courtiers, he
determined that literature should begin anew with his reign. He
therefore determined to destroy all existing books, finally deciding to
spare those connected with three important departments of human
knowledge: namely, (1) works which taught the people to plough, sow,
reap, and provide food for the race; (2) works on the use of drugs and
on the healing art; and (3) works on the various methods of foretelling
the future which might lead men to act in accordance with, and not in

opposition to, the eternal fitness of things as seen in the operations of
Nature. Stringent orders were issued accordingly, and many scholars
were put to death for concealing books in the hope that the storm would
blow over. Numbers of valuable works perished in a vast conflagration
of books, and the only wonder is that any were preserved, with the
exception of the three classes specified above.
In 210 B.C. the First Emperor died, and his youngest son was placed
upon the throne with the title of Second Emperor. The latter began by
carrying out the funeral arrangements of his father, as described about a
century later by the first and greatest of China's historians:--
"On the 9th moon the First Emperor was buried in Mount Li, which in
the early days of his reign he had caused to be tunnelled and prepared
with that view. Then, when he had consolidated the empire, he
employed his soldiery, to the number of 700,000, to bore down to the
Three Springs (that is, until water was reached), and there a firm
foundation was laid and the sarcophagus placed thereon. Rare objects
and costly jewels were collected from the palaces and from the various
officials, and were carried thither and stored in huge quantities.
Artificers were ordered to construct mechanical crossbows, which, if
any one were to enter, would immediately discharge their arrows. With
the aid of quicksilver, rivers were made--the Yangtsze, the Yellow
River, and the great ocean--the metal being made to flow from one into
the other by machinery. On the roof were delineated the constellations
of the sky, on the floor the geographical divisions of the earth. Candles
were made from the fat of the man-fish