sake of winning and storing up merit is centuries old. But galling
poverty, the fierce struggle for existence, strange customs and
superstitions, have all contributed to deaden the sensibilities and
quench the naturally kind impulses of the heart. For example, to
care for a man lying sick by the roadside means to the rank and file
that the Good Samaritan brings down on his own head the ill-luck that
followed the poor unfortunate, and to carry him into his house to die
involves not only the obligation of paying for his coffin and burial,
no small matter in China, but of answering to his relatives, if he
has any, for his decease. Not long ago in the Chinese City a humble
dwelling-house took fire and quickly burned to the ground. The family
barely escaped with their lives, a mother with a new-born baby, and
a troop of older children, one of them sick. The father was away,
presumably at work. A missionary passing through the narrow street saw
the poor things huddled together in a forlorn little group and her
heart was stirred with pity. “Why don’t some of you take them home?”
she asked of the crowd looking on. “Her husband is coming, we must wait
for him,” they answered. An hour or two later, on returning, the lady
found the family in the same spot, the woman weak and weary, pressing
her infant to her breast. A cold rain was falling. “If you don’t give
these people shelter I shall take them home with me,” she exclaimed
indignantly to a bystander. “The husband will be here soon, we dare
not interfere,” he said in tones of sharp decision. The next morning,
unbelievable as it seems, the woman and her children were still on the
street, unsheltered and uncared for. At once they were hurried to the
mission hospital and tenderly nursed. Then, and not till then, did the
real truth in the case come out. Had any one befriended these outcasts,
the evil spirit that caused the destruction of their house, would in
anger have entered the home of their benefactor and wrought disaster.
Hence the only safe course, since they had incurred the displeasure
of the gods, was to let them severely alone. Yet to offset this
circumstance is the sweet story, and by no means an isolated case, of
the old Chinese grandmother, who when a little foreign babe was rescued
from drowning, but chilled to the marrow and ready to die, quickly
opened her padded coat, and pressed it to her warm bosom, till it
revived, thus saving its life.
[Illustration: RESCUED KIDNAPPED CHILDREN AS THEY WERE PHOTOGRAPHED FOR
ADVERTISEMENT IN THE CHINESE DAILY NEWSPAPERS]
The recent revolution ushered in many innovations, but nothing that is
destined to result in larger good to China than the practice of social
service as understood in the West. The idea has met with a quick and
enthusiastic response by the Chinese, Christians, and non-Christians
alike, and is already yielding notable results in many places. “Why
should we not do for ourselves what foreigners have so long been doing
for us?” the leaders are asking one another, and hospitals, orphanages,
model prisons, refuges, industrial plants, are rising up here, there,
and yonder, till it is scarcely possible to open a newspaper without
reading of some new project afloat. In progressive Shanghai social
service is fast becoming a slogan. An unusual opportunity is afforded
here of contrasting the old style of philanthropy with the new, and the
study is valuable as well as interesting.
The local Charitable Society that antedates all others has its
headquarters, known as The Hall of United Benevolence, in the Chinese
City. Its exact age is difficult to determine as no one seems to
know. Some say it has as many as three hundred years to its credit. A
managing board of ten men, with offices in a Chinese house of spacious
dimensions, does the business of the Society, which is very wealthy,
owning large tracts of public land. Its chief work is to donate lots
to philanthropic institutions, furnish coffins to paupers, subsidize
various existing charities, and dispense free of charge Chinese
medicines. This Association is held in the highest regard by all
classes of Chinese, and may be called the fountain-head from which most
of the existing charities have sprung.
One of the older philanthropies, started more than fifty years ago, is
the Home for Widows in the Chinese City. It receives widows without
money or relatives to support them, who have determined not to
re-marry, a most praiseworthy resolve according to Chinese standards.
The house-mother, an old woman of seventy, delights to tell that she
has been an inmate of the Home for forty years, and certainly the
bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked dame is as good an advertisement as the
place could have. Widows with young children are allowed to keep their
little ones with them till the girls are betrothed and the boys able
to go out to work. In the meantime they are sent to day-schools in
the city. A family of three hundred is crowded into the rambling old
house, the gift of a former governor, which consists of a series of
small courts shut in by low two-story buildings. Each woman has her
own little room, or perhaps more than one if her family is large. The
premises are fairly neat, but what troops of children swarm around,
noisy and undisciplined, and as a Chinese caller once pointedly
remarked, “How the women must quarrel!” Their salvation evidently lies
in their industrial work, for while food and shelter are given them,
the able-bodied are expected to provide their own and their children’s
clothes. So they spend their days making articles which are sold and
yield a slight revenue, chiefly Chinese shoes, idol money, and clothing.
The Widows’ Home, despite its limitations, commands a degree of genuine
respect, but not so the two Foundlings’ Homes that awaken only pity and
almost fierce resentment. They are meant to do good, yet alas, what a
travesty on the real thing! The institution inside of the Chinese City
is the oldest philanthropy in Shanghai and dates back to 1710. From
the Hall of United Benevolence that fosters it an occasional report
goes forth telling about this work. The reports are written in the
usual florid Chinese style, and after describing at length the virtuous
motives of the founders and supporters, give the rules governing the
organization. For instance the age of each child is registered, a note
made of its appearance and condition, also “of the lines and fashion of
its fingers, five senses and four limbs.” Wet nurses are made to draw
lots for the babies in order to avoid partiality. Close to the street
entrance is a perforated drawer in which the foundling is to be left.
The one who brings the baby must rap on the door with a stick that
hangs beside the drawer to announce its arrival. These and many more
minute directions are recorded with painstaking elaboration.
They read well, but what are the facts? It requires considerable
tact and insistence for a visitor to gain access to the inner rooms
of the Home, where the real life of the babies is dragged out. Two
or three of the well-favoured will be brought in the arms of nurses
to an outer court, but when permission is asked to go inside there
is evident reluctance and many excuses are offered. Sometimes the
only sure open sesame is the official card of the City Magistrate.
Apparently no cruelty is practiced, but it is the gross ignorance and
negligence of the caretakers that makes so pitiable the brief life of
the babies, for most of them die after a few weeks or months. Each wet
nurse is given the charge of two foundlings. The nurses may remain at
the Home or if they prefer take the little ones to their own home, in
which case they receive somewhat larger pay. If a sufficient number
of wet nurses can not be secured, the foundlings, irrespective of
age, whether a few days or several months old, are fed on rice water
sweetened with coarse brown sugar. Scarcely any reach the Home in a
normal condition. Diseased, weak, bruised, one coming with a terrible
gash in its neck given with intent to kill, the death-knell of the puny
things is generally sounded before birth. The rooms where they are
kept are small, and as a rule almost devoid of light and air. In one
of the Homes even through the heat of a Shanghai summer the babies not
only sleep in stifling rooms but on beds surrounded by closely-woven
cloth curtains. In the other Home they lie the long day through in
bamboo cribs, their little bodies eaten with flies and poisoned with
mosquitoes. The chorus of feeble wails that constantly arises pierces
the visitor’s heart, as does the sight of the tiny skeleton-like limbs.
With scarcely an exception the fifty babies in each of the Homes, and
the far larger number that are put out to nurse, are girls. Just one
thought comes as a slight comfort, that wretched as is the condition of
the children they are certainly quite as well, or even perhaps better
off, than they would be in their own homes. No wonder physicians in
China say the mortality among children reaches as high as seventy or
eighty per cent.
In happy contrast to these Homes, is the Hospice of St. Joseph, which
has gathered into its safe shelter nearly eleven hundred of Shanghai’s
sick and poverty-stricken Chinese. But the story is too good not
to be told from the beginning. Four years ago two Christian men,
members of the Catholic Church, determined to found a philanthropic
institution. One holds several highly responsible offices in the
Chinese Municipality. The other is a successful business man. Many of
the tramcars in the International Settlement, and all of those under
Chinese control, were turned out from his foundry. His snug steamers
ply the waters of the upper Yangtse as far as Chungking, conquerors at
last, after many futile efforts, over the difficulties presented by
the dangerous rapids. He subscribes for American journals on mechanics
which he studies diligently through an interpreter, and after absorbing
ideas gleaned from them, invents and adapts machinery for use in China.
It is his desire to see Chinese farmers follow improved methods of
agriculture, and to encourage them he occasionally presents a village
with a modern threshing machine made in his foundry. His Sundays are
frequently spent in evangelistic work in the country, and busy man that
he is, he makes it a practice as often as possible to leave his work
and go to the Arsenal to pray with condemned prisoners before they die.
Recently the President honoured him with a medal rarely bestowed, and
all who know him, Protestant and Catholic alike, pronounce him a “rare
character.”
The land for the Hospice was donated by the Charitable Society of the
Hall of United Benevolences, and the Chinese Municipality gave bricks
(those bricks seem to multiply miraculously!) from the old city wall
for building material. The colony includes a men’s hospital, a women’s
hospital, a home for boys, a refuge for girls, an asylum for the
blind, a chapel, dispensaries, kitchens, quarters for the insane, for
opium patients, and prisoners from the jail in the Chinese City. These
buildings are already completed and others are projected. While the
two founders direct the business affairs of the institution, they have
given the care of it to twelve Sisters of Charity, four of whom are
Europeans and the rest Chinese.
The upkeep of such a great establishment, under the conditions that
exist in China, is no small matter, but the next to impossible has been
achieved and the management is well-nigh beyond criticism. The long,
light airy wards, with every cot filled, are visited each morning by
a foreign-trained Chinese physician, who donates his services. On the
second floor of the men’s hospital is a beautiful white-tiled operating
room, with all the latest equipment. There are industries, indoors or
out, for those able to work. Children study half a day. Incurables and
old people without support are kept on for life, but the strong and
middle-aged are sent away from the institution as soon as they are well
to make room for others. It is a joy in this land, where the insane
have been so long neglected and maltreated, to find a retreat prepared
for them where they receive the kindest consideration. The consequence
is that many after a few months go home cured. Every cement-lined cell
is protected in front by iron bars, so that the door can be left wide
open, admitting light and air. A door at the back of each cell opens
into a narrow corridor which leads to bathrooms with large earthen
tubs and running water. Several of the cells are neatly padded to
accommodate violent patients. This place and the prisoners’ wards next
to it, as clean and wholesome as heart could wish, are in charge of a
Christian young man of tried character.
In addition to the Hospice, its two large-hearted founders have built,
on a much frequented street, a three-story Evangelistic Hall. Said the
elder one, “We want it to be a place where any passerby and especially
strangers in the city, can stop a while and discuss the Christian
doctrine.” There is a day school for boys in connection with it.
Out in the neighbourhood of the old pagoda, set in the midst of
blooming peach orchards, is a large orphanage for both boys and girls.
This also is a Christian institution, but Protestant, and was started
eleven years ago by a group of men, several of whom had studied in
mission schools. The boys and girls are in separate though connecting
compounds, and a happier, merrier lot of young folks it would be
hard to find. Much is made of Bible Study, and industrial work among
the boys is strongly emphasized. The sale of their rattan furniture,
painted scrolls, cloth and hot-house flowers, especially at the time
of their annual chrysanthemum show, goes a long way toward meeting the
current expenses of the work.
On the same road as the orphanage, but nearer town, is “The Shanghai
Home for Poor Children.” This is not Christian, but it is one of
the most interesting and best conducted institutions in the city. A
few influential business men are its promoters, Chinese with high
ideals and broad vision. There are in the Home about twenty girls
and a hundred boys, many of them waifs picked up on the streets by
the directors themselves. A peculiarity of this institution is that
the children do not use beds but sleep on the floor in great breezy
dormitories where there can be no question of well-inflated lungs. The
school has a famous orchestra, and a picture that catches the eye at
once, on the wall of the reception room, represents the band members,
girls as well as boys, sitting with their instruments in their hands on
the platform in the main hall. This Home is characterized by two unique
features, one, that the old-time Chinese boxing and fencing are taught
in the fine out-of-doors gymnasium, and the other, the prominence
given to agriculture and horticulture as school branches. Indeed this
seems to be the only school in Shanghai where agriculture is a study,
with opportunity for practical work in the ample grounds around the
institution. In connection with this charity it is worth recording
that of the ten members on the Board of Directors five are women.
However, they have not advanced quite far enough to join with the men
in committee meetings but hold separate sessions. Or possibly it is the
men, poor benighted creatures, who are to blame!
It is impossible to lay too much emphasis on the value of industrial
schools, and social service can be turned into no more beneficent
channels than in starting and maintaining such schools. Until very
recently industrial training was wholly neglected in China. Even now,
if a Chinese educator is asked, “Are there any industrial schools in
Shanghai?” he will answer, “None,” and yet there are at least two and
one more soon to be opened. But these, it seems, are not classed as
schools, since they admit only poor boys unable to pay tuition, and
because the study of books is made secondary. The best industrial
school was opened four years ago. Work is carried on in a single
large building that is not divided into rooms, but from whose centre
apartments branch off in different directions like the spokes of a
wheel, all well supplied with windows, thus insuring plenty of fresh
air and good ventilation even in the hottest weather. “How many boys
have you?” was asked of the head teacher. “One hundred, and I wish I
had room for five hundred!” came the reply with surprising earnestness.
The boys range in age from very little fellows to lads of sixteen
and eighteen. There are industries enough to suit the bent of each
one. They include carpet-weaving, wicker work, soap-making, pottery,
portrait painting, the manufacture of kindergarten toys, clothing made
on sewing machines, and stockings on knitting machines. The boys work
during the day and study in the evening. Their pride is in their brass
band and they earn quite a bit of money for the school by playing at
weddings and funerals. The third of an acre covered by the school plant
was originally a cemetery, and how characteristic it is of China, that
in order to secure the land one hundred and thirty-nine graves had to
be removed!
One of the commonest crimes in Shanghai is kidnapping. Chinese
children, if they are healthy and attractive, need to be carefully
guarded. Most of the kidnappers are women, and the nefarious business
is so lucrative that a large number are engaged in it. Kidnappers grow
bold as well as wily, picking up children at play on the street, or off
on errands, and even beguiling or snatching them away from their very
doors. Both boys and girls are stolen, though boys are greater prizes,
being always in demand as apprentices and adopted sons in families that
have not been blessed with an heir, for the master of a house who has
no son to burn incense before his ancestral tablet after his death, and
to worship at his grave, is of all men most miserable. Still, pretty
little girls are always easily disposed of, either in brothels or in
private homes as slaves or future daughters-in-law.
Several years ago about thirty public-spirited Chinese gentlemen in
Shanghai formed themselves into an Anti-Kidnapping Society and set
to work in earnest to combat this evil. They hired skilled Chinese
detectives to meet out-going and in-coming coast and river steamers
and arrest all suspicious characters. Cunning as the kidnappers are,
again and again they prove no match for the quickwitted detectives,
who succeed in rescuing many children. The poor little victims are
frequently concealed in baskets of clothing, or hidden away in boxes
that ostensibly contain fruit or merchandise. Sometimes two or three
will be found crouching together in a single box with only the tiniest
holes for admitting air. The very young children are usually drugged,
and older ones frightened into silence by the most terrible threats.
Five miles out from Shanghai, convenient to the railroad yet in the
midst of open country, has stood for years a large Buddhist temple.
At the time of the revolution, when so many of the temples in China
were abandoned, and put to other uses, this one was leased by the
Anti-Kidnapping Society as a Home for rescued children. Stripped of its
idols and incense burners, the smoke-blackened walls white-washed, the
priests ejected, the old place that so long echoed the mumbled prayers
of heathen devotees now resounds with the happy voices of between two
and three hundred children. The girls, who are considerably in the
minority, occupy the courts in the rear, large and pleasant however,
and the boys those in front. The Worship Hall of the temple has been
converted into a school and assembly room for the boys. Every day in
the Chinese newspapers of Shanghai the Home is advertised, with a
description and photographs of the children most recently rescued. In
this way hundreds have been identified by their parents and returned
to them. Unclaimed children are kept in the Home, being taught some
kind of industrial work until they are able to go out and care for
themselves. Ethics is a branch of the school curriculum, but the
children are at liberty to accept whatever religious belief they will.
The Chinese gentry in Shanghai maintain several free dispensaries.
The largest of these, fronting on a crowded street, has in Chinese
characters over one door the motto, “Loving to Save,” and above another
“Heaven Bestows Perfect Happiness.” This charity is said to be half a
century old and the building itself bears evidence of having endured
that long. Every second day the dispensary is open, when patients
by the hundred visit it. The dozen or so Chinese trained doctors in
attendance are divided into two classes, those treating internal
diseases and the others dealing with external troubles. They are
separated like sheep from goats, sitting each at his own table, under
covered corridors on opposite sides of a court. In the rear of the
dispensary is a large workshop where coffins are made and given to the
poor.
Seven years ago, when plague raged, an isolation hospital was opened
by a well-known Chinese philanthropist in the outskirts of the city.
He succeeded in buying the house of a wealthy Chinaman, whose several
wives and numerous offspring actually performed the unprecedented
feat, for Chinese, of vacating the premises in two days. Wards have
since been added to the main building, so that the hospital will
now accommodate about a hundred. Through the efforts of this same
philanthropist, aided by a distinguished foreigner, Dr. Timothy
Richard, the China Branch of the Red Cross Society was established
in 1904 with headquarters in Shanghai. Three Red Cross hospitals
are operated in widely separated districts of the city, two of them
intended to be used exclusively for cholera patients during the cholera
season. One of these had its opening some months ago when the hospital
was visited by many influential Chinese and a few foreign guests.
Nothing could have illustrated more clearly the progress the people are
making in the science of social service. The building is a thoroughly
renovated old-fashioned Chinese mansion, with courts and rooms
innumerable and the usual lovely carved woodwork, mural decorations
and tiny squares of translucent glass set in quaint wooden screens,
though most of these had been replaced by good-sized modern windows.
The most fastidious Westerner could not have asked for cleaner wards,
arranged for the various classes of patients, whiter examining and
operating rooms for both men and women, or a more complete equipment,
though the whole was on a somewhat diminutive scale. The question, it
is true, would occasionally intrude itself, “How will this place look
a month from now?” but it was followed by the reflection “What began
best, can’t end worst,” and that a committee capable of initiating such
a work could be trusted to supervise its upkeep. The corps of young
men nurses wore a neat uniform of white with blue trimmings. The women
nurses,--well, to be frank, there were none. “It is so difficult to
find women nurses,” explained one of the doctors. “We must have them
of course or we can’t open the women’s department.” The keen interest
of the Chinese themselves in the hospital, evidenced by the numbers
present and their painstaking inspection, was one of the most hopeful
signs. An elderly gentleman, of a singularly refined and benevolent
countenance, had come all the way from Nanking, half a day’s journey,
to study the plant with a view to starting something similar in his own
city.
Time fails to tell of the fine modern hospital of the little Chinese
woman doctor who received her training at a mission medical school in
Canton, and about whom a whole chapter could be written. Unselfish
to a fault, serving devotedly under the Red Cross Society during the
revolution, pouring her money and her life out in kindred charities, no
personal sacrifice is too great for the betterment of her people whose
spiritual as well as physical needs lie as a burden on her heart.