The Chinese are very fond of animals, and especially of birds; and on
the whole they may be said to be kind to their animals, though cases of
ill-treatment occur. At the same time it must be carefully remembered
that such quantum of humanity as they may exhibit is entirely of their
own making; there is no law to act persuasively on brutal natures, and
there is no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to see that
any such law is enforced. A very large number of beautiful birds, mostly
songless, are found in various parts of China, and a great variety of
fishes in the rivers and on the coast. Wild animals are represented by
the tiger (in both north and south), the panther and the bear, and even
the elephant and the rhinoceros may be found in the extreme south-west.
The wolf and the fox, the latter dreaded as an uncanny beast, are very
widely distributed.
Still less would there be any ground for establishing a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the very name of which would make
an ordinary, unsophisticated Chinaman stare. Chinese parents are, if
anything, over-indulgent to their children. The father is, indeed,
popularly known as the "Severe One," and it is a Confucian tradition
that he should not spare the rod and so spoil the child, but he draws
the line at a poker; and although as a father he possesses the power of
life and death over his offspring, such punishments as are inflicted are
usually of the mildest description. The mother, the "Gentle One," is,
speaking broadly, a soft-hearted, sweet-natured specimen of humanity;
one of those women to whom hundreds of Europeans owe deep debts of
gratitude for the care and affection lavished upon their alien children.
In the absence of the Severe One, it falls to her to chastise when
necessary; and we even read of a son who wept, not because his mother
hurt him, but because, owing to her advanced age, she was no longer able
to hit him hard enough!
Among other atrocious libels which have fastened upon the fair fame
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. Fifty years ago it was
generally believed that the Chinese hated their female children, and got
rid of them in early infancy by wholesale murder. It may be admitted
at once that boys are preferred to girls, inasmuch as they carry on
the family line, and see that the worship of ancestors is regularly
performed in due season. Also, because girls require dowries, which they
take away with them for the benefit of other families than their own;
hence the saying, "There is no thief like a family of five daughters,"
and the term "lose-money goods," as jestingly applied to girls, against
which may be set another term, "a thousand ounces of gold," which is
commonly used of a daughter. Of course it is the boy who is specially
wanted in a family; and little boys are often dressed as little girls,
in order to deceive the angels of disease and death, who, it is hoped,
may thus pass them over as of less account.
To return to the belief formerly held that female infanticide was
rampant all over China. The next step was for the honest observer to
admit that it was not known in his own particular district, but to
declare that it was largely practised elsewhere. This view, however,
lost its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no
traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so
on. Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following
argument,--a rare example of proving a negative--from which it will
be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is
quite beyond the bounds of the possible. Those who have even a bowing
acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at
about the age of eighteen, is provided by his parents with a wife. They
must also concede the notorious fact that many well-to-do Chinese take
one or more concubines. The Emperor, indeed, is allowed seventy; but
this number exists only on paper as a regulation maximum. Now, if every
Chinaman has one wife, and many have two, over and above the host of
girls said to be annually sacrificed as worthless babies, it must follow
that the proportion of girls born in China enormously outnumbers the
proportion of boys, whereas in the rest of the world boys are well known
to be always in the majority. After this, it is perhaps superfluous to
state that, apart from the natural love of the parent, a girl is really,
even at a very early age, a marketable commodity. Girls are sometimes
sold into other families to be brought up as wives for the sons;
more often, to be used as servants, under what is of course a form of
slavery, qualified by the important condition, which can be enforced by
law, that when of a marriageable age, the girl's master shall find her
a husband. Illegitimate children, the source of so much baby-farming and
infanticide elsewhere, are practically unknown in China; and the same
may be said of divorce. A woman cannot legally divorce her husband. In
rare cases she will leave him, and return to her family, in spite of the
fact that he can legally insist upon her return; for she knows well that
if her case is good, the husband will not dare to risk the scandal of an
exposure, not to mention the almost certain vengeance of her
affronted kinsmen. It is also the fear of such vengeance that prevents
mothers-in-law from ill-treating the girls who pass into their new homes
rather as servants than daughters to the husband's mother. Every
woman, as indeed every man, has one final appeal by which to punish an
oppressor. She may commit suicide, there being no canon, legal or moral,
against self-slaughter; and in China, where, contrary to widespread
notions on the subject, human life is held in the highest degree sacred,
this course is sure to entail trouble and expense, and possibly severe
punishment, if the aggrieved parties are not promptly conciliated by a
heavy money payment.
A man may divorce his wife for one of the seven following reasons:--Want
of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e.
supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as "leakage"),
jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver
has affixed three qualifying conditions. He may not put her away on
any of the above grounds if she has duly passed through the period of
mourning for his parents; if he has grown rich since their marriage; if
she has no longer any home to which she can return.
Altogether, the Chinese woman has by no means such a bad time as is
generally supposed to be the case. Even in the eye of the law, she has
this advantage over a man, that she cannot be imprisoned except for high
treason and adultery, and is to all intents and purposes exempt from the
punishment of the bamboo. Included in this exemption are the aged and
the young, the sick, the hungry and naked, and those who have already
suffered violence, as in a brawl. Further, in a well-known handbook,
magistrates are advised to postpone, in certain circumstances, the
infliction of corporal punishment; as for instance, when either the
prisoner or they themselves may be under the influence of excitement,
anger or drink.
The bamboo is the only instrument with which physical punishment may
legally be inflicted; and its infliction on a prisoner or recalcitrant
witness, in order to extort evidence, constitutes what has long been
dignified as "torture;" but even that is now, under a changing system,
about to disappear. This must not be taken to mean that torture, in our
sense of the term, has never been applied in China. The real facts
of the case are these. Torture, except as already described, being
constitutionally illegal, no magistrate would venture to resort to it
if there were any chance of his successful impeachment before the higher
authorities, upon which he would be cashiered and his official career
brought abruptly to an end. Torture, therefore, would have no
terrors for the ordinary citizen of good repute and with a backing of
substantial friends; but for the outcast, the rebel, the highway robber
(against whom every man's hand would be), the disreputable native of a
distant province, and also for the outer barbarian (e.g. the captives at
the Summer Palace in 1860), another tale must be told. No consequences,
except perhaps promotion, would follow from too rigorous treatment in
such cases as these.
Resort to the bamboo as a means of extorting the confession of a
prisoner is regarded by the people rather as the magistrate's confession
of his own incapacity. The education of the official, too easily and
too freely turned into ridicule, gives him an insight into human
nature which, coupled with a little experience, renders him extremely
formidable to the shifty criminal or the crafty litigant. As a rule,
he finds no need for the application of pain. There is a quaint story
illustrative of such judicial methods as would be sure to meet with
full approbation in China. A magistrate, who after several hearings had
failed to discover, among a gang accused of murder, what was essential
to the completion of the case, namely, the actual hand which struck
the fatal blow, notified the prisoners that he was about to invoke the
assistance of the spirits, with a view to elicit the truth. Accordingly,
he caused the accused men, dressed in the black clothes of criminals,
to be led into a large barn, and arranged around it, face to the wall.
Having then told them that an accusing angel would shortly come among
them, and mark the back of the guilty man, he went outside and had the
door shut, and the place darkened. After a short interval, when the door
was thrown open, and the men were summoned to come forth, it was seen
directly that one of the number had a white mark on his back. This
man, in order to make all secure, had turned his back to the wall, not
knowing, what the magistrate well knew, that the wall had been newly
white-washed.
As to the punishment of crime by flogging, a sentence of one or two
hundred--even more--blows would seem to be cruel and disgusting;
happily, it may be taken for granted that such ferocious sentences
are executed only in such cases as have been mentioned above. An acute
observer, for many years a member of the municipal police force in
Shanghai, whose duty it was to see that floggings were administered to
Chinese criminals, stated plainly in a public report that the bamboo is
not necessarily a severe ordeal, and that one hundred blows are at times
inflicted so lightly as to leave scarcely a mark behind, though the
recipient howls loudly all the time. Those criminals who have money
can always manage to square the gaoler; and the gaoler has acquired a
certain knack in laying on, the upshot being great cry and little wool,
very satisfactory to the culprit. Even were we to accept the cruellest
estimate in regard to punishment by the bamboo, it would only go to show
that humanitarian feelings in China are lagging somewhat behind our
own. In _The Times_ of March 1, 1811, we read that, for allowing French
prisoners to escape from Dartmoor, three men of the Nottingham militia
were sentenced to receive 900 lashes each, and that one of them actually
received 450 lashes in the presence of pickets from every regiment in
the garrison. On New Year's Day, 1911, a eunuch attempted to assassinate
one of the Imperial Princes. For this he was sentenced to be beaten to
death, some such ferocious punishment being necessary, in Chinese eyes,
to vindicate the majesty of the law. That end having been attained, the
sentence was commuted to eighty blows with the bamboo and deportation to
northern Manchuria.
The Chinese woman often, in mature life, wields enormous influence over
the family, males included, and is a kind of private Empress Dowager.
A man knows, says the proverb, but a woman knows better. As a widow
in early life, her lot is not quite so pleasant. It is not thought
desirable for widows to remarry; but if she remains single, she becomes
"a rudderless boat;" round which gathers much calumny. Many young women
brave public opinion, and enter into second nuptials. If they are bent
upon remarrying, runs the saying, they can no more be prevented than the
sky can be prevented from raining.
The days of "golden lilies," as the artificially small feet of Chinese
women are called, are generally believed to date from the tenth century
A.D., though some writers have endeavoured to place the custom many
centuries earlier. It must always be carefully remembered that Manchu
women--the women of the dynasty which has ruled since 1644--do not
compress their feet. Consequently, the empresses of modern times have
feet of the natural size; neither is the practice in force among the
Hakkas, a race said to have migrated from the north of China to the
south in the thirteenth century; nor among the hill tribes; nor among
the boating population of Canton and elsewhere. Small feet are thus in
no way associated with aristocracy or gentleness of birth; neither is
there any foundation for the generally received opinion that the
Chinese lame their women in this way to keep them from gadding about.
Small-footed women may be seen carrying quite heavy burdens, and even
working in the fields; not to mention that many are employed as nurses
for small children. Another explanation is that women with bound feet
bear finer children and stronger; but the real reason lies in another
direction, quite beyond the scope of this book. The question of charm
may be taken into consideration, for any Chinaman will bear witness to
the seductive effect of a gaily-dressed girl picking her way on tiny
feet some three inches in length, her swaying movements and delightful
appearance of instability conveying a general sense of delicate grace
quite beyond expression in words.
The lady of the tenth century, to whom the origin of small feet is
ascribed, wished to make her own feet like two new moons; but whether
she actually bound them, as at the present day, is purely a matter of
conjecture. The modern style of binding inflicts great pain for a long
time upon the little girls who have to endure it. They become very shy
on the subject, and will on no account show their bare feet, though
Manchu women and others with full-sized feet frequently walk about
unshod, and the boat-girls at Canton and elsewhere never seem to wear
shoes or stockings at all.
The "pigtail," or long plait of hair worn by all Chinamen, for the
abolition of which many advanced reformers are now earnestly pleading,
is an institution of comparatively modern date. It was imposed by the
victorious Manchu-Tartars when they finally established their dynasty in
1644, not so much as a badge of conquest, still less of servitude,
but as a means of obliterating, so far as possible, the most patent
distinction between the two races, and of unifying the appearance,
if not the aspirations, of the subjects of the Son of Heaven. This
obligation was for some time strenuously resisted by the natives of
Amoy, Swatow, and elsewhere in that neighbourhood. At length, when
compelled to yield, it is said that they sullenly wound their queues
round their heads and covered them with turbans, which are still worn by
natives of those parts.
The peculiar custom of shaving the head in front, and allowing the hair
to grow long behind, is said to have been adopted by the Manchus out
of affectionate gratitude to the horse, an animal which has played an
all-important part in the history and achievements of the race. This
view is greatly reinforced by the cut of the modern official sleeves,
which hang down, concealing the hands, and are shaped exactly like a
pair of horse's hoofs.
In many respects the Manchu conquerors left the Chinese to follow their
own customs. No attempt was made to coerce Chinese women, who dress
their hair in styles totally different from that of the Manchu women;
there are, too, some tolerated differences between the dress of the
Manchu and Chinese men, but these are such as readily escape notice.
Neither was any attempt made in the opening years of the conquest to
interfere with foot-binding by Chinese women; but in 1664 an edict was
issued forbidding the practice. Readers may draw their own conclusions,
when it is added that four years after the edict was withdrawn. Hopes
are now widely and earnestly entertained that with the dawn of the new
era, this cruel custom will become a thing of the past; it is, however,
to be feared that those who have been urging on this desirable reform
may be, like all reformers, a little too sanguine of immediate success,
and that a comparatively long period will have to go by before the last
traces of foot-binding disappear altogether. Meanwhile, it seems that
the Government has taken the important step of refusing admission to the
public schools of all girls whose feet are bound.
The disappearance of the queue is another thing altogether. It is not a
native Chinese institution; there would be no violation of any cherished
tradition of antiquity if it were once and for ever discarded. On the
contrary, if the Chinese do not intend to follow the Japanese and take
to foreign clothes, there might be a return to the old style of doing
the hair. The former dress of the Japanese was one of the numerous items
borrowed by them from China; it was indeed the national dress of the
Chinese for some three hundred years, between A.D. 600-900. One little
difficulty will vanish with the queue. A Chinese coolie will tie his
tail round his head when engaged on work in which he requires to keep it
out of the way, and the habit has become of real importance with the use
of modern machinery; but on the arrival of his master, he should at once
drop it, out of respect, a piece of politeness not always exhibited in
the presence of a foreign employer. The agitation, now in progress,
for the final abolition of the queue may be due to one or all of the
following reasons. Intelligent Chinese may have come to realize that the
fashion is cumbrous and out of date. Sensitive Chinese may fear that it
makes them ridiculous in the eyes of foreigners. Political Chinese, who
would gladly see the re-establishment of a native dynasty, may look
to its disappearance as the first step towards throwing off the Manchu
yoke.
On the whole, the ruling Manchus have shown themselves very careful
not to wound the susceptibilities of their Chinese subjects. Besides
allowing the women to retain their own costume, and the dead, men and
women alike, to be buried in the costume of the previous dynasty, it was
agreed from the very first that no Chinese concubines should be taken
into the Palace. This last condition seems to be a concession pure and
simple to the conquered; there is little doubt, however, that the wily
Manchus were only too ready to exclude a very dangerous possibility of
political intrigue.