Theoretically, at least, the Chinese people should have humour, for humour is born of
realism; and the Chinese are an unusually realistic people. Humour is bo rn of
common sense, and the Chinese have an overdose of common sense. Humour,
especially Asiatic humour, is the product of contentment and leisure, and the Chinese
have contentment and leisure to a supreme degree. A humorist is often a defeatist, and
delights in recounting his own failures and embarrassments, and the Chinese are often
sane, coolminded defeatists. Humour often takes a tolerant view of vice and evil and
instead of condemning them, laughs at them, and the Chinese have always been
characterized by the capacity to tolerate evil. Toleration has, then, a good and a bad
side, and the Chinese have both of them. If the characteristics of the Chinese race we
have discussed above 梒 ommon sense, toleration, contentment and old roguery梐 re
true, then humour is inevitable in China.
Chinese humour, however, is more in deeds than in words. The Chinese have their
words for the various types of humour, but the commonest type, called huacKi, in
which sometimes the Confucian scholars indulge under pseudonyms, really means to me only "trying to be funny." Such writings are only literary relaxations of a too
rigoristic classical tradition, but humour as such had no proper place in literature. At
least there was no open acknowledgement of the role and value of humour in
literature. Humour, indeed, abounds in Chinese novels, but novels were never
accepted as "literature55 by the classicists.
There is very first-class humour in Shiking (Book of Poetry), in the Confucian
Analects and in Hanfeitse, but the Confucian gent leman, brought up in his puritan
view of life, could not see any fun in Confucius, just as he failed to see the wonderful
tender love lyrics in Shiking^ giving them fantastic interpretations, as the Western
theologians give of the Song of Songs. There is a very fine humour in T'ao
Yuanming's writings, too, a sort of quiet leisurely content and a refined luxury of
selfabnegatkm, the best example of which is his poem on his unworthy sons:
My temples are grey, my muscles no longer full.
Five sons have I, and none of them likes school.
Ah-shu is sixteen and as lazy as lazy can be.
Ah-hsiian is fifteen and no taste for reading has he.
Thirteen are Yung and Tuan, yet they can' t tell six from seven.
A-t'ung wants only pears and chestnuts 梚 n two years he' ll be eleven.
Then, come! let me empty this cup, if such be the will of Heaven.
Humour -there is, too, in Tu Fu's and Li Po's poetry, Tu Fu who often produces in his
readers a bitter smile, and Li Po who pleases by his romanticist nonchalance, but we
do not call i t "humour." The unholy awe in which Confucianism was held as the
national religion also restricted the free expression of ideas and made the presentation
of novel points of view and ideas taboo, and humour only lives on novel and original
points of view. It is clear that such a conventional environment is not conducive to the
production of humorous literature. If anyone were to make a collection of Chinese
humour, he would have to cull it from the folk-songs and the Yuan dramas'and the
Ming novels, all outside the pale of the classical "literature/' and in the private notes
and letters of scholars (especially those of the Sung and Ming Dynasties), when they
are a little off their guard.
But the Chinese have nevertheless a humour all their own, for they always love a
good joke. It is humour of a grimmer sort, and is based on the farcical view of life. In
spite of the extremely serious style in their editorial and political writings, which are
seldom relieved by humour, they often surprise the foreigners by the extremely light
manner in which they take important reform programmes and movements, like the
Kuomintang agrarian programme, the Sanmin Doctrine, the flood and famine relief,
the New Life Movement, and the AntiOpium Bureaux. An American professor,
recently visiting Shanghai and lecturing in the Chinese colleges, was completely
surprised by the burst of laughter among the student audience whenever he made a perfectly sincere reference to the New Life Movement* If he had made a serious
reference to the Anti -Opium Bureaux, he would have been met by still louder volleys
of silvery laughter.
For humour is, as I have said, a point of view, a way of looking at life. With that view
of life we are more or less familiar. Life is a huge farce, and we human beings are
mere puppets in it. The man who takes life too seriously, who obeys library
reading-room rules too honestly, who actually keeps off the lawn because merely a
signboard says so, always makes a fool of himself and is usually subjected to laughter
from his older colleagues, and since laughter is contagious, very soon he becomes a
humorist, too.
This humorist farcicality then results in the inability of the Chinese to take anything
seriously, from the most serious political reform movement to a dog's funeral. The
farcical element in Chinese funerals is typical. In the grandiloquent funeral
processions of Chinese upper and middle classes, you can see street urchins with dirty
faces wearing embroidered and multi-coloured robes, accompanied, in modern China,
by brass bands playing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," which facts are often adduced
by Europeans as proofs of the Chinese lack of humour. A Chinese funeral procession,
however, is a perfect symbol of Chinese humour, for Europeans alone take a funeral
procession seriously and try to make it solemn. A solemn funeral is inconceivable to
the Chinese mind. Where the Europeans err is that, with their preconceived notions,
they think a priori that a funeral should be a solemn affair. A funeral, like a wedding,
should be noisy and should be expensive, but there is no reason why it should be
solemn. Solemnity is already provided for in the grandiloquent gowns, and the rest is
form, and form is farce. To this day, I cannot distinguish between a funeral and a
wedding procession until I see a coffin or a wedding-chair.
Chinese humour, then, as symbolized by the highly farcical funeral procession,
consists in compliance with outward form as such and the total disregard of the
substance in actuality. One who appreciates the humour of a Chinese funeral should
be able to read and interpret Chinese political programmes properly also. Political
programmes and official statements are issued as matters of form, being drafted by
clerks who specialize in a kind of specious, bombastic phraseology, just as there are
special shops keeping funeral procession gowns and paraphernalia for hire, and no
intelligent Chinese ever takes them seriously. If foreign newspaper correspondents
would bear this symbol of the funeral gown in mind, they would be less likely to be
misled by them and then later give up the Chinese as a unique people that they fail to
understand.
This farcical view of life and this formula regarding form and substance can be
illustrated in a myriad different ways. Some years ago, a government order,
originating in a request from the Central Kuomintang, prohibited the Chinese
government ministries from keeping Shanghai offices in the foreign concessions. The actual carrying out of this order would mean a great inconvenience to the ministers
who have their homes in Shanghai, and throw a number of people out of jobs. The
Nanking ministers neither defied the Nanking order nor petitioned for its repeal on
honest grounds of inconvenience and impracticability. No professional clerk could be
clever enough to draft any such petition and make it accord with good form, since it
meant the desire of Chinese officials to reside in foreign settlements, which would be
unpatriotic. They did an infinitely cleverer thing by changing the doorplates of their
Shanghai offices and calling them trade inspection bureaux. The door-plates probably
cost twenty dollars apiece, no man was thrown out of a job, and no "face" was lost.
The school trick pleased not only the Nanking ministers but also Nanking itself,
where the original order was issued. Our Nanking ministers are great humorists. So
are our bandits. So are our war- lords. The humour of Chinese civil wars has already
been pointed out.
In contrast with this, we might take the case of mission schools as showing the
Western lack of humour. The missions were put into a scare a few years ago when
their registration was required, which involved the crossing out of religious
instruction from the school curricula, the hanging of Sun Yatsen's picture in the
assembly hall, and the holding of Monday memorial meetings. The Chinese
authorities could not see why the mission schools could not comply with these simple
regulations, while the missionaries could not see their way clear to accepting them,
and there was a deadlock. Some missionaries actually had visions of closing up their
schools, and in one instance, everything would have gone on smoothly except for the
stupid honesty of the Western principal who refused to cancel one sentence from their
school catalogue avowing religious instruction to be one of their aims. The principal
wanted to be able to say honestly and openly that religious instruction was indeed the
principal aim of their institution, and to this day that school is not registered. There
was absolutely no lightness of touch. What this mission school should have done was
to imitate the example of the Nanking ministers, comply with every official regulation,
hang a picture of Sun Yatsen梐 nd proceed d la chinoise as regards the rest. But I
cannot help thinking that a school tun with such stupid honesty must be an
honest-to-goodness school.
Such is the Chinese farcical view of life. The Chinese language abounds in metaphors
regarding the drama of human life. Chinese officials assuming and leaving their posts
are spoken of as "entering the stage" and "making their exit," and a man coming with
a high-sounding programme is referred to as "singing high opera." We really look
upon life as a stage, and the kind of theatrical show we like best is always high
comedy, whether that comedy be a new constitution, or a bill of rights, or an
anti -opium bureau, or a disbandment conference. We always enjoy it, but 1 wish our
people would sometimes be serious. Humour, above everything else, is ruining China.
One can have too much of that silvery laughter, for it is again the laughter of the old
rogue, at the touch of whose breath every flower of enthusiasm and idealism must
wither and die.
VIII. CONSERVATISM
No portrait of the Chinese character would be complete without a mention of its
conservatism. Conservatism in itself should not be a word of reproach. Conservatism
is but a form of pride and rests on a feeling of satisfaction with the present. Since
there is usually so little one can be proud of and so little satisfaction in the
arrangement of human life in this world, conservatism is really a sign of inward
richness, a gift rathei to be envied.
The Chinese are by nature a proud race 梕 xcusably so, when one considers the whole
course of their history excep1 the last hundred years. For, though politically they were
atimes humiliated, culturally they were the centre of a vas humanist civilization that
was conscious of itself and lackec no well-reasoned apologetics. China's only cultural
rival o any importance that represented a different point of view wa Indian Buddhism,
and for Buddhism, the true Confucianis had always some measure of sneering
contempt. For th Gonfucianist was immeasurably proud of Confucius, and ii being
proud of Confucius, he was proud of the nation, proui of the Chinese having
understood life in its moral essence proud of their knowledge of human nature, and
proud of their having solved the problems of life in all its ethical and political
relationships.
In a way, he was justified. For Confucianism not only asked about the meaning of life
but also answered it in a way that left people satisfied with having found the meaning
of human existence. The answer was solid, clear and sensible, so that it left people
with no desire to speculate about the future life or to change the present one. Man
naturally becomes conservative when he realizes he has got something that works and
therefore something that is true. The Confucianist saw no other way of life, thought
no other way possible. The fact that Westerners, too, have a well-organized social life
and that a London policeman would help an old woman across the street without any
knowledge of the Confucian doctrine of respect for old age comes to the Chinese
always more or less as a shock.
When the realization came that Westerners possess all the Confucian virtues of
courtesy, orderliness, honour, kindliness, courage, and honesty of government, and
that Confucius would have personally approved of the London policeman and tube
conductor, that racial pride was badly shaken. There were things that displeased the
Chinese and struck him as raw, uncouth and barbarian, like husband and wife walking
