That crime is not very rife in China is sufficiently shown by their having no police force. Foreigners are sometimes shocked by the severity of Chinese punishments, not realising that it is our excellent police that enable us to mitigate our scale of punishments. But the Chinese are like women in this respect also. They afford an extraordinarily small percentage of criminals to the world's criminal roll, and of these the most part are for petty theft. In business dealings, unlike the Japanese, the Chinese keep to their word, even when it is to their own disadvantage to do so. And merely saying, "Puttee book," without any signed and sealed written entry, held good as a legal transaction all through China, till, alas! an old-established English firm, probably already foreboding the failure that afterwards overwhelmed it, repudiated a transaction of which there was no further record than the till then two sacred words. Since then Chinese, like other nations, have recourse to written documents; but so high always is the sense of business obligation among them, that each China New Year many men, unable to discharge their obligations, commit suicide rather than live disgraced. This is the more remarkable among a nation that adulterates everything it knows how to, resorts to every business subterfuge, thinks not to lie foolish, and to be found out only stupid, not disgraceful. When, however, we denounce Orientals for want of truth, do we realise how untruthful we are ourselves, and that what shocks us is rather the different kind of falsity from that to which we are accustomed? I have yet to find the English bootmaker or worker in fur, who can be relied upon to keep to his word as to the day on which he has promised anything; whilst I have met with more than one Chinese tailor, who may be relied upon to appear with his work finished to the very day and hour, his given word being sacred to him. The English tradesman thinks it wrong to lie about the past, the Chinese about the future.
One of the most remarkable things about Chinese is that, whilst of course it is usual for people of other nationalities to denounce their bad qualities as a nation, there is hardly a European living in China who has not one or more Chinese whom he would trust with everything, whom he would rely upon in sickness or in danger, and whom he really--if he spoke out, as we so seldom do--regards as the embodiment of all the virtues in a way in which he regards no European of his acquaintance. We rarely believe in one another's Chinaman; but we are each of us absolutely convinced of the fidelity, trustworthiness, _and_ shrewdness of our own particular Chinaman. Whilst among missionaries life in China is generally sweetened by the recollection of some one Chinaman, at least, whose sincerity and holiness of life shine out to them as a bright example and beautiful memory.