The Y. M. C. A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school
as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial
schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering
China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government
industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and
almost lost cloisonné, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are
memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The
schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of
the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.”
In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The
pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier, viz:
“Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding
that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”
That the Chinese can become linguists has seldom been more uniquely
illustrated than in the following experience related by Prince Henri
d’Orleans. He was about to travel through the territories of the
aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan province. The difficulty was to find
an interpreter. The general interpreter who only knew the Mandarin
pronunciation of the north, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the
south, would not do. The prince found at the Mission d’Etrangeres at
Tali, in remote Yunnan, an interpreter who knew the Lolo dialects, and
though he could not converse with the prince in French or English, he
could converse fairly well in Latin, and they got along splendidly. It
appears that the Catholic fathers had taught the convert from the Latin
Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc!
Eager as the Chinese are to learn from text-books, they more eagerly
cry for exhibits which appeal to the eye, and the establishment of
museums, heretofore neglected, except in the few universities already
mentioned, should be undertaken. Take one week’s records at the
Hongkong Museum, for instance. Four hundred and sixteen non-Chinese and
163 Chinese used the library, but 193 non-Chinese and 3,100 Chinese
studied in the museum. The resourceful Canadian government sent a
traveling exhibit through China. It is what the Chinese call for. We
shall yet see floating and wheeled museums, _in parvo_, throughout the
empire, as educational bodies and merchants appreciate this as the
quickest way to approach the Chinese mind.
When the revolution of 1911 had developed strength, the Chinese
government found itself unable to remit to the thousands of students
who were studying in foreign countries. The American and British
universities, without exception, nobly offered to aid any needy Chinese
student. The move was brilliant and humane, and will be bread scattered
upon returning waters of appreciation some day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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