THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 3 January 1901, Page 3

THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

BITS OF CHINA OLD AND NEW.

BISHOP FAVIEB LEAVES FOB ETJBOPE. Bishop Favier, the head of the French missions in North China and Vicar- Apostolio of Pekin, has left Pekin for Shanghai. He will go from there to Rome to visit the Holy Father and will then go to France. THE BOXERS STILL ACTIVE. A cable message received last week stated that the Boxers, on December 20, attacked 100 Frenoh marines who were engaged in searching for arms 20 miles westward of Tientsin, killing a lieutenant of marines. A Boxer village was burned as a punishment. Chang Chitung, Viceroy of Lianghu, favors Shashi, in the province of Hnpei, or Changsha, the capital of Huan province, as the future capital of China. Missionaries report that the Boxers, 35 miles from Pekin, on the 21st, killed 12 Catholics and burned eight others inside the temples. The southern reform party declare that the regular Chinese troops massacred 1500 reformers and beheaded 27 of their leaders in the Yang-tse district on the 18 th. THE CHINESE EMPEBOR. A writer in A inslee's Magazine Bays : The Chinese Emperor is now about 30 years of age. He is under the medium height, sallow and apparently of a weak constitution. He has received a good training in Chinese and Manchu. He knows some English. He has a wife, a dozen concubines and no children. He is unable to control his explosive temper. It is doubtful whether he can exert a rule of authority over others. He has a kind of feminine energy to push ahead, but lacks clear vision of surrounding conditions. His reform edicts are unique in the history of the Empire. It is impossible to say, however, what part of them is due to him and what part to Kang Yu Wei, the greatest leader of the reform party. Two officials shadow the Emperor without oeasing. These are the Imperial Recorders. They note and transcribe his every act, hie every word. Their memoranda are transferred to the Imperial archives and are not opened until the history of the dynasty is written, long after the rotting bones of Kwang Su have become sacred besides those of his ancestors.' A CHINESE LAUNDRY CIRCULAR. The Chinese, if they have mastered the mysteries of the laundry, have not yet surmounted the more serious difficulties presented by the English tongue. The following neat little circular has been sent round to prospective English customers in Hong Kong by a firm just starting business :— ' Ladies and gentlemen : We, the washer of every kind of clothes, blankets, and so on ; newly established the company and engaged in business. Contrary to our opposite company we will most cleanly and carefully wash our customers with possible cheap prices. With your wages we will work the business.' SIR ROBERT HART'S OPINION. Sir Robert Hart, in the course of an article in the Fortnightly Review, draws attention to the perils of a ' policy of expansion ' in China by the allied Powers. He says :— Foreign interference has imperilled the world's future. Twenty millions or more of Boxers, armed, drilled, disciplined, and animated by patriotic, if mistaken, motives will make residence in China impossible for foreigners, will take back from foreigners everything that foreigners have taken from China, will pay off old grudges with interest, and will carry the Chinese flag and Chinese arms to many a place that even fancy will not suggest to-day, thus preparing for the future upheaval and disasters never even dreamt of. In 50 years' time there will be millions of Boxers in serried ranks and war's panoply at the call of the Chinese Government. There iB not the slightest doubt of that. And if the Chinese Government continues to exist ie will encourage —and it will be quite right to encourage — uphold, and develop the Chinese national movement. It bodes no good for the rest of the world, but China will be acting within its right, and will carry through the national programme. CHINESE CATHOLICS. The Rev. Father Gleason, who is with the United States troops In China and who was the only priest with the allied armies at the oapture of Tientsin, writes as follows to a friend :—

As I mentioned in my last letter the Catholic priests here oommand a great deal of respect. They become like the people. They dress like the Chinese, shave the head but not the beard, and wear a queue. The first I met was a splendid character — a native of France— a Father Debus. He was dressed in blue cotton Chinese clothing:, and when I met him he excitedly described his escape from the Boxers. With a native Chinese priest and his congregation of 600 Catholics he held out for for two months against the Boxers in th*» village of Pao-ti-tsien, and all their ammunition having been nsed they finally surrendered. The little (Jathohc flock woa scattered, bnt the two priests were brought to Peitsan, where the rout gave them an opportunity to escape to Tientsin. To my mind it requires heroic virtue even to dress up like a Chinese and more to live with them and as they live. Last Sunday a few hundred Chinese Catholics, who were camped under foreign protection outside the settlement, were marched to Mass under a French military guard, and it was a sight I will long remember. Some of the minor ceremonies were strange to me. The Chinese priest wore a square purple cap, open on the top and about eight inches high. Four flat, highly-embroidered sides hung from the top, so that no matter which way the body is bent one side flapg. There are two long streamers hanging from the cap much like those of a mitre. The queue is twisted around the alb. The cap is not discarded even at Communion time. The Chinese who served the Mass, although he might be bareheaded all day, wears a straw sort of hat, highly decorated in red. The Chinese Catholics here abstain on Saturday as well as Friday, and they look upon it as lax that we abstain only one day during the week. A few days later I was present at a Solemn Hign Mas?. The celebrant was a French priest and the deacon and sub* deacon were Chinese. They all wore the queue, as also the Btranf c box cap above referred to, and eight Chinese boys served them. They were very prettily gowned. Over 500 Chinese received Holy Communion on this occasion. The men approached the altar fint and the women after them. In the Japanese and Chinese churches the men and women are on opposite sides of the main aisle. JOUBNALIBM IN CHINA. The oldest paper in China, and probably in the world, is the Pekin Gazette. It publishes official notices and gives some news, but without comment. It dates at least 700 years baok. A study of its columns reveals better than anything else the official corruption of China, for the punishment of corrupt mandarins is ridiculously inadequate. All other Chiaeee newspapers are published in treaty, ports. The reason is obvious. Under the protection of the foreigners the publishers and editors are secure from prosecution. Many of these papers have foreign contributors, and some have foreigners as 'dummy' editors, to prevent interference. The Shen-Pao, Shanghai, is the most important. It combats corruption and abuse of all sorts, and is very influential. More than once it has caused unjust decrees to be declared null and void, and it has done much to lessen the application of torture in Chinese courts. Its collections for famine sufferers, etc., are always successful. More than once the Viceroys have tried to suppress it The Viceroy of Cheh-Kiang, whom the paper once attacked, complained to the Tsung Li Yamen ; but the Foreign Office confessed itself unable to suppress the paper. ' Moreover,' Raid Prince Eung, 'it is very interesting. We read it ourselves in Pekin.' Even the Empress v reported to taste of this forbidden fruit. Advertising is carried on to a great extent in the Chinesa papers, for the Chinese have not been slow in discovering the value of this method of improving business. The foreign news is meagre. The ' answers to correspondents ' are important and very interesting, and the local news ia extensive. Some of the Chinese papers are very decided jingoes, and the present troubles are doubtless due in part to their efforts. THE MABTYBS' BOLL. Official telegrams received in Paris announce the massacre of two more of our missionary bishops — Bishop Gregory Grasai, 0.F.M., Titular-Bishop cf Orthoaa and Vicar-Apostolic of North Shan-ai, with residence at To-yuan-fu, and his ooadjutor, Bishop Franci Fogolla, O.F.M , Titular-Bishop of Bagi ; the former, born 1833, was consecrated in 1876, the latter was born in 1839 and con* secrated so lately as 18'JS. Together with them, two of their clergy, Fathers Elias and Balat, and seven nuns (Franciscan tertiaries, we suppose) were also put to death. Three more Jesuit missionaries, names not yet ascertained, have been plain in South -East Chi-li ; and one more of the Paris Society, Father John Souvignet, has perished in North Manchuria. These despatches raise the number of known massacres of our missionaries to five bishops, 32 priests, and 10 nuns ; how many others have perished it is as yet impossible to say. Still more difficult is it to ascertain how many of the native Catholics have been (slaughtered The latest courier from South Manchuria addressed to Father Delpert, the head of the Paris Missionary Seminary, briefly states that over 1000 have been beheaded in the Mukden district alone for refusing to apostatise, and so have become martyrs in the strict sense of the word. The venerable Father Delpert mentioned in the preceding para* graph, who presides over the great missionary seminary at the present anxious crisis, celebrated his golden jubilee of priesthood recently. This remarkable man has had an interesting career. As a young missionary he went out to the Far East, and in 1851 became director of the college of his Society at Pulo-Pinang (Straits Settlement^), whence he was recalled to Paris as one of the directors in 1855. His fint election as Superior of the Mother House took place in 1867, and since then he has been re-elected no less than 10 times to that onerous post. It was during hiß tenure of office that the Society went through the terrible days of the Paris Commune, in which the seminary narrowly escaped destruction. At the present moment the venerable and honorable jubilarian presides over a Society which musters 34 archbishops and bishops and 1200 priests, nearly all of his spiritual children, and who are all united in veneration and affection for the ' grand old man,' of whom they are justly proud.