In my wanderings across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary
systems run with the same object in view but carried out in
diametrically opposite ways. Of course I speak as an outsider. I
criticise as one who only looks on, but after all it is an old saw that
the onlooker sees most of the game. There are, of course, many missions
in China, and I often feel that if the Chinaman were not by nature a
philosopher he would sometimes be a little confused by salvation offered
him by foreigners of all sects and classes, ranging from Roman Catholics
to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have received much kindness
from English Baptists, from the China Inland Mission and from American
Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst them all I--who frankly
do not believe in missions, believing that the children at home
should first be fed--found much to admire, much individual courage and
sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American missions were the
most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in view.
The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.
Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white
man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable.
But the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires
efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission
comes to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers
and schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins
to avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need
of China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes
conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have
only noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by
tens and twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith
missions, which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or
tuition. The faith missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman
just come in from a week's missionary tour in a district where, she
explained, she had slept on the k'angs with the other women of the
household, and she was stripping off her clothes most carefully and
combing her long hair with a tooth-comb, because all women of the class
she visited among were afflicted with those little parasites that we do
not mention. The Chinese have a proverb that “the Empress herself has
three,” so it is no shame. She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that
was what she had come for, everyone else was prepared to do the same;
but when so much is given I like to see great results, as in the
American missions. They are rich, and the Chinaman, with a few glaring
exceptions, is a very practical person. To ask him to change his faith
for good that will work out in another world is asking rather much of
him. If he is going to do so he feels he may as well have a God who will
give him something in return for being outcast. At least that is the way
I read the results. Look at Fen Chou, for instance, where the Americans
are thriving and a power in the town, and look at Yung Ning Chou,
farther west, where a Scandinavian faith mission has been established
for over twenty years. They may have a few adherents in the country
round, but in the city itself--a city of merchants--they have, I
believe, not made a single convert.
Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.
However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no
more than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries
are established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets
as much of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was
poor and lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps.
I understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice
implied when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not
only do I like best the results of the American system, but I dislike
exceedingly that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If
missionaries must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the
Chinese and for the honour and glory of the race to which they belong,
and not for the good of their own souls.
I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the
American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,
Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten,
the whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach
their faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they
teach the manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene
loom large in their curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into
consideration any future life, they must be a blessing to those men and
women who under cruel conditions must see this life through. These six
missionaries at Fen Chou Fu do their best to improve those conditions
with a practical American common-sense and thoroughness that won my
admiration.
Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been
friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were
loath to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were
to be slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but
sent them out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the
city--a very Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the
never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along
the road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the
verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light
on the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the
distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and
there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had
many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but
as far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not
been in the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr
Edwards had been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.
The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite
unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city
about nine _li_ round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs, also
walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to
the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,
and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only
walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way
in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep
browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first
sight there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family
took refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been
allowed to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion
worthy of Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the
hills, and passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they
reached their destination and were laid one on top of another to face
the great clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According
to Chinese ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only.
The mountains to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of
evil influences come from the north, and the people fear greatly
their effect upon the town. It was possible it might never get a good
magistrate, or that, having got one, he might die, and therefore they
took every precaution they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they
put in their watch tower over the gate, and they sit there still, carved
wooden figures, a great fat god--if a city is to be prosperous must not
its god be prosperous too?--surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are
fallen now, and the birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and
the cobwebs have gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared
away. In a chamber below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a
heap as so much useless lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of
the city passes in and out beneath the arches of the gateway. In that
gateway are two upright stones between whieh all wheeled traffic must
pass, the distance between these stones marking the length of the axle
allowed by the narrow city streets. Any vehicle having a greater length
of axle cannot pass in. No mere words can describe the awful condition
of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as far as possible the chance of
an upset the country man makes his axle very wide, and, knowing this,
the town man notifies at his gates the width of the vehicle that can
pass in his streets. No other can enter.
Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar
position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two
tall bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I
was quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I
have read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it
appears that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like
a comic representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's
comb upon his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was
not moved to laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on
the bronze bases and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the
details of a long story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange
symbols that I do not understand come into it, but how they help to
guard the city, except by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits,
I must confess I cannot imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit
the most necessary care: once the walls are finished, the mason is
apparently never called in, and they are drifting to decay. Everywhere
the bricks are falling out, and when I was there in the springtime the
birds of the air found there a secure resting-place. There were crows
and hawks and magpies and whistling kites popping in and out of the
holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs for the making of their
nests. They would be secure probably in any case, for the Chinese love
birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with difficulty and by
the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach them.
The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep--it was a
heart-breaking process to get on top--but Buchanan and I, accompanied by
the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one
of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the
narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here
is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had
been freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of
the day, and the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A
particularly bad cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a
good deal in Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia.
In Shantung a man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly
west, very slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they
feed on heaven only knows, for it looks to me as though there is
nothing, still possibly they pick up something, and I suppose the idea
is that they arrive at the various places in time for the harvest, or
when grain and products are cheapest. There are inns solely given over
to pigs and their drivers in Shansi, and the stench outside some of
those in Fen Chou Fu was just a little taller than the average smell,
and the average smell in a Chinese city is something to be always
remembered. There were other things to be seen from the top of the wall
too--long lines of camels bearing merchandise to and from the town,
donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up the dust of the unkempt roadway,
small-footed women seated in their doorways looking out upon the life of
the streets, riding donkeys or peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I
could see into the courtyards of the well-to-do, with their little
ponds and bridges and gardens. All the life of the city lay beneath us.
Possibly that is why one meets so very, very seldom any Chinese on the
wall--it may be, it probably is, I should think, bad taste to look into
your neighbour's courtyard.
And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it
seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of
good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for
the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but
looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a
big stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a
weapon by no means to be despised.
But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways
than in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are
heavy, and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are
the narrow gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I
came there all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that
a woman was drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern
gate, only to be banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of
centuries, the waste rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall
of the eastern suburb. It took a long, long while for those flood waters
to percolate through the gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place
at last in a swamp the other side of that long-suffering town. I must
confess that this is one of the drawbacks to a walled town that has
never before occurred to me, though to stand there and look at those
great gates, those solid walls, made me feel as if I had somehow
wandered into the fourth dimension, so out of my world were they.
There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and
I, with his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a
Chinese fair in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of
these fairs, though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they
help the funds of the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in
this country, I cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set
of buildings often in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall,
and these buildings are not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms
which are often let to suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if
the stranger knows his way about--I never did--he can get in a temple
accommodation for himself and his servants, far superior accommodation
to that offered in the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is
so cheap that makes no difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple
the day I went there was simply humming with life; there were stalls
everywhere, and crowds of people buying, selling or merely gossiping
and looking on. I took a picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay
dresses and gaily painted faces, tottering about, poor things, on their
maimed feet, and at the same spot, close against the altar of the god,
I took a picture of the priest. With much hesitation he consented to
stand. He had in his hand some fortune-telling sticks, but did not
dare hold them while his portrait was being taken. However, Mr Leete's
teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened man--in a foreign helmet--and he
held the sticks, and the two came out in the picture together. I trust
no subsequent harm came to the daring man.
[Illustration: 0089]
[Illustration: 0090]
In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I
never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as
I could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly.
On the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day
after day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls
or blank grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and
uneven, with the ruts still there that had been made when the ground was
softened by the summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east
was a great pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be
seen for many a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is
_feng shui_. I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are
dotted in apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense
amount of labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not
appear to serve any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to
balance after a fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford
protection for the southern approach to the city. I don't know that it
was used for any other purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding,
dwarfing everything else within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of
the literary tower which stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It
denotes that the town either has or hopes to have a literary man of high
standing among its inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things
Chinese would be foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be
only for artistic purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of
filth, in spite of neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman
is an artist to his finger-tips.
The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a
circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English
town, and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had
no bell, why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has
a plenitude of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical
when the faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to
dissociate themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry,
even when those practices seem to an outsider like myself rather
attractive. At any rate, to summon the faithful to church a man beats a
gong.
But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly
utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A
Chinaman, I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than
the majority of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when
he is married, and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead,
is the generally received idea of his ablutions, but he does want
a little water to carry on life, and in this corner of the town are
situated the wells which supply that necessary. It is rather brackish,
but it is still drinkable, and it is all that the city gets. They were
a never-ending source of interest to me. They were established in those
far-away days before history began--perhaps the presence of the water
here was the reason for the building of the town--and they have been
here ever since. The mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in
and year out have come those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn
by a harnessed ox or an ox and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled
with water. Down through all the ages those self-same men, dressed in
blue cotton that has worn to a dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff
tied round their heads to protect them from the dust or the cold or the
sun, have driven those oxen and drawn that water. Really and truly our
own water, that comes to us, hot and cold, so easily by the turning of a
tap, is much more wonderful and interesting, but that I take as a matter
of course, while I never tired of watching those prehistoric carts. It
was in rather a desolate corner of the town too. The high walls rose up
and frowned upon it, the inside of the walls where there was no brick,
only crumbling clay with shrubs and creepers just bursting into leaf and
little paths that a goat or an active boy might negotiate meandering up
to the top. And to get to that part I had to pass the ruins of the old
yamen razed to the ground when the Government repented them of the
Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually that only the two gate-posts,
fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural lions, survive. A curse is
on the place, the people say; anyhow when I visited it fourteen years
later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not for want of labour,
surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily from dawn to dark
in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting along, bringing
supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I met men carrying
water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime there was a
never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or without
even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of
firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been
counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect
to meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take
one to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone
knows a coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the
most expensive of gifts.
While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese
wedding. The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the
contracting parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay
capacity was a strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss
Newton's school. They had never spoken to one another, that would have
been a frightful breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church,
where there was no screen between the men and the women, as there is in
many Chinese churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It
is curious how in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas
and in others decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member
was allowed to smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement,
and the schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's
wife arranged marriages for such of the girls as came under their
guardianship. Of course I see the reason for that: in the present
state of Chinese society no other method would be possible, for these
schoolgirls, all the more because they had a little scholarship and
education, unless their future had been arranged for, would have been a
temptation and a prey for all the young men around, and even with their
careful education--and it was a careful education; Miss Newton was a
woman in a thousand, I always grudged her to the Chinese--were entirely
unfitted to take care of themselves.
Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class
Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of
humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and
the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and
open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were
very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of
the girls at heart.
And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that
on this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance
of the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to
diligence, and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should
be well read and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people
she might well be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for
the bridegroom was educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese
woman in far higher circles than she came of is appalling.
Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a
glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,
the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.
Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on
so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he
changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated
by devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were
a little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church
would be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers
dotted all over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, “Earth
rejoices, heaven sings,” and across that again was a festoon of small
flags of all nations, while from side to side of the church were
slung garlands of gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new
republic, and when I think of the time and patience that went to
the making of those garlands I was quite sorry they reminded me of
fly-catchers. But the crowning decoration was the Chinese angel that
hovered over all. This being was clad in white, a nurse's apron was
used, girt in at the waist, foreign fashion, and I grieve to say they
did not give her much breathing-space, though they tucked a pink flower
in her belt. Great white paper wings were spread out behind, and from
her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian countenance, were flowing
golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators of singed cotton wool.
One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the
church was full.
They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion
was against it. “It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They
generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.” So
it was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a
stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood
at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,
with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern
fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of
“William,” a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an
old silk umbrella--this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for
“William” was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very
best if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained
to the proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the
girl he has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not
a right to look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood
his special friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been
married four months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's
pretty young wife, and as the word was passed, “The bride is coming!”
she struck up the wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to
the women's door, while the men, who would not commit such a breach of
decorum as to look, stared steadily ahead.
But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she
did come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white
mosquito netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another
bunch in her hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this
great occasion, so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a
bronze satin brocade coat.
A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil
was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her
body moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put
one foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in
the hands of the women on either side--her mother, a stooping little old
woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the
bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above
the elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on
wheels. Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head
bent and his eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same
manner by his friend.
They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the
minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said
the closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
“The bridegroom and bride,” said he, “'will bow to each other once in
the new style.”
The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each
other in the new style.
“They will bow a second time,” and they bowed again.
“They will bow a third time,” and once more they bowed low.
“They will now bow to the minister,” and they turned like well-drilled
soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
“They will now bow to the audience,” and they faced the people and
bowed deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the
salutation.
“And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,” and
with right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three
foreigners, rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in
the new style.
It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the
church, actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride
was not on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with
Chinese ideas. The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward
by his friend, as if he had no means of volition of his own--again
I thought of “William,” long since departed and forgotten till this
moment--and behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner,
still with her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too
had been a doll.
“All the world loves a lover,” but in China, the land of ceremonies,
there are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the
wooing of his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair
chances of success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of
her own.
That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a
mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and
he and his bride would live with her and her husband.
[Illustration: 0099]
[Illustration: 0100]
The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It
was spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through
which we drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt
the bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed
down on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading
family, and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active
member of the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been
bachelor so long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that
there are about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred
young men, therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could
get was a pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty
Mexican dollars, roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who
do not care much what any man's religion is so long as he live a decent
life, understand the desire of that man for a Christian wife, for
that means here in the interior that she will have received a little
education, will be able to read and write and do arithmetic, and will
know something of cleanliness and hygiene.
The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the
bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow.
The entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we
arrived a little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey
and I, were ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior
one, which was crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array,
some servants in the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars
in rags who were anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's
table, and were having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut
out by all manner of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese
characters upon them, and once inside, we made our way towards the house
through a pressing crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for
a front door was a table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the
table were two long square candles of red wax with Chinese characters
in gold upon them. They were warranted to burn a day and a night, and
between them was a pretty dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing
innumerable white flowers. That table was artistic and pretty, but to
its left was a great pile of coal, and, beside the coal, a stove and a
long table at which a man, blue-clad, shaven and with a queue, was busy
preparing the feast within sight of all. I could have wished the signs
of hospitality had not been so much in evidence, for I could quite
believe that cook had not been washed since he was three days old, and
under the table was a large earthenware bowl full of extremely dirty
water in which were being washed the bowls we would presently use.
Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the
bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak
of. It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with
bands of black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats
and loose trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It
was quite a relief to sit down on the _k'ang_ opposite to a stout and
cheerful old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do
farmer's wife. She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained
to the proud position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican
dollars a month, and consequently had a position and station of her
own. In my experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own
importance in the world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know
the missionaries, bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but
whatever the reason at the back of it all, to them is the honour of
that happy, comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few
happy-looking women in China!
We sat on the _k'ang_ and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My
feet--I never can tuck them under me--clad in good substantial
leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the
Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they
were unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and
the-flesh could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my
feet and I laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
“The larger the feet the happier the woman.”
I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
“It hurt like anything,” translated the missionary girl beside me, “but
it is all right now.”
The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs
and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out
to greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and
that well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore
a most respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk
petticoat; round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of
orange-red silk, set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum
of no mean proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him,
was--a rare headgear in China--a hard black felt hat. From the brim of
that, on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which
were strung ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole
effect was striking.
Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her
veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's
mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that
these two women would be antagonistic--which I think I could have
foretold without the aid of any fortune-teller--therefore the rite was
deputed to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at
the sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with
husband and children living on the other, down through the crowd came
the little bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much
embroidered, which entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were
fat or slim it was impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown
entirely covering it, and over her face was a veil of thick bright red
silk. She could neither see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I
have ever seen, they looked about suitable for a baby of twelve months
old. The tiny red shoes were decorated with little green tassels at the
pointed toe and had little baby high heels, and though they say these
feet were probably false, the real ones must have been wonderfully small
if they were hidden in the manifold red bandages that purported to make
the slender red ankles neat.
Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in
front of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to
think of keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet.
The service began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating
minister was an American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience
laughed aloud because she was married by her baby name, her mother
having omitted to provide her with another.
The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl “Lead a
brother.”
Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave
it a hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on
one of the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the
bride's face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her
beauty with carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a
sweet little quivering mouth that was very lovable, and I think the
bridegroom, though he never moved a muscle, must have been pleased with
his bargain.
When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back
to the _k'ang_ in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were
taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her
trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy
little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and
little shoes and made audible comments on them.
“H'm! it's only sham silk,” said one.
“How old are you, new bride?” asked another.
“She's not much to look at,” said a third, which was a shame, for with
the paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,
and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,
without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came
round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon
such as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and
they served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since
seven in the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I
had seen the cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I
was hungry enough not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them
audibly, my friend the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks,
and I managed to put up with that too. I tried a little wine. It
was served in little bowls not as large as a very small salt-cellar,
literally in thimblefuls, but one was too much for me. It tasted of
fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my companion was not denying herself
much when she proclaimed herself a teetotaller. What we ate heaven only
knows, but much to my surprise I found it very good. Chinese when they
have the opportunity are excellent cooks.
The bride sat throughout the feast on the _k'ang_, her hands--three of
her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields--hidden under
her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette
required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed
at her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After
the feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in,
and to every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the
men and women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident
that she was for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected
and laughed at. She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan
T'ai T'ai's cart--I was Kan T'ai T'ai--was announced, and we went home
through the streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had
fed bountifully and well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the
airlessness of the rooms was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of
the narrow street I drew into my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness.
It was good to be in the free air again. Better still to remember,
however I had railed against my fate at times, nothing that could ever
happen to me would be quite as bad as the fate of the average Chinese
woman.
However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one.
The bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer
in T'ai Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to
the school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of
course, her feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an
injustice, the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he
did want an educated mother for his children, and the missionaries
will take no woman with bound feet. They will do the best they can to
retrieve the damage done, though she can never hope to be anything but
a maimed cripple, but at least she in the future will be free from pain,
into her darkened life will come a little knowledge and a little light,
and certainly her daughters will have a happier life and a brighter
outlook.
Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily
patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the
grave. The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye
of young Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the
little tots in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done
or their heads shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the
proud Chinese parents--for Chinese parents are both proud and tender and
loving, though their ways seem strange to us. But babies all the world
over, yellow or black or white, are all lovable, and these babies at the
kindergarten were delicious.
“Beloved guest, beloved guest,” they sang in chorus when I came in and
they were told to greet me. “Peace to thee, peace to thee.”
And “Lao T'ai T'ai” they used to address me in shrill little voices as I
went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd
spelled it properly) means “Old lady”--that is, a woman of venerable
years who is rich enough to keep a servant--and it was the first time in
my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I
had developed grey hair or wrinkles--riding on a mule-pack would be
enough to excuse anything--and then I remembered that if in doubt in
China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance
old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little
girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she
was older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested
in all good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just
attained her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her
youthful appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me
when guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At
least in the West. Here in the East I was “Old lady” by courtesy.
And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the
kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be
married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl
was the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after
his little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty
_tiaous_--that is, a little over one pound--and at first he said it was
too much and he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little
girl he changed his mind and scraped together the money, for the child
could be betrothed to his little son and save the expense of a wife
later on.
They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and
old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads
shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut
short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and
were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always
together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair
these little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the
home was a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought
that she need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in
Fen Chou Fu in the future there would be one married couple between whom
the sincerest affection will exist.
I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other
occasionally, but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a
different point of view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a
new-made widow who came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from
a long illness. She was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her
turn said in the vernacular:
“And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.”
“I?” incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
“Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?”
“Call that a bitterness?” smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be
consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another
lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made
widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her
head:
“All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!”
which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether
she had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite
correctly.
Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it.
When I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan
and was ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too
much imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but
he was full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these
enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large
Government school here--you may see the courtyards with their lily ponds
and bridges from the wall--that has been in existence for hundreds of
years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to take it over
and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he said, teach
their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way was want
of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a way of
sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The missionaries
were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his conversion, but I do
not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded man who sees the
good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help his people sunk
in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that came in his
way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never Westernise
a Chinaman. He will take all that is good--or bad--in the West that
appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This magistrate
was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to the mission
station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed his wife
to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved guilty
of crime.