Throughout the whole course of their existence as a social aggregate
the Chinese have pushed ceremonial observances to an extreme
limit. "Ceremonies," says the _Li chi_, the great classic of ceremonial
usages, "are the greatest of all things by which men live." Ranks were
distinguished by different headdresses, garments, badges, weapons,
writing-tablets, number of attendants, carriages, horses, height of
walls, etc. Daily as well as official life was regulated by minute
observances. There were written codes embracing almost every attitude
and act of inferiors toward superiors, of superiors toward inferiors,
and of equals toward equals. Visits, forms of address, and giving
of presents had each their set of formulae, known and observed by
every one as strictly and regularly as each child in China learned by
heart and repeated aloud the three-word sentences of the elementary
_Trimetrical Classic_. But while the school text-book was extremely
simple, ceremonial observances were extremely elaborate. A Chinese
was in this respect as much a slave to the living as in his funeral
rites he was a slave to the dead. Only now, in the rush of 'modern
progress,' is the doffing of the hat taking the place of the 'kowtow'
(_k'o-t'ou_).

It is in this matter of ceremonial observances that the East
and the West have misunderstood each other perhaps more than in
all others. Where rules of etiquette are not only different,
but are diametrically opposed, there is every opportunity for
misunderstanding, if not estrangement. The points at issue in
such questions as 'kowtowing' to the emperor and the worshipping
of ancestors are generally known, but the Westerner, as a rule, is
ignorant of the fact that if he wishes to conform to Chinese etiquette
when in China (instead of to those Western customs which are in many