China and the West

Baring, Maurice. A year in Russia. (London : Methuen, 1907)
https://archive.org/details/ayearinrussia00barigoog.
I am laid up in bed, and Mr. Ostrovski of the Russo-Chinese bank has just been to see me…
Chinese town. The Military Attaches are here in their car…
I arrived at the quarters of the battery this morning. It is quartered in a village near the large Chinese town of Jen-tzen-tung on the Mongolian frontier…
You must be careful with that pony, he throws himself. I wondered what this meant ; whether the pony ran away, or bit, or kicked, or stumbled, or bucked, or fell, my experience of Chinese ponies being that they do all these things…
After luncheon we went on, asking the way of the Chinese in each village, our destination for the evening being the large town of Oushitai. At every village we asked, the Chinese answered by telling us how many lis Oushitai was distant…
We halted at midday in a small Chinese village for our midday meal. It was a small, rather tumble-down village, with a large clump of trees near it A Chinaman came out of a house, and seeing the red correspondent's badge on my arm, asked me if I was a doctor…
I asked what he had been eating lately. The Chinaman said raw Indian com. I prescribed cessation of diet and complete repose. The Chinaman appeared to me to be much satisfied, and asked me if I would like to hear a concert. I said very much. Then he bade me sit down on the khan — the natural divan of every Chinese house — and to look ("smotri smotri" he said). Presently another Chinaman came into the room and, taking from the wall a large and twisted clarion (like the wreathed horn old Triton blew), he blew on it one deafening blast and hung it up on the wall again. There was a short pause, I waited in expectation, and the Chinaman turned to me and said : " The concert is now over."…
When we had finished luncheon, and just as we were about to resume our journey, the Chinaman in whose house I had been entertained rushed up to me and said : " In your country, when you go to a concert, do you not pay for it?"…
Towards the afternoon the aspect of the country changed ; we reached grassy and flowery steppes. It was the beginning of the Mongolian country. We met Mongols sitting sideways on their ponies, and dressed in coats of many colours…
There I found my old friend Kizlitzki, of the battery, who, as usual, was living by himself in Chinese quarters of immaculate cleanliness…
The house is a regular Chinese house, or series of one-storeyed houses forming a quadrangle, in which horses, donkeys, and hens disport themselves. We occupy one side of the house. Opposite us the owner lives. In the evening one hears music from the other side. I went to see what it was ; a Chinaman lying on his back plays on a one-stringed lute…
Next to our quarters there is a small house where an old Chinaman is preparing three young students for their examination in Pekin. One of these Chinamen came this morning and complained that their house had been ruined by the Cossacks. We went to inspect the disaster. It turned out that one of the Cossacks had put his finger through one of the paper windows of the house, making thereby a small hole in it The old teacher is quite charming. He redted poetry to us. When the Chinese recite poetry they half sing it I had lately read a translation of
a Chinese poem by Li-Tai-Po, which in the translation runs thus : —
" You ask me what my soul does away in the sky ;
I inwardly smile but I cannot make answer ;
Like the peach blossom carried of by the stream,
I soar away to a world unknown to you."
By means of a small piece of wood, a flower, and some water I made the Chinaman understand what poem I was alluding to and he recited it for us. The Chinese asked me to tell them their fortunes by their hands. I said to one of them, at random, that I saw great riches in his hand, thinking it would please him. The Chinaman said nothing, but later, when this Chinaman, who was a visitor, had gone, the others said to me: "You spoke true words. That man is a 'Koupeza' (pidgin-Russian for merchant) and he is enormously rich." These Chinamen take an acute interest in the result of the peace notiations, and wish to be informed as to all sorts of details of which we are ignorant The impression among the officers here is that it is a very good thing that peace has been concluded. "We ought to thank Heaven that our men have not been beaten again," one of them said, and he added : " It is silly to say that the higher authorities are the only guilty ones ; we are all equally guilty."…
The Chinese consult him before striking a bargain or setting out on a journey…
I had tea with a Chinese Mandarin. I do not know which was the more exquisite, his tea or his manners. In the evening we discussed writers of books…
It is a delicious life. We often visit the Chinese professor in his peripatetic school…
Chinese Bank ? It is not enough to say that the revolution is merely the work of enemies financed by foreigners, and then Schwamm darüber as the Germans say…
We were sitting in the ante-room of the small Chinese house which formed our quarters…
Across the courtyard from the part of the dwelling where the Chinese herded together, we could hear the monotonous song of a Chinaman or a Mongol singing over and over to himself the same strophe…
I believe that there is the same difference between myself and a Cadet as there is between a Mandarin and a Japanese. Perhaps the social value of Chinese philosophy in not incomparable to the French Eighteenth Century strain, which is still so strong in us…
Russian and the Chinese have been worn threadbare. But now we are face to face with the extraordinary situation of having, as it were, Japanese and Chinamen in the same country struggling for prevalence…
Japanese can reform China. But just as the Japanese will never make the Chinaman Japanese in character, so I the Cadets will never make Russia…
The way an English-woman he had known had spoken of Indians and Chinese as something so infinitely inferior, too, had surprised and amused him….
You can make laws telling them to do so, but if you force them you will only drive them to rebellion. Russia is like China…
According to this school, the comparison with China is wrong because the Chinese are intellectually a highly civilised nation, and the proportion of them who can read and write is large…
If it is true that what you represent is really Russia, we have no further wish to remain Russians, and the day you are proved to be in the right, we will emigrate and settle in Turkey, in Persia, or in China…