The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Civilization Of China, by Herbert A. Giles

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Civilization Of China

Author: Herbert A. Giles

Release Date: March 25, 2006 [EBook #2076]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA ***

Produced by John Bickers and Dagny

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA

by Herbert A. Giles

Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge,

And sometime H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo

PREFACE

The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese
civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid
and startling transition.

It has been written, primarily, for readers who know little or nothing
of China, in the hope that it may succeed in alluring them to a wider
and more methodical survey.

H.A.G.

Cambridge, May 12, 1911.

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA

CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE

It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by
the term China?

Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as
China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths
of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a
half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking,
the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the
south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.

Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
square, will soon realize the absurd