China and the West

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
June 5. [5.6.1919].
This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a friend got a pass which permitted him to enter the building where the students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in that day at ten had had no food. One of our friends went out and got the University to appropriate some money and they ordered a carload of bread sent in. This bread means some little biscuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home. I think carload means one of the carts in which they are delivered. At any rate, the boys had some food, though not at the expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting an education. This morning one of our friends here is going to take us up to the University to see the military encampment, and I hope he will take us inside also, though I hardly think he will do the latter.
As near as I can find out, the Chinese have reached that interesting stage of development when they must do something for women and do as little as they can, but in case they must have a girls’ school they find that a convenient place to unload an antiquated official who really can’t be endured any longer by real folks.
No one can tell to-day what the students' strike will bring next; it may bring a revolution, it may do anything surprising to the police, who seem to be as lacking in imagination as police are famous for being. Everyone here is getting ready to flee for the summer, which is very hot during July. On the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to endure than the heat of New York, as it is so dry. But the dryness has its own effect and when those hard winds blow up the dust storms it gets on the nerves. Dust heaps up inside the house, and cuts the skin both inside and outside of the body. This is a lucky day, being cloudy and a little damp as if it might rain.
The Western Hill was an experience to remember. Stepping from a Ford limousine to a chair carried by four men and an outwalker alongside, we were thus taken by fifteen men to the temples, your father, an officer from the Department of Education, and I. The men walked over the paths in the dust and on stones which no one thinks of picking up. It was so astounding to call it a pleasure resort that we could only stare and remain dumb. We saw three temples and one royal garden. Five hundred Buddhas in one building, and all the buildings tumble-down and dirty. On top of one hill is a huge building which cost a million or more to build about four hundred years ago by someone for his tomb. Then he did something wrong, probably stole from the wrong person, and was not allowed to be buried there. Round the temple places the trees remain and give a refreshing oasis, and there are some beautiful springs. All the time we kept saying, 'Trees ought to be planted'. 'Yes, but they take so long to grow,' or, 'Yes, but they will not grow, it is so dry,' etc. Sometimes they would say, 'Yes, we must plant some trees,' or more likely, 'Yes, I think we may plant some trees sometime, but we have an Arbor Day and the people cut down the trees or else they did.' We would show that the trees would grow because they were there round the temples, and besides grass was growing and trees would grow where grass would grow in such dry weather, and they would say the same things over. It made the little forestry station in Nanking seem like a monumental advance, while that fearful sun was beating up the dust under the stones as the men gave us the Swedish massage in the motion of the chairs. Fifty men and more stood around as we got in and out of the car and five men apiece stood and waited for us as we walked round the temple and ate our lunch and spent the time sipping tea, and yet they cannot plant trees, and that is China.
The whole country is covered every inch with stones. Nature has supplied them, and falling walls are everywhere. We saw one great thing, however. They are building a new school house and orphanage for the children of that village. Many of the children are naked everywhere hereabouts and they stand with sunburned heads, their backs covered only with coats of dirt, eating their bean food in the street. Everywhere the food is laid out on tables by the roadside ready to eat. In one temple, a certain official here has promised to rebuild a small shrine which houses the laughing Buddha, who is made of bronze and was once covered with lacquer, which is now mostly split off. At present the only shade the god has is a roof of mats which they have braced up on the pile of ruins that once made a roof. The President of the Republic has built a lovely big gate like the old ones, because it is propitious and would bring him good fortune. But he has decided it was not propitious, something went wrong with the gods, I did not learn what it was; anyway, he is now tearing down one of the big buttresses on one side of it to see if fate will treat him more kindly then. Just what he wants of fate I did not learn either, but perhaps it is that fate should make him Emperor, as that seems to be their idea of curing poverty and political evils. I forgot to say that they never remove ruins; everything is left to lie as it falls or is falling, so one gets a good idea of how gods are constructed. Most of them were of clay, a sort of concrete built up on a wood frame, and badly as they need wood I have never seen a sign of piling up the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of that, you risk your life by walking under these falling roofs unless you have the sense to look after your own safety. In most of these Peking temples they do sweep the floors and even some of the statues look as if they had some time been dusted, though this last I am not certain about.