revenue as "the people's fat and the people's marrow." The process of extraction of
human fat and human marrow is a science comparable in diversity and ingenuity to
organic chemistry. A good chemist can convert beetroot into sugar, and a really good
one can draw nitrogen and make fertilizer out of air. The Chinese officialdom have
nothing to lose by comparison.
The redeeming feature is the absence of caste or aristocracy in China. The yamen
class is not a permanent hereditary institution, like tie landed aristocracy in Europe,
and it is impossible to identify it permanently with any group of individuals. There
has been no family in China which can boast that its ancestors have never worked for
the last five hundred years, like some aristocrats in France or the Habsburgs in Austria,
except Confucius's family, which has not worked for the last two thousand years. The
descendants of the Manchu army, which conquered China in 1644, may be truly said
not to have worked for the last three hundred years, and now with the fall of the
Manchu Dynasty they still refuse to work 梩 hat is, most of them. They are a most
interesting case for socialists to study, as showing what can happen to a class of
people fed by the nation for three centuries, for they are the true "leisure class" in
China. But they are the exception.
There is no hard-and- fast line of distinction between the yamen and the non-yamen
class.
The family, rather than any hereditary class, is the social unit. These families go up
and down kaleidoscopically. Everyman past forty has seen with his own eyes how
some families rise and others go down. Social democracy is maintained in the West or
in China, not by any constitution but, as someone has pointed out, by our prodigal
sons. Of these prodigal sons, there are plenty in China who, through their prodigality,
make the rise of a permanent rich class impossible, standing thus, as it were, as the
bulwark of democracy. The civil examinations made it possible always for ambitious
and able men to rise from the bottom of the scale. From such examinations none were
excluded except the sons of beggars or prostitutes. And education was not so costly
that only sons of the higher classes could afford it. While learning was a privilege of
the talented, it was never the privilege of the rich, No one was known to be seriously
handicapped in his academic career by his poverty. In this sense, it may be said that
there was equality of opportunity for all.
The Chinese divide society into four classes, in the following order of importance: the
scholars, the farmers, the artisans and the merchants. In a primitive agricultural
society in which China always remained, the spirit was essentially democratic. There
was no class antagonism, as there was no need. The intercourse between these classes,
except, as we have mentioned, the yamen class, was not marred by "class feeling" and
snobbery. In the best social tradition of China, a rich merchant or a high official may
ask a woodcutter to have a cup of tea and chat quite sociably with him, perhaps with
less condescension than the inmates of an English manor house speak to the
farm-hand.1 The farmers, the artisans and the merchants, being all part of the sap of
the earth, are humble, quiet, self-respecting citizens. The fanners are placed, by
Confucian theory, at the head of these three classes, for the rice-conscious Chinese
always know where every grain comes from, and they are grateful. They, together
with the merchants and artisans, all look up to the scholars as a class entitled to
privilege and extra courtesy, and with the difficulty of acquiring a knowledge of the
Chinese written characters, this respect comes from the bottom of their hearts.
1 A striking example of this is contained in tae sketch called "Democracy" in
Somerset Maugham's On a Chinese Screen.
VI. THE MALE TRIAD
But do the scholars deserve this respect? Mental labour is decidedly higher than
manual labour, and the inequality really seems quite natural. The conq uest of the
animal kingdom by mankind was based on man's greater cerebral development.
Through his mental development, he justified his supremacy over the animal world. But, of course, one can ask the question whether, from the animals' point of view, man
has the right to take away the mountain forests from the lions and tigers and rob the
buffalo of the prairie. The dog might agree, but the wolf might think otherwise. Man
justified it merely by his greater cunning, and the scholar in China did the same. He
alone knew the treasure of knowledge, he alone knew history and the law, and he
alone knew how to murder a man by the dexterous use of one word in a legal brief.
Learning is so complicated that respect for it is natural. He and his kind form the
so-called "gentry" class in China. To continue the forest analogy, the gentry are the
parasites, which have a way of reaching the top of the highest tree without great effort,
and all Chinese banyans are surrounded by such parasites. In other words, they can
reach the trees and whisper a kind word for the sap of the earth, incidentally pocketing
a commission. More than that, they often undertake from the tree the duty of draining
the sap of the earth.
This is the so-called "tax monopoly system" which is ruining both the financial
condition of the people and the national revenue itself. These tax monopolies are the
feeding ground of the local gentry, an evil which has been greatly aggravated since
the establishment of the Republic. Actually, a tax monopoly which is bought out from
the city government at thirty thousand dollars a year yields two to three times its price.
The sap goes to nourish the parasites. The pity of it is that the people are duped
without any benefit to the government or to society, except the fattening of the
parasites' own families.
But the parasites are so thickly entrenched in their local ground that any new regime
almost has to work with them and through them. They parcel out the butchery tax, the
prostitution tax and the gambling tax, and from what they invest in, they naturally
expect to get the greatest returns. This idea of the "greatest returns" proves ruinous to
the people. There is no limit to their rapacity, for no definition of "the greatest" is
possible. And with their professional knowledge, they can invent new taxes. Every
new official has a few of these gentry friends officially or unofficially connected with
his yamen. They may come for a visit, and between the sippings of tea may often utter
a sigh: "Ah! come to think of it, there are at least 15,000 troughs for feeding pigs in
every hsien, and 150,000 troughs in every district of ten hsien. A dollar per trough
would net in a very handsome sum, very handsome indeed." Down goes another gulp
of fine lungching tea. When there are many such sighs and flashes of insight, the
official really begins to learn the art of extracting human fat and human marrow. The
official is profoundly grateful and feels half ashamed of his own ignorance. He is
maturing in "the ways of the world." Soon after the pig-trough tax, the gentry scholar
discovers the coffin tax, and after that the wedding-sedan tax. ...
I have always connected these scholar gentry in my thoughts with the divinely
beautiful white cranes in Chinese paintings. They are so pure, so white, so unearthly.
That is why they stand for the symbol of the Taoist recluse, and fairies go up to
heaven on their backs. One would think they were fed on ether. But they are fed on frogs and earthworms. What if their plumes are so white and smooth and their steps so
stately! The trouble is they must feed on something. The gentry, who know all the
good things of life, must live, and in order to live, they must have money.
Their love of money forces them to work with the rich, and here we come to the real
inequality in China, economic inequality. In Chinese towns there was always a male
Triad: the magistrate, the gentry and the local rich, besides the female Triad of Face,
Fate and Favour. The male Triad more or less always worked together. A good
magistrate had to fight his way out and directly reach the people over the shoulders of
the other two. There were many such magistrates. But they had a hard time, and these
people had always to attend to the administration personally themselves without the
usual paraphernalia of the whole yamendom. Such a one, for instance, was Yuan Mei,
and there were many others. They were good, but gratuitously good, to the people.
In modern times a fourth potentate has come into being in the countryside, and instead
of a Triad we have in some parts of the country four monsters working hand in hand
together: the magistrate, the gentry, the local rich and the bandit. Sometimes the local
rich get out, and there remain only three. No wonder the fat of the land is running thin.
No wonder that Communism grows. Communism, without Russian doctrine, could
not find a more ideal growing ground. The movement of Communism, with its
ruthless stand against the gentry and the local rich, and constantly growing and
feeding upon the dislocated population, now homeless, fatless, and marrowless and
being called "bandits," must be looked upon as an economic rebellion of the people,
quite apart from the accident of Russian theories. And all this because Confucius, in
outlining his social scheme of five human relationships, forgot to define the
relationship between man and the stranger.
Communism has so changed the scheme of social life that a peasant may go directly
to the magistrate and, resting his bamboo pole on the yamen wall, talk to the
magistrate as man to man. This has become so deep-rooted that in territories
recovered from the communistic area, the officials can no longer keep to their yamen
style, but must speak to the peasant, as the communist officials used to speak to him.
Certain things are still wrong, grievously wrong. The Kuomintang had on its literary
programme the lightening of the tenants' contribution of crops to the landlords, the
establishment of rural banks, and the forbidding of usury, etc., etc. And some day it is
going to be forced to do all this. The Shanghai pawnshops still proclaim their
generosity with the words in big characters outside their doors: "MONTHLY
INTEREST EIGHTEEN PER CENT!"
VII. THE FEMALE TRIAD
With the Doctrine of Social Status and the conception of stratified equality, certain,
laws of Chinese social behaviour arise as a result. They are the three immutable laws of the Chinese universe, more eternal than a Roman Catholic dogma, and more
authoritative than the Constitution of the United States. They are, in fact, the three
Muses ruling over China, rather than General Chiang Kaishek or Wang Chingwei.
Their names are Face, Fate and Favour. These three sisters have always ruled China,
and are ruling China still. The only revolution that is real and tha t is worth while is a
revolution against this female triad. The trouble is that these three women are so
human and so charming. They corrupt our priests, flatter our rulers, protect the
powerful, seduce the rich, hypnotize the poor, bribe the ambitious and demoralize the
revolutionary camp. They paralyse justice, render ineffective all paper constitutions,
scorn at democracy, contemn the law, make a laughing stock of the people's rights,
violate all traffic rules and club regulations, and ride roughshod ove r the people's
home gardens. If they were tyrants, or if they were ugly, like the Furies, their reign
might not endure so long; but their voices are soft, their ways are gentle, their feet
tread noiselessly over the law courts, and their fingers move silently, expertly, putting
the machinery of justice out of order while they caress the judge's cheeks. Yes, it is
immeasurably comfortable to worship in the shrine of these pagan women. For that
reason, their reign will last in China for some time yet.
In order to understand the conception of favour, it is necessary to know the beautiful
simplicity of life in which the Chinese have lived. The Chinese ideal of society has
always been one in which the "administration is simple and the punishments are
light." A personal, human touch always colours the Chinese conception of law and
government. TTbie Chinese are invariably suspicious of laws and lawyers, and of a
highly mechanized society. Their ideal is one in which people living in the heyday of
peace and leisure retain a good measure of primitive simplicity. In this atmosphere
emerged favour, and in this atmosphere emerged that most beautiful of ancient
Chinese characteristics, gratitude, the counterpart of favour. Of this gratitude, the
common people of China, especially the agricultural population, have still a large
"bellyful." A farmer who has been recipient of an act of favour remembers it for life
and will probably worship you for life in the form of an inscribed wooden tablet in his
private household, or serve you loyally "through fire and water." True, the people are
