I regret that he died while in America in 1912.
Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose
works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M.
Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his
Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai
Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years
and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial
secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult
language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the
name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of
_Lion and Dragon in North China_, who was one of our Hongkong cadets,
Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and
scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West
in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting
China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy,
their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of
a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai,
the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million
dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the
fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan
by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning
to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates
that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were
admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders
in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture,
building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of
progress and government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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