Brown's mother in the English classic Tom Browtfs School Days to "hold his head
high and answer straight" and the traditional parting instruction of the Chinese mother
that her son should "not meddle with public affairs." This is so because, in a society
where legal protection is not given to personal rights, indifference is always safe and
has an attractive side to it difficult for Westerners to appreciate.
I think this indifference is not a natural characteristic of the people, but is a conscious
product of our culture, deliberately inculcated by our old-world wisdom under the
special circumstances. Taine once said that vice and virtue are products like sugar and
vitriol. Without taking such an absolute view, one can nevertheless subscribe to the
general statement that any virtue will be more generally encouraged in a society
where that virtue is easily seen to be "good," and is more likely to be generally
accepted as part of life.
The Chinese people take to indifference as Englishmen take to umbrellas, because the
political weather always looks a little ominous for the individual who ventures a little
too far out alone. In other words, indifference has a distinct "survivalvalue" in China.
Chinese youths are as public-spirited as foreign youths, and Chinese hot-heads show
as much desire to "meddle with public affairs" as those in any other country. But
somewhere between their twenty- fifth and their thirtieth years, they all become
wise ("hsuek huai liao" as we say), and acquire this indifference which contributes a
lot to their mellowness and culture. Some learn it by native intelligence, and others
by getting their fingers burned once or twice. All old people play safely because all
old rogues have learned the benefits of indifference in a society where personal rights
are not guaranteed and where getting one's fingers burned once is bad enough.
The "survival-value" of indifference consists, therefore, in the fact that in the absence
of protection of personal rights, it is highly unsafe for a man to take too much interest
in public affairs, or "idle affairs," as we call them. When Shao P' iaop' ing and Lin
Poshui, two of our most daring journalists, got shot by a Manchurian war- lord in
Peiping in 1926 without even a trial, the other journalists naturally learned the virtue
of this indifference in no time, and "became wise." The most successful journalists in
China are those who have no opinion of their own. Like all Chinese gentlemen, and
like the Western diplomats, they are proud of committing themselves to no opinion on life in general, and on the crying question of the hour in particular.1 What else can
they do? One can be public-spirited when there is a guarantee for personal rights, and
one's only look-out is the libel law. When these rights are not protected, however, our
instinct of self-preservation tells us that indifference is our best constitutional
guarantee for personal liberty.
In other words, indifference is not a high moral virtue but a social attitude made
necessary by the absence of legal protection. It is a form of self-protection, developed
in the same manner as the tortoise develops its shell. The famous Chinese apathetic
gaze is only a self-protective gaze, acquired by a lot of culture and self-discipline.
This is borne out by the fact that Chinese robbers and bandits, who do not depe nd
upon legal protection, do not develop this indifference, but are the most chivalrous
and public-spirited class of people we know in China. Chinese chivalry, under the
name of "haohsieh" is invariably associated with the robbers as in Shuihu. The
vicarious pleasure derived in reading the life and adventures of such heroes accounts
for the popularity of such novels, in the same way that Elinor Glyn's popularity was to
be accounted for by the large number of old maids in the United States. The strong,
therefore, are public-spirited because they can afford to be so, and the meek who
constitute the majority of the people are indifferent because they need to protect
themselves.
Historically, this could be strikingly proved in the history of the Wei and Ch' in
Dynasties, when scholars became admired for their indifference to national affairs,
resulting soon in the sapping of national strength and the conquest of North China by
barbarians. It was the fashion for scholars of the Wei and Ch' in Dynasties to give
themselves up to drinking, "light conversation" (cKingfan), and dreaming about
Taoist fairies and discovering the pill of immortality. This period seemed to be
politically the lowest period of the Chinese race since the Chou and Han times,
representing the end of a progressive degeneration of the race until, for the first time
in its history, China was submerged under barbarian rule. Was this cult of indifference
natural, and if not, how was it brought about? History reveals this to us in no
uncertain terms.
1 The oldest and biggest daily paper in China, Shun Poo, formerly enjoyed the
reputation of editorially handling (i) foreign and not domestic questions; (2) distant
and not immediate topics, and (3) general and not specific subjects,, like ''The
Importance of Diligence," "The Value of Truth/' etc.
Toward the end of the Han Dynasty, the Chinese scholars were not indifferent. In
fact, political criticism was at its height during this period. Leading scholars and
"university" students, numbering over thirty thousand, were often embroiled over
questions of current politics, and dared the wrath of the eunuchs and the Emperor in
their intrepid attacks on government policies or the conduct of members of the
imperial household. Yet, because of the absence of constitutional protection, this movement ended in complete suppression at the hands of the eunuchs. Two or
three hundred scholars and sometimes their whole families were sentenced to death,
exile or imprisonment. This occurred in the years A.D. 166-169, and was known as
the tangku, or "party cases." This was carried out in such a thorough fashion and on
such a grand scale that the whole movement was cut short, and its remaining effects
were felt for over a century afterward. Then came the reaction and the cult of
indifference and the developing crazes for wine, women, poetry and Taoistic
occultism. Some of the scholars went into the mountains and built themselves
mudhouses without a door, receiving their food through a window till their death.
Others disguised themselves as woodcutters and begged their relatives to save them
from recognition by refraining from making calls.
Immediately after that came the seven poets, or the "Pl&ade of the Bamboo Grove."
Liu Ling, a great poet, could go on a drunken fit for months. He used to travel on a
cart with a jug of wine, a shovel and a grave-digger, giving the latter the order as they
started: "Bury me when I am dead!梐 nywhere, any time" People admired him and
called him "clever." All scholars affected either extreme rusticity or extreme
sensuality and extreme superficiality. Another great poet, Yiian Hsien, had illicit
relations with his maid. When he learned at a public feast that his wife had sent the
maid away, he immediately borrowed a horse from a friend and galloped off after the
maid until he overtook her and carried her back on horseback in the presence of all the
guests. These were the people who became admired for their cleverness. People
admired them as a small tortoise admires the thick shell of a big tortoise.
Here we seem to have laid our finger on the fatal disease of the body politic, and to
see the origin of that indifference which explains the proverbial inability of the
Chinese people to organize themselves. It would seem that the curing of the disease is
simple, by having constitutional protection for the people's civil rights. Yet no one has
seen the far-reaching consequences of this. No one desires it. No one sincerely wants
it.
IV. OLD ROGUERY
Perhaps the most striking quality of the Chinese people is what, for want of a better
term, must be termed its "old roguery." It is the most difficult characteristic to explain
to a Westerner, and yet at the same time it is most profound, in that it goes back
directly to a different philosophy of life. Compared with this view of life, the whole
fabric of Western civilization seems extremely raw and immature. When a young man
tries to drag his old grandfather from his fireside for a sea bath on a September
morning and fails to do so, the young man will perhaps show angered astonishment,
while the old man will merely show a smile of amusement. That smile is the smile of
the old rogue, and it is difficult to say which one is right. All this bustle and
restlessness of the spirit of the young man梬 here will it all lead to? And all this enthusiasm and self-assertion and struggle and war and hot-headed nationalism 梬
here will it all end, and what is it all for? Perhaps it will be futile to find an answer to
the question, and equally futile to force one party to accept the view of the other, since
it is all a matter of age.
An old rogue is a man who has seen a lot of life, and who is materialistic, nonchalant,
and sceptical of progress. At its best, this old roguery gives us mellowness and good
temper, which in old men make many girls prefer them for husbands. For if life is
worth anything, it is that it teaches a lesson of kindliness. The Chinese people have
arrived at this point of view, not by having found any religious sanction for it, but
from a profound observation and a knowledge of the vicissitudes of life. Typical of
this extremely shrewd philosophy is the following famous dialogue of two
poet-monks of the T'ang Dynasty:
Once Hanshan asked Shihteh: "If one slanders me, insults me, sneers at me, desp ises
me, injures me, hates me, and deceives me, what should I do?35 Shihteh replied:
"Only bear with him, yield to him, let him, avoid him, endure him, respect him, and
ignore him. And after a few years, you just look at him"
In myriad other forms, this spirit of Laotse finds expression in our literature, poetry
and proverbs. Whether the expression be "By losing that pawn, one wins the whole
game," or "Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is the best/5 or "A true hero
never incurs present risk/* or "Taking a step backwards in your thought/9 this attitude
toward life's problems has permeated the whole fibre of Chinese thought. Life is then
full of second-thoughts and of "the thirty-sixth alternatives"; its angularities are
smoothed off, and one achieves that true mellowness which is the mark of Chinese
culture.
At its worst, this old roguery, which is the highest product of Chinese intelligence,
works against idealism and action. It shatters all desire for reform, laughs at the
futility of human effort and renders the Chinese people incapable of idealism and
action. It has a strange way of reducing all human activities to the level of the
alimentary canal and other simple biologic needs. Mencius was a great rogue when he
declared the chief desires of mankind to be food and women, or alimentation and
reproduction. The late President Li Ylianhung was also a great rogue when he
pronounced the heartily accepted dictum of Chinese political philosophy and formula
for solving all Chinese party differences by saying "When there is rice, let everybody
share it" President Li was a grim realist without knowing it, and he spoke wiser than
he knew when he was thus giving an economic interpretation of current Chinese
history. The economic interpretation of history is not new to the Chinese people, nor
is the biologic interpretation of human life of the iSmile Zola school. With Zola, it is
an intellectual fad, but with us it is a matter of national consciousness. In China one
does not have to learn to become a realist: here one is born a realist. President Li
Ytianhung was never noted for power of cerebration, but, as a Chinese, he instinctively felt that all political problems are not, and should not be, anything but
problems of the rice-bowl. As a Chinese, he gave thus the profoundest explanation of
Chinese politics of which I know. This nonchalant and materialistic attitude is based
on the very shrewd view of life to which only old people and old nations can attain. It
would be futile for young men under thirty to understand it, as it is futile for young
nations of the West to try to appreciate it. Perhaps it was no mere accident that the
very name of Laotse, the author of Taotehking^ the Bible of Taoism, means an "old
man."1 Someone has said that every man past forty is a crook. Anyway, it is
undeniable that the older we grow, the more shameless we become. Young girls of
twenty seldom marry for money; women of forty seldom marry for anything
else?security" is perhaps the word they call it. It is by no mere whim that, in Greek
mythology, young Icarus was made to fly too high until the wax of his wings melted
