THE DROWNING OF DAUGHTERS—EARLY MONGOLIAN CIVILIZATION
MARKED BY ANCESTOR WORSHIP—SEVERE CHARACTER OF
CONFUCIUS—“BEGINNING” OF INFANTICIDE, 200 B. C.—REFORMS OF
THE EMPEROR CHOENTCHE AND THE MANCHUS IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY—DECREES REDUCING THE COST OF WEDDING GIFTS IN
ORDER TO STOP PARENTS FROM KILLING FEMALE CHILDREN.
Assuming that the human cradle was in the Eastern Archipelago, and
more particularly in the Island of Java where Dr. Dubois discovered
his _Pithecanthropus erectus_, the primeval home of the Mongolian
division of the human race was the Tibetan plateau. From this central
plateau the early Mongol groups spread during the Stone Age over the
Asiatic continent, in one place developing into the Akkado-Sumerians of
Babylonia, the almost extinct Hyperboreans of Siberia in another, the
Mongolo-Tartars stretching across Central Asia from Japan to Europe,
the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese of Tibet, Indo-China, and China, and the
Oceanic Mongols of Malaysia, Madagascar, and the Philippines.
In Tibet even today, polyandrous customs are still strong and the
nomadic tendencies of the people show that the years of civilization or
near-civilization have not changed the primitive roving inclinations,
inclinations that partly account for the indifference to child life
among the Chinese.
Our knowledge of ancient China rests principally on two authorities,
the _Chou King_ of Confucius, written 484 B. C., and the _Sse Ki_ of
Tsse Ma Thsein, written at the beginning of the first era before
Christ. Confucius was not able to go further back than seventeen
centuries before his own time, so that we can safely say that we
know something about Chinese history for about 2200 years before the
Christian era. The social and political life of the Chinese people in
the time of Yao, the first of the emperors named by Confucius, was that
of a pastoral people, but even then most of the useful arts had been
invented, writing was already known, and the first notions of astronomy
on which they founded their calendar had been acquired. The successor
of Yao was Chun, and after Chun came Hia, the founder of a dynasty
which lasted from 2205 to 1767 B. C., with which dynasty began the real
history of China.
When Confucius appeared the Chinese Empire was a highly civilized
nation, but of Confucius it has been said that he, more than any other
one man, went to make China a nation. Born at a time when his country
was torn with discord and desolated by war, husbandry neglected, peace
of households destroyed, and plunder and rapine common occurrences,
Confucius was nineteen when he married and added to the national woes
his own domestic troubles, divorcing the lady after a brief period in
captivity, but not however until she had borne him a son.
It is through this son that we learn something of the personal
character of Confucius. An inquisitive disciple asked the son if he had
learned any more than those who were not related to the great teacher.
“No,” replied Le. “He was standing alone once when I was passing
through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me:
“‘Have you read the Odes?’
“On my replying, ‘Not yet,’ he added:
“‘If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse with.’
“Another day in the same way and the same place, he said to me:
“‘Have you read the rules of Propriety?’
“On my replying ‘Not yet,’ he added:
“‘If you do not learn the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be
established.’”
“I asked one thing,” said the enthusiastic disciple, “and I have
learned three things. I have learned about the Odes, I have learned
about the rules of Propriety, and I have learned that the Superior Man
maintains a distant reserve toward his son.”
In this anecdote—and in his works—it is evident that Confucius had the
Chinese estimate of the child—the father was sovereign; the child,
as long as that sovereign lived, a mere subject. It was this idea and
the strongly implanted idea of filial piety that led to the callous
attitude toward children among the disciples of Confucius.
The Chinese explanation and defence of this phase of their life is
that up to the year 232 B. C. there did not exist in China anything but
the most humane system of treatment of children. The Jesuit authors of
the _Mémoires_ declare that up to that time there is no trace of the
drowning of infants, their abandonment, etc. Instead of being a burden,
says the missionary chronicler, children were considered an asset and
the orphan was generally in the position of having to choose between
many would-be adoptive parents. The law is cited to prove this, the
Code declaring that in case there were several people anxious to adopt
an orphan, preference should be given to those who were childless.[80]
It was under Ts’in Chi Hoang,[81] who reigned about 232 B. C., that the
abominable practice grew up, along with many other ills. The greed and
avarice of the nobles and the Emperor’s immediate following produced
much suffering, in the wake of which came famine, causing mothers and
fathers to abandon children that they were not able to feed.
Whatever truth there may be in this statement, there is very little
doubt that the reign of Ts’in Chi Hoang was one of bloodshed, war, and
suffering and that with the end of the Chou (or Chow), dynasty, and the
accession of the Prince Ts’in, first as the dominating King and then as
Emperor of China, there was much suffering.
“It was a time of extreme severity,” says the historian Tsse Ma Thsien,
“and all affairs were decided according to the law without either grace
or charity.”[82]
In addition to his bloodthirsty qualities, the Prince Ts’in, who was
known as the Great First Emperor and who insisted that all successors
should be known as the Second, Third, and Fourth Emperors, was superbly
egotistic. Everything, including literature, was ordained to begin from
his reign, to which end he issued an edict that all books should be
burned. He put to death so many hundred of the _literati_ who refused
to obey this edict that the “melons actually grew in winter on the spot
beneath which the bodies were buried”[83]—a tribute to the fertile
character of the Chinese _literati_.
Even assuming that the ill-treatment of children as we know it today
did not extend farther back than the period ascribed to it by the
Catholic missionaries, the period of Ts’in Chi Hoang, the earliest
records of the Chinese indicate that the family was placed on a
plane that, for severity toward children, challenges even the Roman
_patria potestas_. To the Emperor Yao or Yau, who is supposed to have
reigned about 2300 years before Christ, is ascribed the first step in
establishing the Chinese attitude toward parents and the respectful
obedience exacted from children. Particular emphasis was laid on the
son’s obedience. It was apparently taken for granted that a daughter
would not be rebellious.
Having occupied the throne a long time, Yao, as it is said, called his
ministers about him and, telling them that he had now reigned for more
than seventy years, expressed his willingness to abdicate in favour of
any one who felt capable of taking the Emperor’s place. When no one
volunteered—they were wise Chinese—he asked them to suggest someone who
was deserving of charity.
“Yu Chun,” answered the ministers, “though an aged man, is without a
wife and comes from an obscure family. Though his father was blind and
of neither talent nor mind, and his mother a wicked woman by whom he
was mistreated, and though his brother Siang is full of pride, he has
observed the rules of filial obedience and has lived in peace and has
gradually improved the condition of his family.”
“Then,” replied the Emperor, “I shall give him my two daughters in
marriage and he shall succeed me on the throne to the exclusion of my
son, Ly, who has shown himself to be unworthy by his lack of respect
for his parents.”
And it was this Yu Chun, it is said, who further established the
Chinese principles of morality, by which the family and not the
individual shaped the progress of the nation.
How well established those principles became may be seen from the _Li
Ki_, which was composed about a thousand years later. This is a code or
book of ceremonials on the civil life, composed or put together by or
under the patronage of Tscheou Kong, uncle of the Emperor Tchin Ouang,
in 1145 B. C.
“A son,” says the _Li Ki_, “possesses nothing while his parents are
living. He cannot even expose his life for a friend.”[84]
“A son has received his life from his father and his mother,” says
Confucius in the _Hiao King_, composed 480 B. C., “and this gives them
rights over him that are above all others.”
In the legend of How Tseih, the founder of the House of Chow, whose
mother was Keang Yuen and whose father was “a toe print made by God,”
the adventures of the child are thus described:
He was placed in a narrow lane,
But the sheep and oxen protected him with loving care.
He was placed in a wide forest,
Where he was met with by the wood-cutters.
He was placed on the cold ice,
And a bird screened and supported him with its wings.
When the bird went away
How Tseih began to wail.
His cry was long and loud
So that his voice filled the whole way.
No indication is given in the ode as to who was responsible for
exposing the infant to these dangers, but just as in other mythologies
in which the heroes or near-gods survive the dangers of infancy, there
is no doubt that this Chinese hero was pictured as having overlived
dangers that were the common lot of the average child. The commentators
take different views of the person responsible for the dangers to which
How Tseih was subjected, Maou believing that it was the father, the
Emperor K’uh; Ch’ing on the contrary holding that it was Keang Yuen,
the mother, who did it herself but not for the purpose of getting rid
of the child so much as to show what a “marvellous gift he was from
Heaven.”[85]
It is not that there are not occasional tender strains in the ode.
Number seven in the Odes of Ts’e, the poet, sings:
How young and tender
Is the child with his two tufts of hair.
When you see him after not so long a time
Lo! He is wearing the cap.[86]
Writing later the Emperor Tai Tsong, the author of a book called the
_Mirror of Gold_, repeated these ideas on ancestor worship in the
following ordinance (627 to 650 A.D.):
“The foundation of all the virtues is filial piety. It is the first
thing to learn and I in my youth have received the right lessons. I
have done my best to place at ease all my subjects to the end that the
parents might be in a state to bring their children up properly and
that infants in their turn might acquit themselves of their duties
toward their parents.
“When the virtue of filial piety flourishes, then all other virtues
will follow. In order that the Empire may know that such is my
desire and that it is nearest to my heart, I now order that there be
distributed in my name and my account to all those who are known for
their filial piety, five large measures of rice. To those who have
passed their eightieth year, two measures; to those of ninety years,
three measures; ... Moreover one shall give, commencing with the first
moon, to each woman who gives birth to a son, a measure of rice.”
But twice is there mention of human sacrifice in the _Chu’un Ts’ew_
but both references indicate that there was little regard for honour
as well as for human life. In the account of the reign of Duke He, who
ruled from 658 to 626 B. C., it is said that when the Viscount Tsang
went to covenant with the people of Choo, the Viscount was sacrificed
as an animal might be sacrificed on an altar built on the banks of the
Suy in order that the wild tribes of the East might be frightened and
“drawn toward him.”[87]
In the twelfth year of the reign of Duke Ch’aou, who was Marquis of Loo
from B. C. 540 to 509, the army of Ts’oo seized Yew (Yin) and sacrificed
him on Mount Kang.[88]
Not until the reign of Choen Tche (1633 to 1662 A.D.) was there
any movement to check the slaughter of infants. Then it was found
that infanticide had desolated so many of the provinces that it was
necessary for this Emperor, the founder of the Tsing dynasty, to
condemn the crime and warn the inhabitants of Hang Hoi, of Kiang Sou,
and of Fou-kien that the practice must stop.
The first official document endeavouring to save the children was
dated the second day of the third moon, 1659, and was an appeal to the
Emperor by an under-official.
“The Supreme King,” it begins, “loves to give life and to prevent
destruction. All men have received from Heaven a pitying heart. But the
corruption of morals comes between the father and the child and causes
men to be guilty of cruelty. I, your humble subject, have learned that
in the provinces of Kiang Nan, Kiang Si, and Fou Kien there exists the
barbarous custom of drowning little girls.”
The request of the official for an imperial edict against the practice
was approved by Choen Tche, who condemned the murder of female children
and ordered the mandarins of the provinces named to use means to check
the practice. On the twenty-third day of the third moon in the same
year in the presence of his advisers, he issued the following edict:
“We had heard that there were people who drowned their girl children
but we had not been able to believe it. Today our censor T’Kiai having
addressed to us a petition on this unholy practice, we are led to
believe that it must really exist.
“The paternal emotions come from nature and there ought not be any
difference in the manner of treating sons and daughters. Why should
parents conduct themselves cruelly toward girl babies and condemn them
to death? Meng Tse has said:
“‘When one sees an infant on the point of falling into a well every man
feels in his heart the sentiments of fear and compassion.’
“Here, however, it is not a question of strangers or of passers-by.
Since all men are moved at the sight of an infant in danger when that
infant is a stranger, what kind of parents must those be who deprive
their own children of life? What excesses are they not capable of when
they can commit such crimes?
[Illustration: SPECIAL REPOSITORY FOR BODIES OF NEGLECTED BABIES, CHINA
(REPRODUCED FROM “CHINA IN DECAY”)]
“The Supreme Ruler loves to give life and wishes that all beings
might enjoy themselves without harm. But if a mother and father destroy
the child to which they have given life, how can they help but see in
that act a blot in the celestial harmony?
“If flood and famine, war and pestilence, visit their terrors on the
people, it is because these misfortunes are the punishments for the
crimes spoken of. The ancient Emperors wept bitterly over these faults
of the people and pardoned crimes, and by that spirit imitated the
Spirit of Heaven, who loves to give life. When one of our officers
addresses us a report concerning a great wrong, we first look to save
the life; if it is not possible to use clemency, and if it is necessary
that we pronounce the sentence of death, such a decision causes us
genuine sadness. How great ought to be our sorrow, however, at the
sight of an infant that had hardly been born, condemned to death.
“Although the mandarins have prohibited this custom, all people are
probably not aware of the prohibition. Measures must therefore be taken
to bring this prohibition to the knowledge of all and an end must be
put to this custom. Not until then will we be joyous and content.
“Ho Long Tou in his book entitled _On Abstaining from Drowning Little
Girls_ has written these words:
“‘The Tiger and the Wolf are very cruel but they understand the
relations that should exist between the parent and its offspring. Why
then should man, gifted as is no animal, show himself to be on a
lower plane? Our infants, boys and girls, are equally the fruit of our
bodies. I have heard that the sad cry uttered by these girl babies as
they are plunged into a vase of water and drowned is inexpressible.
Alas! that the heart of a father or a mother should be so cruel.’”
Choen Tche then makes an appeal to his subjects asking them not to
tolerate further this barbarous custom, dwelling on the superior and
more gentle quality of daughters over sons, citing historical instances
of the good fortune that many daughters had brought to their parents,
and concluding by promising the benediction of Heaven on those who
would protect the lives of the little females.
Choen Tche (or Shun Chih) was the ninth son of T’ien Ts’ung and was
left to the care of his uncle as regent. His reign was marked by an
endeavour to consolidate the newly acquired empire. His biographers
speak of his magnanimity as a ruler and he was much praised by his
contemporaries. The fact that he treated the Catholic missionaries with
favour may also partially explain his horror over the conditions of
which he was apparently ignorant until the protest.
Choen Tche’s reign also marked the beginning of many modern things in
the history of China. It was during his life that there took place
the first diplomatic intercourse between the government of the Middle
Kingdom and the European nations, both the Dutch and the Russians
having had an embassy resident at Pekin during 1656, but although both
were treated most politely, neither achieved the substantial gains they
sought.[89] It was during his reign too that tea was first introduced
to England and a substitute produced for the quart of ale with which
even Lady Jane Grey washed down her morning bacon.
It was, however, under the reign of Kang Hi, the son of Choen Tche,
that the modern attitude toward children was approximated. The great
works of Kang Hi and his long reign have obscured the wisdom and
moderation of Choen Tche. One of Kang Hi’s first acts was to abolish
for all time the eunuchs, a law being passed and engraven on metals
that it might stand the ravages of time, forbidding for all time the
employment in public service of this class of person, and the Manchus,
until the time they gave up the sceptre a few years ago, held to their
word. Thus passed out of Chinese history its most industrious class of
trouble makers.
But two years after the death of Choen Tche, a writer named Li Li
Ong collected the edicts that were being issued by mandarins to show
the spread of vice among the people. Among this collection was the
following addressed to the governor of the province of Tche Kiang by
the mandarin, Ki Eul Jia, prefect of Yen Tcheou:
“The Heaven and the Earth love to shower benefits on man and to
conserve life. But alas! the inhabitants of this prefecture of Yen
Tcheou have the habit of drowning their girl babies. The rich as well
as the poor have been found to be guilty of this crime. The tiger,
despite his cruelty, does not devour his young, and it is hard to think
that man should be insensible to the cries of his drowning infant.
I myself have witnessed such drownings and that is why I ask that
you send into my six districts a proclamation strictly prohibiting
infanticide. It will be printed on stone. If any one should then be
guilty of the crime, his neighbours should be encouraged to notify the
magistrates that he might be dealt with according to law. As you are
charged to maintain morality among the people, I propose that you use
this means.”
Whether this suggestion was taken or not, it is known that in that
particular province infanticide increased instead of diminished. The
particularly interesting part of this document is that it brings to
light the fact from an official source that the rich as well as the
poor were the offenders and that it was not lack of food alone that
made this practice so common in China.
Even in modern times this is so, a midwife who was asked in recent
years to become a Christian saying that it was impossible inasmuch as
it interfered with her business. She said that frequently she was asked
by wealthy people to drown the female children which the parents had
not the courage to kill themselves.[90]
In 1720 Father d’Entrcolles translated a manual for the use of
mandarins which bore the title _The Perfect Happiness of the People_
and which contained a plan for a “House of Pity for homeless
infants”[91] and an exhortation to put such a plan into execution,
declaring that in times past there had been such institutions for the
reception of orphans and homeless children and that nurses had been
provided for them when they had been rescued.
The next proclamation of which we have any knowledge was that issued
with the approval of the Emperor Kien Long, who reigned from 1736
to 1796. In 1772, Ngeou Yang Yun Ki addressed to the Emperor, in
the thirty-seventh year and the twenty-ninth day of the tenth moon
of his reign, a communication in which it was stated that the poor
families had been obliged to drown their daughters because they had
not had enough food. Permission was asked to inflict on the person
who committed this crime, the penalty of sixty blows from a cane, and
a year in exile. In 1773 the Emperor Kien Long himself issued the
following edict against infanticide:
“The statutes fixing the penalty for the murder of a grown-up child
or a small child presuppose that the child has not failed to obey
the orders of its parents or grandparents, and cover cases where
the infants are murdered deliberately and with premeditation. This
crime, which violates the laws of nature, should be punished with the
whip and with banishment. If the infants that are thus killed are but
newly-born and therefore without intelligence and reason, the guilty
cannot plead the disobedience of these daughters as an excuse for their
crimes. Therefore henceforth whenever any one following the barbarous
custom shall drown his infants, he will be prosecuted for murder with
premeditation, and when the proof has been properly established before
the proper tribunals he will receive a sentence equal to that which is
meted out to the parents or grandparents who voluntarily assassinate
their children. It is not necessary to issue a special ordinance. Let
all respect this decree.”
A dozen years later another voice was raised in protest against the
drowning of girls. Chen, Treasurer General of the province of Kiang
Sou, presented to the governor of that province a proclamation against
infanticide and begged him to publish it.
In 1815 a writer named Ou Sing King made an appeal to the officials of
China to stop the drowning of infants and the sale of women, and this
appeal falling into the hands of the Emperor Kia King, a proclamation
was issued against both vices. The writer, Ou Sing King, was given
imperial permission to go further in his investigations.
Early in the reign of Tao Kang (1820–1851) the then governor of the
province of Tche Kiang, believing that the expensive wedding gifts were
the real cause of the child murder, decreed:
“It is ordered that ornaments of gold, pearls, precious stones, and
embroidered gowns are forbidden at all marriages. As for silver
ornaments, silks, and other materials, this is the rule that we hereby
establish:
“For rich families the sum set out for such purchases must not be over
one hundred taels. For people of medium fortune the expense must be
limited to from forty to fifty taels. Those of inferior blood must not
spend more than twenty or thirty taels and the poorest people must not
go beyond two or five.[92]
“As for gifts by the parents to the husband, the quantity is left to
their discretion; this being the means to avoid all dispute. After the
marriage, on certain occasions, it is permitted to make one or two
presents. The celebrations of three and seven days when the grandson
is born or when he attains his first year are hereby forbidden and
henceforth the people should not have any more difficulties about
bringing up daughters. If, in spite of this, the poor are unable to
bring up their female children, they must carry them to the orphanage
or give them to other families.”[93]
On the 19th of February, 1838, the Lieutenant General Ki of the
province of Koang Tong instituted an investigation to find out what
the actual conditions were in his provinces, and after receiving his
reports, issued a proclamation in which he said:
“I am convinced that in the province of Koang Tong the custom of
drowning and suffocating the girl babies is common and that the rich
as well as the poor are guilty. The poor pretend that, not having
sufficient means of existence, they are not able to bring up their
female children, while the rich declare that there is no object in
bringing up children that occupy a purely ornamental position in the
household.”
Ki then goes on to philosophize on the enormity of the crime and the
folly of these reasons. Never, perhaps, did any single individual in
China devote himself with more energy to trying to eradicate this evil
than did Ki, both by verbal castigation of those who were guilty of
the crime and by appealing to the sympathies of the inhabitants of his
province. He distributed copies of the works of Ouang Ouan. He sent
out advice and instructions to his subordinates that infanticide must
be prevented; he enlisted the nobles and educated people in this fight
and reiterated that those who were guilty of the crime would be seized,
judged, and punished with sixty blows and a year’s banishment as the
law directed. Throughout the province his efforts were regarded as
extremely interesting, his proclamations as delightful literature, and
there was no decrease in the number of murders.
In 1845 the Emperor Tao Kang himself published an edict condemning the
practice and declaring that the extreme punishment permitted by the law
would be meted out to the guilty. The edict had no effect.
In 1848 another endeavour was made by the chief magistrate of Canton,
acting on the initiative of Ki, to eliminate the evil in that
particular city, but neither in Canton or in the province of Koang
Tong was there a cessation of the evil for eighteen years afterward.
The Emperor Kong Tche listed both Canton and the province as among the
places where infanticide was most common.
During the reign of Hien Fong, 1851–1862, little progress was made.
In many parts of China during the following reign, that of Tong Tche,
1862–1875, attempts were made to check the evil.
During the minority of the Emperor the two Empress Regents issued a
proclamation in which they appealed to the “nobles and rich of all
villages to contribute for the erection of orphanages where there might
be received abandoned children so that the poor will not be able to
justify their abominable practice on the ground of poverty.”
The reign of Koang Siu began in 1875, and was marked with vigorous
proclamations and warnings to the people to take their children to the
orphan asylums that were being established rather than to throw them
into the river.[94]
Of the conditions as they exist in modern times, travellers and writers
are of one accord—infanticide is horribly prevalent. The conditions
vary with different localities.
“In Fuhkien province,” says Williams, “especially in the department
of Chang Chau, infanticide prevails to a greater extent than in any
other part of the Empire yet examined. Mr. Abeel extended his inquiries
to forty different towns and villages lying in the first, and found
that the percentage was between seventy and eighty down to ten, giving
an average of about forty per cent. of all girls born in those
places as being murdered. In Chang Chau, out of seventeen towns, the
proportion lies between one fourth and three tenths in some places,
occasionally rising to one third, and in others sinking to one fifth,
making an average of one fourth put to death. In other departments of
the province the practice is confessed, but the proportion thought by
intelligent natives to be less, since there is less poverty and fewer
people than formerly.”
“Infanticide, which until now has gone unpunished,” says Dr. Lauterer,
“is practised especially in Pekin and Fuhkien. A large per cent. of
female infants meet with an unnatural death because of their parents’
poverty or their niggardliness. The unfortunates are simply cast into
the nearest stream and the corpse left until the morning when the
government’s wagon collects them, or they are exposed in the open
where, not being protected from the cold, they soon perish. Lately a
decree has been made to prohibit it.”[95]
“The province of Fuhkien,” says Douglas, “is that in which this crime
most obtains. Inquiries show that in many districts as large a portion
as one fourth of the female children born are destroyed at birth. At
Pekin, on the other hand, it cannot be said to exist at all. But in
this as in so many social offences in China, the sword of the law,
which is alone capable of putting down crime, is allowed to hang like a
rusty weapon on the wall. It is true that occasionally proclamations
are issued in which the heinousness of the evil is explained with
all the impressiveness that could be desired, but so long as natural
affection finds no support from without it will continue, in China, to
yield to the requirements of daily food.”[96]
[Illustration: AN OVERBURDENED CHINESE CHILD CARRYING MORE THAN HIS
WEIGHT IN TEA
(COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N. Y.)]
[Illustration: “LITTLE MOTHERS”—THE ONE FIVE, THE OTHER EIGHT, YEARS
OLD—CHINA]
“The custom of infanticide,” wrote Professor Krausse, “is one which has
obtained in many parts of China for ages. It does not, as a rule, take
the form of actual murder, but consists rather in assisting the laws of
Nature. Thus an infant will be neglected and permitted to perish, or if
it sicken, will be put aside and allowed to take its chance.”[97]
“Outside the wall [of Wie Hsien],” writes A. J. Brown, “we saw a ‘Baby
House,’ a small stone building in which dead children of the poor are
thrown to be eaten by dogs!
“I wanted to examine it, but was warned not to do so as the Chinese
imagine that foreigners make their medicine out of children’s eyes and
brains, and our crowds of watching Chinese might quickly become an
infuriated mob.”[98]
In the face of all this one reads with interest in a book by a
professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge that:
“Among other atrocious libels which have fastened upon the fair
name of the Chinese people, first and foremost stands the charge of
female infanticide, now happily, though still slowly, fading from the
calculations of those who seek the truth.”[99]