A History of Chinese Literature

The death of Yüan Yüan in 1849 brings us down to the period when China began to find herself for the first time face to face with the foreigner. The opening of five ports in 1842 to comparatively unrestricted trade, followed by more ports and right of residence in Peking from 1860, created points of contact and brought about foreign complications to which the governors of China had hitherto been unused. A Chinese Horace might well complain that the audacious brood of England have by wicked fraud introduced journalism into the Empire, and that evils worse than consumption and fevers have followed in its train.

From time immemorial wall-literature has been a feature in the life of a Chinese city surpassing in extent and variety that of any other nation, and often playing a part fraught with much danger to the community at large. Generally speaking, the literature of the walls covers pretty much the same ground as an ordinary English newspaper, from the "agony" column downwards. For, mixed up with notices of lost property, consisting sometimes of human beings, and advertisements of all kinds of articles of trade, such as one would naturally look for in the handbill literature of any city, there are to be found announcements of new and startling remedies for various diseases or of infallible pills for the cure of depraved opium-smokers, long lists of the names of subscribers to some coming festival or to the pious restoration of a local temple, sermons without end directed against the abuse of written paper, and now and then against female infanticide, or Cumming-like warnings of an approaching millenium, at which the wicked will receive the reward of their crimes according to the horrible arrangements of the Buddhist-Taoist purgatory. Occasionally an objectionable person will be advised through an anonymous placard to desist from a course which is pointed out as offensive, and similarly, but more rarely, the action of an official will be sometimes severely criticised or condemned. Official proclamations on public business can hardly be classed as wall literature, except perhaps when, as is not uncommon, they are written in doggerel verse, with a view to appealing more directly to the illiterate reader. The following proclamation establishing a registry office for boats at Tientsin will give an idea of these queer documents, the only parallel to which in the West might be found in the famous lines issued by the Board of Trade for the use of sea- captains: "Green to green, and red to red, Perfect safety, go ahead, " &c.