therefore do not represent modern Chinese womanhood. On the whole, these modern
influences must be taken as liberalizing influences working for the good of Chinese
womanhood and therefore of the race. The first important effect is on the girl's
physique. The exposure of female thighs in athletic contests, so much regretted by the
older generation, must in the end work for the good of the nation. With the
development of physique comes a more naturally graceful movement than the
boudoir-cultivated movements of the bound feet.
Chapter Six
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE
I. ABSENCE OF THE SOCIAL MIND
THE Chinese are a nation of individualists. They are familyminded, not
social -minded, and the family mind is only a form of magnified selfishness. It is
curious that the word "society'5 does not exist as an idea in Chinese thought. In the
Confucian social and political philosophy we see a direct transition from the family,
chia, to the state, kuo, as successive stages of human organization, as in such sayings
as "When the family is orderly, then the state is peaceful,55 or "Put the family in order
and rule the state in peace.55 The nearest equivalent to the notion of society is, then, a
compound of the two words, kuochia, or "state- family,55 in accordance with the rule
for forming Chinese abstract terms.
"Public spirit55 is a new term, so is "civic consciousness,55 and so is "social
service.55 There are no such commodities in China. To be sure, there are "social
affairs,55 such as weddings, funerals, and birthday celebrations and Buddhistic
processions and annual festivals. But the things which make up English and American
social life, viz., sport, politics and religion, are conspicuously absent. There is no
church and no church community. The Chinese religiously abstain from talking
politics; they do not cast votes, and they have no club-house debates on politics. They
do not indulge in sport, which binds human beings together, and which is the essence
of the English and American social life. They play games, to be sure, but these games
are characteristic of Chinese individualism. Chinese games do not divide the players
into two parties, as in cricket with one team playing against the other. Team work ii
unknown. In Chinese card games, each man plays for himself The Chinese like poker,
and do not like bridge. They have always played mahjong, which is nearer to poker than to bridge. In this philosophy of mahjong may be seen the essence of Chinese
individualism.
An illustration of Chinese individualism may be seen in the organization of a Chinese
newspaper. The Chinese run their papers as they play their mahjong. I have seen
Chinese daily papers so edited as to require an editor- in-chief* whose only business is
to write editorials. The man in charge of domestic news has his page, the man in
charge of international cables has his, and the man in charge of city news again has
his own ground. These four men handle their respective departments like the four
hands at a mahjong table, each trying to guess what the others have got. Each tries to
make up his set and throws out the unwanted bamboo to the next man. If there is too
much domestic news, it can conveniently flow over (without warning, as far as the
reader is concerned) to the page for city news, and if this again has too much copy, it
can conveniently flow over to the murders and conflagrations. There is no necessity
for front-page make-up, no selection, no coordination, no subordination. Each editor
can retire at his own good time. The scheme is simplicity itself. Moreover, both the
editors and the readers are born individualists. It is the editor's business to publish the
news, and the reader's business to look for it. They do not interfere with one another.
This is the journalistic technique of some of the oldest, largest and most popular daily
papers in China to this day.
If you ask why there is no co-ordination, the answer is, there's no social mind. For if
the editor- in-chief tries to initiate reforms and fire the city editor for obstruction, he
will run up against the family system. What does he mean by interfering with other
people's business? Does he mean to throw the city editor out and break his rice-bowl,
starving all the people dependent upon him? And if the city editor's wife is the
proprietor's niece, can he throw him out? If the editorin-chief has any Chinese social
consciousness, he will not attempt such a thing, and if he is a raw American-returned
graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, he will soon have to get out. Another
man who knows Chinese social ways will get in, the old scheme will go on working,
the readers will go on hunting for their news and the paper will go on increasing its
circulation and making money.
Some such psychology is hidden behind all Chinese social intercourse, and it would
be easy to multiply examples showing a lack of the social mind truly bewildering to
the twentiethcentury Western man. I say "twentieth-century man" because he has
received the benefits of nineteenth-century humanitarianism, with a broadened social
outlook. As a typically bewildering example, which is yet truly representative of
Chinese thought regarding social work, I quote verbally from the Analects Fortnightly
(a magazine devoted to unconscious Chinese humour) reporting the speech of a native
war-lord regarding the movement for mass education. The young people caught with
the modern American enthusiasm for social service organized a movement for
"annihilating literary blindness.9' So saith the General, therefore, in a speech:
"Students ought to work at their books and not meddle with public affairs. The people do their own business and eat their own rice, and you want to annihilate the people!"
The persuasive argument is this: the illiterate are not interfering with you, why must
you interfere with them? Those words, so short, so forceful, are yet so true because
they come direct and undisguised from the speaker's heart. To a Chinese, social work
always looks like "meddling with other people's business." A man enthusiastic for
social reform or, in fact, for any kind of public work always looks a little bit
ridiculous. We discount his sincerity. We cannot understand him. What does he mean
by going out of his way to do all this work? Is he courting publicity? Why is he not
loyal to his family and why does he not get official promotion and help his family first?
We decide he is young, or else he is a deviation from the normal human type.
There were always such deviations from type, the haohsieh or "chivalrous men," but
they were invariably of the bandit or vagabond class, unmarried, bachelors with good
vagabond souls, willing to jump into the water to save an unknown drowning child.
(Married men in China do not do that.) Or else they were married men who died
penniless and made their wives and children suffer. We admire them, we love them,
but we do not like to have them in the family. When we see a boy who has too much
public spirit getting himself into all sorts of scrapes, we confidently predict that boy
will be the death of his parents. If we can break him early enough, well and good; if
not, he will go to jail and ruin the family fortune besides. But it isn' t always as bad as
that. If we cannot break him, he will probably run away from home and join the
publicspirited brigands. That is why they are "deviations."
How is such a state of things possible? The Chinese are not such heathens,
deep-drowned in their sins, as the Christian missionaries would imagine, although
here the word "heathen," with all the force of Christian contempt and condemnation,
seems eminently applicable. It would be better if the missionaries tried to understand
them and attack the evil from its source, for back of it is a social philosophy different
from theirs. The difference is a difference of point of view. The best modern educated
Chinese still cannot understand why Western women should organize a "Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." Why bother about the dogs, and why do they
not stay at home and nurse their babies? We decide that these women have no children
and therefore have nothing better to do, which is probably often true. The conflict is
between the family mind and the social mind. If one scratches deep eno ugh, one
always finds the family mind at work.
For the family system is the root of Chinese society, from which all Chinese social
characteristics derive. The family system and the village system, which is the family
raised to a higher exponent, account for all there is to explain in the Chinese social
life. Face, favour, privilege, gratitude, courtesy, official corruption, public institutions,
the school, the guild, philanthropy, hospitality, justice, and finally the whole
government of China 梐 ll spring from the family and village system, all borrow from
it their peculiar tenor and complexion, and all find in it enlightening explanations for
their peculiar characteristics. For from the family system there arises the family mind, and from the family mind there arise certain laws of social behaviour. It will be
interesting to study these and see how man behaves as a social being in the absence of
a social mind.
II. THE FAMILY SYSTEM
There were formerly no such words as "family system" as a sociological term; we
knew the family only as "the basis of the state," or rather as the basis of human society.
The system colours all our social life. It is personal, as our conception of government
is personal. It teaches our children the first lessons in social obligations between man
and man, the necessity of mutual adjustment, self-control, courtesy, a sense of duty,
which is very well defined, a sense of obligation and gratitude toward parents, and
respect for elders. It very nearly takes the place of religion by giving man a sense of
social survival and family continuity, thus satisfying man's craving for immortality,
and through the ancestral worship it makes the sense of immortality very vivid. It
breeds a sense of family honour, for which it is so easy to find parallels in the West.
It touches us even in very personal ways. It takes the right of contracting marriage
from our hands and gives it to those of our parents; it makes us marry, not wives but
c'daughtersin- law," and it makes our wives give birth, not to children but to
"grandchildren," It multiplies the obligations of the bride a hundredfold. It makes it
rude for a young couple to close the door of their room in the family house in the
daytime, and makes privacy an unknown word in China. Like the radio, it accustoms
us to noisy weddings, noisy funerals, noisy suppers and noisy sleep. And like the
radio, it benumbs our nerves and develops our good temper. The Western man is like a
maiden who has only herself to look after, and who consequently manages to look
neat and tidy, while the Chinese man is like the daughter- in- law of a big family who
has a thousand and one household obligations to attend to. It therefore breeds in us
soberness at an early age. It keeps our young in their places. It overprotects our
child.ren, and it is strange how few children rebel and run away Where the parents are
top self-centred and autocratic, it often deprives the young man of enterprise and
initiative, and I consider this the most disastrous effect of the family system on
Chinese character. A parent's funeral interferes with a scholar's chances at the official
examinations for three years, and is good ground for the resignation of a cabinet
minister.
Family ethics interferes even with our travel and sport, for the theory was developed
in the Hsiaoking, or Classic of Filial Piejty (which every schoolboy used to
memorize), that "the body, the hair and the skin are received from the parents and may
not be injured." Tsengtse, the great disciple of Confucius, said on his deathbed,
"Examine my hands, examine my feet," which had been kept intact to return to his
forefathers. This already borders on a religious feeling. It limits our travels, for
Confucius saida "A man does not travel to distant places when his parents are living, and if he does he must have a definite destination." The best form of travel, i.e., travel
without destination and without hoping to arrive anywhere, is therefore theoretically
impossible. The filial son "does not climb high, and does not tread on dangerous
places." There is therefore not a single filial son in the Alpine Club.
In short, the family system is the negation of individualism itself, and it holds a man
back, as the reins of the jockey hold back the dashing Arabian horse. Sometimes the
jockey is good, and then he helps the horse to win the race, but sometimes he is not so
good. Sometimes it is not a jockey that is holding the horse back but merely a refuse
cart. But then, Chinese society has no use for fine Arabian thoroughbreds, the best
proof of which is that we have not produced them. We murder them, assassinate them,
hound them into the mountains, or send them into the asylum. We want only steady,
