I. MELLOWNESS
"CHARACTER" is a typically English word. Apart from the English, few nations
have laid such stress on character in their ideal of education and manhood as the
Chinese. The Chinese seem to be so preoccupied with it that in their whole
philosophy they have not been able to think of anything else. Tota lly devoid of any
extra-mundane interests, and without getting involved in any religious claptrap, this
ideal of building of character has, through the influence of their literature, the theatre,
and proverbs, permeated to the lowliest peasant, and provided him with a philosophy
of life. But while the English word "character" suggests strength, courage, "guts," and
looking merely glum in moments of anger or disappointment, the Chinese word for
"character" brings to us the vision of a mature man of mellow temperament, retaining
an equanimity of mind under all circumstances, with a complete understanding not
only of himself but of his fellow-men.
The Sung philosophy has a tremendous confidence in the power and supremacy of the
mind over emotions, and an overweening assurance that the human mind, through its
understanding of oneself and of one's fellow-men, is able to adjust itself to the most
unfavourable circumstances and triumph over them. The Great Learning, the
Confucian primer : with which Chinese schoolboys used to begin their first lesson at
school,. defines the "great learning" as consisting of the attainment of a "dear
character," which is almost an impossible English expression, but by which is meant
the illumination of understanding, developed and cultivated through knowledge* A
mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the
Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived,
such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the
Chinese character. Strength of character is really strength of the mind, according to
the Gonfucianists. When a man has cultivated these virtues through mental discipline,
we say he has developed his character.
Very often these virtues are attained also through the help of Confucian fatalism. For
contrary to the general belief, fatalism is a great source of peace and contentment. A
beautiful and talented girl may rebel against an unsuitable marriage, but if the peculiar
circumstances of her meeting with her fianc?can convince her that it is the gods who
have decreed the match, she can at once, through an act of understanding, become a
happy and contented wife. For the husband has in her eyes become a "predestined
enemy," and the Chinese proverb says "predestined enemies will always meet in a
narrow alleyway." With that understanding, they can love and fight each other
furiously ever after, knowing all the time that the gods are looking on and causing
them all this trouble.
If we review the Chinese race and try to picture their national characteristics,, we shall
probably find the following traits of character: (i) sanity, (2) simplicity, (3) love of
nature, (4) patience, (5) indifference, (6) old roguery, (7) fecundity, (8) industry, (9)
frugality, (10) love of family life, (u) pacifism, (12) contentment, (13) humour, (14)
conservatism, and (15) sensuality. They are, on the whole, simple great qualities that
would adorn any nation.1 Some of these characteristics are vices rather than virtues,
and others are neutral qualities; they are the weakness as well as the strength of the
Chinese nation. Too much mental sanity often clips imagination of its wings and
deprives the race of its moments of blissful madness; pacifism can become a vice of
cowardice; patience, again, may bring about a morbid tolerance of evil; conservatism
may at times be a mere synonym for sloth and laziness, and fecundity may be a racial
virtue but an individual vice.
11 have not put down honesty, because all over the world farming people axe honest,
and the reputation of the Chinese merchant for honesty is only a concomitant of his
provincial method of doing business, and a mere result of the predominance of the
rural pattern and ideal of life. When Chinese are put in a seaport, they lose to a
marked extent that pristine honesty and can be as dishonest as any Wall Street
stock-jobber.
But all these qualities may be summed up in the word mellowness. They are passive
qualities, suggestive of calm and passive strength rather than as youthful vigour and
romance. They suggest the qualities of a civilization built for strength and
endurance rather than for progress and conquest. For it is a civilization which
enables man to find peace under any circumstance, and when a man is at peace with
himself, he cannot understand the youthful enthusiasm for progress and reform. It is
the old culture of an old people who know life for what it is worth and do not strive
for the unattainable. The supremacy of the Chinese mind flays its own hopes and
desires, and by making the supreme realization that happiness is an unattainable
bluebird and giving up the quest for it?"taking a step backwards," as the Chinese
expression goes梚t finds happiness nestling in its own hand, almost strangled to
death during the hot pursuit of an imagined shadow. As a Ming scholar puts it, "by
losing that pawn, one wins the whole game." This so-called mellowness is the result
of a certain type of environment. In fact, all national qualities have an organic unity,
which finds its explanation in the kind of social and political soil that nourishes them.
For mellowness somehow grows naturally out of the Chinese environment as a
peculiar variety of pear grows out of its natural soil. There are Americanborn Chinese,
brought up in a different environment, who are totally devoid of the characteristics of
the common Chinese, and who can break up a faculty meeting by the sheer force of
their uncouth nasal twang and their direct forceful speech, a speech which knows no
fine modulations. They lack that supreme, unique mellowness peculiar to the sons
of Cathay. On the other hand, Chinese college youths are considerably more mature
than American students of the same age, for even young Chinese freshmen in American universities cannot get interested in football and motor-cars. They have
already other and more mature interests.1 Most probably they are already married.
They have wives and families to think about, their parents to remember, and perhaps
some cousins to help through school. Responsibility makes men sober, and a national
cultural tradition helps them to think sanely about life at a period earlier than they
could arrive at individually. But their mellowness does not come from books; it comes
from a society which is apt to laugh young enthusiasm out of court. The Chinese have
a certain contempt for young enthusiasm and for new brooms that will sweep this
universe clean. By laughing at that enthusiasm and at the belief that everything is
possible in the world, Chinese society early teaches the young to hold their tongues
while their elders are speaking. Very soon the Chinese youth learns this, and instead
of being foolish enough to support any proposed scheme or socialistic venture, he
learns to comment unfavourably upon it, pointing out all the possible difficulties, and
in that way gets his pass into mature society. Then, after coming back from Europe or
America, he begins to manufacture tooth-paste and calls it "saving the country by
industrialization" or he translates some American free verse and calls it "introduction
of the Western culture." And since he has usually a big family to support and some
cousins for whom to secure positions, he cannot remain a school teacher if he is in the
teaching profession, but must think of ways and means to rise higher, perhaps become
a dean, and in that way become a good member of his family. That process of trying
to rise higher teaches him some memorable lessons of life and human nature, and if he
escapes all that experience and remains a roundeyed, innocent hot-headed young man
at thirty, still enthusiastic for progress and reform, he is either an inspired idiot or a
confounded genius.
lit is extremely dangerous, therefore, to send fresh American college
graduates out to China as missionaries and put them over Chinese teachers or
preachers twice as mature as themselves. Many of them have not even tasted
the agony of first love.
II. PATIENCE
Let us take the three worst and most striking characteristics, patience, indifference and
old roguery, and see how they arose. I believe that these are effects of culture and
environment and hence are not necessarily a part of the Chinese mental make-up.
They are here to-day because for thousands of years we have been living under certain
cultural and social influences. The natural inference is that when these influences are
removed, the qualities will also correspondingly diminish or disappear. The quality of
patience is the result of racial adjustment to a condition where over-population and
economic pressure leave very little elbow-room for people to move about, and is, in
particular, a result of the family system, which is a miniature of Chinese society.
Indifference is largely due to the lack of legal protection and constitutional guarantee for personal liberty. Old roguery is due, for lack of a better word, to the Taoistic view
of life. Of course, all these qualities are products of the same environment, and it is
only for the sake of clearness that one assigns any single cause for any resulting
quality.
That patience is a noble virtue of the Chinese people no one who knows them will
gainsay. There is so much of this virtue that it has almost become a vice with them.
The Chinese people have put up with more tyranny, anarchy and misrule than any
Western people will ever put up with, and seem to have regarded them as part of the
laws of nature. In certain parts of Szechuen, the people have been taxed thirty years in
advance without showing more energetic protest than a halfaudible curse in the
privacy of the household. Christian patience would seem like petulance compared
with Chinese patience, which is as unique as Chinese blue porcelain is unique. The
world tourists would do well to bring home with them some of this Chinese patience
along with Chinese blue porcelain, for true individuality cannot be copied. We submit
to tyranny and extortion as small fish swim into the mouth of a big fish. Perhaps had
our capacity for sufferance been smaller, our sufferings would also be less. As it is,
this capacity for putting up with insults has been ennobled by the name of patience,
and deliberately inculcated as a cardinal virtue by Confucian ethics. I am not saying
that this patience is not a great quality of the Chinese people. Jesus said, "Blessed are
the meek, for they shall inherit the earth/' and I am not sure but that Chinese patience
has enabled us to inherit half a continent and keep it. The Chinese also inculcate it
consciouslv as a high moral virtue. As our saying goes, "A man who cannot
tolerate small ills can never accomplish great things/3
The training school for developing this virtue is, however, the big family, where a
large number of daughters-in- law, brothers-in- law, fathers and sons daily learn this
virtue by trying to endure one another. In the big family, where a closed door is an
offence, and where there is very little elbow-room for the individuals, one learns by
necessity and by parental instruction from early childhood the need for mutual
toleration and adjustments in human relationships. The deep, slow, everyday wearing
effect on character can scarcely be overestimated.
There was once a prime minister, Chang Kungni, who was much envied for his
earthly blessedness of having nine generations living together under the same roof.
Once the emperor, T'ang Kaochung, asked him the secret of his success, and the
minister asked for a brush and paper, on which he wrote a hundred times the character
"patience" or "endurance." Instead of taking that as a sad commentary on the family
system, the Chinese people have ever after envied his example, and the phrase
"hundred patience" (po-jeri) has passed into current moral proverbs which are written
on red paper and pasted on all house-doors on New Year's Day: "peaceableness brings
good luck99/ "patience is the best family heritage," etc. But so long as the family
system exists and so long as society is built on the principle that a man is not an
individual but attains his full being only in living in harmonious social relationships, it is easy to see how patience must be regarded as a supreme virtue and must grow
naturally out of the social system. For in such a society, patience has a reason for
existence.
III. INDIFFERENCE
But if the Chinese people are unique in their patience, they are still more justly
famous for their indifference. This, again, I believe, is a product of social environment.
There is no more significant contrast than that between the parting instruction of Tom
