Some Observations Upon the Civilization of the Western Barbarians, Particularly by Ah Chin-Lee

AH-CHIN-LE, Mandarin, and member of the exalted Calao, to the Illustrious Wo-sung, Mandarin, First class, President of the most Serene, the grand Council, Calao; virtue, health, and the highest place in the Hall of your Sublime Ancestors! Trained from my youth for many years in the school of the Foreigners [Fo-kien], so as to be versed in the languages of the chief Barbarians of the West, and particularly of the English, afterwards perfected in the latter at our port of Shanghai, and sent by your Illustrious command upon a private mission with the Imperial Embassy to the outside Barbarians of the far West to curiously seek into the state of those Peoples, and report upon the same to your Illustrious mind—that being so informed exactly, your Wisdom might, in those matters appertaining to the Western Barbarians, enlighten the Son of Heaven (our Celestial and Imperial Majesty [Bang-ztse] most renowned and exalted) when, in Council, things touching those outer Barbarians should be considered: these, my poor words, in so far as to your Illustrious Wisdom it has been thought proper to make general, are now produced: that the happy subjects of our Central, Flowery Kingdom, may understand more perfectly the condition of those outside Barbarians, respecting whom so very little is known, and may the more cautiously guard the Sacred Institutions [Kam-phfe] of our Celestial Land—wise, peaceful, powerful, and teeming with an industrious and contented people, before the Western Barbarians had so much as the rudiments of learning.