University of Nanking - Linguist Yearbook (Nanking, China)

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32 ' l'i:-IE l,lNGUIST ' automobile cleverly fashioned of bamboo and paper, a carriage three fourths' size, drawn by a life-sized paper horse mounted on wheels: large tloats of sacred animals'and birds made of gorgeous yellow chrysanthemumsg children carrying numerous silk banners, huge paper men, boxes, furniture, etc, tablets borne of fourg an enlarged picture of the deceased, as wgll as .a sta.tue,.als.o,,borne on a sacred table. A riderless horse immediately preceded the line of special friends of the deceased who were walking within long streamers of white cloth. The coffin, covered with a red pall of richly embroidered satin was carried on a large platform swung from a pole with a dragon's tail at one end and the dragopnfspliead, with long white beard and deer's horns, at the other. Immediately in front of the coffin, borne by thirty-two coolies, were the sons, dressed in white cotton cloth, with a head dress of sack-cloth. These sons were each carried hy two friends. As the procession passed the banks of the deceased and the shops- of special friends, there was a pause while mats were spread on the streets and the sons bowed with their heads to the ground. The pro- prietors came out and also bowed down before the broken-hearted QU mourners. Lastly came a score or more of sedan chairs bearing the wives, concubines, and children of the household, wailing out their grief. ' During one of these pauses, I inquired ofa gentleman inthe procession who the deceased was, and what was the approximate- expenditurc. He said that the deceased was Chen Shiso4mei, one of the wealthiest citizens in the province, that there was being expended fully 325,000 on the funeral, and that the procession alone cost about i53,000. NVhen the average wage of a day laborer is not more than 255.00 a month, one can by comparison realize how enormous the expenditure of this funeral really was. .ln the procession were scores of beggars, men, women, and children, employed to carry banners, for which they each received a few pennies. As I stood in- the midst of the huge crowd of on-lookers, I recalled the lines of Gray's e'eg5': The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, with the- accent of boast and pomp Residing in a city with a population' of 800,000, with its- very limited recreational facilities in librariesg thousands of poor children such as those who carried the things in the procession, who because of the pinch of' poverty are deprived of an educationg public sanitation at a standstill because of the lack of public funds? places of historic interest fallen into decayg one can readily appre- ciate what there is of apathy, of selfishness, of utter lack of con- sciousness in folks who are. of a civilization thoroughly saturated' with heathen practices. ' ' - 1 If a son in China ,wishes to show filial devotion to an aged or sick father, he buys the casket and places it around the house in order to prove that ie is preparing a good future life for the father,

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THE CHINESE FUNERAL 31 Furthermore, the evangelist should remember that he has come to China to counsel with and advise the Chinese in the conduct of their own church. I-Ie is not a diviiiely appointed boss, though he may have had a definite call to his field of work. His chief joy should be to 'decrease while his Chinese colleagues increase in power, in influence, and in the controlot his work. just in line with this aim, it would seem a wise plan to spend much time in the training of leaders rather than attempting a more general evangelistic campaign which cannot be adequately followed with the necessary training and education to make it effective. A test of such service might beg how many preachers, teachers and writers-Christian leaders of thought- have been influenced? There is a large place for the foreign leader in the development -of religious education in the schools. There is need for trainingin Christian worship, the spiritualizing of prayer, the instilling in the minds and hearts of Chinese youth the beauty and religious concepts found in our Scriptures. There need be nofcondemnation of non- Christian customs, but the quiet teaching of the good, the beautiful, and the true as found in the Bible will commend itself to the students, and the Christian message itself will prove to be its own best advocate. The foreign evangelist will find opportunity also to lead the way in the application of the gospel to social conditions. If the so-called Christian west has been slow to realize the social implication of the gospel, is it any wonder that non-Christian China has placed little emphasis on the value of human life or cared whether thousands of the coolie class lived or died? This attitude is changing, and in- stitutional churches are being built to carry their message of practical salvation to the city throngs. Chinese Christians are beginning to realize that economic wrongs done to their brothers are their concern. Here there is need for the finest cooperation and counsel on the part -of the evangelist, for the Chinese Christian has but little experience. Christianity is the Christlike life lived by men. and needs nothing but its own expression for its propagation. The supreme task of the foreign evangelist is to live that life, trusting in the God whom he serves to do the rest. Collaborators: GRACE M. P11412 j. P. FOLLETTE j. I-li. RICCALLUM Oswsmm GoU1,'1'ER. A c1-nNEsi3 FUNERAL Yesterday there passed through the streets of the city the long- est funeral procession I have ever seen since arriving in China. It took one hour for it to pass any single point. For variety of para- phernalia used, this procession, apart from royalty, would have no peer. There were trumpeters blowing the familiar notes of the march of the dead. There were military and police bandsg two lines of boys and girls of schools presumably supported by the deceased, two drvismnsvof Buddhist and of Taoist priests: dining tables set with food .md carried by bearers: tables of sticks o-f sandal woodgan

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THE TEN PERCENT A33 THE TEN PERCENT y Every one who comes to China, whether Christian' worker or mere traveler, visits the old Examination Halls which are in every capital city. In many places they are in complete ruing in others the material has been used to build schools for Western educationg and in still others, as in Nanking, sectionsofe them have been preserved as monuments to Chinese scholarship. Each booth is about three feet square' by six high: They are built in long rows, cover acres and acres, and mnnber in each place into the thousands. Three-day examinations were held in these booths annually. The candidates for honors 'were shut up in them for three days, during which they wrote essaysrunder eightheadsg if they were successful they passed-were recommended for special examination at Pekingg if they were physically weak and could not stand the strain they passed out, and were carried out of their cubby-holes the next morn- ing. The subjects of the examination were the Chinese Classics, literature and history, nothing ofa practical nature. Education was not considered as an end in itself, but merely a means to political office. It was not unusual, then, to find men of eighty and ninety taking the examinations. I learn from a Chinese teacher that besides the Chinese language, literature,and classics, a little geography and astrology were taught in the schools. When a Chinese boy recited to his teacher he stood with his back to the tutor, holding out his hand, palm up, behind him. For every error in reciting the lesson he should have memorized, he received from one to ten stinging blows from the teacher's ferule, the number depending upon the disposition of the teacher. ' This 'ruly' element of education is probably still retained in many private and government schools. 1 The scholarship of the old education is comparable to that of the Medieval Scholastsf There was nothing forward-looking in it, everything was referred back to authority, the more ancient the authority or the source, the more certain and truthful the matter. China has never 'reasoned induetively, if she has reasoned at all. This presents a striking contrast to Occidental education, which is now based on the scientific spirit and not on books and ancient lore. The purposes of our 'education is to give us as complete and varied a store of knowledge as possible and to train us to use that knowledge that we may live in understanding of our fellows and to fit us to be of most service to them. Our education brings us closer to life and to life's problems and is forward-looking. Under the old Chinese system, the more a man studied, the--farther removed he was from the problems of life. True, he studied ethics, but this only in the abstract and as a sort of ideal ethics, much as we should study Plato's Republic to-day. His learning was not applied to life, even though the ultimate goal of all his laborious memorizing wasaposition in authority over multitudes. Education was individual, unorganized, haphazard, in private schools of a few students each, or by tutor. I