Chapter 1 The China Mirage

(The China Mirage)

(中国海市蜃楼)

 英汉双语。

English—Chinese Bilingual. 

Chapter 1 

OLD CHINA, NEW CHINA 

China can never be reformed from within. The manifold needs of China... will be met permanently, completely, only by Christian civilization. — Reverend Arthur Henderson Smith.

 The written histories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Delano ancestors chronicle their childhoods, schooling, marriages, careers, children, deaths, and legacies. Curiously, the source of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's dynastic wealth is little commented upon by the chroniclers. As the esteemed Roosevelt historian Geoffrey Ward wrote, "The full story of Warren Delano's career in the China trade has not been written."

 Warren Delano was a blueblood. His forebears had left Europe and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, just two ships after the May-flower brought the first colonists to New England. The Delanos were among the earliest settlers of the area of southern Massachusetts – New Bedford, Buzzards Bay, and Fairhaven-that produced so many of America's original whalers and sea merchants.

 Warren's father — also named Warren— made a substantial income ferrying corn, salt, and potatoes to New Orleans, England, and the 

中国海市蜃楼。

 第1章

 旧中国，新中国

 中国永远不可能从内部改革。 中国的多方面需求……只有基督教文明才能永久地、完全地得到满足。  ——亚瑟·亨德森·史密斯牧师。

  富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福 (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) 和他德拉诺 (Delano) 祖先的书面历史记录了他们的童年、教育、婚姻、职业、子女、死亡和遗产。 奇怪的是，编年史家几乎没有评论富兰克林德拉诺罗斯福王朝财富的来源。 正如受人尊敬的罗斯福历史学家杰弗里·沃德 (Geoffrey Ward) 所写，“沃伦·德拉诺 (Warren Delano) 在中国贸易中的职业生涯的完整故事还没有写出来。”

  沃伦德拉诺是一个蓝血人。 他的祖先离开欧洲到达马萨诸塞州普利茅斯，就在五月花号将第一批殖民者带到新英格兰之后的两艘船。 德拉诺人是马萨诸塞州南部地区（新贝德福德、秃鹰湾和费尔黑文）最早的定居者之一，这些地区产生了许多美国原始的捕鲸者和海商。

  沃伦的父亲——也叫沃伦——靠运送玉米、盐和土豆到英格兰的新奥尔良和

Canary Islands. The first Warren helped found a Fairhaven church – the Washington Street Christian meeting place on Walnut Street –and his former residence is today the Delano Homestead Bed-and-Breakfast. Warren Junior graduated from Fairhaven Academy – a local trade school – in 1842, and he apprenticed with the Boston importer Hathaway and Company and then with one of New York's premier importers, Goodhue and Company. 

Great Britain had decided many years earlier that the Chinese frontier was much more lucrative than America's. By sailing halfway around the world, Delano could participate in the single largest  commodity trade of the nineteenth century: smuggling opium into China. Such an enterprise promised him a quick killing and world-class wealth before the age of thirty. Delano grabbed his big chance. 

For centuries, China was the richest country on earth, and its people thought it natural that outsiders would come to China to learn from it superior culture. The Chinese saw these visitors as barbarians– more specifically, as fan kuei, "foreign devils"; second-class vassals, pitiful in their desperation for Chinese knowledge and goods. 

In the late seventeenth century, the English began to import enormous quantities of Chinese tea to satisfy and stimulate its new factory-worker class. British silver flowed in increasingly alarming amounts from London's vaults to the Middle Kingdom, but the money went only one way, the Chinese wanted few English products. The constant importation of Chinese tea to the West caused a gargantuan drain of silver from Europe to Asia. China was a rich country in the 1700s, its population tripling over the course of the century from about one hundred million to over three hundred million. The imbalance in trade quickly decimated the coffers of many European nations, hitting Britain particularly hard. Deeply concerned, London hit upon a corrective that took advantage of England's colonial holding of India, its naval might, and its disdain for the Chinese. The Brits' dependence on tea made them subject to the Chinese, but they saw a way to reverse the situation, and the flow of silver.

 In the Confucian value system, merchants–consumed by thoughts of profit –were near the bottom of the social scale. Those concerned with the people's welfare–the mandarins who studied the classics and served the emperor – were at the top of the heap. "Barbarian" merchants could access China's market only by making clear they knew their place in the pecking order and following the tribute system. This required foreign missions to travel to Beijing to pay tribute to the emperor and acknowledge their inferiority by kowtowing – kneeling in front of the Son of Heaven (as he was known) and touching their foreheads to the floor. After the foreign devils acknowledged China's superiority and offered valuable tribute, the Son of Heaven benevolently allowed them to purchase the riches of the Middle Kingdom.

 Over milennia, barbarians had traveled to China from Korea, Japan, Mongolia. Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, and many other countries. In the Middle Ages, Europeans ventured in their tiny ships out into the world's oceans, and a new type of foreign devil arrived in China: the sea barbarians, funny-looking, long-nosed cow-eaters in tight trousers and high hats. 

In the course of becoming a world power, Great Britain grew accustomed to imposing its trade terms on people around the globe. But China's restrictive tribute system was slow, cumbersome, and devoid of any respect for the British. In 1793, King George lII of England sent emissaries to Beijing with impertinent demands. Among these was the unthinkable call for the emperor to cede a piece of land – an island or a coastal strip – where England could establish a permanent trading post. 

King George also insulted the Son of Heaven by suggesting peer-to-peer diplomatic relations. The English did not comprehend that the Son of Heaven could never comply with this. China had no foreign affairs office because it shunned official relationships with barbarian countries. Instead, the emperor managed trading relations with foreign devils through his Barbarian Management Bureau, whose 

加那利群岛。 第一个沃伦帮助建立了一个费尔黑文教堂——位于核桃街的华盛顿街基督徒聚会场所——他的故居今天是德拉诺家园民宿。  Warren Junior 于 1842 年从当地的贸易学校 Fairhaven Academy 毕业，他在波士顿进口商 Hathaway and Company 和纽约主要进口商之一 Goodhue and Company 做学徒。

 多年前，英国就认为中国的边疆比美国的要有利可图。 通过航行到半个地球，德拉诺可以参与 19 世纪最大的单一商品贸易：将鸦片走私到中国。 这样的事业，让他在三十岁之前，得到了速杀和世界级的财富。 德拉诺抓住了他的大好机会。

 几个世纪以来，中国是地球上最富有的国家，中国人认为外来者来中国学习优秀文化是理所当然的。 中国人把这些来访者视为野蛮人——更确切地说，是番珲，“洋鬼子”； 二等附庸，可怜他们对中国的知识和商品的绝望。

 17 世纪后期，英国人开始大量进口中国茶叶，以满足和刺激新的工厂工人阶级。 英国的白银从伦敦的金库流向中国的金库的数量越来越惊人，但钱只流向了一个方向，中国人想要的英国产品很少。 中国茶叶不断进口到西方，导致大量白银从欧洲流向亚洲。 中国在 1700 年代是一个富裕的国家，其人口在本世纪中翻了三倍，从大约一亿增加到三亿多。 贸易失衡迅速摧毁了许多欧洲国家的国库，对英国的打击尤其严重。 伦敦深感忧虑，利用英国对印度的殖民统治、海军实力和对中国的蔑视，采取了纠正措施。 英国人对茶的依赖使他们受制于中国人，但他们看到了扭转局势的方法，以及银的流动。

 在儒家价值体系中，商人——被利润的思想所消费——接近社会规模的底部。 那些关心百姓福祉的人——学经、侍奉皇帝的官吏——居于榜首。  “蛮夷”商人只有明确自己的等级，遵循朝贡制度，才能进入中国市场。 这需要外国使团前往北京向皇帝致敬并通过叩头承认他们的自卑——跪在天子（众所周知）面前并将他们的额头贴在地板上。 洋鬼子承认中国的优越性并献上贵重的贡品后，天子仁慈地允许他们购买中王国的财富。

 几千年来，蛮族从韩国、日本、蒙古来到中国。 越南、马来西亚、老挝、柬埔寨等许多国家。 中世纪，欧洲人乘着小船冒险进入世界海洋，一种新型的洋鬼子来到了中国：海蛮人，穿着紧身裤和高帽的长鼻牛食人，长相滑稽。

 在成为世界强国的过程中，英国逐渐习惯于将其贸易条件强加于全球人民。 但中国限制性的朝贡制度缓慢、繁琐，而且对英国人没有任何尊重。  1793年，英国国王乔治三世派使者到北京，提出无礼的要求。 其中一个不可思议的呼吁是要求皇帝割让一块土地——一个岛屿或一个沿海地带——英格兰可以在那里建立一个永久的贸易站。

 乔治国王还通过提出点对点的外交关系来侮辱天子。 英国人不明白天子绝不会遵守这一点。 中国没有外交办公室，因为它回避与野蛮国家的官方关系。 取而代之的是，皇帝通过他的蛮族管理局管理与外国恶魔的贸易关系。

mandarins forwarded this response from the Son of Heaven to the English sovereign:

 Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside: barbarians in exchange for our own produce. But as the tea, silk, and porcelain which the Celestial Empire produces are absolute necessities to European nations and to yourselves, we have permited, as a signal mark of favor, that foreign hongs [private businessmen who paid the government for the right to trade with barbarians] should be established at Canton, so that your wants might be supplied and your country thas participale in our beneficence. 

The Barbarian Management Bureau's mandarins designed the Canton system above all to protect ordinary Chinese from infection by the low character and animal nature of foreign devils like Warren Delano. To begin with, the port of Canton, in China's hot and humid south, was about as far away as possible from the Son of Heaven's home in Beijing. The system required the sea barbarians to live and work in white- washed warehouses located outside Canton's city wall. When the roughly four month trading season was over, the foreign devil traders had to leave Canton immediately. 

If sea barbarians wanted to trade with the Middle Kingdom, they could humble themselves and submit to the Canton system. But the English – and, later, the Americans– were not used to humbling themselves. Quite the contrary.  

Like grapes and ginseng, the product that would make Warren Delano a wealthy man grows best in certain parts of the world. The prime opium-producing area was a vast swath stretching five hundred miles across the Bengal region of India. Arab merchants dominated the India-to-China opium trade for hundreds of years, until Portuguese sailors took it over in the sixteenth centary. The Portuguese also

官僚们将天子的这个回应转发给了英国君主：

  我们天国万物皆丰，国境无物。 因此，没有必要进口外面的制造品：野蛮人来换取我们自己的产品。 但是，由于天朝生产的茶叶、丝绸和瓷器对欧洲国家和你们自己来说都是绝对必需品，我们允许外国商人[为政府支付贸易权的私人商人 与蛮夷] 应设于广州，使你们的需要得以供应，你们的国家也能参与我们的恩惠。

 蛮管局的官僚们设计了广州制度，首先是为了保护普通中国人免受像沃伦德拉诺这样的洋鬼子的低贱性格和兽性的感染。 首先，在中国炎热潮湿的南方，广州港离天子在北京的家尽可能远。 该制度要求海蛮人在广州城墙外的白色仓库里生活和工作。 当大约四个月的交易季节结束时，外国魔鬼交易员不得不立即离开广州。

 海蛮人若想与中国进行贸易，可以自卑，臣服于广州制度。 但是英国人——以及后来的美国人——不习惯自卑。 恰恰相反。

 像葡萄和人参一样，使沃伦·德拉诺成为富人的产品在世界某些地区生长得最好。 主要的鸦片产区是印度孟加拉地区绵延五百英里的广阔地带。 数百年来，阿拉伯商人一直主导着印度对中国的鸦片贸易，直到 16 世纪葡萄牙水手接管了它。 葡萄牙人也