Excerpt from A Young People's History of the Chinese The object of this small volume is to furnish our young people some general information about China and the Chinese. In a catalogue of two hundred and fifty books on China, now before me, I find but three intended specially for the young, and these are small biographies, containing little besides personal incidents. To add something, however little, toward supplying this deficiency in our juvenile literature, the following pages have been prepared. A consecutive history of the Chinese, running through the long and dreary centuries of their existence, was of course impracticable. To dwell upon their peculiarities only, might amuse but would not greatly profit the youthful reader. I have therefore endeavored to select such salient features in their national character and history as would enable a person of average intelligence to form some just idea of the country and the people. How far I have succeeded in this attempt, the reader will judge. Previous to the beginning of the present century, comparatively little was known in Europe or America concerning the people of China or their institutions. Enterprising travelers, from the days of Marco Polo, had now and then touched at points on the coast of China, and reported, with more or less accuracy, what they had seen; but until 1842 no foreigner was allowed to travel or reside on the sacred soil of the "Celestial Empire." So that China was, to the people of the West, practically an unknown land. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.