food goes to nourish them and three- fourths to kill them. That accounts for the
prevalence of rich men's ailments, like diseases of the liver and the kidneys, which are
periodically announced in the newspapers when these officials see fit to retire from
the political arena for reasons of convenience.
<u
Although the Chinese may learn from the West a great d about a sense of proportion
in arranging for feasts, they have, in this field as in medicine, many famous and
wonderful recipes to teach the Westerners. In the cooking of ordinary things like
vegetables and chickens, the Chinese have a rich store to hand to the West, when the
West is ready and humble enough to learn it. This seems unlikely until China has built
a few good gun-boats and can punch the West in the jaw, when it will be admitted that
we are unquestionably better cooks as a nation. But until that time comes, there is no
use talking about it. There are thousands of Englishmen in the Shanghai Settlement
who have never stepped inside a Chinese restaurant, and the Chinese are bad
evangelists. We never force salvation on anybody who does not come to ask for it. We
have no gunboats, anyway, and even if we had, we would never care to go up the
Thames or the Mississippi and shoot the English or the Americans into heaven against
their will.
As to drinks, we are naturally moderate except as regarding tea. Owing to the
comparative absence of distilled liquor^ one very seldom sees drunkards in the streets.
But tea-drinking is an art in itself. It amounts with some persons almost to a cult.
There are special books about tea-drinking as there are special books about incense
and wine and rocks for house decoration* More than any other human invention of
this nature, the drinking of tea has coloured our daily life as a nation, and gives rise to
the institution of tea-houses which are approximate equivalents of Western cafes for
the common people. People drink tea in their homes and in the tea-houses, alone and
in company, at committee meetings and at the settling of disputes. They drink tea
before breakfast and at midnight With a teapot, a Chinese is happy wherever he is. It
is a universal habit, and it has no deleterious effect whatsoever, except in very rare
cases, as in my native district where according to tradition some people have drunk
themselves bankrupt. This is only possible with extremely costly tea, but the average
tea is cheap, and the average tea in China is good enough for a prince. The best tea is
mild and gives a "back- flavour" which comes after a minute or two, when its
chemical action has set in on the salivary glands. Such good tea puts everybody in
good humour.
I have no doubt that it prolongs Chinese lives by aiding their digestion and maintaining their equanimity of temper.
The selection of tea and spring water is an art in itself. I give here an example of a
scholar in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Chang Tai, who wrote thus about
his art of tasting tea and spring wrater, in which he was a great connoisseur with very
few rivals in his time:
Chou Molung often spoke to me in enthusiastic terms about the tea of Min Wenshui.
In September of a certain year, I came to his town, and when I arrived, I called on him
at Peach Leaves Ferry. It was already afternoon, and Wenshui was not at home. He
came back late and I found him to be an old man. We had just opened our
conversation when he rose suddenly and said that he had left his stick somewhere and
went out again. I was determined not to miss this chance of having a talk with him,
so I waited. After a long while, Wenshui came back, when it was already night, and he
stared at me, saying, "Are you still here? What do you want to see me for?" I said, "I
have heard about your name so long, and am determined to have a drink with you
to-day before I go!" Wenshui was pleased, and then he rose to prepare the tea himself.
In a wonderfully short time it was ready* Then he led me into a room, where
everything was neat and tidy, and I saw over ten kinds of Chingch' i pots and
Hsiianyao and Ch'engyao teacups, which were all very rare and precious. Under
the lamplight, I saw that the colour of the tea was not distinguishable from that of the
cups, but a wonderful fragrance assailed my nostrils, and I felt ever so happy.
"What is this tea?" I asked, "Langwan," Wenshui replied. I tasted it again and said,
"Now don't deceive me. The method of preparation is Langwan, but the tea- leaves are
not Langwan." "What is it then?" asked Wenshui smilingly. I tasted it again and
said, "Why is it so much like Lochieh tea?" Wenshui was quite struck by my answer
and said, "Marvellous! Marvellous!" "What water is it?" I asked.
"Huich' iian," he said. "Don't try to make fun of me," I sa id again, "How can
Huich' iian water be carried here over a long distance, and after tlie shaking on the
way still retain its keenness?" So Wenshui said, "I shan't try to deceive you any
longer* When I take Hukh' iian water, I dig a well, and wait at night until the new
current comes, and then take it up. I put a lot of mountain rocks at the bottom of the
jar, and during the voyage I permit only sailing with the wind, but no rowing. Hence
the water still keeps its edge. This water is therefore better even tha n ordinary
Huich' iian water, not to speak of water from other springs." Again he said,
"Marvellous! Marvellous!" and before he had finished his sentence, he went out again.
Soon he came back with another pot, and asked me to taste it, I said, "Its fragrance is
strong, and its flavour is very mild. This must be spring tea, while the one we just had
must be autumn tea." Then Wenshui burst into laughter and said, "I am a man of
seventy, and yet have never met a tea connoisseur like you." After that, we remained
fast friends.
That art is now almost gone, except among a few old artlovers and connoisseurs. It
used to be very difficult to get good tea on the Chinese national railways, even in die first-class carriages, where Lipton's tea, probably the most unpalatable to my taste,
was served with milk and sugar. When Lord Lytton visited Shanghai he was
entertained at the home of a prominent rich Chinese. He asked for a cup of Chinese
tea, and he could not get it. He was served Lipton's, with milk and sugar.
EPILOGUE
I. THE END OF LIFE
IN the general survey of Chinese art and Chinese life, the conviction must have been
forced upon us that the Chinese are past masters in the art of living. There is a certain
wholehearted concentration on the material life, a certain zest in living, which is
mellower, perhaps deeper, anyway just as intense as in the West. In China the spiritual
values have not been separated from the material values, but rather help man in a
keener enjoyment of life as it falls to our lot. This accounts for our joviality and our
incorrigible humour. A heathen can have a heathenish devotion to the life of the
present and envelop both spiritual and material values in one outlook, which it is
difficult for a Christian to imagine. We live the life of the senses and the life of the
spirit at the same moment, and see no necessary conflict. For the human spirit is used
to beautify life, to extract its essence, perhaps to help it overcome ugliness and pain
inevitable in the world of our senses, but never to escape from it and find its meaning
in a life hereafter. When Confucius said, in reply to a question by a disciple on death,
"Don't know life 梙 ow know death?" he expressed there a somewhat bourgeois,
unmetaphysical and practical attitude toward the problems of life and knowledge
which has characterized our national life and thinking.
This standpoint establishes for us a certain scale of values* In every aspect of
knowledge and of living, the test of life holds. It accounts for our pleasures and our
antipathies. The test of life was with us a racial thought, wordless and needing no
definition or giving of reasons* It was that test of life which, instinctively I think,
guided us to distrust civic civilization and uphold the rural ideal in art, life and letters,
to dislike religion in our rational moments, to play with Buddhism but never quite
accept its logical conclusions, and to hate mechanical ingenuity. It was that instinctive
trust in life that gave us a robust common sense in looking at life's kaleidoscopic
changes and the myriad vexatious problems of the intellect which we rudely ignored.
It enabled us to see life steadily and see life whole, with no great distortions of values.
It taught us some simple wisdom, like respect for old age and the joys of domestic life,
acceptance of life, of sex and of sorrow, It made us lay emphasis on certain common
virtues, like endurance, industry, thrift, moderation and pacificism. It prevented the
development of freakish extreme theories and the enslaving of man by the products of
his own intelligence. It gave us a sense of values, and taught us to accept the material
as well as the spiritual goods of life. It taught us that, after all is said and done, human happiness is the end of all knowledge. And we arrange ourse lves to make our lives
happy on this planet, under whatever vicissitudes of fortune.
We are an old nation. The eyes of an old people see in its past and in this changing
modern life much that is superficial and much that is of true meaning to our lives. We
are a little cynical about progress, and we are a little bit indolent, as are all old people.
We do not want to race about in a field for a ball; we prefer to saunter along willow
banks to listen to the bird's song and the children's laughter. Life is so precarious that
when we know something truly satisfies us, we hold on to it tight, as a mother hugs
her baby close to her breast in a dark, stormy night. We have really no desire for
exploring the South Pole or scaling the Himalayas. When Westerners do that^ we ask,
"What do you do that for? Do you have to go to the South Pole to be happy?" We go
to the movies and theatres, but in the heart of our hearts we feel that a real child's
laughter gives us as much real joy and happiness as an imaginary child's laughter on
the screen. We compare the two and we stay at home. We do not believe that kissing
one's own wife is neces* sarily insipid, and that other people's wives are necessarily
more beautiM because they are other people's wives. We do not ache to reach the foot
of the mountain when we are in the middle of the lake, and we do not ache to be at the
top of the hill when we are at its foot. We drink what wine there is in tibe pot and
enjoy what scenery there is before our eyes.
So much of life is merely a farce. It is sometimes just as well to stand by and look at it
and smile, better perhaps than to take part in it. Like a dreamer awakened, we see life,
not with the romantic colouring of yesternight's dream but with a saner vision. We are
more ready to give up the dubious, the glamorous and the unattainable, but at the
same time to hold on to the few things that we know will give us happiness. We
always go back to nature as an eternal source of beauty and of true and deep and
lasting happiness. Deprived of progress and of national power, we yet throw open our
windows and listen to cicadas or to falling autumn leaves and inhale the fragrance of
chrysanthemums, and over the top there shines the autumn moon, and we are content.
For we are now in the autumn of our national life. There comes a time in our lives, as
nations and as individuals, when we are pervaded by the spirit of early autumn, in
which green is mixed with gold and sadness is mixed with joy, and hope is mixed
with reminiscence. There comes a time in our lives when the innocence of spring is a
memory and the exuberance of summer a song whose echoes faintly remain in the air,
when, as we look out on life, the problem is not how to grow but how to live truly, not
how to strive and labour but how to enjoy the precious moments we have, not how to
squander our energy but how to conserve it in preparation for the coming winter. A
sense of having arrived somewhere, of having settled and found out what we want. A
sense of having achieved something also, precious little compared with its past
exuberance, but still something, like an autumn forest shorn of its summer glory but
retaining such of it as will endure,
I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all
autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and
it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks
not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness
and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content.
From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a
symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange
speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death. And the moon
