China and the West

Russell, Bertrand. Autobiography [ID D28131]. [Text über Japan wurde ausgelassen. Briefe, die mit China zu tun haben sind chronologisch eingetragen].
We travelled to China from Marseilles in a French boat called 'Portos'. Just before we left London, we learned that, owing to a case of plague on board, the sailing would be delayed for three weeks. We did not feel, however, that we could go through all the business of saying goodbye a second time, so we went to Paris and spent three weeks there. During this time I finished my book on Russia, and decided, after much hesitation, that I would publish it. To say anything against Bolshevism was, of course, to play into the hands of reaction, and most of my friends took the view that one ought not to say what one thought about Russia unless what one thought was favourable. I had, however, been impervious to similar arguments from patriots during the War, and it seemed to me that in the long run no good purpose would be served by holding one's tongue. The matter was, of course, much complicated for me by the question of my personal relations with Dora. One hot summer night, after she had gone to sleep, I got up and sat on the balcony of our room and contemplated the stars. I tried to see the question without the heat of party passion and imagined myself holding a conversation with Cassiopeia. It seemed to me that I should be more in harmony with the stars if I published what I thought about Bolshevism than if I did not. So I went on with the work and finished the book on the night before we started for Marseilles.
The bulk of our time in Paris, however, was spent in a more frivolous manner, buying frocks suitable for the Red Sea, and the rest of the trousseau required for unofficial marriage. After a few days in Paris, all the appearance of estrangement which had existed between us ceased, and we became gay and light-hearted. There were, however, moments on the boat when things were difficult. I was sensitive because of the contempt that Dora had poured on my head for not liking Russia. I suggested to her that we had made a mistake in coming away together, and that the best way out would be to jump into the sea. This mood, however, which was largely induced by the heat, soon passed.
The voyage lasted five or six weeks, to that one got to know one's fellow-passengers pretty well. The French people mostly belonged to the official classes. They were much superior to the English, who were rubber planters and business men. There were rows between the English and the French, in which we had to act as mediators. On one condition the English asked me to give an address about Soviet Russia. In view of the sort of people that they were, I said only favourable things about the Soviet Government, so there was nearly a riot, and when we reached Shanghai our English fellow-passengers sent a telegram to the Consulate General in Peking, urging that we should not be allowed to land. We consoled ourselves with the thought of what had befallen the ring-leader among our enemies at Saigon. There was at Saigon an elephant whose keeper sold bananas which the visitors gave to the elephant. We each gave him a banana, and he made us a very elegant bow, but our enemy refused, whereupon the elephant squirted dirty water all over his immaculate clothes, which also the keeper had taught him to do. Perhaps our amusement at this incident did not increase his love of us.
When we arrived at Shanghai there was at first no one to meet us. I had had from the first a dark suspicion that the invitation might be a practical joke, and in order to test its genuineness I had got the Chinese to pay my passage money before I started. I thought that few people would spend £125 on a joke, but when nobody appeared at Shanghai our fears revived, and we began to think we might have to creep home with our tails between our legs. It turned out, however, that our friends had only made a little mistake as to the time of the boat's arrival. They soon appeared on board and took us to a Chinese hotel, where we passed three of the most bewildering days that I have ever experienced. There was at first some difficulty in explaining about Dora. They got the impression that she was my wife, and when we said that this was not the case, they were afraid that I should be annoyed about their previous misconception. I told them that I wished her treated as my wife, and they published a statement to that effect in the Chinese papers. From the firs moment to the last of our stay in China, every Chinese with whom we came in contact treated her with the most complete and perfect courtesy, and with exactly the same deference as would have been paid to her if she had been in fact my wife. There did this in spite of the fact that we insisted upon her always being called 'Miss Black'.
Our time in Shanghai was spent in seeing endless people, Europeans, Americans, Japanese, and Koreans, as well as Chinese. In general the various people who came to see us were not on speaking terms with each other ; for instance, there could be no social relations between the Japanese and the Korean Christians who had been exiled for bomb-throwing. (In Korea at that a time a Christian was practically synonymous with a bomb-thrower.) So we had to put our guests at separate tables in the public room, and move round from table to table throughout the day. We had also to attend an enormous banquet, at which various Chinese made after-dinner speeches in the best English style, with exactly the type of joke which is demanded of such an occasion. It was our first experience of the Chinese, and we were somewhat surprised by their wit and fluency. I had not realized until then that a civilized Chinese is the most civilized person in the world. Sun Yat-sen invited me to dinner, but to my lasting regret the evening he suggested was after my departure, and I had to refuse. Shortly after this he went to Canton to inaugurate the nationalist movement which afterwards conquered the whole country, and as I was unable to go to Canton, I never met him.
Our Chinese friends took us for two days to Hangchow to see the Western Lane. The first day we went round it by boat, and the second day in chairs. It was marvelously beautiful, with the beauty of ancient civilization, surpassing even that of Italy. From there we went to Hanking, and from Nankin by boat to Hankow. The days on the Yangtse were as delightful as the days on the Volga had been horrible. From Hankow we went to Changsha, where an educational conference was in progress. They wished us to stay there for a week, and give addresses every day, but we were both exhausted and anxious for a chance to rest, which made us eager to reach Peking. So we refused to stay more than twenty-four hours, in spite of the fact that the Governor of Hunan in person held out every imaginable inducement, including a special train in all the way to Wuchang.
However, in order to do my best to conciliate the people of Changsha, I gave four lectures, two after-dinner speeches, and an after-lunch speech, during the twenty-four hours. Changsha was a place without modern hotels, and the missionaries very kindly offered to put us up, but they made it clear that Dora was to stay with one set of missionaries, and I with another. We therefore thought it best to decline their invitation, and stayed at a Chinese hotel. The experience was not altogether pleasant. Armies of bugs walked across the bed all through the night.
The Tuchun (the military Governor of the Province) gave a magnificent banquet, at which we first met the Deweys, who behaved with great kindness, and later, when I became ill, John Dewey treated us both with singular helpfulness. I was told that when he came to see me in the hospital, he was much touched by my saying, 'We must make a plan for peace' at a time when everything else that I said was delirium. We assembled in one vast hall and then moved into another for the feast, which was sumptuous beyond belief. In the middle of it the Tuchun apologized for the extreme simplicity of the fare, saying that he thought we should like to see how they lived in everyday life rather than to be treated with any pomp. To my intense chagrin, I was unable to think of a retort in kind, but I hope the interpreter made up for my lack of wit. We left Changsha in the middle of a lunar eclipse, and saw bonfire being lit and heard gongs beaten to frighten off the Heavenly Dog, according to the traditional ritual of China on such occasions. From Changsha, we travelled straight through to Peking, where we enjoyed our first wash for ten days.
Our first months in Peking were a time of absolute and complete happiness. All the difficulties and disagreements that we had were completely forgotten. Our Chinese friends were delightful. The work was interesting, and Peking itself inconceivably beautiful.
We had a house boy, a male cook and a rickshaw boy. The house boy spoke some English and it was through him that we made ourselves intelligible to the others. This process succeeded better than it would have done in England. We engaged the cook sometime before we came to live in our house and told him that the first meal we should want would be dinner some days hence. Sure enough, when the time came, dinner was ready. The house boy knew everything. One day we were in need of change and we had hidden what we believed to be a dollar in an old table. We described its whereabouts to the house boy and asked him to fetch it. He replied imperturbably, 'No, Madam. He bad'. We also had the occasional services of a sewing woman. We engaged her in the winter and dispensed with her services in the summer. We were amused to observe that while, in winter, she had been very fat, as the weather grew warm, she became gradually very thin, having replaced the thick garments of winter gradually by the elegant garments of summer. We had to furnish our house which we did from the very excellent second-hand furniture shops which abounded in Peking. Our Chinese friends could not understand our preferring old Chinese things to modern furniture from Birmingham. We had an official interpreter assigned to look after us. His English was very good and he was especially proud of his ability to make puns in English. His name was Mr Chao and, when I showed him an article that I had written called 'Causes of the Present Chaos', he remarked, 'Well, I suppose, the causes of the present Chaos are the previous Chaos'. I became a close friend of his in the course of our journeys. He was engaged to a Chinese girl and I was able to remove some difficulties that had impeded his marriage. I still hear from him occasionally and once or twice he and his wife come to see me in England.
I was very busy lecturing, and I also had a seminar of the more advanced students. All of them were Bolsheviks except one, who was the nephew of the Emperor. They used to slip off to Moscow one by one. They were charming youths, ingenuous and intelligent at the same time, eager to know the works and to escape from the trammels of Chinese tradition. Most of them had been betrothed in infancy to old-fashioned girls, and were troubled by the ethical question whether they would be justified in breaking the betrothal to marry some girl of modern education. The gulf between the old China and the new as vast, and family bonds were extraordinarily irksome for the modern-minded young man. Dora used to go to the Girls' Normal School, where those who were to be teachers were being trained. They would put to her every kind of question about marriage, free love, contraception, etc., and she answered all their questions with complete frankness. Nothing of the sort would have been possible in any similar European institution. In spite of their freedom of thought, traditional habits of behavior had a great hold upon them. We occasionally gave parties to the young men of my seminar and the girls at the Normal School. The girls at first would take refuge in a room to which they supposed no men would penetrate, and they had to be fetched out and encouraged to associate with males. It must be said that when once the ice was broken, no further encouragement was needed.
The National University of Peking for which I lectured was a very remarkable institution. The Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor were men passionately devoted to the modernising of China. The Vice-Chancellor was one of the most whole-hearted idealists that I have ever known. The funds which should have gone to pay salaries were always being appropriated by Tuchums, so that the teaching was mainly a labour of love. The students deserved what their professors had to give them. They were ardently desirous of knowledge, and there was no limit to the sacrifices that they were prepared to make for their country. The atmosphere was electric with the hope of a great awakening. After centuries of slumber, China was becoming aware of the modern world, and at that time the sordidnesses and compromises that go with governmental responsibility had not yet descended upon the reformers. The English sneered at the reformers, and said that China would always be China. They assured me that it was silly to listen to the frothy talk of half-baked young men ; yet within a few years those half-baked young men had conquered China and deprived the English of many of their most cherished privileges.
Since the advent of the Communists to power in China, the policy of the British towards that country has been somewhat more enlightened than that of the United States, but until that time the exact opposite was the case. In 1926, on three separate occasions, British troops fired on unarmed crowds of Chinese students, killing and wounding many. I wrote a fierce denunciation of these outrages, which was published first in England and then throughout China. An American missionary in China, with whom I corresponded, came to Engliand shortly after this time, and told me that indignation in China had been such as to endanger the lives of all Englishmen living in that country. He even said – though I found this scarcely credible – that the English in China owed their preservation to me, since I had caused infuriated Chinese to include that not all Englishmen are vile. However that may be, I incurred the hostility, not only of the English in China, but of the British Government.
White men in China were ignorant of many things that were common knowledge among the Chinese. On one occasion my bank (which was American) gave me notes issued by a French bank, and I found that Chinese tradesmen refused to accept them. My bank expressed astonishment, and gave me other notes instead. Three months later, the French bank went bankrupt, to the surprise of all other white banks in China.
The Englishman in the East, as far as I was able to judge of him, is a man completely out of touch with his environment. He plays polo and goes to his club. He derives his ideas of native culture from the works of eighteenth-century missionaries, and he regards intelligence in the East with the same contempt which he feels for intelligence in his own country. Unfortunately for our political sagacity, he overlooks the fact that in the East intelligence is respected, so that enlightened Radicals have an influence upon affairs which is denied to their English counterparts. MacDonald went to Windsor in knee-breeches, but the Chinese reformers showed no such respect to their Emperor, although our monarchy is a mushroom growth of yesterday compared to that of China.
My views as to what should be done in China I put into my book The problem of China and so shall not repeat them here.
In spite of the fact that China was in a ferment, it appeared to us, as compared with Europe, to be a country filled with philosophic calm. Once a week the mail would arrive from England, and the letters and newspapers that came from there seemed to breathe upon us a hot blast of insanity like the fiery heat that comes from a furnace door suddenly opened. As we had to work on Sundays, we made a practice of taking a holiday on Mondays, and we usually spent the whole day in the Temple of Heaven, the most beautiful building that it has ever been my good fortune to see. We would sit in the winter sunshine saying little, gradually absorbing peace, and would come away prepared to face the madness and passion of our own distracted continent with poise and calm. At other times, we used to walk on the walls of Peking. I remember with particular vividness a walk one evening starting at sunset and continuing through the rise of the full moon.
The Chinese have (or had) a sense of humour which I found very congenial. Perhaps communism has killed it, but when I was there they constantly reminded me of the people in their ancient books. One hot day two fat middle-aged business men invited me to motor into the country to see a certain very famous half-ruined pagoda. When we reached it, I climbed the spiral staircase, expecting them to follow, but on arriving at the top I saw them still on the ground. I asked why they had not come up, and with portentous gravity they replied : 'We thought of coming up, and debated whether we should do so. Many weighty arguments were advanced on both sides, but at last there was one which decided us. The pagoda might crumble at any moment, and we felt that, if it did, it would be well there should be those who could bear witness as to how the philosopher died.' What they meant was that it was hot and they were fat.
Many Chinese have that refinement of humour which consists in enjoying a joke more when the other person cannot see it. As I was leaving Peking a Chinese friend gave me a long classical passage microscopically engraved by hand on a very small surface ; he also gave me the same passage written out in exquisite calligraphy. When I asked what it said, he replied : 'Ask Professor Giles when you get home'. I took his advice, and found that it was 'The consultation of the Wizard', in which the wizard merely advises his clients to do whatever they like. He was poking fun at me because I always refused to give advice to the Chinese as to their immediate political difficulties.
The climate of Peking in winter is very cold. The wind blows almost always from the north, bringing an icy breath from the Mongolian mountains. I got bronchitis, but paid no attention to it. It seemed to get better, and one day, at the invitation of some Chinese friends, we went to a place about two hours by motorcar from Peking, where there were hot springs. The hotel provided a very good tea, and someone suggested that it was unwise to eat too much tea as it would spoil one's dinner. I objected to such prudence on the ground that the Day of Judgement might intervene. I was right, as it was three months before I ate another square meal. After tea, I suddenly began to shiver, and after I had been shivering for an hour or so, we decided that we had better get back to Peking at once. On the way home, our car had a puncture, and by the time the puncture was mended, the engine was cold. By this time, I was nearly delirious, but the Chinese servants and Dora pushed the car to the top of a hill, and on the descent the engine gradually began to work. Owing to the delay, the gates of Peking were shut when we reached them, and it took an hour of telephoning to gem them open. By the time we finally got home, I was very ill indeed. Before I had time to realize what was happening, I was delirious. I was moved into a German hospital, where Dora nursed me by day, and the only English professional nurse in Peking nursed my by night. For a fortnight the doctors thought every evening that I should be dead before morning. I remember nothing of this time except a few dreams. When I came out of delirium, I did not know where I was, and did not recognise the nurse. Dora told me that I had been very ill and nearly died, to which I replied : 'How interesting', but I was so weak that I forgot it in five minutes, and she had to tell me again. I could not even remember my own name. But although for about a month after my delirium had ceased they kept telling me I might die at any moment. I never believed a word of it. The nurse whom they had found was rather distinguished in her profession, and had been the Sister in charge of a hospital in Serbia during the War. The whole hospital had been captured by the Germans, and the nurses removed to Bulgaria. She was never tired of telling me how intimate she had become with the Queen of Bulgaria. She was a deeply religious woman, and told me when I began to get better that she had seriously considered whether it was not her duty to let me die. Fortunately, professional training was too strong for her moral sense.
All through the time of my convalescence, in spite of weakness and great physical discomfort, I was exceedingly happy. Dora was very devoted, and her devotion made me forget everything unpleasant. At an early stage of my convalescence Dora discovered that she was pregnant, and this was a source of immense happiness to us both. Ever since the moment when I walked on Richmond Green with Alys, the desire for children had been growing stronger and stronger within me, until at last it had become a consuming passion. When I discovered that I was not only to survive myself, but to have a child, I became completely indifferent to the circumstances of convalescence, although, during convalescence, I had a whole series of minor diseases. The main trouble had been double pneumonia, but in addition to that I had heart disease, kidney disease, dysentery, and phlebitis. None of these, however prevented me from feeling perfectly happy, and in spite of all gloomy prognostications, no ill effects whatever remained after my recovery.
Lying in my bed feeling that I was not going to die was surprisingly delightful. I had always imagined until then that I was fundamentally pessimistic and did not greatly value being alive. I discovered that in this I had been completely mistaken, and that life was infinitely sweet to me. Rain in Peking is rare, but during my convalescence there came heavy rains bringing the delicious smell of damp earth through the windows, and I used to think how dreadful it would have been to have never smelt that smell again. I had the same feeling about the light of the sun, and the sound of the wind. Just outside my windows were some very beautiful acacia trees, which came into blossom at the first moment when I was well enough to enjoy them. I have known ever since that at bottom I am glad to be alive. Most people, no doubt, always know this, but I did not.
I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.
There was in Peking at that time a Soviet diplomatic mission, whose members showed great kindness. They had the only good champagne in Peking, and supplied it liberally for my use, champagne being apparently the only proper beverage for pneumonia patients. They used to take first Dora, and later Dora and me, for motor drives in the neighbourhood of Peking. This was a pleasure, but a somewhat exciting one, as they were as bold in driving as they were in revolutions.
I probably owe my life to the Rockefeller Institute in Peking which provided a serum that killed the pneumococci. I owe them the more gratitude on this point, as both before and after I was strongly opposed to them politically, and they regarded me with as much horror as was felt by my nurse.
The Japanese journalists were continually worrying Dora to give them interviews when she wanted to be nursing me. At last she became a little curt with them, so they caused the Japanese newspapers to say that I was dead. This news was forwarded by mail from Japan to America and from America to England. It appeared in the English newspapers on the same day as the news of my divorce. Fortunately, the Court did not believe it, or the divorce might have been postponed. It provided me with the pleasure of reading my obituary notices, which I had always desired without expecting my wishes to be fulfilled. One missionary paper, I remember, had an obituary notice of one sentence : 'Missionaries may be pardoned for heaving a sigh of relief at the news of Mr Bertrand Russell's death'. I fear they must have heaved a sigh of a different sort when they found that I was not dead after all. The report caused some pain to friends in England. We in Peking knew nothing about it until a telegram came from my brother enquiring whether I was still alive. He had been remarking meanwhile that to die in Peking was not the sort of thing I would do.
The most tedious stage of my convalescence was when I had phlebitis, and had to lie motionless on by back for six weeks. We are very anxious to return home for the confinement, and as time went on it began to seem doubtful whether we should be able to do so. In these circumstances it was difficult not to feel impatience, the more so as the doctors said there was nothing to do but wait. However, the trouble cleared up just in time, and on July 10th we were able to leave Peking, though I was still very weak and could only hobble about with the help of a stick.
Shortly after my return from China, the British Government decided to deal with the question of the Boxer indemnity. When the Boxers had been defeated, the subsequent treaty of peace provided that the Chinese government should pay an annual sum to all those European Powers which had been injured by it. The Americans very wisely decided to forgo any payment on this account. Friends of China in England urged England in vain to do likewise. At last it was decided that, instead of a punitive payment, the Chinese should make some payment which should be profitable to both China and Britain. What form this payment should take was left to be determined by a Committee on which there should be two Chinese members. While MacDonald was Prime Minister he invited Lowes Dickinson and me to be members of the Committee, and consented to our recommendation of V.K. Ting and Hu Shih as the Chinese members. When, shortly afterwards, MacDonald's Government fell, the succeeding Conservative Government informed Lowes Dickinson and myself that our services would not be wanted on the Committee, and they would not accept either V.K. Ting or Hu Shih as Chinese members of it, on the ground that we knew nothing about China. The Chinese government replied that it desired the two Chinese whom I had recommended and would not have anyone else. This put an end to the very feeble efforts at securing Chinese friendship. The only thing that had been secured during the Labour period of friendship was that Shantung should become a golf course for the British Navy and should no longer be open for Chinese trading.
Before I became Ill I had undertaken to do a lecture tour in Japan after leaving China. I had to cut this down to one lecture, and visits to various people. We spent twelve hectic days in Japan, days which were far from pleasant, though very interesting. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese proved to be destitute of good manners, and incapable of avoiding intrusiveness. Owing to my being still very feeble, we were anxious to avoid all unnecessary fatigues, but the journalists proved a very difficult matter. At the first port at which our boat touched, some thirty journalists were lying in wait, although we had done our best to travel secretly, and they only discovered our movements through the police. As the Japanese papers had refused to contradict the news of my death, Dora gave each of them a type-written slip saying that as I was dead I could not be interviewed. They drew in their breath through their teeth and said : 'Ah ! veree funnee ! '… [Es folgen Bericht Japan und Briefe].