Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1916 — Peadsants of China [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Peadsants of China

THIS is being written in China, where, at the moment of writing, there is much talk of discovering and following the will of the people on the question of monarchy or republic. Those who best know China can only smile. There Is something amusing In the Idea of discovering the will of China’s millions of peasants on a subject of national moment, says a writer in the Dundee Courier, The patient Chinese husbandman knows nothing and cares less whether he is ruled by a president or an emperor. His opinion on any matter of national Importance will not be discovered within the next 100 years. He has to discover it himself before others can do so. At present it does not exist. His oneldea otgoMgovemmcnt Is to be left alone in peace without being too greatly robbed by officials. If his crops are good he leaves politics, whether local or national, to those who are interested in them. For hls part, he has less than no interest. The Chinese peasant is a man almost entirely without ambition. He has two ruling passions of life, and these are so closely allied that they may be described as one, The acquisition of wealth is out of the question for him. To him a Mexican dollar—which is worth about 1 shilling 9 pence—is a vast sum, and twenty of them constitute a fortune. If he earns the equivalent of two pence a day he is doing famously, but you cannot save much off two .pence a day. Since he cannot amass wealth, therefore, he sets himself to amass a family, if one may so phrase it. The strongest am-

hition Of his life—perhaps passion would be a more accurate term —is to get married and to rear a large family, preferably of boys. Second only to that is his desire, having reared his family, to have the members of it married as well. And because marriage is the beginning and end of the existence of a Chinese peasant the matter is taken with quite tremendous seriousness. He marries young. Rather, he is married young, for the contracting parties are not the two most immediately concerned, but their parents. The contract is drawn up long before the young people are of a marriageable age, and past it the young people cannot go if they wish. But they seldom wish. The young man is content with the choice made by his mother. One girl is as good as another to him, so always she can rear a family. What women think in China matters nothing to any one; among the peasant 5 class, that is to say. Yet for all his passion to get married, the young man seldom dreams of providing a home for his bride. He is content to take her to his father’s house, and to rear his children there. The time will come, of course, when the little home will become too small, but it serves him for a very long time first. Everyone a Worker. From this custom of two or three generations living together springs the fact that everyone, from the youngest to the oldest, does some kind of work to help. A little tot of three may be seen gathering bits of stick; the tottering old grandmother Is generally found trying to weave or spin. Chinese youngsters appear to have no real childhood. They do not laugh as do our children, or as do the children, say, of our Japanese allies. In point of fact, one has to visit Japan to find children who appear to make the most of life. Thev laUgh aH-dav and every day, and they_never seem to find anything worth crying over.' Yet it must not be supposed that, because the Chinese child works at an age when bur children can dollttie morethan toddle, life for them is one of gloom. In their own way, they are perfectly happy while they are working, axd one' doubts whether they would be anything like so contented if they were wsFlaplay aS we know play. The sameholds of the wffe ufthe peasant.

Day after day she 1b forced to work, and very often the burdens she is forced to carry are disgracefully heavy for a woman. But what else is there for her to do? She has no housework to perform. She cannot read. She is not educated, and she has not been taught to think. If the right to work in the field? were denied her she would be the most miserable creature alive. These things must be viewed from the Chinese and not from the western point of view. Every writer on Chinese matter® makes mention of the filial respect displayed by Chinese young people. Yet it simply does not exist. They are misled by the fact that ancestors are worshiped and old people revered. It has to be said of the Chinese peasant that he never allows his old father or his old mother to starve so long as he has a handful of rice to share. There are no poorhouses for old people in China. They are not needed. But between child and parent there is no sign of respect. Men and women in China are not respected until they are either dead or approaching death. They they become tremendously important. A woman is regarded as a fool and a tool while she is still young and vigorous. She is venerated and her opinion gravely regarded when she is in her dotage. But no children on earth, perhaps, talk to their parents as do Chinese children; and the manner of their back-chat, bad as it is, is as nothing to the nature of it. You have to understand that swearing in China is an art. I grant you that you have some “professors” in Dundee; I have heard them, and I ap-

predate their proficiency. But they have to hide their diminished/heads in front of a Chinese —even a Chinese youngster. Man Without Sympathy. One characteristic of the Chinese peasafat is his Indifference to pain. He may be badly smashed up, yet he will cling to 11 fe with a tenacity that pulls him through where a European would go under. I saw a man the other day who fell thirty feet down the hold of a ship. One side of his face was terribly battered. Two of his ribs were broken and one arm was badly damaged. A European would have been carried instantly to hospital. His one anxiety was to be allowed to return to work and his description of those who would not allow him to do so lacked nothing in point and directness and was sufilciently comprehensive to include their ancestors, existing relations and heirs forever. He simply could not understand what all the bother was about. From this Indifference to pain, again, springs a want of sympathy with another sufferer. A man may die on the roadside without the slightest notice being taken of him. Let his relatives take care of him. If he is dying, why trouble with him? It is the business of the authorities to cart a'way the corpse. .Why should anyone worry over him?' For the matter of that, of course, if the case is one of plague, say in Hongkong (where the laboring class Is only a little better than the peasant class in China), a dying man will be taken into the street and left there. If that cannot be managed the body will later be slipped out quietly and left some distance away. If it is kept in the house the authorities will come round with brushes and pails and disinfectants and other foolish things, and clean the house and fumigate it, and generally annoy the Inmates. The idea of anroying living people because ola man Whir Is deadls ridiculous! He has one strong saving grace, however. If be has not come too much in contact with foreigners, and so become contaminated. he is an honest business man. Order rice or tea from one of the more important peasant farmers and get a sample.andhe will, send rice or tea exactly to sample; Therein he differa from the Japanese, who has no sense of honor In business, and is seven kinds of a rogue,