Literati In The 19th Century Essay

Their view of the world and of non-Chinese as barbarians and tribute bearers was too deeply rooted in the uniform experience of 4,000 years to change easily. Another physiological factor also helped induce the Chinese of the 19th century to consider Westerners as barbarians. Western diet included more meat and dairy products than the relatively vegetarian diet of the Chinese. The resultant excess consumption of protein gave Westerners, in the Chinese view, a peculiar smell of butter or mutton. It must indeed have been difficult to negotiate with men who stank. Most of the Literati during the 19th century were unable to see the Western nations as other than a new group of barbarians. The Westerners with whom the Literati came in contact did nothing to teach the Chinese that the West had significant literature, poetry, philosophy, art, and architecture just like China. Westerners simply used military force against the Chinese to require them to import vast quantities of an addictive drug. Even a relatively realistic statesman like Li Hongzhang could pause in the midst of his strictures on the evils of opium to pay reverent

Eras of slack government, heavy taxation, military ineptitude and peasant rebellions were nothing new in Chinese experience. Dynasties had come and gone, but the Literati had stayed on as the advisors and officials of the new dynasties. In the end, though, Literati shortsightedness proved their undoing. When the Manchu dynasty fell, no Tang Taizong, no Song Taizu appeared to reinvigorate Confucian society. The 19th century was not, after all, a mere traditional close of the dynastic cycle. The new problems China faced, especially the Western