The Chinese alone have continued to
give to the world their treasures of thought these five thousand years.
To literature and to it alone they look for the rule to guide them in their
conduct. To them all writing is most sacred. The very pens and
papers used in the making of their books have become objects of
veneration. Even our smallest village is provided with a scrap-box into
which every bit of paper containing words or printed matter is carefully
placed, to await a suitable occasion when it may be reverently
burned.
Change is now the order of the day, educationally as well as
politically. We do not hear the children shouting their tasks at the top
of their voices, nor do they learn by heart the thirteen classics, sitting
on their hard benches within the simple rooms with earthen floor,
where the faint light comes straggling through the unglazed windows
on the boy who hopes to gain the prize that will lead him to the great
Halls of Examination at Peking. If, while there, he is favoured by the
God of Learning and passes the examination, he will come back to
his village an honour to his province, and all his world will come and
do him reverence, from the viceroy in his official chair to the meanest
worker in the fields.
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