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This was to some extent true, though K'ang Yo-wei and his friends were as yet largely unconscious of it. Very soon the reformers had to flee; those who failed to make good their escape were arrested and executed. The emperor was made a prisoner in a palace near Peking, and remained a captive until his death; the empress resumed her regency on his behalf.

These laws were not at all bad in themselves; they would have paved the way for a liberalization of Chinese society. But they aroused the utmost hatred in the conservative gentry and also in the moderate reformers among the gentry. K'ang Yo-wei and his followers, to whom a number of well-known modern scholars belonged, had strong support in South China.

And the gentry were still strong enough to maintain their dominance and so to prevent a radical reconstruction; all they would agree to were a few reforms from which they might hope to secure an increase of power for their own ends. In 1895 and in 1698 a scholar, K'ang Yo-wei, who was admitted into the presence of the emperor, submitted to him memoranda in which he called for radical reform.

They were only intended to make an impression on the outer world and to appease the continually growing body of supporters of the reform party, especially numerous in South China. The south remained, nevertheless, a focus of hostility to the Manchus. After his failure in 1898, K'ang Yo-wei went to Europe, and no longer played any important political part. 12 End of the dynasty

What Christian apostle left behind him the records of such words as those of Confucius, boldly spoken to a king: "Ke K'ang, distressed about the number of thieves in his kingdom, inquired of Confucius how he might do away with them?

These two, in fact, were the very terms favoured by the early Jesuit missionaries to China, though not with the limitations above suggested, as fit the proper renderings for God; and of the two terms the great Manchu Emperor K'ang Hsi chose T'ien.

K'ang Hsi, the great Emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty, who had already declared that if it is wrong to impute deceit to a man it is still more reprehensible to impute a fraud to Heaven, stigmatized him as follows: "Wang Tan committed two faults: the first was in showing himself a vile flatterer of his Prince during his life; the second was in becoming a worshipper of Buddha at his death."

"She is of the house of K'ang, her name being Hwa-mei, though from the nature of her charm she is ofttime called the Golden Mouse. But touching this affair of your own immediate danger: we being both but common men of the idler sort, it is only fitting that when high ones threaten I should stand by you."

A comparison might perhaps be instituted with the use of "God" and "Jehovah" in the Bible. At the same time it must be noted that this view was not suggested by the Emperor K'ang Hsi, who fixed upon T'ien as the appropriate term.

It was a constellation formed of the two star-groups Chio and K'ang, the first two on the list of twenty-eight constellations. Hence, say the Chinese writers, because of this precedence, it was called the Star of Longevity. When it appears the nation enjoys peace, when it disappears there will be war.