China and the West

Giovanni Vacca lebt ein Jahr in Chengdu (Sichuan).

Li Qingya graduiert an der Fudan-Universität, Shanghai.

Charles Dickens in China.
Wei Qianghua : Charles Dickens's sympathy towards the lower class and criticism of injustice in English society initially won him fame among the Chinese public.
Tong Zhen : Dickens was mainly perceived as a 'progressive' English writer who relentlessly criticized the ruling bourgeois and condemned the evil capitalist system.

Gladstone Porteous kommt 1907 in der Mission Sapsuhan in Yunnan an und arbeitet als Mission mit den Miao und in der Mission Salaowu den Nosu.

Aufführung von Hei nu yu tian lu = "Black slave's cry to heaven" von Zeng Xiaogu nach Hei nu yu tian lu in der Übersetzung von Lin Shu und Wei Yi [ID D10429], unter der Regie von Li Shutong [Li Xishuang] und Ouyang Yuqian, durch chinesische Studenten der Chun liu she (Spring Willow Society) im Hongô Theater in Tokyo, June 1-2, 1907. Adaptation von Uncle Tom's cabin von Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Li Shutong played Amelia Shelby, her husband was played by Huang Nannan and George Harris was played by Xie Kangbai. Ouyang Yuqian played a slave girl. Song and dance were improperly intruded. A visitor from China sang an aria from a Beijing opera.
The play was divided into five acts. This, for a Chinese audience accustomed to an unbroken action upon the stage, was an innovation which the new drama companies of the early period found hard to sustain. The whole play, in preparation at least, was in spoken dialogue from a completely written text, a feature which became impossible to maintain in the circumstances in which the Spring Willow Society was forced to play in Shanghai.
This first version of the story was used to reflect the abjection of China in her anticolonial struggle at the beginning of the twentieth century. The play was the beginning of the Chinese spoken drama hua ju. The most striking differences between Stowe's novel and the adaption are the absence of Christian religion in the Chinese play and the ending. Whereas the novel ends with the emancipation of the slaves by the character George Shelby, in Zeng's play the slaves liberate themselves. This play was unlike previous Chinese xi qu in excluding dance and song and disallowing recitation, soliloquies, or asides.
The theme of oppression and liberation had an obvious appeal for the young Chinese students in Tokyo. Their dramatized version completely removed the Christian emphasis of Stowe's book and made the theme a struggle between the negro slaves and their oppressors, the slave-dealers, with final victory for the slaves in their slaughter of the slave-dealers.
In the programme of the play is declared :
The Aims of the Spring Willow Society's 1907 Grand Performance.
"The greatest task of artistic performance is in enlightenment. Therefore this society's creative work begins with this. It has established a special section to study old and new drama. It hopes to be the leader of the reform of our country's world of the arts."
Ouyang Yuqian, who participated in the performance recalled : "The play was divided into five acts and consisted totally of dialogue, with no recitation, no chorus, no soliloquy or asides. It was rendered in the typical form of the drama. Although the play was adapted from a novel, it should be considered the first created script of Chinese drama because there had never existed before in China a play in the form of divided acts."
Zhang Geng (1954) described the performance "as a most memorable performance in the history of Chinese drama. It was the first performance presented by the Chun liu she and was fairly successful in content, form, and technique. It made a deep impression on the audience and had a great effect on the development of drama".
Cao Xiaoqiao (1987) : "Although only male actors performed in the play, the use of stage settings and the division of acts were breakthroughs as compared with traditional operas."

Aufführung von Hei nu yu tian lu = "The black slave's cry to heaven", nach der Übersetzung von Hei nu yu tian lu [ID D10429] von Lin Shu und Wei Yi, einer Adaptation von Uncle Tom's cabin von Harriet Beecher Stowe durch chinesische Studenten der Chun yang she [Spring Sun Society] im Lyceum Theatre in Shanghai. The five-act scipt was witten by Xu Xiaotian, Aufführung unter der Regie von Wang Zhongsheng.
The actors were all in new Western suit and dress but none used black face. The significance of the production lies in its introducing a Chinese audience to modern division of acts, realistic scenera and lighting, and the Western-style Lyceum Theatre.

Aufführung eines Aktes von Cha hua nü yi [ID D23857] nach der Übersetzung von Lin Shu und Wang Shouchang, Adaptation von La dame aux camélias von Alexandre Dumas fils, durch die Spring Willow Society, unter der Regie von Fujisawa Asajirô mit Li Shutong als Marguerite und Zeng Xiaogu als Armand's father, im Tokyo YMCA in Kanda-mitoshirocho.

Sigede [Scott, Walter]. Shi zi jun ying xiong ji. Lin Shu yi. [ID D10420].
Lin Shu schreibt im Vorwort : "Today's China is feckless and declining. It's a great pity that I do not have a wide knowledge, so that I could come up with original works for publication to inspire my countrymen. What I can do now is to translate as many as I can of the stories of Western heroes in order that my people can, by learning from these heroes, get out of their state of lassitude and isolation, and catch up with the strong rival nations. Would that not bring me consolation any the less ?"

Moore, Marianne. Notebook.
[Notations on two meetings of the local Ladies' Missionary Society].
The meeting was opened with prayer ; after which, the roll was called, each of those present reciting a verse of scripture as her name was called… the subject for discussion - 'The Chinese' was introduced… Mrs. King read an article on the Chinese & their peculiarities…Mrs. Barr & Mrs. Merwood read articles on the easiest ways & means to adopt, to convert the Chinaman…

Notebook
Pound – Li Po. Epitaph
And Li Po also died drunk
He tried to embrace a moon
In the yellow river.

Chen Jie studiert an der Universität Berlin.

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…

London, Jack. The road. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1907).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14658/14658.txt
Road-kids and gay-cats.
We took our position on K Street, on the corner, I think, of Fifth. It was early in the evening and the street was crowded. Bob studied the head-gear of every Chinaman that passed. I used to wonder how the road-kids all managed to wear "five-dollar Stetson stiff-rims," and now I knew. They got them, the way I was going to get mine, from the Chinese. I was nervous--there were so many people about; but Bob was cool as an iceberg. Several times, when I started forward toward a Chinaman, all nerved and keyed up, Bob dragged me back…
He sent a sweeping look-about for police, then nodded his head. I lifted the hat from the Chinaman's head and pulled it down on my own. It was a perfect fit. Then I started. I heard Bob crying out, and I caught a glimpse of him blocking the irate Mongolian and tripping him up. I ran on. I turned up the next corner, and around the next. This street was not so crowded as K, and I walked along in quietude, catching my breath and congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away.
And then, suddenly, around the corner at my back, came the bare-headed Chinaman. With him were a couple more Chinamen, and at their heels were half a dozen men and boys. I sprinted to the next corner, crossed the street, and rounded the following corner. I decided that I had surely played him out, and I dropped into a walk again. But around the corner at my heels came that persistent Mongolian. It was the old story of the hare and the tortoise. He could not run so fast as I, but
he stayed with it, plodding along at a shambling and deceptive trot, and wasting much good breath in noisy imprecations. He called all Sacramento to witness the dishonor that had been done him, and a goodly portion of Sacramento heard and flocked at his heels. And I ran on like the hare, and ever that persistent Mongolian, with the increasing rabble, overhauled me. But finally, when a policeman had joined his following, I let out all my links. I twisted and turned, and I swear I ran at least twenty blocks on the straight away. And I never saw that Chinaman again. The hat was a dandy, a brand-new Stetson, just out of the shop, and it was the envy of the whole push. Furthermore, it was the symbol that I had delivered the goods. I wore it for over a year…
Two thousand stiffs.
And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of learning that the device we employed to navigate the rapids of the Des Moines--the one-two-one-two, head-boat-tail-boat proposition--was not originated by us. I learned that the Chinese river-boatmen had for thousands of years used a similar device to negotiate "bad water."…

Bernhard Karlgren studiert an der Uppsala Universität mit Hauptfach slavische Sprachen.

Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe hält sich in Norwegen auf und überreicht dem Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum in Bergen die ersten chinesischen Kunstobjekte. Er schickt regelmässig weitere Sendungen.

Regelmässige Schiffsreisen der Svenska Ostasiatiska Kompaniet nach China.

Alexandr Vasil'evic Grebenscikov beendet seine Studien und erhält einen Lehrstuhl der Fakultät für Mandjurische Philologie.

Alexandr Vasil'evic Grebenscikov studiert die wichtigsten Bücher über moderne Linguistik und Phonetik.

Tolstoy, Leo. Kitaiskaya mudrost : mysli kitaiskikh myslitelei [ID D36257]. [The books of Confucius].
"The Chinese are the oldest people in the world. The Chinese are the most populous people in the world. There are 450 million of them, almost twice as many as Russians, Germans, French, Italians and English put together. The Chinese are the most peaceful people in the world. They seek nothing from others, nor do they wish to engage in war. The Chinese are tillers of the soil. Their ruler himself begins the plowing. And because of that the Chinese are the most peaceful people in the world.
"They say: If a man claims that he is skilled in warfare, know that this man is a great criminal.
"The Chinese live in their own way, not ours. They know how we live but they do not adopt our way of life, for they consider their life to be better. Neither French, Russian, German, Turk nor any other people in the world can, in eating so little and producing so much, compete in work with the Chinese. There is no single people in the world who can till the soil and gain a livelihood from it as well as do the Chinese-Whereas on one desyatina [2 ¾ English acres] a single Russian or two Germans can support them¬selves, on that same desyatina ten Chinese can do so.
"The Chinese have now begun to migrate to America, and the American workers do not know what to do.
"The Chinese work cheaper, better and more honestly than do the latter, but they demand less and so have brought down the wages for all work. Some Americans say: We should accept them. Others say: We should expel them. Like it or not, the work will be taken by him who works better. And he who is better is he who does no harm to anyone, takes less for himself, and gives more to others. The Chinese do no harm, fight with no one, and give more and take less. Therefore they are better. And if they are better, we must find out what is their faith.
"Here is their faith : They say (this is what their teacher Chu-khi says): All men have originated from the Heavenly Father, and therefore there is not a single man whose heart is not endowed with love, virtue, truth, propriety and wisdom. But although natural goodness exists in all people from birth, only a very few can nurture this goodness and develop it completely. That is why it so happens that not all people know, or can know, the goodness which lies in them, and develop it. Those, however, who have great sensibility, reason and wisdom, can develop in themselves their spiritual goodness, and it is they who differ from the mass of other people. It is to such men that the Heavenly Father gave a decree to be the leaders and teachers of the people. He decreed that from generation to generation they were to rule and teach the people, so that these might all return to their original purity.
"In this way Fukhi, Chanpunch, Goanti, Iao and Chun received their superior rank from the Heavenly Father, and in this way their assistants carried out their orders. From this their teachings spread everywhere.
"And thus it finally came to be that in the palaces of the rulers, as well as in the smallest hamlets, there was no place where the people did not study. As soon as a boy reached his ninth year—were he the son of an emperor or prince, or of a simple peasant—he entered a primary school where he was taught how to plant, water, cultivate, and keep things tidy. He was taught how to answer politely those who addressed him, how to come forth and greet people, and how to receive guests and see them off. He was taught how to ride horseback, shoot the bow, and how to read, write and count."

Tolstoy, Leo. Pismo k kitaitsu ; Kitaiskaya mudrost : mysli kitaiskikh myslitelei [ID D36257].
Tolstoy urged the Chinese to put an end to the despostism of the Manchurian emperor and recommended that they should continue living "a peaceful, arduous, and bucolic life, following in behavior the fundamental principles of their three religions : Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism".

Alfred E. Hippisley ist Postal Secretary des Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service.