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National Geographic : 1920 Nov
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"THE MAN IN THE STREET" IN CHINA Photograph by Guy Magee, Jr. HERE; TIIE PITOTOGRAPIHER HAS CAPITALIZED TITE NATIVE CURIOSITY OF CHILDREN, WHIICH OUTWEIGHS INSTINCTIVE DISLIKE FOR TIIE FOREIGNER The fat boy in the foreground is the son of a well-to-do tradesman of the Yangtze Valley. The features of the boy wearing the foreign cap are suggestive of the southern type. The child to the right and rear of the fat boy is a slave girl (see text, page 415). 4. South of the Yangtze Valley are the native Chinese, as distinguished from the Manchu or mixed races, culminating in their marked characteristics in the Can tonese. They have a slight, rather grace ful stature, intelligent and mobile fea tures, quick perception, and a profound contempt for the foreigner. TIlE YANGTZE VALLEY CIIINESE ARE BEST KNOWN TO TRAVELERS The type occupying the Yangtze Val ley is the largest, the most accessible, and probably the best known to the foreigner. In this large group there is far less homogeneity than in any one of the other three, and, generally speaking, this rather curious fact may be traced to two entirely different causes-one natural, the other artificial. The natural cause is the intermarriage for nearly 400 years of the northern, or Manchu, type with the southern, or Chi nese. The artificial cause is the great Taiping Rebellion; it was of far-reach ing effect, and is more noticeable in its traces today, although only seventy years have passed, than the earlier intermin gling of Manchus and Chinese. The extent of the social upheaval caused by the Taipings may be partially grasped when it is considered that the best historians, native as well as foreign, concede that, fire and famine assisting, more than forty million people perished in the rebellion. To remove any doubt regarding these figures one has only to visit some of the larger native cities-Soochow, Nanking, and Hang-chau, for example-and see the large intramural areas to this day razed and unpopulated; then consider that the. same devastation extends hun dreds of miles along the broad sweep of the valley, and that millions of the slain were replaced by the invaders. In general, the march of the rebels was from west to east down the valley of the Yangtze, dispersing myriads of families and thousands of communities; some of the people fled north, some south, and some in the van of the invasion. Upon reaching the sea, progress was checked; pursuers and pursued recoiled upon each other in a great struggling mass. A retrograde movement to the west set in, but, lacking organization and objective, it soon spent itself. 409
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