“When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honour are things to be ashamed of.”
Confucius, The Analects
“All the present suffering [in China] is caused by clerks [bureaucrats]. Their arrogance is greater than that of any official, while gentry and scholars alike acquiesce to their every desire. The common people upon whom they feed have no redress, and can do nothing but die in lonely ditches by the roadside.”
Huangchao jingshi wenbian, 1827
“Why are the Western nations small and yet strong? Why are we large and yet weak? We must search for the means to become their equal, and that depends solely on human effort… In the matching of words with deeds, we are inferior to the barbarians. The remedy is to seek the causes in ourselves. This can be changed at once, if only the emperor would set us in the right direction.”
Feng Guifen, 19th century Chinese reformer, 1861
“We have only one thing to learn from the barbarians, and that is strong ships and effective guns.”
Feng Guifen, 1861
“A great many of the foreign chiefs have learned our written and spoken language, the best of them can even read our classics and histories. They are able to speak on our dynastic regulations and government administration, on our geography and the state of our people. On the other hand, our officers, from our generals down, are completely uninformed in regard to foreign countries. Should we not feel ashamed?”
Feng Guifen, 1861
“There is no spot on earth where there was been greater progress made within the past few years than in the Empire of China. She has expanded her trade, she has reformed her revenue system, she is changing her military… she has built or established a great school, where modern science and the foreign languages are to be taught… China now itself seeks the West… she has come forth to meet you.”
Anson Burlingame, US diplomat, 1868
Wo Ren, an advisor to Cixi, c.1870
“I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived and others cannot compare with me… Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria…I don’t think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine… I have 400 million people dependent on my judgement.”
Dowager Empress Cixi, late 1800s
“The wealthy join acre after acre of land, while the poor have none at all. These rich folks care only for their summer rooms or stone arches… Powerful families look on poor relatives or neighbours like strangers on the road. They will lend them neither cloth nor grain. They treat their tenants and hired labourers particularly cruelly, arousing a hatred so strong that [it] tends to invite banditry… There is no other source of food, only collecting dung… When they hear of the fun of being a bandit, who is not tempted?”
Anonymous peasant, Caozhou, 1896
“If she [Cixi] refuses to delegate power to me, I shall abandon my throne. I do not want to be emperor of a conquered nation.”
Guangxu Emperor, 1898
“He does not want to sit on the throne. I did not want him to sit there long ago.”
Dowager Empress Cixi, on hearing the Guangxu Emperor’s remarks above, 1898
“Human flesh began to be sold in the suburbs of Xian. At first the traffic was carried on clandestinely, but after a time a horrible kind of meat ball, made from the bodies of human beings who had died of hunger, became a staple article of food, sold for the equivalent of four American cents a pound.”
Francis Nichols, US traveller, on the 1900-01 famine in Xian
“She [Dowager Empress Cixi] was bright and happy and her face glowed with good will. There was no trace of cruelty to be seen. In simple expressions she welcomed us and her actions were full of freedom and warmth. [She gestured to us] with much enthusiastic earnestness, ‘One family, all one family’.”
Sarah Pike Conger, American visitor to Beijing, 1902
“If we still cling to the old traditions, do not take measures quickly to carry out reform and let things take their course, the country will go from bad to worse, the sovereignty will be weakened and the territory will be eroded day by day. In the end, the situation will be worse than that of Korea. I am extremely disturbed whenever I think of this.”
Yuan Shikai, 1905
“They are tainted with indolence and idly consume their official stipends. Their numbers multiply and they fall ever more into poverty… but they never think of living as civilians. Now they must seek ways of self support and survive through their own toil.”
Guangxu Emperor on the Manchu bannerman, 1907
“China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place on the face of the globe… It promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest, most populous and most conservative of empires. Is there a people in either hemisphere that can afford to look on [at the Chinese Revolution] with indifference?”
William Alexander Parsons Martin, US educator, 1907
“Besides the driving out of the barbarian [foreign] dynasty and the restoration of China, it is necessary also to change the national polity and the people’s livelihood. Though there are myriad ways and means to achieve this goal, the essential spirit that runs through them is freedom, equality and fraternity.”
Tongmenghui manifesto, 1910
“For 50 years hers [Cixi’s] was the brain, hers the strong hand, that held in check the rising forces of disintegration; and when she died it required no great gifts of divination to foretell the approaching doom of the Manchu.”
John Otway Percy Bland, British writer, 1910
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