CHEERFUL CHINESE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 673, 27 October 1933, Page 3

CHEERFUL CHINESE

HAPPY .PHILOSOPHY NEW ZEALANDER FINDS UNIYERSAL GAIETY. DESPITE HARD LTFE. "The most striking- impression I received in China was the renrarkably happy and che-erful philosophy of life of the people," said Mr. J. E. Strachan in an address at the •msmbers' social of the Ganterbury Justices of the Peace Assoeiation on. "A Tra.vell:er's Impressions of the East," reports th'e Christchurch Press. Mr. Strachan said that -although for many of the people exisitence was the hardest pos■sible work for the nnost meagre pittance, there was a, universal atmosphere of gaiety and jollity. Everywhere he went he found this refreshing atit.itude. It was the ch'aracteristic of the peasanlts, who depended for fuel on gathering every leaf that fell from the willow tre.s, and who were continu'ally faced wdth ■the prohlem of wiinning a harvest from the barren and rocky hillsides, of the sampan dwellers who lived in. almost incredibly crowded conditions in the .smallj iboats that plded on the rivers and harbours, and of the coolies whose highest wage for the most arduous toil was a dollar a day. "It anade me won-der whether we in New Zealand were losing our .sense of p:rspective in so jealously .guarding our standaxd of .living," said. Mr. Strachan. "Although the average person in the Dominion has immeasurably mone of the material thintgs of .'the world than the Obinese, -I am doubtful whether he is as happy." Harmony with Environment. The same spirit of happiness aippeared to permieate the livss of the lintellectuals, said Mr. Strachan. He attended a conferc-nce a:t which the disputes hetween Japan -and China were ddscussed, and in spite of the vital nature of the subjects there was not the faintest suggestion of d. pression. The fundamental teaching of .the Chinese was harmony with the environment, which could hav® n-o other effect than to lead to a gaiety of spirit and hopefulness of outlook. The Japanese were very d'ifferent in their attitude to life. It was true, also, tha't they were harder to unierstand than the Chinese. The Japanese ; were a renrarkably effiedent ptople1. As a Japanese merchant had remarked to him, they were eclectics, they strove to choose the best from ths cultures and civilisations of other parlts of the world. They had adopted the American comtmerci-a.l and business methods, they had anodelled their army on that of Germany, and they had copkd the British naval system. ! Mr. Strachan was inelined to think, , however, that they had made one or ; two mistakes in the selection of their | models. They were not entirely to be ! iblamed for attaching importanoe- to j the success that had attended the j Imper.ial and finanoial aggressiveness , of the Western nations, and overlookJ ed the disillusionmenfs that many of tshose nations had suffered following j the Great War. China's Future. ' Mr. St.vchan said that China today was undergo'ing the most stupendous experiment in .its history. The separateness of the Chinese Empire had faded befors the aggressive con- ' tacts of the west, and so the rul:rs j of the country had set about the busi'i ncss of converting an Empire made up | of littls self-contained comlmunity i groups into a nation wdth a demo- ! ci-atic government. The three alterI natives before China were individual 1 liberty, Nationalism, or Communism. The last-mentioned appealed to a large force of opinion in- China because of the apparent success of the Russian system in raising a large peasant population from a state pf -complete subservience. Whether Comi munism finally triumphed depended on whether or not the- Russian expieriment succeeded, on the success or otherwise of the efforts of the Chinese Government to establish a diemocracy and a place for the country in the comtm,unity of nations, and on the attitude of the rcst of the world to China's claam for equality.