CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE

It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by
the term China?

Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as
China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths
of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a
half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking,
the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the
south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.

Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a returning traveller
the very much asked question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a
Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in England, how he liked Europe!
Peking, for instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as Madrid;
whereas Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the square