Reminiscences of Li Hung-Chang
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Reminiscences of Li Hung-chang.
When I lived at Tientsin Li Hung-chang loomed large on the horizon, and I
did not suppose that I should ever have to explain to anyone who he
was. I suppose however that he is only a name to you.
He became Viceroy of the metropolitan Province in 1870 and
until the Japanese War of 1894, he stood as the real executive officer
of the Manchu Court at Peking. There was during this time a sort of
Foreign Office at Peking called the Tsung-li Yamen, but it was not
uncommon for foreign ministers to get weary of the delays caused by
the tactics of the Tsung-li Yamen, and so come to the Tientsin to
settle things with the great Viceroy. His power seemed to us almost
without limits.
Li Hung-chang was a native of Ho Fei Hsien in Anhui Province.
Physically he was a large man, standing three or four inches over six
feet in height.
The real Chinese of North China
are much larger than the
Cantonese whom you know as Chinese in California. They seem to breed
a tall and strong race of men in that part of Anhui Province from
which the great Viceroy came. I have known several of his fellow-
[illegible: townsmen] who were over
six feet tall. The Chinese giant Chang whom Barnum showed to the world
was 7 feet 9 inches in height and I believe that scientists agree that
his was a natural growth not caused by any disease, as is generally
the case with the "giants." I have often been told by the Anhui
Chinese that Chang had a sister who was taller than he.
Li Hung-chang showed his ability in youth by passing with
distinction the various examinations that were formerly held in China,
finally passing the highest at Peking, and winning for himself the
coveted distinc tion of being enrolled as a Han-lin at
Peking. It was as a military
leader that he first became famous however. He joined the force of the
Chinese general who was fighting the T'ai P'ing Rebels and soon had an
independent position in the great civil war. He came in contact with
foreigners by employing Ward, a mass, man, to organize an auxiliary
force composed of Chinese and foreigners to fight against the T'ai P'ings.
At Shanghai in these days a confusion there were many foreign
adventurers, of whom Ward was one. He had already been connected with
the filibustering expedition against Nicaragua before he came to
Shanghai. His foreign and Chinese force did good
called
^given the name of^ the "Ever Victorious Army."
After two years he was killed and turned
ov the "Ever Victorious Army" was turned over to Burgeoine, a
North Carolina man.
Burgeoine soon quarrelled with his
Chinese superiors and changed
sides, joining the rebels. After his capture and death Gordon took
charge of the army and won great honor by his manner of conducting
it. I think it is not generally realized in this country that the
leader of the T'ai P'ing Rebels was nominally a Christian. At all the
gatherings of the army a sort of religious service was held, but
Christian doctrine in his hands soon took grotesque form and the
essence of Christianity soon changed into savagery. He overran half of
China and his operations have been estimated to have accounted,
directly and indirectly, for 100,000,000 deaths. I think that this
illustrates the folly of the misssionary's expending his force in
merely teaching Christian doctrine. All missionaries ought to regard
themselves as representatives of the higher form of civilization which
has been developed in the Western
nations as the practical result
of Christianity. Those of you who are planning to go out as
missionaries ought to learn all that you can of engineering in its
different forms and wherever you go, you should take the lead in
lifting
^elevating^
^[below]elevating^ the people by introducing proper
measures of sanitation by establishing schools, by guarding against
floods, by improving methods of agriculture and by establishing
hospitals. In modern times, because many of the missionaries stand for
these things, the church is looked upon with a new respect. Out of the
military leaders now, ^Gen.^ teng Yü-hsiang is
a Christian ^of the Methodist Church,^ and as a
Christian he regards himself as necessarily and naturally a reformer.
He has devoted himself to the general welfare of the people in every
line.
The history of Christianity in the Far East has shown that
mere Xian doctrine is soon submerged. I have recently been reading
Marco Polo ^who^ was in China during the 13th
Century of our era. Christian churches
existed then in nearly every city
of North China that he described. Now they have all disappeared. The
doctrine has gradually been changed, until it has so assimilated the
Buddhist or Mohametan doctrines that the distinction ^of
churches^ has not been kept up.
In 1886 I established a school at Tsu for teaching English
and Chinese, mathe matics and elementary science. At
the end of the first year I was greatly pleased to receive an
invitation from the Viceroy, Li Hung-chang, to spend two hours every
afternoon at the Yamen or official residence, tutoring his sons and
grand-sons. I was glad to turn over my school to my assistants and to
devote myself for a part of the day to the new work. I thought it
indicated that my school was building up a good reputation and I felt
that with this sign of the Viceroy's approval it would prosper still
more. This was at the beginning of the movement for modernizing China.
Times have changed now. It is not uncommon now for officials to send
their sons
to foreign schools, but at that
time it was unheard of to place a foreigner in the position of a tutor
in an official family. I happened to know that some of the Viceroy's
friends protested vigorously against his placing young children under
the influence of a foreigner. The Viceroy insisted upon having his own
way and up to the year 1894, when the Sino-Japanese War took place,
two house were placed at my disposal from the vice-regal stables and I
continued to act as tutor
^rode to the Yamen every afternoon to act as tutor^.
After the Viceroy had finished the day's official business he
was in the habit of sauntering into the school room to listen to the
children ^recite,^ so that I saw a great deal of
him. He was certainly a bigger man than any that have come to the
front in these days of the Republic of China. His faults were those of
his class, for he was an old fashioned Mandarin, at
the same time
that he was progressive. His
wealth was, of course, against him. He did not believe "in muzzling
the ox that treadith out the corn." I remember once asking the boys
what they knew of Gordon. They at once bega became animated and
said that he was an Englishman who fought under their father, but who
unfortunately rebelled against their father in the end, and so had to
be dismissed. This was the way the story had been handed down in the
Li family. The foreign version is that on the surrender of the T'ai
P'ing leaders at Soochow they were promised their lives ^by Gordon and the Chin, Gen. with^^[right]whom he was
cooperating^, but General Li treacherously ordered them all
to be executed, which so outraged Gordon that he tried to shoot his
general. Gordon seems to have impressed Li Hung-chang ^however,^, for he said once that when he first began
to deal with foreigners he had the impression that they were more
truthful than the Chinese, but that further experience
had shown him that he was
wrong in his early conclusion; that there were truthful and untruthful
foreigners but that the general average was about the same as among
the Chinese. From this you may perceive the quality of the diplomats
and concession hunters with whom he came in contact as Viceroy of the
metropolitan Province.
Among the paraphernalia of the school room I had the usual
small set of apparatus for illustrating science all of which had to be
shown and explained to the Viceroy; and I also had the first form of
the phonograph, with wax cylinders for taking records and a glass
pointed needle for repro ducing the record just
taken. This aroused the greatest possible interest of course. I
remember once that the Viceroy ordered one of his attendants to sing
into the phonography. The poor man had to sing a Chinese song, but
but it was a trying ordeal and in
the midst of the song his embarrassment caused him to break down and
to have a fit of the giggles. I suppose he thought that I would stop
the machine until he had recovered, but I let it run on. When I
reproduced the record, his break down and embarrassed
giggling all came out faithfully. I have never seen a man more amused
than the Viceroy was. I thought he would never finish laughing. I
remember one afternoon we had a rather severe earth-quake at Tientsin.
I gathered my small boys in the middle of the square compound onto
which the school ^[inline]room^ opened and we were all
bunched together there to be free from the danger of falling walls.
The next compound connected with ours by a gate which generally stood
open was that on which the Viceroy's office opened. At that time Li
Hung-chang's brother, Li Han-chang who was also a Viceroy, at Canton,
was his guest. After we had
taken our position, we saw these two elderly men come out from the
office with the same idea ^as ours^, but as they saw
us in the middle of our compound they came through the open gate and
joined us. Then as the walls were still creaking and groaning, ^and we were all crowded together,^ the Viceroy asked
me to explain the cause of earth-quakes. I have never forgotten the
peculiar circumstances under which I delivered that scientific
lecture. As I have spoken of the Viceroy's brother I would like to
explain that leading families in China have a system by which you know
when you hear a man's name just where he stands among the generations.
For example the character Chang as used in Li Hung ^Chang^, Li Han-Chang, serves to place the man. Ching is
chosen as the name of the next generation. So you have Li Ching-fang, Ching
Su, Ching Hsi Ching-chin, Ching-mai. Kuo makes the next generation, as
Li Kuo-chich, Kuo Yun
[illegible: etc].
(Filial piety outraged by Am. Consul + son)
In 1894 came the Sino-Japanese War in which Li Hung-chang was disgraced. He
had built up a navy, but although the ships were there, the Empress
Dowager had used the naval maintainance fund to embellish the Summer
Palace, so that the well-equipped Japanese navy made short work of
destroying it. The Chinese armies too made a poor showing in face of
the well-disciplined Japanese forces. Corea had been a tributary state
of China's before the war but now became attached to Japan. Li
Hung-chang was relieved of his post as Viceroy of the metropolitan
province in consequence of his failure in the war and might have lost
his life, if it had not been for the friendship of the Empress
Dowager. In 1896 he was appointed special envoy to attend the
coronation of the Czar of Russia and later he passed on through Europe
and America. It was sad to see his great career ending in disgrace. I
think that no one was more surprised than himself at the inferiority of his
army and navy. Then too no one,
least of all China, realized the rapid strides that Japan had made in
modern warfare. I remember that after the capture of Port Arthur by
the Japanese
he^Li Hung-chang^ said to me that the
engineers who constructed the fortifications of Port Arthur had made
the mistake of placing the cannon so that they commanded the
approaches from the sea but could not be turned so as to command an
attack by land, which was what the Japanese army carried out. This
pitiful excuse was, I suppose, only a repetition of what some one of
his military officers had told him. After his return from the round
the world trip he was given an appointment at Peking. But when the
Empress Dowager was preparing her one great folly in allying herself
with the so-called Boxer Society to expel all the foreigners from
China it was necessary to be rid of Li Hung-chang from Peking, because
he never would
have countenanced the folly. So
several months before the storm broke in 1900, he was sent to Canton
to be Viceroy of the province in which Canton is situ ated and only recalled when the consequences of the
folly had become evident. I remember well when he arrived at Tientsin
to make peace with the foreigners. He arrived at night and I called on
him the next morning. He dispensed with the usual salutations and only
said "Oh Mr. Tenney, if I had been here this would not have happened."
He was then nearly 80 years of age and the next year he died, with the
work of peace negotiations still incomplete. Though he was in the
extreme South when the Boxer attempt was made, he was still able to
influence the course of events somewhat. Orders were sent to the
Yang-Tzŭ River Viceroys from Peking ordering them to exterminate all
the foreigners in their section.
They had become so accustomed to follow the guidance of Li Hung-chang
that the telegraphed to him at Canton telling him that these orders
had been received and asking him what they should do. He at once
telegraphed his reply. "Ignore the orders." They did so and thus the
disorders of that fateful year were confined to the North, to the
region immediately around Peking. Whatever circumstances may be made
of Li Hung-chang no one can doubt his loyalty to the Manchu Dynasty
and its head, the old Empress Dowager. Confucian morality requires
that when a man has once held office under a dynasty he must be
faithful to that dynasty to the end and never serve under any rulers
who may take its place. I often wonder what he would have said to the
China of today. A republic in name, but really under
the rule of military dictators
and dis united. A few of the officials who
served under the Empire have taken office in the Republic. I suppose
that they satisfy their consciences by saying that the Republic exists
by Imperial order and so differs from another dynasty which might have
supplanted the old dynasty. Li Hung-chang would never have
su allowed this sophistry to satisfy him. His sons and
grand-sons have almost without exception held themselves aloof from
Republican China. One of his sons, with whom I correspond, is living
in hope that the young emperor may take up the reins again and
reinstate the Ta Ch'ing Dynasty. I have had to tell him frankly that
it is quite impossible. The revolution of 1911 was directed mainly
against the corruption and inefficiency of the Manchu government. No
family of
China is powerful enough to set
up a new dynasty, and so the Republic has come to stay. The people
will never submit to the Manchus again, discour
aging as is the present outlook of the Republic. I have great respect
for the mental power and essential saneness of the Chinese, and I
believe that in some way they will solve their present difficulties
and evolve a stable government.
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