CHINESE NERVELESSNESS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2540, 20 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHINESE NERVELESSNESS.

A writer in the North China Herald of Shanghai, who has lately been devoting a series of articles to the discussion of Chinese characteristics, referring to what he calls the " nervelessuess" of the Chinaman, observes that, although the nerves of the latter, as compared with those of a European, may be what geometricians call "similar and similarly situated," nothing is plainer than that the two sets of nerves are wholly different. It seems to make no particular difference to a Chinaman how long he remains in one position. He will write a)l day, like an automaton ; he will stand all day in one place from dewy morn till dusky eve working away at his weaving, gold beating, or whatever it may be, and do it every day without any variation of the monotony, and apparently without any consciousness of the monotony. Chinese school children will undergo an amount of confinement, unrelieved by recesses or changes of work, which would drive Western pupils to the verge of insanity ; even Chinese infants remain as impassive as ''mud gods." It appears a physiological fact that to the Chinese exercise is superfluous ; they cannot understand why people should go through athletic performances when they might hire coolies for the purpose. In the matter of sleep there is tho same difference. The Chinaman, generally speaking, is able to sleep anywhere. No trifling disturbances annoy him. With a brick for a pillow he can lie down on his bed of stalks, or mud bricks, or rattan, and sleep tho sleep of the just, with no reference to the rest of creation. He does not want a darkened room, nor does he require others to be still. The "infant crying in the night " may continue to cry for all he cares; it does not disturb him. In some places the entire population seem to fall asleep as by a common instinct during the first two hours of summer afternoons, no matter where they may be. In the case of most working people at least, and also in that of many others, position in sleep is of no sort of consequence. "It would be easy to raise in China au army of 1,000,000 men—nay, of 10,000,000—tested by competitive examination as to their capacity to go to sleep across three wheelbarrows, head downwards like a spider, their mouths wide open, and a fly inside."