Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1883 — A Peculiar People. [ARTICLE]

A Peculiar People.

There are some odd facts in regard to the result of .6,000 or 7>ooo years of Chinese civilization, and we presume that those who may speculate upon the probable condition of the Anglo-Saxon on or about the Ist of January 800 A. D., will not overlook a few of the salient features which have grown up over the advanced age of the Mogolian dynasty. Just think of it; there is not a road in all the broad expanse of populous China where even a wheelbarrow could be driven or a horse led except around Shanghai, and here the English have built them. They have no cemeteries; no tombstones’ mark their last resting place on the earth. Those who own private gardens bury their dead and those of their friends therein. Those who have no gardens or plats of ground lay the bodies of the dead in rough boxes on the surface of open fields. The Chinese regard the souls of their ancestry as links in the length of a great chain, which, they say, enables them to reach up to the Supreme Source of life and Ruler of the universe. This is the reason why these remarkably quick-witted, keen people will not tolerate the construction of a railroad in their country. They declare that the locomotive and rattling trains would certainly violate the sacred charm influenced in their hehalf by causing the abrupt, sacred flight of their ancestry, who are hovering around them. They have no banks in China, and no coin of value except our silver and that of Mexico. They have no lawyers, but they have a perfect, rigidly enforced system of Saw and order. The principals alone ean plead their cases. The first social rank in Chi a can only be attained by literary merit. All Chinamen read and write because education is compulsory. Every man in China is free to compete for a literary degree, and last year 107,000 candidates for this honor were entered at Canton for examination. Those of this large number who pass muster here are free to advance to the higher national grade competition at Pekm—held annually there —and when they pass this ordeal they become mandarins, and! live in high estate'at the public expense. No military man is allowed to compete for these liberal honors in China. This annual selection, from the whole Chines • people, of its rulers, who represent its best thought and mental power, has probably been, the greatest and most potent factor of their remarkable vitality and preservation as a nation, but at the same timo it increases the wonder that they should have stood still on the avenue of progress for hundreds of years.