Whilst, according to a Chinese newspaper in 1891, "there were over two thousand expectant military officials in Nanking alone, all offices were filled, and these expectants have scarcely any hope of obtaining one. A monthly examination in rifle-shooting, with rewards for skilful marksmen, is the only means to afford them a precarious livelihood. On the arrival of the new Viceroy Liu, the _yamen_ was daily crowded by those, who had formerly fought against the Taipings, petitioning for some office or commission."
About fourteen thousand Bachelors are added to the list every year. There are probably close on seven hundred thousand Chinese graduates now living. It is the expectants of office, who are one of China's greatest dangers, men embittered by feeling that they have themselves been unjustly passed over, who have never been given opportunity to show what they could do, and who are incapable of doing what alone lies before them; although in the west of China we have come across one man who had taken a high degree keeping a wayside inn in a very lonely place, believed by our coolies, as it happens, to be the resort of robbers.
Yet notwithstanding all this the desire to learn and the honour for learning seem almost to overtop the desire for money in a Chinaman's breast, and it is difficult to see that there is not some special significance in the curious fact, in regard to the worship of Confucius, that he was once worshipped as a duke, at another time as a prince, then as an emperor, after which his rank was, what we should call, lowered, and he was honoured as "the most wise ancestral teacher Confucius."
Confucius is still their master in preference to Laotze, whom Confucius himself compared to a dragon, and whose writings are so spiritual as to approach closer to the Gospel of St. John than anything else. Both write about "The Way," or, as Laotze calls it, _Tao_, on which word alone whole volumes have been written. Yet I see, in a note made at the time of a visit, I wrote: "A party of young Chinese called to-day, all ready for their degrees, preparing for the mandarinate, and in the meantime _schwa_-ing for a few days in a neighbouring guild garden. They had seen the newly arrived Japanese consular officials. One of them said he had read the _Tao-teh-ching_, Laotze's great book, and praised it as very beautiful. But the nearest they got to a sensible remark was: 'We do not like our women to walk about. Do women with you study equally with men? With us very few can read. I think it is a good thing they should study.' This last clause, though, said timorously, rather more as a feeler than as a decided expression of the speaker's convictions. They went away with some copies of Pastor Kranz's admirable pamphlet against footbinding, which they at once looked into, and pronounced very good. But it was curious to notice how eager they were to learn who the writer was."