Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1

And I would here draw attention to one most important point: namely, that although a great number of books have been published about China and the Chinese, there are extremely few in which the information is conveyed at first hand; in other words, in which the Chinese are allowed to speak for themselves. How can a statement as to customs, myths, beliefs, etc., of a savage tribe be treated as evidence, where it depends on the testimony of some traveler or missionary, who may be a superficial observer, or more or less ignorant of the native language, a careless retailer of unsifted talk, a man prejudiced or even willfully deceitful? — Tylor’s Primitive Culture, Vol. I., p. 9. Hence, perhaps, it may be that in an accurately compiled work such as Tylor’s Primitive Culture, allusions to the religious rites and ceremonies of nearly one-third of the human race are condensed within the limits of barely a dozen short passages. Hence, too, it undoubtedly is that many Chinese customs are ridiculed and condemned by turns, simply because the medium through which they have been conveyed has produced a distorted image. Much of what the Chinese do actually believe and practice in their religious and social life will be found in this volume, in the ipsissima verba original: "ipsissima verba"; Latin for "the very words themselves." of a highly educated scholar writing about his fellow-countrymen and his native land; while for the notes with which I have essayed to make the picture more suggestive and more acceptable...