Changing China

Mr. President and Gentlemen,-

This reminds me of a friend of ours who used to come to our home, and after a meal he never forgot to thank the host and hostess for the good dinner; this would be appropriate today. However, I realize that the Empire Club does not exist for the purpose of eating and drinking, but for the purpose of social intercourse, both educational and intellectual; and that this all comes in to fill up the full stature of man that we may finally see the realization of God's plan, the universal brotherhood of man. Your respected President said to me that he felt honoured in having a man who had been so long in China speak to this Club today. I conceive the honour is on the other side. When I have the privilege of speaking to the best minds of men in the city of Toronto, it certainly affords me a great pleasure.

Let me try to lay before you some of the reasons why China has changed and some of the reasons why we ought to recognize China as a part of the great human race. Previously we scarcely thought of the Chinese as on the same level as ourselves, but we have to change our ideas now. She is no longer an Empire; she has become a Republic, and will play a very important part in the coming days of this century. The scientific men listening to me today can realize that our thoughts and ideas on scientific lines, especially of late, have been very much changed by the discovery of radium. So by the opening. up of China our conception of that country will be changed. Men have been there for years trading to get rich, but they have not busied, themselves in trying to find out China as she is. It has only been in late years that we have become able to understand each other and to have reciprocal relationships. The changes that are now taking place will concern this country very much in the matter of trade. China has learned to appreciate us. There are many things in that Old Country, the oldest country in the world, which we have not got and we, the newest country in the world, of course will have things that she will need. As trade contests have been fought out in the past century on the Atlantic, so the trade contests of this century will be fought on the Pacific, and it will largely be between China and Canada.

Let us go across then to China and look at her. Remember we are not going to talk theory today. We shall confine ourselves to what we have actually seen and to the changes that have taken place under our own observation. Shanghai is the great port of entry for Canadian commerce. When we went there first, we found a city called the native city surrounded by a heavy stone wall. Inside that city I found the most unsanitary, filthy conditions my eyes had ever beheld. Just outside this city there was a settlement called the French settlement. Bordering on that was another settlement which was very cosmopolitan called the model settlement, largely of course dominated by British influence. At that time, sir, in travelling around the city we had to take a rickshaw. That is a little carriage capable of holding one individual, and it is pulled by a man. There were a few horse carriages: and there was the wheelbarrow. The latter consists of a partition running from the wheel backwards dividing the barrow into two sections. On either side are seated three individuals. Thus ones man is capable of wheeling six persons. In coming down through Shanghai in last December I found that the old city walls were being torn down, not by foreign invasion, but by the Chinese themselves. They had decided to make fine wide streets and boulevards and let the air in to the city, because sunshine and air are the very best cures for all diseases. On all the principal thoroughfares they now have a very fine system of electric street cars. Standing at the busy thoroughfares, those such as Yonge and King are here, you can see the policeman holding up his hand to regulate the traffic, because the old rickshaw is there, the taxi-bus is there, the auto is there, and in company with these you can see the man wheeling the wheelbarrow, all competing to see who shall get the first place in this modern traffic of the twentieth century. The police force is just as cosmopolitan as the city itself. You will see there 'the Sheik with his peculiar head-dress which looks like a bundle of silk wound round his head, and the white men of different nationalities. Shanghai has advanced in other lines just as rapidly. In that city they have as fine- parks and athletic sport fields as you will find in any place in the world. They have banking systems, and I would like to tell you that in their banks, and in positions which require the greatest carefulness and honesty, there are Chinese. In the Yokohama Specie Bank with its Japanese President and officers they have Chinese in responsible positions. In conversation with the President I asked him why, and he said the Chinese were considered the more trustworthy. Now, that being the case, I think it would be worth our while to cultivate the friendship of the Chinese people.

Let me take you on an inland passage up that mighty river the Yangtse. The ships of almost the heaviest draught can ply up that river for 600 miles. In the course of that 600 miles you pass the city of Nanking, a rival of Peking, for the capital. It is the place where Sun Yat Sen first gathered together his officers and formed the provisional government, and at that same city I had the honour or seeing the government changed. The parties were in close combat for some days previous to my coming from the west, and the day we arrived the city surrendered to the revolutionaries, and they hung up their revolutionary flag in the city of Nanking.

I would like to draw your attention now to Hankow, and Wuchang, and Han-yang, 600 miles from the coast? On the left bank is Wuchang, a large city, the capital of the provinces of Hunan and Hu-pei. On the right bank of the river is situated Hankow, a great modern city, and separated from it by the small river. Han is the city of Han-yang where the great arsenal is located. Here they have what promises to be one of the greatest iron manufacturing centres perhaps in the world. You will remember from reading the papers that this centre l was where much of the fighting took place in the late war. A few days previous to my getting there troops came down from the north and burned the great arsenal and the iron works. These forces had come down from the north but had not understood exactly what they were coming for: In conversation with some of them 'they informed me they had come down to quell a few brigands who were gathering around this city and disturbing the foreigners. They were equipped with the most modern artillery, and I would like to remark here, that had China been in this position fifteen years previously when she had her war with Japan, the history of Japan would have to be written in a different type, because all the latest machine guns were there in operation. In a few days they learned they were not fighting against enemies but against friends. As one man said to me: "Do you suppose I am going to continue to fight against my own brothers, the Chinese?" That was why it was so very easy to bring about an armistice and to talk peace on both sides, when they had learned who they were fighting. This threefold city is bound to become a very important centre in the future. At the present time there is a trunk line connecting with Peking, and they are surveying lines to all points of the circumference of the great republic of China. I notice, in the very latest report, that in place of building a memorial arch, as they used to do in old China, wasting money, they are going to span this mighty river by one of the most modern bridges, and thus connect the traffic on both sides. That is China as she is today.

Passing on up the river to the province of Szechwan let me speak of some of the changes there. I would like to remark that the great changes in China have been brought about firstly by the influence of missionaries, and secondly by commerce. Commerce was made possible by the missionaries, and in 1900 when we were so severely criticised as being upstarts, and causing war and bloodshed, and bringing death upon ourselves and our converts and interrupting trade, I came in contact with an up-to-date business man in Shanghai who said, "We recognize the missionaries as the vanguards of commerce; we recognize in them our greatest advertising agencies." I said, "Why?" "The reason is this, sir, they go far inland in China; they carry with them the products from the west; they live with the people, and learn to know them and their language; they have the common people visit them in their homes and see what the west can produce. The people taste of the canned milk coming from this country and cultivate a taste for it; they see the missionaries burning kerosene oil in their lamps and they follow the example." He said, "I think, sir, we could afford to pay the salaries of the missionaries for the advertising work they have. done for us." (Applause.) When we went first we carried, of course, oil with us to burn, but now in West China in even the last village in that province you will find the Standard Oil Company's oil, and you will find Kilburn's milk in every city in that great province. There is one thing I would like to whisper to you men today, and that is that we ought to have more of that trade. The Chinese did not have milch cows and consequently it was necessary for us to import milk and butter and cheese. We were compelled to buy Dutch cheese because you do not put up cheese in a proper way to keep in China. We bought French butter because you do not put up butter in a proper way to keep there. I would like to have the privilege of explaining to the Board of Trade some of those things, and it might help them out:

And there are other changes. When we went out there were no post-offices, no postal system, in that great province. Today, and for the last three or four years, we could sit in our home in the city of Yuinhsien and have the mail delivered to us three times a day by well dressed polite mail deliverers. Further, when we first went to China, the Chinese didn't have any respect for us. My earliest recollection of going on the street was to have little' boys running after me, calling out something I didn't understand, but as my ears became familiar with the sounds I learned some of that language; and what do you suppose it was? "Foreign Devil," "Eye Gouger," "Baby Eater." These were common ex-. press16ns. At that particular time our ladies would not dare go on the streets walking; but that is all changed. They are now able to walk on the street where they like, unmolested. For the last two or three years if any boy. called out after a foreigner or anybody else; you would soon find a policeman, taking him in charge. They have actually changed from a position of hatred and contempt for us to that of respect and honour. This may have been brought about because of some of the things we have done. We went there, of course, as medical men, and we organized our clinics and treated the people from the lowest to the highest who would condescend to come into our little clinic room, and by so doing we gained their confidence and respect. I shall just repeat one instance which will illustrate the effect it had.

In travelling through the country we were molested in all the towns and villages as we were in Chengtu, and indeed they refused in many instances to give us food. One morning, because the custom there is to travel five miles from where you stay all night to where you have breakfast, we arrived at an inn and halted to have our breakfast. They had heard by the ragamuffins running ahead that there was a foreigner coming, one of those miserable, hateful foreigners. The chairman put my chair down and said we wanted some breakfast. They said, "We won't give you any; you are carrying a foreigner and we won't have anything to do with you nor him, go right on." Of course they supposed it was a foreigner who did not understand their language. I crawled out of my chair and presented myself, and just then an old lady from the upper end of the inn calve out and recognized me though I did not recognize her at first. She said: "That is the man in the city who treated me. Do you see that sore there just about healed up? That had been very sore for several years; and he also' helped my other friends. I would like you to come in now, Dr. Wong, and see my daughter." "Very good," said I, and in we went, and when we came back from diagnosing the case and prescribing such medicine as we carried with us, do you suppose we had to go without our breakfast? The very best in the inn was placed before us and the chairman, and then they refused to take one cent. They said: "This is just a slight token of respect for you for what you have done." This changed attitude, friends, was brought about perhaps by our learning to really know the people. The literati of course hated us and showed us disrespect. They were the men who urged on the mob to tear down our buildings in the past. I remember more than once in that city walking on the streets and meeting well dressed scholarly looking men, who would put their hands to their noses as they passed by for fear of the objectionable odour of the foreigners. The words of Scotland's greatest poet came to my mind "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us." They have learned to see us and to know us, and now their attitude is one, I think it is not putting it too strongly to say, of admiration for the west.

Their educational system has changed. They have based it on what they have learned from us, and many of those same men who had no respect for us in the earlier days are the first to come to us now in this time of revolution to inquire about the political situation and what they had best do in this crisis. In that province we did not find a school when we went there, and now the government has, according to the inspector's own words, more than 15,000 pupils. With the country being educated like that on western lines she cannot but change. This is the outcome of coming in contact with westerners, and she is gradually learning the benefits of the west.