A Cycle of Cathay; Or China, South and North
With Personal Reminiscences
Description:... Excerpt from A Cycle of Cathay; Or China, South and North: With Personal Reminiscences
From the prelude to China's first war with England to the present date is, roughly speaking, about sixty years - the length of a Chinese cycle, though for all I know Tennyson may have thought of it as a thousand years. To this period the following pages principally relate. During three fourths of it I was domiciled in China, dividing my life between South and North, and adding to the experiences of a missionary those of an employee of the Chinese government. For two years I served my own country at a critical epoch, when the treaties were negotiated which led to the opening of Peking.
My position in a college closely connected with the Board of Foreign Affairs gave me exceptional opportunities for observing the course of diplomacy in the Chinese capital for nearly thirty years. Yet my object is not so much to write a history of events as to exhibit the Chinese as I have seen them, in their social and political life. To some the personal element will add interest; to all, I would fain hope, it will add confidence.
Should the volume fall into the hands of any of my old students, they will, I trust, find in it the same sympathetic appreciation of their country and the same candor of criticism which, I am sure, they have learned to expect.
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