American universities grow China-minded

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: American universities grow China-minded
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 9 (No. 6) June 1929
Year: 1929
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Fulltext: 18 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL, june, American Universities Grow China-Minded Bulletin No. 10, the current number, of the American Council of Learned Societies, is en tirely devoted to the plans now well along toward fruition for including and encouraging in American universities studies and research on China and the Chinese. To this end Manila can assist, and may become, as a consequence, one center to which American students in the new cult (that is, new in America) will gravitate. The subject may engage the attention of our own university, some coordination of effort may be established—which would be an advantage to the cause of learning here. A study of the Chinese as a foreign trader, colonizer, and father of the Sino-Malayan. dominant element in the Philippines, would naturally lead to research in the general records of the government and, more particularly, in the orientalia and Philippiniana in the reference division of the public library. This collection is reputed unsurpassed. Then, too, the Beyer collection of porcelains, though mainly of fragments, but sufficient for study, is unexcelled even in the London mu seums, which it actually surpasses. The Council, quite rightly, feels that American interest in China has been too long delayed. Preliminary meetings under the auspices of the Council, an effective agency for the advance ment of learning, seem to have brought the movement to the stage where funds will be sought for the founding of the work; and that there will responses in behalf of such institu tions as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia in the east, and Stanford in the west, there can be no doubt. Remarks by Mortimer Graves, secretary of the Council, throw a sufficient light on the subject: Changing American Policy in the Orient— Its Manifestations in the Philippines (Continued from page 6) Then let us examine into it a little. Nothing is either wholly good or wholly evil. For digressive illustration, of this philosophic truth, let it be recalled that much of this growing city of Manila occupies areas once the site of majestic primeval forests. It was a grievous wound to nature to cut them down, yet it served mankind. A century ago the sturdy walnut, hewn down and burned, gave place to corn fields along the great Ohio; and in the place where the pioneer ruthlessly bruised the forests and dug the fallow wilderness, farms, towns and cities are feeding, employing and sheltering millions of people today—an important and significant fact for us in the Philippines, since these millions of Ohio-valley folk have constant need of our prod ucts. If the valley were still an awesome but magnificent wilderness, copra would not sell even for three pesos per picul. The esthetic and the material are often opposed one to the other; both are essential to modern life; the esthetic is healing to man’s inclination to despair, but it is the material utilization of the earth’s wealth by which man really lives. Conditions often appear in a more precise light when their alternatives are reflected upon. If the activities of the concessionist in the Philippines seem objectionable, what is the alternative? We have that at present, and it is not satisfactory; no, nor even very tolerable. It is not very tolerable to behold the fertile regions of Mindanao (and even many fertile areas of Luzon itself) given over to roaming barbarians who set wild fire to denude the hills, spreading from little patches where they make meager plantings; who thus destroy the protec tive forest without putting in its stead farms, towns and cities; rather, they abandon the sites of their annual ravages, take despoiling toll of the forest somewhere else; flood pours down the naked hills they leave behind them, and carries havoc to the civilized settlements. Thus the millions of uncultivated acres in the Philippines cannot be saved to posterity by keeping the scientific husbandman off of them; if he would expend his millions of dollars and convert these fallow lands into empires of productive fields, his would “That the next decade will see a striking in crease in American interest in Chinese studies is no very faring prediction. In the domain of politics an4 economics, the large number of works daily coming from the press on current Far Eastern affairs and the activities of such organizations as the Institute of Pacific Rela tions demonstrate the growing realization of the truth of John Hay’s dictum that the world’s peace rests with China.” He then says that the Chinese have important contributions to make to humanistic and social sciences. “It has been estimated that prior to 1750 more books had been published in Chinesethan in all other languages combined. As late in 1850, Chinese books outnumbered those in any other language. Even in 1928 the largest publishing house in the world (this is the Commercial Press.—Ed.) is located not in New York, or London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Shanghai. And little of the literature thus produced is ephemeral, for the Chinese penchant has been towards history, topography, philosophy, poetry and commentary on the classics, all saturated with a serenity and a height of tone that might well be emulated by the more sophisticated literatures. “It is evident, therefore, that if we are to hope for the final solution of our linguistic and phil ological problems, the satisfaction of our anti quarian or archeological curiosity, and the construction of an adequate philosophy or a complete historical synthesis, we cannot dis regard the lessons learned by a vigorous and intelligent people, numbering one fourth of the population of the globe, through 3,000 years of continued and varied culture.” Remarking that America is surpassed by be the risks of experimentation and the country’s and his the gains from his probable eventual success. This magazine has published descrip tions by foresters of what goes on now, the barba rians’ spoliation of the unoccupied lands. This information has been supplemented with other authentic data to the effect that a capital of 5,000 pesos ($2,500) is insufficient for the plant ing up, in Manila hemp and coconuts, of a single homestead of 16 hectares, 40 acres. To subdue tropical jungle and substitute it with hemp for which you will wait near two years after planting for the first crop, and with coco nuts or rubber for which you will wait eight and ten years for the first worthwhile returns, is a task recommending itself more to the able corporation than to the individual. But the two may thrive together, the corporation being bank and primary market for the settler. How did Negros and Pampanga become great sugar-producing provinces? Practically in this way; namely, upon the credit of corporations interested in buying the product on the one hand, and in supplying the machinery for its milling on the other. Similarly the Batangas coffee industry once thrived, and why does it now languish? The direct interest of exporting corporations has waned, credit has been withdrawn. The same group of planters who were once apparently so capable in the industry, seem now to have lost their cunning; it is, however, rather their credit which is the wanting factor. Were a great corporation to go about restoring this industry with a capital sufficient to see it through the initial experiments, the fortunes of the plant ers would be rehabilitated because they would all vicariously profit by what the corporation did in its own selfish behalf. (Incidentally, a new social class, aligned with the corporation, and more concerned with bourse quotations than with the petty affairs of local government, would develop. This may now be observed of the sugar industry; it is a concomitant of all planta tion prosperity). The major benefits the islands are to derive from the concessionists remain to be stated. They are two. (Concluded on page 23) France, England, Russia and Germany in re vealing Chinese culture to the western world by the media of translations, Mr. Graves adds that in American universities at present it is easier “to become an initiate in .the mysteries of an ancient language whose whole record com prises a number of sculptured stones or clay tablets, than it is to obtain the key to an im mense and living literature (the Chinese) which can boast a single encyclopedia of over 11,000 volumes. “This is a condition that ought not to exist, and the signs of the times portend that it will Jefferson McChailler draws him! He has read the new Einstein theory all through and it’s the bunk—it does not tell why gentlemen prefer blondes! Junior’s own preference is for GORDON GIN It’s best! Judge—So you plead guilty to taking a drink of alcoholic liquor in a speak easy? Yes, your honor. Ten years for imper sonating an officer! —Judge. In the line of GOOD WHISKY Of course there’s a best, too, and we sell it— ROBERTSON Kuenzle & Streiff Importers 343 T. Pinpin Tel. 2-39-36 Manila, P. I. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL june, rTTE^AMERlLJAN CHAMBA OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 19 not exist much longer. The recent establishment of the Harvard-Yengching Institute, to mention only a single important development, is a most promising indication of awakening interest.” After publication of the Bulletin quoted, the subject was further taken up in the April meet ing of the American Oriental Society, at Cam bridge. The Bulletin outlines, for the informa tion of the general membership of the Council, and of others whose initiative must inaugurate the movement and find place for it in the uni versities, the scope that various courses might comprise. Under the head of social history is a list of subjects of which more general knowledge in America than prevails at present, even if it The Fairies and the Sunset By Maud It was sunset. Donata was playing in the rice stubble of her father’s field near Cabu. With her was her constant companion and friend Carmen, and Carmen’s little sister Pati, who always tagged along wherever the two friends went if they would let her. If they did not let her she made such a fuss, as a rule, that the whole family interfered and made Donata and Carmen take her along anyway. On this particular evening the sunset clouds had arranged themselves as if for a lesson in geography. Doning and Mameng,-as the girls lovingly called each other, were busy pointing out in the cloud picture lakes, bays, inlets, gulfs, seas, peninsulas, capes, islands, cliffs, mountain peaks, valleys and clouds above clouds—each one intent upon the game of finding more features than the other. Pati only pointed at the clouds as she saw the bigger girls doing and jabbered baby talk, the meaning of which was clear only to herself. After the girls had named all the points they could, they turned to naming the colors of the sky and clouds, each striving to name more than the other. It was easy to name blue, red, golden, white, pink, and gray, but the tints and shades of the principal colors were harder to name, so Donata and Carmen merely pointed to each new color discovered and called it that. Pati made them laugh heartily by pointing and saying, dat dat. Doning had brought along her colored crayons and a clean sheet of drawing paper. She was very fond of drawing and was ambitious to become a great artist, so she often tried to draw the gorgeous sunsets that were to be seen to the best advantage from her father’s open fields. “How I wish I could paint a sunset just like that one,” sighed Doning, for perhaps the twen tieth time, as she looked at the drawing she had been making and back again at the sunset she was trying to copy. “If wishes were fishes, We’d have some fried.” “What good does it do to wish unless there is a fairy around to grant your wishes?” quoth Carmen. “Well, maybe there are fairies around,” said Donata, looking all about her carefully as if she hoped to see one. “Oh, if we could only see them!” she exclaim ed, so sorrowfully that Carmen laughed with glee. * “Why not open your eyes, then, and see them?”, said a strange, musical voice at Donata’s side. Both girls turned quickly and were startled speechless to see a diminutive maiden of match less beauty standing near them. She was dressed in a gorgeous robe of cloth of gold trimmed with scarlet, while around her slender waist hung a girdle that looked as if made of thin discs of pure gold. Her eyes were large, luminous and of a gray green color. Her lips were of a bright coral red and her cheeks were as pink as the cloud banks near the eastern horizon. The Sunset Fairy, for such she proved to be, was smiling in a friendly manner that won the confidence of the two girls at once and put them at their ease. were confined to university circles, would be of no little national value: origin of customs, history of problems of population, clan and family organ ization, marriage, exogamy, surnames and name magic, serfdom, foot-binding, conctibinage, fa shions, methods of social control, social morality, social classifications, social mobility, philan thropy {native, not missionary), guilds, community organization, housing, communication and iso lation as social but not economic factors, social conflict, accommodations, evolution, conscious ef forts to remake society, assimilation, influence of the press {new). The papers have been reporting the almost total absorption by the Chinese of Manila, of the household shoe industry in Mariquina, which N. Parker Pati, however, who was quite timid in the presence of all strangers, held tightly to Donata’s hand, eyeing doubtfully the maiden, who was even smaller than she. “How would you like to go with me and help paint the sunset itself?”, invited the fairy. BLACKSTONE Crude Oil Engine Full Diesel—Cold Starting 11 To 600 H. P.—In One to Four Cylinder AS a power unit for ice plants, electric plants and wherever motive power is used, Blackstone engine provides steady and efficient service. It is a four-cycle engine of slow speed, which insures long life and economy both in fuel and oil. More than 100 Blackstone engines ranging from 11 to 180 H.P. are now in operation in the Philippines, several of which are repeat orders. Ask a Blackstone owner or visit us to see a Blackstone engine in actual operation MACLEOD & COMPANY MANILA Iloilo Cebu Davao seems to have been effected by the commercial and industrial guilds. The native craftsmen also contributed to their own spoliation through habits of unthrift which involved them in debt to the Chinese who buy their shoes. Bringing this pressure to bear, the Chinese shoe dealers were able to compel the native shoemakers to buy their leather and findings from Chinese importers and tanners, their other necessities, even those of their households, from other Chinese merchants. Native leather dealers did not prosper, it is alleged, since their patrons were unable to sell to the shoe dealers. Such problems, it would seem, ought to engage the interest of our own scholars. But any port in a storm. “Oh, I would like it above everything else!” cried Donata, clasping her hands in delight, thinking only of herself and forgetting her com panions in the excitement of the moment. Pati brought her back to earth by giving a loud cry and clinging to Donata’s dress tightly—• as she always did when there was any question of going anywhere. “There, little girl, don’t cry so,” said the fairy, “you may go also. I am afraid, though, IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL