The young men there undertook to dispute
and doubt everything which came in the way of national reorganization,
setting aside--as China must do if she is to take her place alongside
the ideal she has set up for herself, Japan--parental teaching,
ancestral authority, the customs of centuries. A large proportion of the
population of China has a passion for reform and progress. This young
fellow was a typical example. In the west of China, however, to conform
with the spirit of reform and real progress--not the make-believe, which
is satisfying them at the present moment--they must needs change their
ways.
Seventeen memorial plates were passed at the entrance to Chao-chow, a
particularly modern-looking place, as one approaches it from the hill.
A remarkably ungainly individual, with a hole in the top of his skull
and his body one mass of sores, came to me here, addressed me as "Sien
seng," and then commenced an oration to the effect that he was a
Szech'wanese, that he had known the missionaries down by the Yangtze,
and that he knew he would be welcome to accompany me to Hsiakwan.[AT] He
switched himself on the main line of my caravan. Here was a man who had
been brought in contact with the missionary away down in another
province, and he knew he was welcome.
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