The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 104

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104

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

origin of the human race. The story that every
Chinese boy and girl hears from the lips of his
mother regarding the origin of mankind is the fol-
lowing: In the beginning of time there lived a sort
of God-man-like creature by the name of Panku.
After Panku had lived many cycles, he died. <At
his death his breath was turned into grass, hills,
and mountains. The blood in his veins became the
rivers of the earth, and after decay set in, the
worms were turned into human beings.

Historians to-day begin Chinese authentic his-
tory about 900 years before Christ. At this time,
about the time of Homer, in the days of Isaiah, we
find in China a well-regulated system and code of
moral, ceremonial, and civil laws. These laws can
very well be compared with the laws of the great
lawgiver Hammurabi.

The history of the Chinese people, from the
early ages down to the present time, is a continued
series of intrigues, loves, and hates, subjugating
and being subjugated. During these centuries of
development there evolved in China a remarkable
degree of civilization, culture, and art. In fact, up
to the beginning of the fifteenth century the
Chinese nation developed along the same lines,
with, of course, a different background, as those of
the Occident. The Chinese have their great war-
riors, statesmen, philosophers, historians, poets, and
artists. They have their Socrates, Plato, their
Bismarck and Napoleon, their Raffael and Leonardo
da Vinci, their Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, and
Longfellow. We of the Western world point with
pride to the civilization of the old Greeks and
Romans as the foundation of our civilization.
Anything that we find in the civilization of the old
Greeks and Romans has a counterpart in Chinese
civilization. In fact, up to the beginning of the
fifteenth century the Chinese were in some respects
even farther advanced than the nations of the
Occident. But now begins a period of, if not retro-
gression, then at least stagnation, in the evolution
of Chinese civilization, which lasted until a few
years ago. Beginning with the days of Luther, the
Western world made wonderful strides forward in
all branches of civilization, but the Chinese nation,
which at that time was on a par with the Western
world, stopped stock-still and in some phases éven
went backwards. In the Western world to-day we
have what we call our wonderful twentieth-century
civilization with its life of high pressure. In China
_ to-day they live as did the people in the fifteenth
century or in many places as did the people in the
times before Christ.

What does that mean? That means, that when
you go to China to-day, you step into a country
in which there are found none of the things which
we call essentials in daily life. In China you would
congregate in a building constructed of mud bricks,
straw, bamboo, and rice straw or, if very modern,
mud tiles for the roof. But there would be no
floor and no windows. The Chinese have no such
thing as a door-latch or window-latch, no electricity,
and in most homes you do not even find a lamp.
To light their homes they use a little pole filled
with peanut or vegetable oil. In this they put
a little string for a wick, which gives about as much
light as a match. It is cold outside, China being
a country of about the same latitude and longitude
as America, and they have about the same weather
over there as we have here in the United States.
During the cold season we heat our homes. The
Chinese have no heating facilities. When it gets
colder, they put on another layer of clothes, and
this usually stays on day and night from early fall
till late in spring. There are no chimneys in the
homes. The open fire-hole is either in the corner
or in the middle of the room, and the smoke is so
choking and blinding that one is better outside than
in the damp, dark, cold little hut. After you get
home this evening, you will go to a nice, clean,
comfortable bed, such as is unknown in China. In
the northern part of China the Chinese use what
is known as kang. ‘This is a bed made of bricks.
Underneath is a place hollowed out for a fire. They
build a fire, heat the bricks, and on this kang the
whole family sleeps.

Chinese cities are something which we here in
the West cannot imagine. The houses are closely
crowded together, with no back or front yards.
The streets, if they are what the Chinese call wide,
have a width of ten to twelve feet; but in many
places they are not more than three feet wide.
In the little hovels, often containing not more than
one room, the Chinese family lives, together with
any animals they may have. All the garbage is
thrown out into the streets. You cannot imagine
what: this means in a city like Hankow with about
two million inhabitants, in an area not much
larger than Clayton, in the summer-time with the
thermometer registering up to about 110, with very
little variation between day and night for weeks at
atime. The stench and odor is something beyond
descriptign.

Sanitation and cleanliness such as we are accus-
tomed to in our country is something unheard of
and unknown in the Orient. As soon as one