Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — Chinese Characteristics. [ARTICLE]

Chinese Characteristics.

It seems to make no particular difference to a Chinese how long he remains in one position. He will write all day, like an automaton. If he is a handicraftsman, he will stand Ip one place from dewy morn till dusky eve, working away at his weaving, his gold-beating, or whatever It may be, and do it every day, without any variation in the monotony, and apparently no special consciousness that there is any monotony to be varied.

In the same way Chinese schoolchildren are subjected to an amount of confinement, unrelieved by any lecesses or change of work, which would soon drive Western pupils to the verge of K»s»nity. The very infants In arms, instead of squirming and wriggling as our children begin to do as soon as they are born, lie as impassive as so many mud gods. At a more advanced age, when Western children vie with the monkey-in his wildest antics, Chinese children will often stand, sit or squat in the same posture for a groat length of time.

Ia the item of sleep the Chinese establishes the same differences between himself and the Occidental as in the directions already specified. Generally speaking, he is able to sleep anywhere. None of the trifling disturbances which drive us to despair annoy him. With a brick for a pillow he can lie down on his bed of stalks, or mud bricks, or rattan, and sleep the sleep of the just, with no reference to the rest of creation. He does not want his room darkened, nor does he require others to b& still. The “infant crying in the night” may continue to cry for all he cares, for it does not disturb him. The same freedom from the tyranny of nerves is exhibited in the Chinese endurance of physical pain. Those who have any acquaintance with the operations in hospitals in China know how common, or rather how almost universal, it is for the patients to bear without flinching a degree of pain from which the st'jutest of us would shrink in terror.