Letters From China And Japan - free ebook by Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

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Letters From China And Japan

Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

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LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

BY JOHN DEWEY, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University AND ALICE CHIPMAN DEWEY Edited by EVELYN DEWEY NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright, 1920, By E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C. Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in this book, left the United States early in 1919 for a trip to Japan. The trip was ea

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Tokyo, Monday, February.

Tokyo, Monday, February.

Well, if you want to see one mammoth, muddy masquerade just see Tokyo to-day. I am so amused all the time that if I were to do just as I feel, I should sit down or stand up and call out, as it were, from the housetops to every one in the world to come and see the show. If it were not for the cut of them I should think that all the cast-off clothing had been misdirected and had gone to Japan instead of Belgium. But they are mostly as queer in cut as they are in material. Imagine rummaging your at

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Tuesday, February 11 (Tokyo).

Tuesday, February 11 (Tokyo).

To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the bank, but we can go to a meeting where they will discuss universal franchise and democratization generally. The Emperor is said to be indisposed, so he will not come to the celebration. His illnesses, like everything else about him, are arranged by the ministers and mistresses, as near as we can make out. We are having so many interesting experiences and impressions that it is already difficult to catch up in writing them down. Yesterday morning we wen

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Tokyo, Thursday, February 13.

Tokyo, Thursday, February 13.

We have done our first independent shopping to-day. I can’t get over my astonishment at the amount and quality of English spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in this store, the big department store, as it is at home—much easier as respects attention and comfort. They give us little wrappers or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Think of what an improvement that would be in muddy weather in Chicago. This afternoon is sort of a lull after the storm of sociability and hospitality which reache

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Tokyo, February.

Tokyo, February.

Here we are, one week after landing, on a hill in a beautiful garden of trees on which the buds are already swelling. The plums will soon be in bloom, and in March the camellias, which grow to fairly large trees. In the distance we see the wonderful Fuji, nearby the other hills of this district, and the further plains of the city. Just at the foot of our hill is a canal, along which is an alley of cherry trees formerly famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a few years ago. We have a wonderful

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February 22.

February 22.

Yesterday we went to the theater, beginning at one and ending about nine; tea is constantly in the box, and little meals—and a big one—between the acts. We liked the old Japanese theater better than the more or less modernized one. Baron Shibusawa presented us with a box—or rather two of them—and his niece and another relative and the two young people from the house went. I won’t try to describe the dramas, except to say that the way to study Japanese history and tradition would be to go to the

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Tokyo, Friday, February 28.

Tokyo, Friday, February 28.

I don’t get much sightseeing done except in the way of seeing street sights. I am generally accompanied when I take a walk for exercise and always taken by some new way. The other evening we went out after dinner and took a walk to a lively street not far off—booksellers with their things spread out on the sidewalk or rather road, little lunch wagons, crowded streets and shops—they have electricity everywhere, and some geisha girls trotting along with maids to carry their samisens. We went into

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Sunday Morning, March 2.

Sunday Morning, March 2.

I am writing early because we are going to-day to Kamakura. You have probably heard of the big bronze Buddha—fifty feet high—well, that is there. A friend has arranged an interview for us with the most distinguished or most learned of the Buddhist priests in Japan—who belongs to the most philosophical of all the sects, the Zen, which believes in the simple life and is more or less Stoical; this is the sect that had the greatest influence on the warrior class in the good old days. Kamakura is on

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Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.

Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.

You would be surprised to see how free from all affectations this country has remained, at least so far as we see it. There is a social democracy here that we do not know. All Japan is talking democracy now, which is to be taken in the sense of representative government rather than in the sense of tearing down the present form of government. The representation in elections here now does not seem to extend much further, if any, than to include those large taxpayers who would under any system be a

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Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.

Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.

Our friends took us to Kamakura; it isn’t interesting reading these things in advance in guide books, so I don’t think a description will be interesting, but something over seven hundred years ago, the first Shogun rulers settled there and made it their capital, of which nothing is now left save the Buddhist temples. We met on the train going down the professor of Japanese literature in the University, who was going there because it was the seventh hundred anniversary of a Shogun who wrote poetr

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March 5.

March 5.

I have now given three lectures. They are a patient race; there is still a good-sized audience, probably five hundred. We are gradually getting a superficial acquaintance with a good many people, and if I could get two or three weeks free from lectures to prepare I could make a business of finding things out, but as it is I only accumulate certain impressions. There is no doubt a great change is going on; how permanent it will be depends a good deal upon how the rest of the world behaves. If it

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Tokyo, Monday, March 10.

Tokyo, Monday, March 10.

Yesterday we had our first taste of the Noh drama. We got there before nine in the morning, and I left before two to go to Mr. Naruse’s funeral, but Mamma stayed till nearly three when she had to go to speak at a school. Mamma can give you a much more intelligent idea of it than I can, but the building is a kind of barnlike structure—the Elizabethan theater with a vengeance, and no stage properties except some little live pines and a big painted one, and except costumes which are rich and expens

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Tokyo, Thursday, March 14.

Tokyo, Thursday, March 14.

We have just had a mild picnic. Mamma has a slight cold, so the maids brought her supper up to her and for sociability brought mine up too. Mamma got out a Japanese phrase book and pronounced various phrases to them; to see them giggle and bend double, no theater was ever so funny. When I got to my last bite, I inquired the name of the food, and said it and “Sayonara”—good night. This old gag was a triumph of humor. They are certainly a good-natured people. I have watched the children come out f

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Tokyo, March 14th.

Tokyo, March 14th.

The ceremony of breakfast is over, and I am sorry again you cannot all share in these daily festivals which add so much to the dignity of living. We are now studying Japanese with the aid of the maids. I missed going to the Dolls’ Festival at a private kindergarten and the result—this morning by mail a postcard from the children with numerous presents made by them, all dolls, and those I will send home, as they are interesting. With the presents they say: “We made cakes and prepared for your com

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Tokyo, Thursday, March 20.

Tokyo, Thursday, March 20.

We have had a number of social events this week. Tuesday evening General H——, who speaks no English but who came over on the Shinyo with us, gave a party for us in the gardens of the Arsenal Grounds. We could not have entered the Arsenal Grounds in any other way. There were about twenty-five people there, mostly Christian Association people, and the clergyman of the Japanese church where I had spoken the night before. He is keen about introducing more democracy in Japan, and I spoke on the moral

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Kamakura, Thursday, March 27.

Kamakura, Thursday, March 27.

This weather beats Chicago for changeableness. Monday, at midnight, it was storming rain; when we got up the next day it was the brightest, warmest day we have had. We spent it sightseeing and went out without an overcoat. The magnolia trees are in full bloom. Yesterday and to-day are as raw March days as I ever saw anywhere; there would have been frost last night but for the wind. Tuberculosis is rife here and no wonder. Three of the University professors have called on me this morning. They wi

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Tokyo, Wednesday, March 28.

Tokyo, Wednesday, March 28.

To-morrow we are going to Kamakura again; it is only an hour and a half from here. We are going to take a little trip into the mountain and hot-spring district also, but the cherry blossom season is much advanced, ten days earlier than usual, and we are afraid it will spring itself in our absence if we go far, so probably we shall be back here in a few days for about a week. Then we shall take a five-day trip on our way to Kyoto, going to the shrine at Ise. This is the oldest and most sacred Shi

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Tokyo, Tuesday, April 1.

Tokyo, Tuesday, April 1.

The Japanese do one thing that we should do well to imitate. They teach the children in school a very nice lesson about the beauty and the responsibility of being polite and kind to the foreigner, like being so to the guests of your own house. This adds to the national dignity. Yesterday the Emperor got out and I caught him at it. Quite an amazing and lucky experience for me and no harm to him, as I had not known he ever went out before I picked him up in the street. I went down our hill as usua

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Tokyo, April 1.

Tokyo, April 1.

Our activities of late have been miscellaneous; we spent three days, counting coming and going four days, at Kamakura last week. It is on the seaside and is a great resort, summer and winter, for the Japanese, and at the hotel for Europeans over weekends. For summers the foreigners go to the mountains, while the Japanese take to the seaside, largely because there is more for the children to do on the seashore, but partly because mountains seem to be an acquired taste. Kamakura is about ten degre

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Tokyo, April 2.

Tokyo, April 2.

We have had another great day to-day. This morning rose early and wrote letters, which were not sent in spite of the haste, as we decided the slow boat was slower than waiting for a later and faster one. So you ought to get many letters at once. The day has been sunshiny and bright, but not at all sultry, so perfect for getting about. We went to the art store to get some prints which we had selected the day before and then on to call on a Professor of Political Economy, who is also a member of P

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Tokyo, April 4.

Tokyo, April 4.

Ganjiro, the greatest actor from Osaka, is acting here now, and the show was great. He did the scene among other things they did in New York under the name of “Bushido.” A dance by a fox who had taken the form of a man was a wonderful thing. There is no use in trying to describe it. It was not just slow posturings, like the other Japanese dances we have seen, nor was it as wild as the Russian dancers; he did it alone, no companion, male or female. But it was as free as the Russian and much more

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Tokyo, April 8.

Tokyo, April 8.

We are actually packing up and get away to-morrow morning at 8:30—we travel all day, the first part till four o’clock on the fastest train in Japan. The ordinary trains make about fifteen miles an hour, Japan having unfortunately adopted narrow gauge in early days and going on the well-known principle of safety first. We have had various and sundry experiences since writing, the most interesting being on Sunday, when we were taken into the country both to see the cherry blossoms and the merry-ma

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Nara, April 12.

Nara, April 12.

Well, we have started on our journey and have seen Japan for the first time, scenically speaking, that is to say. The first day’s ride from Tokyo to Nagoya was interesting, but not particularly so except for Fuji, which we saw off and on for several hours, and on three sides. As sometimes it isn’t visible, and we had a fine warm day, we had good luck. Nagoya is where the best old castle in Japan is, you may even in your benighted country and estate have heard of the two golden dolphins on top. T

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Kyoto, April 15.

Kyoto, April 15.

Here we are in the Florence of Japan, and even more to see if possible than in Italy. We have had a rainy day to-day, which is perhaps a good beginning for a week of constant sightseeing. This morning we spent in Yamanaka’s—the most beautiful shop I ever saw, composed of the finest Japanese rooms of the finest proportions and filled with the most beautiful art specimens of all kinds. But the kinds are properly assorted in true Japanese fashion. I bought a red brocade. It is a panel, old red with

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Kyoto, April 15.

Kyoto, April 15.

To-day is rainy and we haven’t done much. We got here yesterday noon. The hotel is on the side of a hill with wonderful views, and is pretty good, though the one at Nara which is run by the Imperial Railway System is the only first-class one we have seen so far. In the afternoon the University sent a car and we took an auto ride into the suburbs to a famous cherry place—it was too late for blossoms, but the river and hills and woods were beautiful, and we saw the usual large crowd enjoying life.

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Kyoto, April 19.

Kyoto, April 19.

We have just come from another Geisha party, given by the mayor and about fifteen of the other officers of the city. Papa is quite stuck up because they say it is the first time the city of Kyoto ever entertained a scholar in that fashion. But if he is stuck up what should I be when a woman appears for the first time in history at a men’s carouse in Japan? The Geisha girls are all the way from eleven years old to something like fifty. One of the older ones is the best dancer in the city, and she

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Kyoto, April 22.

Kyoto, April 22.

To-day we were taken visiting schools—first a Boys’ High school, then an elementary school which had an American flag along with the Japanese over the door in our honor, and which was awfully nice. The children did lots of cunning stunts for us, one little kid beating the Japanese drum for their rhythmic marching, which they are good at. Then a textile school for textile design, weaving and dyeing, which for some unexplained reason was bad and poorly attended. The machines were old, German and o

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April 28, on the Kumano Maru. En Route to China.

April 28, on the Kumano Maru. En Route to China.

The lecture yesterday was a success, going off rather better than the others. It was in a school hall and they are always beautiful rooms. I was entertained during its two hours of duration by watching a splendid pink azalea and a pine on either side of the desk. They are each about five feet high and of the most lovely shape, and there were about a thousand blossoms on this azalea. We know but very little about dwarfed trees and shrubs in our country as the specimens we see are very small ones

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Shanghai, May 1.

Shanghai, May 1.

We have slept one night in China, but we haven’t any first impressions, because China hasn’t revealed itself to our eyes as yet. We compared Shanghai to Detroit, Michigan, and except that there is less coal smoke, the description hits it off. This is said to be literally an international city, but I haven’t learned yet just what the technique is; every country seems to have its own post office though, and its own front-door yard, and when we were given a little auto ride yesterday, we found that

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Shanghai, May 2.

Shanghai, May 2.

We have been taken in hand by a reception committee of several Chinese gentlemen, mostly returned American students. The “returned student” is a definite category here, and if and when China gets on its feet, the American university will have a fair share of the glory to its credit. They took us to see a Chinese cotton spinning and weaving factory. There is not even the pretense at labor laws here that there is in Japan. Children six years of age are employed, not many though, and the wages of t

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Shanghai, May 3.

Shanghai, May 3.

Some one told us when we were on the boat that the Japanese cared everything for what people thought of them, and the Chinese cared nothing. Making comparisons is a favorite, if dangerous, indoor sport. The Chinese are noisy, not to say boisterous, easy-going and dirty—and quite human in general effect. They are much bigger than the Japanese, and frequently very handsome from any point of view. The most surprising thing is the number of those who look not merely intelligent but intellectual amon

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Shanghai, May 4.

Shanghai, May 4.

I have seen a Chinese lady, small feet and all. We took dinner with her. She did not come into the room until after dinner was over, having been in the kitchen cooking it while the servant brought things in. She has one of those placid faces which are round and plump and quite beautiful in a way, a pretty complexion, and of course a slow, rocking, hobbling way of walking. Yesterday after the lecture we went there again and she showed us all over her flat. It is well kept, with not many convenien

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Shanghai, Monday, May 12.

Shanghai, Monday, May 12.

The Peking tempest seems to have subsided for the present, the Chancellor still holding the fort, and the students being released. The subsidized press said this was due in part to the request of the Japanese that the school-boy pranks be looked upon indulgently. According to the papers, the Japanese boycott is spreading, but the ones we see doubt if the people will hold out long enough—meanwhile Japanese money is refused here. The East is an example of what masculine civilization can be and do.

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Tuesday A.M.

Tuesday A.M.

Ex-President Sun Yat Sen is a philosopher, as I found out last night during dinner with him. He has written a book, to be published soon, saying that the weakness of the Chinese is due to their acceptance of the statement of an old philosopher, “To know is easy, to act is difficult.” Consequently they did not like to act and thought it was possible to get a complete theoretical understanding, while the strength of the Japanese was that they acted even in ignorance and went ahead and learned by t

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Shanghai, May 13.

Shanghai, May 13.

I closed up abruptly because there seemed a possibility of mail going out and now it is a day after and more to tell, with a prospect of little time to tell it. China is full of unused resources and there are too many people. The factories begin to work at six or earlier in the morning, with not enough for the poor to do, and they have the habit of not wanting to work much. Two shifts work in factories for the twenty-four hours. They get about twenty to thirty cents a day and the little children

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Nanking, May 18.

Nanking, May 18.

There is no doubt we are in China. Hangchow, we are told, was one of the most prosperous of the strictly Chinese cities, and after seeing this town we can believe it. It has a big wall around it, said to be 21 miles and also 33—my guess is the latter; nonetheless there are hundreds of acres of farm within it. This afternoon we were taken up on the wall; it varies from 15 to 79 feet in height, according to the lay of the ground, and from 12 to 30 feet or so wide; hard baked brick, about as large

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Nanking, Thursday, May 22.

Nanking, Thursday, May 22.

The returned students from Japan hate Japan, but they are all at loggers with the returned students from America, and their separate organizations cannot get together. Many returned students have no jobs, apparently because they will not go into business or begin at the bottom anywhere, and there is strong hostility against them on the part of the officials. As a sample of the way business is done here, we have just had an express letter from Shanghai which took four days to arrive. It should ar

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Nanking, May 23.

Nanking, May 23.

I don’t believe anybody knows what the political prospects are; this students’ movement has introduced a new and uncalculable factor—and all in the three weeks we have been here. You heard nothing but gloom about political China at first, corrupt and traitorous officials, soldiers only paid banditti, the officers getting the money from Japan to pay them with, no organizing power or cohesion among the Chinese; and then the students take things into their hands, and there is animation and a sudden

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Nanking, Monday, May 26.

Nanking, Monday, May 26.

The trouble among the students is daily getting worse, and even the most sympathetic among the faculties are getting more and more anxious. The governor of this province, capital here, is thought most liberal, and he has promised to support these advanced measures in education. Last Friday the assembly passed a bill cutting down the educational appropriation and raising their own salaries. Therefore the students here are now all stirred up and the faculties are afraid they cannot be kept in cont

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Peking, Sunday, June 1.

Peking, Sunday, June 1.

We met a young man here from an interior province who is trying to get money for teachers who haven’t received their pay for a long time. Meantime over sixty per cent of the entire national expenses is going to the military, and the army is worse than useless. In many provinces it is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of local o

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Peking, June 1.

Peking, June 1.

We have just seen a few hundred girls march away from the American Board Mission school to go to see the President to ask him to release the boy students who are in prison for making speeches on the street. To say that life in China is exciting is to put it fairly. We are witnessing the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard. I may as well begin at the right end and tell you what has happened while things have been moving so fast I could not get time to write. Yesterday we went to see th

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Peking, June 2.

Peking, June 2.

Maybe you would like to know a little about how we look this morning and how we are living. In the first place, this is a big hotel with a bath in each room. On a big street opposite to us is the wall of the legation quarter, which has trees in it and big roofs which represent all that China ought to have and has not. The weather is like our hot July, except that it is drier than the August drought on Long Island. The streets of Peking are the widest in the world, I guess, and ours leads by the

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June 5.

June 5.

This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a friend got a pass which permitted him to enter the building where the students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in that day at te

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Peking, June 5.

Peking, June 5.

As has been remarked before, you never can tell. The students were stirred up by orders dissolving their associations, and by the “mandates” criticising the Japanese boycott and telling what valuable services the two men whose dismissal was demanded had rendered the country. So they got busy—the students. They were also angered because the industrial departments of two schools were ordered closed by the police. In these departments the students had set about seeing what things of Japanese import

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June 7.

June 7.

The whole story of the students is funny and not the least funny part is that last Friday the students were speaking and parading with banners and cheers and the police standing near them like guardian angels, no one being arrested or molested. We heard that one student pouring out hot eloquence was respectfully requested to move his audience along a little for the reason that they were so numerous in statu quo as to impede traffic, and the policeman would not like to be held responsible for int

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Peking, June 10.

Peking, June 10.

The students have taken the trick and won the game at the present moment—I decline to predict the morrow when it comes to China. Sunday morning I lectured at the auditorium of the Board of Education and at that time the officials there didn’t know what had happened. But the government sent what is called a pacification delegate to the self-imprisoned students to say that the government recognized that it had made a mistake and apologized. Consequently the students marched triumphantly out, and y

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June 16.

June 16.

Chinesewise speaking, we are now having another lull. The three “traitors” have had their resignations accepted, the cabinet is undergoing reconstruction, the strike has been called off, both of students and merchants (the railwaymen striking was the last straw), and the mystery is what will happen next. There are evidences that the extreme militarists are spitting on their hands to take hold in spite of their defeat, and also that the President, who is said to be a moderate and skillful politic

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Peking, June 20.

Peking, June 20.

Some time ago I had decided to tell you that here I had found the human duplication of the bee colony in actual working order. China is it, and in all particulars lives up to the perfect socialization of the race. Nobody can do anything alone, nobody can do anything in a hurry. The hunt of the bee for her cell goes on before one’s eyes all the time. When found, lo, the discovery that the cell was there all the time. Let me give you an example. We go to the art school for lectures, enter by a doo

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Peking, June 20.

Peking, June 20.

Last weekend we went out about ten miles to Ching Hua College; this is the institution started with the returned Boxer Indemnity Fund; it’s a high school with about two years college work; they have just graduated sixty or seventy who are going to America next year to finish up. They go all around, largely to small colleges and the Middle West state institutions, a good many to Tech and a number to Stevens, though none go to Columbia, because it is in a big city; just what improvement Hoboken is

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Peking, June 23.

Peking, June 23.

Last night we had a lovely dinner at the house of a Chinese official. All the guests were men except me and the fourteen-year-old daughter of the house. She was educated in an English school here and speaks beautiful English, besides being a talented and interesting girl. Chinese girls at her age seem older than ours. The family consists of five children and two wives. I found the reason the daughter was hostess was that it was embarrassing to choose between the two wives for hostess and they di

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Peking, June 25.

Peking, June 25.

Simple facts for home consumption. All boards in China are sawed by hand—two men and a saw, like a cross-cut buck-saw. At the new Hotel de Peking, a big building, instead of carrying window casings ready to put in, they are carrying big logs cut the proper length for a casing. Spitting is a common accomplishment. When a school girl wants excuse to leave her seat she walks across the room and spits vigorously in the spittoon. Little melons are now ready to eat. They come like ripe cucumbers, smal

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Peking, June 27.

Peking, June 27.

It’s a wonder we were ever let out of Japan at all. It’s fatal; I could now tell after reading ten lines of the writings of any traveler whether he ever journeyed beyond a certain point. You have to hand it to the Japanese. Their country is beautiful, their treatment of visitors is beautiful, and they have the most artistic knack of making the visible side of everything beautiful, or at least attractive. Deliberate deceit couldn’t be one-tenth as effective; it’s a real gift of art. They are the

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Peking, July 2.

Peking, July 2.

The rainy season has set in, and now we have floods and also coolness, the temperature having fallen from the late nineties to the early seventies, and life seems more worth living again. This is a great country for pictures, and I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a very small and placid cream colored donkey. He is fanning himself as the donkey moves imperceptibly along the highway, is satisfied with him

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Peking, Wednesday, July 2.

Peking, Wednesday, July 2.

The anxiety here is tense. The report is that the delegates did not sign, but so vaguely worded as to leave conjectures and no confirmation. Meanwhile the students’ organizations, etc., have begun another attack against the government by demanding the dissolution of Parliament. Meantime there is no cabinet and the President can get no one to form one, and half those inside seem to be also on the strike because the other half are there....

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Peking, July 4.

Peking, July 4.

We are going out to the Higher Normal this morning. The head of the industrial department is going to take us. The students are erecting three new school buildings this summer—they made the plans, designs, details, and are supervising the erection as well as doing the routine carpenter work. The head of the industrial department, who acted as our guide and host, has been organizing the “national industry” activity in connection with the students’ agitation. He is now, among other things, trying

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Sunday, July 7.

Sunday, July 7.

We had quite another ride yesterday, sixty or seventy miles altogether. The reason for the macadam road is worth telling. When Yuan Shi Kai was planning to be Emperor his son broke his leg, and he heard the hot springs would be good for him. So one of the officials made a road to it. Some of the present day officials, including an ex-official who was recently forced to resign after being beaten up, now own the springs and hotel, so the road will continue to be taken care of. On the way we went t

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Peking, July 8.

Peking, July 8.

This morning the papers here reported the denial of Japan that she had made a secret treaty with Germany. The opinion here seems to be that they did not, but merely that preliminaries had begun with reference to such a treaty. We heard at dinner the other day from responsible American officials here that, after America had completed the last of the arrangements for China to go into the war, the Japanese arranged to get a concession from Russia for the delivery on the part of the Japanese of Chin

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Peking, July 8.

Peking, July 8.

The Rockefeller buildings are lovely samples of what money can do. In the midst of this worn and weak city they stand out like illuminating monuments of the splendor of the past in proper combination with the modern idea. They are in the finest old style of Chinese architecture; green roofs instead of yellow, with three stories instead of one. One wonders how long it will take China to catch up and know what they are doing. It is said the Chinese are not at all inclined to go to their hospital f

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Peking, July 11.

Peking, July 11.

They have the best melons here you ever saw. Their watermelons, which are sold on the street in such quantities as to put even the southern negroes to shame, are just like yellow ice cream in color, but they aren’t as juicy as ours. Their musk melons aren’t spicy like the ones at home at all, but are shaped like pears, only bigger and have an acid taste; in fact they are more like a cucumber with a little acid pep in them, only the seeds are all in the center like our melons. When you get macaro

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Y.M.C.A., Peking, July 17.

Y.M.C.A., Peking, July 17.

A young Korean arrived here in the evening and he was met here on our porch by a Chinese citizen who is also Korean. The newly arrived could speak very little English and by means of a triangle we were able to arrive at his story. It seems there is quite a leakage of Korean students over the Chinese border all the time. To become a Chinese student requires six years of residence, or else it was three; anyway enough to postpone the idea of going to America to study till rather late in case one wa

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Peking, July 17.

Peking, July 17.

We are pleased to learn that the Japanese censor hasn’t detained all our letters, though since you call them incoherent there must be some gaps. I’m sure we never write anything incoherent if you get it all. The course of events has been a trifle incoherent if you don’t sit up and hold its hands all the time. Since China didn’t sign the peace treaty things have quite settled down here, however, and the lack of excitement after living on aerated news for a couple of months is quite a letdown. How

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Peking, July 19.

Peking, July 19.

I met the tutor, the English tutor, of the young Manchu Emperor, the other day—he has three Chinese tutors besides. He teaches him Math., Sciences, etc., besides English, which he has been doing for three months. It is characteristic of the Chinese that they not only didn’t kill any of the royal family, but they left them one of the palaces in the Imperial City and an income of four million dollars Mex. a year, and within this palace the kid who is now thirteen is still Emperor, is called that,

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Peking, July 24.

Peking, July 24.

We expect to go to Manchuria, probably in September, and in October to Shansi, which is quite celebrated now because they have a civil governor who properly devotes himself to his job, and they are said to have sixty per cent or more of the children in school and to be prepared for compulsory education in 1920. It is the ease with which the Chinese do these things without any foreign assistance which makes you feel so hopeful for China on the one hand, and so disgusted on the other that they put

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(Later) July 27.

(Later) July 27.

I think I wrote a while back about a little kid five years old or so who walked up the middle aisle at one of my lectures and stood for about fifteen minutes quite close to me, gazing at me most seriously and also wholly unembarrassed. Night before last we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, under the guardianship of a friend here. A little boy came into our coop and began most earnestly addressing me in Chinese. Out friend found out that he was asking me if I knew his third uncle. He was t

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Peking, August 4.

Peking, August 4.

I went to Tientsin to an educational conference for two days last week. It was called by the Commissioner of this Province for all the principals of the higher schools to discuss the questions connected with the opening of the schools in the fall. Most of the heads of schools are very conservative and were much opposed to the students’ strikes, and also to the students’ participation in politics. They are very nervous and timorous about the opening of the schools, for they think that the student

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