Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/113

 Rh Editors of vernacular journals throughout the country, especially in Canton (the very stronghold of literary conservatism, yet the place where Kang Yu-wei had been conducting his progressive school) continued the crusade of reform, so that "one believed a cleansing storm would soon pass over the land. And the storm came drenching part of the country in blood." The era of conservatism and opposition to things western culminated in the Boxer uprising of 1900, which put Peking into the hands of the allies and drove the imperial court into exile as far as Hsian, the capital of Shensi province. Here in 1901, while still in exile, the empress dowager, into the hearts of whose advisers a desire for better things had come as a result of the lessons taught by the allies, astonished her people and the world by promulgating the very educational reforms for which the emperor had been deposed. Her decree provided that henceforth in provincial and central examinations the three groups of subjects should be as follows: (1) Five topics relating to the government and history of China; (2) Five themes upon the government, arts and sciences of all lands; (3) Exposition of two passages from the 'Four Books' and one from the 'Five Classics.' Examiners were commanded to weight the three groups equally, and in exposition of the canonical books candidates were forbidden to use the form of the eight-legged essay, hitherto required. In writing on the practical subjects in groups 1 and 2, the presentation of reality and not empty rhetoric was enjoined.

But it would be rash to declare this reform to have been complete in fact. 'Clean sweeps' are rare, perhaps rarer in China than elsewhere. How by the stroke of the imperial pen can the mind of the nation take a new course and a million of men yearly become acquainted with 'modern matters'? The vastness of the problem requires years of intelligent, patient effort for its solution. Most of the chancellors are as ignorant as the students they are set to examine as to the 'laws, constitutions and political economy of western lands.' In Shangtung at the first examination after the reform decrees of 1901, the chancellor did indeed prepare a list of books by means of which the candidates were to prepare themselves in such matters as 'political economy, commercial intercourse, military training, common law, international law, astronomy, geography, physics, mathematics, manufactures, sound, light, chemistry and electricity.' But the list, while containing one good arithmetic, consisted chiefly of out-of-date books, several lists of scientific terms, a scientific magazine defunct some ten years before, the whole being thrown together without order. Yet it is certain that a list of text-books in general use in the foreign-conducted schools of China was presented to him, though no use was made of it.

In order to get an idea of the exact nature of the change brought