Village Family Life
XXII
VILLAGE BOYS AND MEN
There is a passage in one of the oldest Chinese Classics, the Book of
Odes, which, in describing the palace of an ancient king, shows in a
striking light the relative estimation at that remote time put upon boys
and upon girls. After speaking of the dreams of the king, the poet adds a
couple of stanzas, which, according to Dr. Legge's translation, are as
follows:
Sons shall be born to him; they will be put to sleep on couches;
They will be clothed in robes; they will have sceptres to play with;
Their cry will be loud.
They will be (hereafter) resplendent with red knee-covers,
The (future) king, the princes of the land.
Daughters will be born to him. They will be put to sleep on the ground;
They will be clothed with wrappers; they will have tiles to play with.
It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good.
Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think,
And to cause no sorrow to their parents.
From the sentiment of this poem alone it would be easy to determine the
Chinese of to-day to be lineal descendants of their ancient ancestors.
The early years of a Chinese boy are spent in what, viewed from the
experience of a decade later, must appear to him a condition of supreme
happiness. He is welcomed to the household with a wild delight, to which
it is wholly impossible for an Occidental to do any justice. He begins
life on the theory that whatever he wants, that he must have; this theory
is also the one acted upon by those who have him in charge, to an extent
which seems to us, who occupy the position of impartial critics, truly
amazing. A Chinese mother is the literal slave of her children. If they
cry, they must be coddled, most probably carried about, and at whatever
expense, if it is possible to prevent such a terrible state of things.
They must not be allowed to cry continuously. In this respect, at least,
it does not appear that there is much distinction between the treatment of
boys and girls.
The names given to Chinese children, like those of the babies of North
American Indians, are frequently suggested by whatever happens first to
attract the father's attention, such as Basket, Cart, etc. Each year of
the cycle of twelve has an animal which "belongs to" it, as Dog, Cat,
Chicken, Tiger, Horse or Monkey, and all these names are constantly
employed. If when the child is born an old grandmother happens to be three
score and ten, he is not improbably dubbed "Seventy." Many have no other
appellation than a numerical one such as Three, Five, or Six, to the
hopeless confusion of an inquirer. If the child seems to be of a good
constitution he may receive the title of Stone, or Solid. Should he be
plump, he is likely to be styled Little Fat One; if dark coloured, Little
Black One. Bad Temper, and Little Idiot are common, and if all the
previous children have died, the last one may go by the name of Great
Repairs.
When the parents are peculiarly fearful lest an only boy should be made
away with by malicious spirits, they often call him by a girl's name in
order to deceive the powers of evil, and thus beat them at their own game.
Another plan with the same end in view is a nominal adoption into another
family, where the children spend at least a portion of their time, the
spirits being thus hopelessly perplexed as to which family really owns the
child! Slave Girl, and Old Woman are names sometimes given to boys under
these conditions. A man who had more girls than he desired, called one of
them Enough Hawks (Kou Ying), while another little maid was outfitted
with the happy title "Ought-to-have-been-a-Boy" (Kai TzA-). Girls are
frequently named for birds, fruits, and flowers.
All the preceding are "milk-names," or "small names," which strangers must
be careful even should they know them, never to employ. No greater insult
can be put upon an adult Chinese than to revile him in public by his
"small name"--a by no means infrequent occurrence--which seems to convey
the implication that the reviler knows all about his antecedents and holds
them in supreme contempt.
It is a highly convenient arrangement of Chinese family nomenclature, that
the names of each member of the same generation (within certain defined
degrees of cousinship) furnish a clue to his relationship to the rest.
Thus, if a man's surname is Wang, his family name (which can be either two
characters or one) may be compounded with the character denoting Spring,
in which case one brother might be called Wang Spring-Flowers, the next
Wang Spring-Fragrance, a third Wang Spring-Fields, and so universally for
that generation as far away among the cousins as the Spring influence
penetrates. These family names are theoretically recorded in carefully
kept registers, and must not be repeated in later generations, or only
after the lapse of a due number of generations. Memorials sometimes appear
in the _Peking Gazette_ from high officials asking permission to have a
family name altered, since a repeated title has inadvertently been taken.
This use of the same characters in Chinese family names has often been
compared to the Anglo-Saxon habit of bestowing upon brothers names of
which one syllable is constant, as Edward, Edwin, Edmund, Edgar, etc.
Besides the name, there is the "style," often much more in use than any
other designation, which may be bestowed upon the owner by a friend. It is
common by a respectful familiarity to prefix to the first character of the
style, the honourific "Old," (_Lao_) making still another title. Thus
supposing Mr. Wang Spring-Fragrance has the style of Illustrious Virtue,
his common appellation may be Wang Old Illustrious, his other names being
used as alternatives. The result of all this is that a single Chinese not
infrequently appears to be three and sometimes four, since students have
also their examination names, differing, strange to say, from any which
they have hitherto borne. The confusion attending the addressing of
Chinese letters in correspondence would be intolerable to an Occidental.
Aside from the ambiguities already mentioned, it sometimes appears to the
writer of a letter a happy expedient to employ a title on the back of his
epistle, known only to himself and to the recipient, to the great
bewilderment of the persons through whose hands the missive may pass. We
have seen a Chinese teacher invited to inspect the address of a letter of
this sort, the destination of which neither he nor any one else could
decide. Yet it subsequently turned out that the epistle was meant for his
own son! With all this labyrinth of future complexity the village boy is
very little concerned, often passing through life without any name at all
to speak of.
In this connection it is worth noting that the foreigner in China suffers
from a chronic embarrassment as to how to address a Chinese. There is in
the language no term answering to our Mister or Master, the nearest
equivalent being the words Elder-born or Seignor (_Hsien-shAȘng_). The
expression properly connotes a Teacher in reality or by courtesy, and
although applied indiscriminately to blind men (even if they should be
beggars) will not serve for general use. Honourific terms abound, but in
the rural regions these are not in use, and are but dimly comprehensible.
On the principle that "Within the four seas all are brethren," it is the
Chinese habit to _assume the existence_ of a relationship, so that the
passing stranger may appropriately call out to one whom he has never seen
before: "Great elder-brother may I borrow your light and inquire whether
this is the right road to Peking?" Should the person addressed be an old
man, the title would be changed to Uncle or Grandfather. The fact that the
term for an older uncle differs from that for a younger one, embarrasses
the foreigner by forcing upon him a decision of the difficult question
which one to use, for deciding which point he often has absolutely no
data.
A Chinese married woman has literally no name at all, but only two
surnames, her husband's and her father's, so that when these chance to be
common ones, it is impossible by this means to discriminate one woman from
another. If Chinese women are to be addressed by strangers at all, there
is even more embarrassment than in the case of men. In some regions the
term Elder-sister-in-law (_sao-tzA-_) serves indiscriminately for any
woman, but in others Aunt (_la-niang_) must be used, while in yet others
nothing is appropriate but Grandmother (_nai-nai_) which elsewhere would
be equivalent to Old Granny. When there happen to be three generations of
women in the same family to dub them all "Grandmother" (especially if one
of them is a girl in her teens just married) is flagrantly absurd. Beggars
at the other gates clamour to have their "Aunts" bestow a little food, and
the phrase Old Lady (_lao T'ai-t'ai_) is in constant use for any woman
past middle life.
The age at which a boy is too large to be carried is a very indefinite
one, and it is common to see distracted mothers staggering with their
little goat-feet under the weight of children half their own size, lugging
their offspring about for the reason that "they would not stand it" to be
put down. A preparatory discipline of this nature is not adapted to teach
children independence, self-control, or any useful lessons, and the result
is such as might have been expected. But the Chinese child is an eminently
practical being, and he finds by experience that, when there are half a
dozen children smaller than himself, the period of his own supreme rule
has passed away, and has passed away never to return. To this altered
condition he soon learns to adapt himself.
Of that sympathy for childhood as such, which is so distinguishing a part
of our modern civilization, an average Chinese father has no conception
whatever. By this is not meant that he is not fond of his children, for
the reverse is most palpably true. But he has no capacity for entering
into the life of a child, and comprehending it. His fondness for his
children is the result of the paternal instinct, and is not an intelligent
and sympathetic appreciation of the mind of a child. He not only has no
conception of such a thing, but he would not be able to understand what is
meant by it, if the possibility of such sympathy were pointed out. The
invariable reply to all suggestions, looking toward such sympathy coming
from a foreigner, seems to be, "Why, he is only a mere child!" It is by
the slow moulding forces of maturing life alone that the boy is expected
to learn the lessons of life, and these lessons he must learn
largely--though not altogether--by himself.
To most Chinese children, there is very little that is attractive in their
own homes. The instinct of self-preservation does of course lead them to
fly thither, as soon as they meet with any repulse from without, but this
instinct they share with animals.
Chinese courtyards are almost invariably very contracted, and allow little
scope for enterprising youth to indulge in any but the most crude and
simple forms of amusement. The Chinese lad generally has but few toys, and
those of the simplest and most clumsy description. At certain festivals,
especially in the cities, one sees the children loaded down with all
varieties of playthings often of a flimsy and highly inexpensive
character. In the country the same phenomenon is observed wherever there
has been a large fair, at which the provision for the children is always
on a scale commensurate with their known wants. But of these articles made
of earth, paper, bits of cloth, clay, reeds, sugar, and other perishable
substances, nothing will be left when the next moon shall have completed
its orbit. In regions where bamboo is to be had, there are a few more
serviceable and less fragile articles constructed expressly for the
children, and such articles doubtless have a longer lease of life.
That Chinese parents should take occasion to have a romp with their
children, or even to engage with them in any game whatever, is, so far as
we have observed, a thing wholly outside of the range of their wildest
imagination. Children have very few games which can be played in the
house, and the time which is to our little ones the cream of the whole
day, that namely in which they can gather "around the evening lamp," is to
the Chinese a period of dismal obscurity. By the dim light of a small and
ill-trimmed wick, dipped into a few spoonfuls of crude vegetable oil, the
evening's occupations are carried on as best they may be; but to a
foreigner a Chinese home is at such times most ideally comfortless,
especially if the season be winter. No wonder that those members of the
family who can do so, are glad to crawl upon the more or less perfectly
warmed _k'ang_, and wrap themselves in their wadded bedclothes. During the
portion of his existence in which the father and the mother of the Chinese
child most gladly forsake him, kind Morpheus takes him up, and claims him
for his own.
The outdoor games of Chinese children are mostly of a tame and
uninteresting type. Tossing bits of earth at a mark, playing shuttlecock
with his toes and heels, striking a small stick sharpened at the ends so
as to make it jump into a "city," a species of "fox and geese," a kind of
"cat's-cradle," a variety of "jack-stones,"--these are among the most
popular juvenile amusements in the rural regions with which we happen to
be acquainted. Chinese cities have allurements of their own, some of which
do not differ essentially from those found in other parts of the world
than China. But even in the country, where restrictions are at a minimum,
Chinese lads do not appear to take kindly to anything which involves much
exercise. One does not ordinarily see them running races, as foreign boys
of the same age cannot fail to do, and their jumping and climbing are of
the most elementary sort. We have never heard of a crow which was so
injudicious as to build its nest in a spot where it would be visible to
the eye of an Anglo-Saxon boy, unless the owner of the eye had previously
made a long journey with it to a distance from all human habitations. But
Chinese crows build their huge nests in all sorts of trees, in and about
every Chinese village. It is not uncommon to see an old poplar with ten or
twelve of these huge nests of sticks, which are undisturbed from year to
year and from generation to generation.
The writer once counted twenty-four such nests in a single moderate sized
elm, and this in the suburbs of a Chinese city. Buddhist teachings in
regard to the sacredness of animal life do not suffice to account for the
singular inviolability which crows' nests enjoy in China. In the spring
they are sometimes defended with the query; "How would you like to have
your house pulled down?" But in a region where every stick of fuel is
precious, what sacredness can attach to a bushel or two of large twigs,
when the crows have visibly done using them? Neither does superstition in
regard to ill-luck arising from demolition of the nests of crows explain
their security, although at first sight this may seem to be the case.
Extensive inquiries have satisfied us that the true explanation is simply
the natural one, that the Chinese boy is _afraid_ to climb so high as a
crow's-nest. "What if he should fall?" says every one when applied to for
information on the point, and it is this unanswered and unanswerable
question which seems to protect young Chinese crows from age to age.
The Chinese boy can seldom get access to running water; that is to say,
the proportion of Chinese who can do so is infinitesimal. Most of them
have no lakes, rivers, or ponds in which they can plunge and learn to
swim, or in which they can fish. The village mud-hole is the nearest
approach to the joys of a "watering-place" to which Chinese children can
ordinarily aspire. These excavations are the hole whence the material for
the village houses was originally dug. During the summer time these pits,
many of them as large as a dry-dock, are filled to the brim with dirty
water, and at such times they are sure to be surrounded by groups of
children clad in the costume of the garden of Eden, enjoying one of the
few luxuries of their mundane existence. When the boys are too large to
indulge in this amusement, there is much reason to fear that most of them
have taken their last bath, no matter to what age their lives may be
prolonged!
[Illustration: CHINESE PUNCH AND JUDY.]
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE STORY-TELLER.]
If he cannot fish, neither can the Chinese boy go a-hunting, for in the
most populous parts of the plains, of which so large a portion of the
empire is composed, there is nothing to hunt. A few small birds, and the
common hare, seem to constitute the objects most frequently shot, but
except in the case of the limited number of those who make a business of
securing such game to sell as a means of support, there are very few
persons who devote their energies to any form of hunting. Indeed, the
instinct which is said to lead the average Englishman to remark "It is a
fine day, let us go and kill something," is totally lacking in the
Chinese.
In those relatively limited parts of the empire where ice forms to a
sufficient thickness to bear the weight of human beings, one does see
considerable frolicking upon frozen rivers and ponds. But the propulsion
of the ice-sleds with passengers is a matter of business with those
boatmen who during the season of navigation have no other means of earning
a living. Chinese children do not take to them as our boys do to sleds,
and even if they wish to do so, their parents would never dream of
furnishing the children with such an ice-sled simply for amusement. To
earn one, as a boy at home earns a sled or a pair of skates, by doing
extra work, by picking up old iron, and other similar expedients, would be
for a Chinese lad an impossibility.
If the amusements of the Chinese lad are relatively scanty and
uninteresting, there is one feature of his life which is a fixed fact, and
upon which nothing is allowed to intrude. This is his work. The number of
Chinese children within any given area is literally incalculable, but it
may be safely laid down as a general truth, that by far the larger part
of these children are for the greater part of their time made to do some
useful work. There is scarcely any handicraft in which even the very
smallest children cannot be utilized, and it is for this reason in part
that hereditary occupations are so commonly the rule. The child bred up to
one mode of physical activity is fitted for that, if he is fitted for
nothing else. If he is the son of a farmer, there is a very small portion
of the year during which there is not some definite work for him to do, by
way of assisting in the cultivation of the land. This is no doubt true of
farming everywhere, but the unfailing industry of the Chinese and the
heavy pressure of the common poverty give to this fact an emphasis not so
strongly felt in other lands.
But even if the work on the land were all done, which is never the case
until the winter has actually set in, there are two occupations at which
the children may be set at any time, and at which more myriads of young
persons are probably employed, than in any other portion of the planet.
These two employments are gathering fuel and collecting manure. In a land
where the expense of transportation forbids the use of coal in places
distant even a few miles from the mouth of the pit, it is necessary to
depend upon what comes from the soil in any particular place, for fuel to
cook the food and furnish such warmth as can be got. Not a stalk, not a
twig, not a leaf is wasted. Even at the best, the products of a field ill
suffice in the item of fuel for the wants of those who own it. The Chinese
habit of constantly drinking hot water, which must be furnished afresh as
often as it cools and for each chance comer, consumes a vast amount of
fuel over and above what would be strictly required for the preparation of
food. The collection and storage of the fuel supply is an affair second in
importance only to the gathering of the crops. But in every village, a
considerable although varying proportion of the population is to be found
who own no land. These people pick up a precarious living as they can, by
working for others who have land, but their remuneration is slight, and
often wholly insufficient for the food supply of the many mouths
clamouring to be filled.
Farm labourers can be hired by the year in Shan-tung, for a sum equal to
not more than five dollars in gold, with food but no perquisites. If the
year has an intercalary month the labourer sometimes gets less than two
cents a day. When refugees from regions flooded by the Yellow River
abound, workmen can be obtained at merely nominal wages.
The writer has known an able-bodied boy engaged for a year for a sum equal
to about a dollar and a half (gold). In another case a lad was offered
about a dollar for a year's toil, and was required to find some one as
security that he would not abscond!
For the fuel wherewith to cook the exiguous supplies of this uncertain
food, the family is wholly dependent upon what the children can scratch
together. Any intermission of this labour is scarcely less a check upon
the means of existence, than the interruption of the work of the
bread-winner himself. In this dismal struggle for a basket full of leaves
and weeds, the children of China expend annually incomputable millenniums
of work.
In the midst of such a barren wilderness as constitutes the life of most
Chinese children, anything which breaks the dull monotony is welcomed with
keen joy. The feast-days, the annual or semiannual fairs held at some
neighbouring town, an occasional theatrical exhibition, the humbler Punch
and Judy performance, the peripatetic story-teller, the unfailing
succession of weddings and funerals, and most of all the half-month
holiday at New Year all serve as happy reliefs to the unceasing grind of
daily toil.
There is one incident in the life of the Chinese lad, which assumes in his
eyes some degree of importance, to which most Occidental boys are
strangers. This is the ceremony of donning the cap, in other words of
becoming a man and his marriage. The age at which this takes place is far
from being a fixed one, but is often in the vicinity of sixteen. The
customs observed vary widely, in some rural districts they frequently
consist in nothing more exciting than the playing by a band of music in
the evening before his marriage, and a visit on the part of the young man
to each house in the village where he makes his prostration, much as at
New Year, and is henceforth to be considered a full-grown man, and is
protected to some extent from snubs because he is "only a child."
The more conspicuous part of the affair, however, is the wedding. This
proceeding is based upon principles so radically different from those to
which we are accustomed, that it is generally hard for a Westerner to
become reconciled either to the Chinese theory or to the practice. To us,
marriage seems suitable for persons who have attained, not merely years of
puberty, but a certain maturity of development compatible with the new
relations which they now assume. We regard the man and wife as the basis
and centre of a new family, and there is ancient and adequate authority
for the doctrine that they should leave father and mother. In China it is
altogether otherwise. The boy and girl who are married are not a new
family, but the latest branch in a tall family tree, independent of which
they have no corporate existence.
It is by no means uncommon for boys to be married at the age of ten,
although this is regarded as a trifle premature. The physical,
intellectual, or moral development of the parties concerned has nothing
whatever to do with the matter of their marriage, which is an affair
controlled by wholly different considerations. Sometimes it is hastened
because an old grandmother is in feeble health and insists upon seeing the
main business of life done up before she is called away. Sometimes the
motive is to settle the division of a piece of property so that it shall
be impossible for the elder heirs to retreat from the settlement. Quite as
often the real motive for hastening the wedding is the felt need in the
boy's family of an additional servant, which need will be supplied by the
introduction of a new bride. It is for this reason that so many Chinese
women are older than their husbands. When they are betrothed, the bigger
they are the better, because they can do all the more work.
To a Chinese, there is no more sense of incongruity in marrying a little
slip of a boy, simply because he is young, and perhaps not more than half
the size of his bride, than there would be in playing checkers with
buttons, and then crowning the first button that happened to get to the
king-row. What signified whether the button is a small one or a large one,
since it has reached the last row, and has now a set of moves of its own,
a fact which must be recognized by doubling itself. It is not otherwise
with the Chinese boy. He is a double button, it is true, but he is nothing
but a button still, and a small one, and is only an insignificant part of
a wide and complicated game.
During the celebration of a Chinese wedding it does not strike the
spectator that the bridegroom is the centre of interest, and the bride is
so only for the time being, and in consequence of the curiosity which is
felt to see what sort of a bargain the family has made in getting her. The
young man is ordered out of the apartment where he has been kept in
ambush--according to the custom in some regions--like an ox for the
sacrifice. He is to fall upon his knees at a word of command, and kotow
with intermittent sequence to a great variety of persons, until his knees
are stiff and his legs lame. His eyes are fixed upon the ground, as if in
deepest humility, and the most awkward Chinese youth will perform the
details of this trying ordeal with a natural grace, with which the most
well-bred Occidental youth could scarcely hope to vie, and which he
assuredly could not hope to surpass.
When the complicated protracted ceremonies are all over, our young lad is,
it is true, a married man, but he is not the "head" of any family, not
even of his own. He is still under the same control of his father as
before, his bride is under the control of the mother-in-law, to a degree
which it is difficult for us to comprehend. If the youthful husband is
trying to learn to compose essays, his marriage does not at all interrupt
his educational enterprise and as soon as the ceremonies are over he goes
on just as before. If he is dull, and cannot make the "seven empty
particles"--the terror of the inexpert Chinese essayist--fit into his
laborious sentences to the satisfaction of his teacher, he is not unlikely
to be beaten over the head for his lack of critical acumen, and can then
go weeping home to have his wife stick a black gummy plaster over the area
of his chastisement. We have known a Chinese boy who had the dropsy in an
aggravated form but who could not be persuaded to take a single dose of
medicine that was at all bitter. If he was pressed to do so by his fond
mother, he either fell into a passion, or cried. If he was not allowed to
eat two whole watermelons at a time his tactics were the same, a domestic
scene either of violent temper, or of dismal howling grief. He was merely
prolonging into youth the plan universally adopted in the childhood of
Chinese children. Yet this sensitive infant of seventeen had been married
for several years, and leaves a widow to mourn the circumstance that
drugs, dropsy, and watermelons, have blighted her existence.
It is far from being an infrequent circumstance for boys who have been
married early, on occasion of some grievance, to run crying to their
mothers for comfort as they have been in the habit of doing, and to be met
with the chilling inquiry: "Why do you come to me? If you want anything,
go to _Her_!"
By a strange exception to the otherwise almost uniform prudishness of
Chinese practice, on the occasion of a wedding it is common--although by
no means universal--for guests to take the liberty of going into the
apartment set apart for the married pair, inspecting the bride as if she
were an animal just purchased at a market, openly expressing whatever
criticisms may occur. In this as in everything else customs differ
greatly, but the phrase "playing pranks in the bridal room" (_nao
tung-fang_) testifies to the frequency of the occurrence. In the year
1893, a native newspaper of Canton reported a case in which the bride was
actually killed in this way, by having cold water poured on her, the
perpetrators being fined $200 for "consolation money," and all the costs
of remarrying.
It is a postulate of Chinese ethics that no branch of any family should be
allowed to be without its living representative, in order that the
ancestral rites may be duly performed. As it constantly happens that there
are no sons, it becomes necessary to adopt those of other brothers, or
failing these the grandson of an uncle, or the great-grandson of a
granduncle. Sons thus adopted are on the same footing as if they were own
children, and cannot be displaced by such sons born later. The
universality of these adoptions often makes it difficult to ascertain with
precision the real relationship of a man to others of his family.
Sometimes he continues to call his real father by that title, and
sometimes he terms the uncle who has adopted him his "father" and his own
father "uncle." Again, he may be nominally adopted by an uncle, but
continue to live with his own parents as before. The adoption of relatives
is expressed by the general term "crossing over," (_kuo_) and it is a
sufficiently important feature of Chinese life to serve as the subject for
a treatise rather than for a paragraph. It enters into the warp and woof
of all Chinese family life, which cannot be comprehended without taking
into account the substratum upon which the universal practice rests. While
it is rooted in ancestral worship it is kept alive among even the poorest
classes in the social scale by their very poverty. If a man has no heir he
can be compelled to adopt some one of the numerous candidates who are
thirsting to enter into prospective possession of even a small holding.
But whoever is thus adopted becomes responsible for the funeral expenses
of the one who adopts him. Innumerable lawsuits arise out of these complex
conditions.
If there are no suitable persons for adoption among the family or clan of
the adopter, he is often obliged to content himself with the son of his
sisters, or even the grandchildren of his aunts. To our thought one
"nephew" is as good as another, but it is otherwise with a Chinese, to
whom the children of his sister (being of a different surname) are much
farther off than those of his brothers. Besides this, on occasion of the
death of the adopter, the position of a sister's son is liable to be very
insecure. Rather than take such an heir many Chinese will pick up a mere
stranger, but in this case he can be easily got rid of should he turn out
unsatisfactory. Outsiders thus adopted although they may be as filial and
in every way as satisfactory as an own son, never escape the stigma of
being only "picked up," and this taint lasts to distant generations. A man
told the writer that he was wholly without influence in the village where
he was born, since his grandfather had been adopted as a stranger.
There is still another method of securing a son which is far less common
than we should expect it to be. This is that of finding a suitable husband
for a daughter, and then adopting him as a son. By this means the parents
are enabled to have the services of an own daughter all their lives--a
rare privilege in China, and an adopted heir of this kind is certainly
much more closely bound to the family than any other of a different family
would be likely to be. But there are not many clans which do not have a
number of candidates available for an adoptive vacancy. It would be
necessary to conciliate whoever was entitled to adoption by dividing the
property with him, which, in the case of those with but small resources,
would be tantamount to perpetual pauperism. For this reason most cases of
"calling a son-in-law" occur in families where there are no sons of
brothers or cousins available.
As a rule every Chinese is as wide awake to opportunities for laying claim
to the property of some one else, as a cat apparently asleep is to seize
an injudiciously venturesome bird. The writer is acquainted with a man
who had adopted a son-in-law in legal form, but who at the funeral of his
own father was surprised to see a large band of strangers enter his
courtyard clad in mourning, and set up a simultaneous wail for their
"Uncle," "Grandfather," etc., according to the alleged relationship. Upon
inquiry he learned that they came from a village at some distance, and
bearing the same surname as the deceased had determined to claim kinship
with him in order to fall heirs to the property which consisted of but
little more than enough to support a moderate sized family. The result was
a lawsuit in which the pretenders being unable to produce any family
register to the purpose, were severely beaten by the District Magistrate
as a penalty for their presumption.
One is constantly surprised in China to hear that a Chinese whose name he
knows perfectly well, has taken an entirely different surname, so that Mr.
Wang Spring-Flowers suddenly appears as Mr. Ma Illustrious-Virtue. This is
called "reverting to the original name," and may be due to any one of a
great variety of causes. Even while these lines are being committed to
paper, a friend of the writer has called to mention the experiences
through which he has recently passed, a rA(C)sumA(C) of which may throw a little
light on the Chinese theory and practice of adoption. This man is the
second of four brothers, the eldest of whom was adopted into a somewhat
distant branch of the family, and has three sons. Number two has two sons,
the youngest of whom is adopted by number three, who has none of his own.
Number four died some time ago without a son. The funeral has never been
held, and the body has been encoffined awaiting a favourable time, that is
to say, a period of financial prosperity. Number four owed to a grain-shop
in which numbers two and three are interested, several hundred strings of
cash. To pay up this debt and to have a proper funeral, would require the
sale of all the forty acres of land, so that the right of adoption has not
seemed worth contesting. But of late a son of number one has set up a
claim to this inheritance, and it is this which has been in active
dispute for a period of twelve days. To adjust the matter, "peace-talkers"
have been summoned to the number of _thirty-eight_, many of them literary
graduates. There have been angry disputes between them and some of the
members of the family, and an actual fight. The "peace-talkers" were
reviled, and took revenge by beating the son of number one who was in
fault. This involved fresh complications, which had just been settled by a
final feast.
During the course of the intricate controversies the eight and thirty men
had by no means omitted to eat and drink (one of the leading functions of
"peace-talkers" and for the sake of which many quarrels are purposely
stirred up, and many more kept unsettled for long periods). They consumed
in all seventy catties of wine, and a hundred more of bread-cakes, and the
total cost to number two is about two hundred and thirty strings of cash,
one hundred of which are paid by number two to number one's family as
"consolation money." Yet in this whole matter the financial interest of
number two is absolutely nil!
Another of the many devices which the Chinese have chosen for perpetuating
a branch of the family which might otherwise become extinct, is to have a
single individual represent two branches. Thus suppose there are two
brothers only one of whom has a son, he may be married to two wives, one
for each branch. The establishment must be a double one, and he will
probably be obliged to divide his time equally between his partners, even
having to change all his clothing in going from one house to the other. It
is needless to remark that the jealousies thus provoked are such as would
destroy any home.
If there is very little sentiment connected with the introduction of a
daughter-in-law into a family, on the part of the husband's family at
least, there is often not much more on the occasion of her death. But this
is generally regretted, if for no other reason, on account of the trouble
and expense involved. Perhaps there is no single particular in which the
Orient and the Occident differ more widely than in the utter disregard of
Orientals for what we understand by privacy and for quiet. The lack of the
latter is indeed often vaguely felt, but as it is a blessing known only by
the imaginative faculty and never from experience, its absence has none of
the intolerable features which we should associate with it. The moment
that any Chinese is ill, the first step is to send in every direction to
notify all sorts and grades of relatives, many of whom will feel it their
stern duty to drop whatever they are doing, no matter what its importance,
to go, and "take a look." This inspection not infrequently extends for
days and sometimes for weeks, when the presence of the relative has not
the smallest relation to the care of the sick person, except as a
hinderance by adding to the throng that hover over the patient, each with
his endless questions as to how he feels _now_, and each with fertile
suggestions as to articles of food vying with one another in
preposterousness. Few of us would not welcome death as a relief from the
experiences incident to serious illness under Chinese conditions, but
under these conditions all Chinese are born, live, and die.
If a sick person is considered to be beyond the possibility of recovery,
the next step is to "put on the clothes," that is, those in which he is to
be buried, a process which involves pulling him about to an extent which
it is distressing to contemplate. In the case of old men there are
sometimes angry disputes about the property in the immediate presence of
death, and in that of wives--especially younger ones--if there is any
considerable property, it will not be strange if the house is visited by
relays of go-betweens intent upon proposing an eligible successor to the
one about to depart, so as to be certain to forestall other offers. These
negotiations may take place in the immediate presence of the dying woman,
perhaps two or more strangers striving at the same time to get a hearing
with their rival proposals!
The writer is acquainted with a family in which this took place, and one
of the offers was accepted, but the sick woman contrived not to die after
all! The agreement, however, was valid, and the prospectively stricken
husband thus found himself provided with _two lawful wives_, each of whom
subsequently bore him sons. Strange to say the family life is in this
instance a comparatively peaceful one. Should a wife die, it is often a
short time before the marriage of the next one takes place, an interval
regulated not by sentiment, but by the difficulty of raising funds. Soon
after the wedding may come the funeral of the predecessor.
In theory a Chinese lad becomes of age at sixteen, but as a practical
thing he is not his own master while any of the generation above him
within the five degrees of relationship remain on the mundane stage. To
what extent these relatives will carry their interference with his
affairs, will depend to a large extent upon their disposition, and to some
extent upon his own. In some households there is a great amount of
freedom, while in others life is a weariness and an incessant vexation
because Chinese social arrangements effectually thwart Nature's design in
giving each human being a separate personality, which in China is too
often simply merged in the common stock, leaving a man a free agent only
in name.
Taking it in an all around survey there is very little in the life of the
village boy to excite one's envy. As we have already seen, he generally
learns well two valuable lessons, and the thoroughness with which they are
mastered does much to atone for the great defects of his training in other
regards. He learns obedience and respect for authority, and he learns to
be industrious. In most cases, the latter quality is the condition of his
continued existence and those who refuse to submit to the inexorable law,
are disposed of by that law, to the great advantage of the survivors. But
of intellectual independence, he has not the faintest conception or even a
capacity of comprehension. He does as others do, and neither knows nor
can imagine any other way. If he is educated, his mind is like a subsoil
pipe, filled with all the drainage which has ever run through the ground.
A part of this drainage originally came, it is true, from the skies, but
it has been considerably altered in its constituents since that time; and
a much larger part is a wholly human secretion, painfully lacking in
chemical purity. In any case this is the content of his mind, and it is
all of its content.
If, on the other hand, the Chinese youth is uneducated, his mind is like
an open ditch, partly vacant, and partly full of whatever is flowing or
blowing over the surface. He is not indeed destitute of humility; in fact
he has a most depressing amount of it. He knows that he knows nothing,
that he never did, never shall, never can know anything, and also that it
makes very little difference what he knows. He has a blind respect for
learning, but no idea of gathering any crumbs thereof for himself. The
long, broad, black and hopeless shadow of practical Confucianism is over
him. It means a high degree of intellectual cultivation for the few, who
are necessarily narrow and often bigoted, and for the many it means a
lifetime of intellectual stagnation.
XXIII
CHINESE COUNTRY GIRLS AND WOMEN
The Chinese are as practical a people as ever had a national existence,
and we know of no reason to suppose that the Chinese ever had the least
doubt that a substantial equality of the sexes in point of numbers is a
condition of the continued propagation of the race. Certainly no race was
ever more careful to keep itself propagated, or has ever met with greater
success in the undertaking. Yet the Chinese are almost the only people
boasting an ancient and developed civilization who despise their own
daughters who are married into the families of others, and are by that
process lost to their own because according to ancient custom they can
offer no sacrifices for their parents when the latter are dead. It is for
this reason that the popular saying declares that the most ideally
excellent daughter (literally a daughter with the virtues of the eighteen
Lo-hans) is not equal to a splay-footed son. This sentiment is endorsed by
all Chinese consciously and unconsciously, in a manner to show that it is
interwoven with the very fibres of their being. Its ultimate root is the
same as that of so many other human opinions, pure selfishness.
The Chinese girl when she makes her first appearance in the world is very
likely to be unwelcome, though this is by no means invariably the case.
The ratio in which fortune-tellers allot happiness is generally about five
sons to two daughters. "Whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
With theories like those of the Chinese about the unavailability of
daughters for the performance of ancestral rites, and with the Chinese
nature as it is, it is not to be wondered at that the great pressure of
poverty leads to the crime of infanticide upon an enormous scale. For
aught that appears, this has always been the case. It is not that the
Chinese conscience does not recognize the murder of girl babies as wrong,
but that the temptation to such murder, especially the temptation to the
disappointed and often abused mother, is too strong to be resisted by any
motives which have the opportunity to act upon her.
Much has already been done by those who have had most opportunity to learn
the facts, toward exhibiting the real practice of the Chinese in the
matter of destroying female infants. Yet no more can be safely predicated
than that this is a crime which to some extent everywhere prevails, and in
some places to such a degree as seriously to affect the proportion of the
sexes. It seems to be most common in the maritime provinces of the
southern part of China, in some districts of which it is by the Chinese
themselves regarded as a terrible and a threatening evil. Native tract
societies publish books exhorting the people against the practice, and
magistrates occasionally issue proclamations forbidding it, but it is
evident that the nature of the offence is such that no laws can touch it,
and nothing short of the elevation of the mothers themselves to a far
higher point of view than they now occupy, can have any permanent effect
upon Chinese female infanticide.
Next to the destruction of the lives of female infants, the Chinese
practice most revolting to our Western ideas is the sale of their
daughters, at all periods from infancy up to a marriageable age. The
usages of different parts of the empire vary widely, but the sale of
girls, like infanticide, seems to flourish most in the maritime provinces
of the south, where it is conducted as openly as any other traffic. That
the parents are generally impelled to this extreme step simply by the
pressure of poverty we are quite ready to believe. Yet the knowledge that
the girl must be separated from her family at a later period, and that
this parting is irrevocable, must tend to reconcile many Chinese parents
to an anticipation, by a few years, of the inevitable. Of the miseries
which girls who have been thus sold are likely to endure, it is
unnecessary to speak in detail, but enough is known on the subject to lead
us to regard the practice with horror. If the parents do not feel able to
keep their daughter until she is old enough to be married, and yet do not
wish to sell her, Chinese custom has invented another expedient, which is
a compromise between the two. This is the well-known "rearing-marriage,"
by which the girl is made over to the family into which she is to be
married, and is by that family brought up, and married whenever their
convenience dictates. There are manifest and grave objections to this
practice, but there can be no doubt that it is far better than the custom
of child marriages, which lead to so much wretchedness in India. In some
instances the relations with the family of the girl are wholly broken off,
when she is taken for a "rearing-marriage," and in all cases it is
regarded as a confession of poverty and weakness, which places the girl's
family at much more than their usual disadvantage, at best sufficiently
great. When a girl is brought up in the family the son of which is to
become her future husband, it is of course wholly out of the question that
the parties should not have the fullest opportunities to become acquainted
with each other's disposition, however they may be forbidden by usage to
speak to one another. There is and can be very little sentiment about
Chinese matches, but anything which tends to make the parties to one of
these matches better able to adapt themselves to the inevitable friction
of after life, cannot fail to have its advantages. Whether the parties to
a "rearing-marriage" are or are not on the whole happier than those
married in the ordinary way, is a question which no Chinese would be
likely to ask, for the reason that he has no associations connecting
marriage with happiness, but rather the reverse, and if the question is
proposed by a foreigner, he is not likely to be made much the wiser by the
replies which he receives.
The practice of binding the feet of Chinese girls is familiar to all who
have the smallest knowledge of China, and requires but the barest mention.
It is almost universal throughout China, yet with some conspicuous
exceptions, as among the Hakkas of the south, an exception for which it is
not easy to account. The custom forcibly illustrates some of the innate
traits of Chinese character, especially the readiness to endure great and
prolonged suffering in attaining to a standard, merely for the sake of
appearances. There is no other non-religious custom peculiar to the
Chinese which is so utterly opposed to the natural instincts of mankind,
and yet which is at the same time so dear to the Chinese, and which would
be given up with more reluctance.
It is well known that the greatest emperor who ever sat upon the throne of
China dared not risk his authority in an attempt to put down this custom,
although his father had successfully imposed upon the Chinese race the
wearing of the queue as a badge of subjection. A quarter of a millennium
of Tartar rule seems to have done absolutely nothing toward modifying the
practice of foot-binding in favour of the more rational one of the
governing race, except to a limited extent in the capital itself. But a
few _li_ away from Peking, the old habits hold their iron sway. The only
impulse toward reform of this useless and cruel custom originated with
foreigners in China, and was long in making itself felt, which it is now,
especially in the central part of the empire, beginning to be.
The observations which may be made with regard to the industry of Chinese
boys, are equally applicable--_mutatis mutandis_--to Chinese girls. In all
lands and in all climes, "woman's work is never done," and this is most
especially true of China, where machinery has not yet expelled the
primitive processes of what is literally manufacture, or work by the hand.
The care of silk-worms, and the picking, spinning, and weaving of cotton,
are largely the labour of women, to which the girls are introduced at a
very early age. The sewing for a Chinese family is a serious matter,
especially as the number of families who can afford to hire help in this
line is a very trifling proportion. But aside from this employment, in
which a Chinese girl who expects to be acceptable to the family of her
mother-in-law must be expert, girls can also be made useful in almost any
line of home work to which the father may be devoted. In the country
districts all over the empire, boys and girls alike are sent out to
scratch together as much fuel as possible, for the preparation of the
food, and this continues in the case of the girls until they are too large
to go to any distance from home. It is not an unmeaning appellation, which
is given to girls generally, that of _ya-t'ou_, or "slave-girl," used just
as we should say "daughter." To a foreigner, this sounds much like the
term "nigger" applied to black men, but to the Chinese there is a fitness
in the designation, which they refuse to surrender.
With the exception of such limited raids as she may have been able to make
in early childhood, and occasional visits to relatives, most Chinese girls
never go anywhere to speak of, and live what is literally the existence of
a frog in a well.[2] Tens of thousands of them have never been two miles
away from the village in which they happened to be born, with the
occasional exception of the visit to the mother's family just mentioned,
where they are not improbably regarded as terrible beings who cannot be
exterminated, but who are to be as much as possible repressed. If the
nieces on the mother's side are numerous, as is often the case, there is
some reason for dread of the visits, on the part of the bread-winners, for
no Chinese mother can be dissociated from her flock of children, whose
appetites are invariably several horse-power strong, and who, like
their elders, are all excessively fond of enjoying the pleasure of eating
at some one else's expense.
[Illustration: WOMEN PREPARING FOOD.]
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE FEAST.]
It is when the married daughters of a large family have all returned to
their parents to spend a few days or weeks, that the most dramatic scenes
of childhood occur. Self-control and unselfishness have not been a feature
in the culture of any one of the numerous cousins thus brought together in
a cluster which frequently resembles those on the inside of a beehive.
Each of the young generation has the keenest instinct for getting as much
of the best of what is to be had as any one else, and if possible more.
This leads to occasional "scenes of confusion, and creature complaints,"
in which each small participant publishes his or her version of the
particular squabble in piercing tones, which soon summon the whole
establishment to the scene of action. Judicious parents would punish the
children all round for their complicity in such a quarrel, which is most
often based upon alleged or supposed inequalities in distribution of food.
But Chinese parents are seldom judicious, and the most that can be
expected is that the mother will call off her child or children, and
"yell" it, or them. "Yelling" a person is the act of proclaiming in a loud
and piercing voice the disapprobation on the part of the "yeller" of the
conduct of the "yellee," often accompanied by reviling language, and
frequently also with promises to "beat" and "kill" the said "yellee" in
the event of further provocation. These remarks are interpreted by the
"yellee" as a hint to stop, a feat which is at length accomplished after a
period of more or less spasmodic and convulsive recrimination.
But if, as often happens, each of the mothers feels called upon from a
high sense of duty to take a firm stand for the rights of her offspring,
the case becomes much more serious. Each of the mothers will then scream
simultaneously, to the accompaniment of the wails, yells, and reviling of
the whole half-dozen or more of her posterity, while above the general
clamour may be distinctly caught the shrill shrieks of the grandmother,
whose views, whatever difficulty they may have in getting themselves
heard, must eventually prevail when peace once more reigns in the domestic
teapot. After one of these family cyclones, the atmosphere gradually
becomes cleared again, and things go on as before; but we have known a
particularly spirited married daughter, who exhibited her dissatisfaction
with the terms of settlement of a dispute of this sort by refusing to
speak to her sisters for some days together.
With the humdrum routine of her life at home, the occasional visits to
relatives, and now and then a large fair or a theatrical exhibition, the
Chinese girl grows to be what we should call a "young schoolgirl," by
which time all her friends begin to be very uneasy about her. This
uneasiness, we need scarcely remark, has not the smallest connection with
her intellectual nature, which, so far as any culture which it receives is
concerned, might as well be non-existent. Unless her father happens to be
a schoolmaster, and at home with nothing to do, he never thinks of
teaching his daughter to read. Even in the case of boys, this would be
exceptional and irregular, but in the case of girls it is felt to be
preposterous. And why? asks the incredulous foreigner. It will take the
average Chinese a long time to explain the nature of his objection, and
when he does so he will not have stated the whole of the case, nor have
gone to the root of the matter. The real difficulty is that to educate a
girl is like weeding the field of some other man. It is like putting a
gold chain around the neck of some one else's puppy, which may at any
moment be whistled off, and then what will have become of the chain? It is
a proverbially mean man in China, who, when marrying his daughter, wants
to be paid for the food he has wasted upon her up to the date of marriage.
But the expression illustrates clearly one of the underlying assumptions
of Chinese society, that it is the body of the girl for which the parents
are responsible, and not the mind. To almost any Chinese it would probably
appear a self-evident proposition that to spend time, strength, and much
more money in educating the daughter-in-law of some one else is a sheer
waste. But, you say to him, she is your daughter. "Not after she is
married," he replies; "she is theirs, let them educate her themselves if
they want her educated." "Why should I teach her how to read, write and
reckon, when it will never do me any good?" With which utilitarian
inquiry, the education of most Chinese girls has been banished from human
thought for the space of some millenniums.
The anxiety which all her friends begin to feel about a Chinese girl, as
soon as she attains any considerable size, is exhibited in the inquiries
which are made about her whenever she happens to be spoken of. These
inquiries do not concern her character or her domestic accomplishments,
much less her intellectual capacity--of which she has, theoretically, none
to speak of--but they may all be summed up in the single phrase, "Is she
said?" meaning by the term "said" "betrothed." If the reply should be in
the negative, the intelligence is received in much the same way as we
should receive the information that a foreign child had been allowed to
grow to the age of sixteen without having been taught anything whatever
out of books. "Why?" we should say, "what is the explanation age of this
strange neglect?" The instinctive feeling of a Chinese in regard to a girl
is that she should be betrothed as soon as possible. This is one of the
many points in regard to which it is almost impossible for the Chinese and
the Anglo-Saxon to come to terms. To the latter the betrothal of a mere
child, scarcely in her teens, is a piece of absolute barbarity.
As soon as a Chinese girl is once betrothed, she is placed in different
relations to the universe generally. She is no longer allowed such freedom
as hitherto, although that may have been little enough. She cannot go
anywhere, because it would be "inconvenient." She might be seen by some
member of the family into which she is to marry, than which it is hardly
possible to think of anything more horrible. "Why?" the irrepressible
Occidental inquires; and is quenched by the information that "it would not
be proper."
The imminent risk that the girl might in some unguarded moment be actually
_seen_ by the family of the future mother-in-law is a reason why so few
engagements for girls are made in the town in which the girl lives, an
arrangement which would seem to be for the convenience of all parties in a
great variety of ways. It would put a stop to the constant deceptions
practiced by the middle-women, or professional match-makers, whose only
object is to carry through whatever match has been proposed, in order to
reap the percentage which will accrue to the agent. It would do away with
the waste of time and money involved in transporting brides from one of
their homes to the other, often at great inconvenience and loss. It would
make the interchange of little courtesies between the families easy and
frequent. But for all these advantages the Chinese do not seem to care,
and the most frequent explanation of the neglect of them is that there
would be the risk already mentioned. When these two families are such as
would in the ordinary course of events be likely to meet, nothing is more
amusing to a foreigner than to watch the struggles which are made to avert
such a catastrophe. One is reminded of some of our childhood's games, in
which one party is "poison" and the other party is liable to be "poisoned"
and must at all hazards keep out of the way. The only difference between
the cases is that in the Chinese game, _each party_ is afraid of being
"poisoned," and will struggle to prevent it. There is one set of
circumstances, however, in which, despite their utmost efforts, Fate is
too much both for the poisoners and the poisoned. If during the betrothal
a death of an older person takes place in the family of the mother-in-law,
it is generally thought necessary that the girl (who is considered as
already "belonging" to that family) should be present and should perform
the same reverence to the coffin of the deceased as if she had been
already married. She is (theoretically) their daughter; why should she
not come and lament like the rest?[3] If it is possible to arrange it,
however, the marriage will be hastened, in the event of a death of a
person belonging to an older generation, even if a later date had been
previously set.
To a foreigner, the Chinese habit of early engagements appears to have no
single redeeming feature. It hampers both families with no apparent
corresponding advantages, if indeed there are advantages of any kind. It
assumes, what is far from certain, and often not at all likely, that the
relative position of the two families will continue to be the same. This
assumption is contradicted by universal experience. Time and change happen
to all, and the insecurity of human affairs is nowhere more manifest than
in the tenure of Chinese property. Families are going up and coming down
all the time. It is a well-settled principle in China that matches should
be between those who are in the same general circumstances. Disregard of
this rule is sure to bring trouble. But if early betrothals are the
practice, the chances of material alteration in the condition of each of
the families are greatly increased. When he is engaged, the character of
the boy, upon which so much of a bride's happiness is to depend, has not
perhaps been formed. Even if it has been formed, it is generally next to
impossible for the girl's family to learn anything authentic as to what
the character is, though to all appearance it would be so easy for them to
ascertain by latent methods. But as a rule, it would appear that they do
not concern themselves much about the matter after the engagement is
proposed and accepted, and at no time do they give it a hundredth part of
the investigation which it seems to us to warrant. If the boy becomes a
gambler, a profligate, or dissipated in any other way, there is no
retreat for the family of the girl, no matter to what extremities they may
be driven. Chinese violation of the most ordinary rules of prudence and
common sense in the matter of the betrothal of their daughters is, to a
Westerner, previous to experience and observation, almost incredible.
A Chinese marriage engagement begins when the red cards have been
interchanged, ratifying the agreement. These are in some districts
formidable documents, almost as large as a crib-blanket, and are very
important as evidence in case of future trouble. It is very rare to hear
of the breaking of a marriage engagement in China, though such instances
do doubtless occur. In a case of this sort the card of the boy's family
had been delivered to the other family, at which point the transaction is
considered to be definitely closed. But an uncle of the betrothed girl,
although younger than the father of the girl, created a disturbance and
refused to allow the engagement to stand. This made the matter very
serious, but as the younger brother was inflexible, there was no help for
it but to send the red acceptance card back by the middleman who brought
it. This also was a delicate matter, but a Chinese is seldom at a loss for
expedients when a disagreeable thing must be done. He selected a time when
all the male members of the boy's family were in the wheatfield, and then
threw the card declining the match into the yard of the family of the boy,
and went his way. None of the women of the family could read, and it was
not until the men returned that it was discovered what the document was.
The result was a lawsuit of portentous proportions, in which an accusation
was brought against both the father of the girl and against the middleman.
This case was finally adjusted by a money payment.
The delivery of the red cards is, as we have remarked, the beginning of
the engagement, the culmination being the arrival of the bride in her
chair at the home of her husband. The date of this event is generally
dependent upon the pleasure of the boy's family. Whatever accessories the
wedding may have, the arrival of the bride is the _de facto_ completion
of the contract. This becomes evident in the case of second marriages,
where there is often, and even proverbially, no ceremony of any sort which
must be observed. The Chinese imperial calendar designates the days which
are the most felicitous for weddings, and it constantly happens that on
these particular days there will be what the Chinese term "red
festivities" in almost every village. This is one of the many instances in
which Chinese superstitions are financially expensive. On "lucky days" the
hire of sedan-chairs rises with the great demand, while those who
disregard luck are able to get better service at a lower price. There is a
tradition of a winter in the early part of this century when on a
"fortunate day" many brides were being carried to their new homes during
the progress of a tremendous snowstorm which blinded the bearers and
obliterated the roads. Some of the brides were frozen to death, and many
were taken to the wrong places. On the other hand in a blistering summer,
cases have been known where the bride was found to be dead when the chair
was deposited at the husband's home. The same bridal sedan-chair may be
used many times. In regions where it is the custom to have all weddings in
the forenoon, second marriages are put off until the afternoon, or even
postponed until the evening, marking their minor importance.
That the only _essential_ feature of a Chinese wedding is the delivery of
the bride at her husband's home, is strikingly shown in those not very
uncommon instances in which a Chinese is married without himself being
present at all. It is usually considered a very ill omen to change the
date set for a wedding, especially to postpone it. Yet it sometimes
happens that the young man is at a distance from home, and fails to return
in time. Or the bridegroom may be a scholar, and find that the date of an
important examination coincides with the day set for his wedding. In such
a case he will probably choose "business before pleasure" and the bride
will be "taken delivery of" by older members of his family, without
disturbing his own literary ambitions.
Of the details of Chinese weddings we do not intend to speak. There are
wide variations of usage in almost all particulars, though the general
plan is doubtless much the same. The variations appertain, not to the
ceremonies of the wedding alone, but to all the proceedings from beginning
to end. It is supposed that the explanation of the singular and sometimes
apparently unaccountable variation in these and other usages, found all
over China, may be due to the persistent survival of customs which have
been handed down from the time of the Divided Kingdoms. But very
considerable differences in usage are to be met with in regions not far
apart, and which were never a part of different kingdoms. The saying runs,
"Customs vary every ten _li_," which seems at times to be a literal truth.
In the south of China, as we have already remarked, the transfer of money,
at the engagement of a daughter, from the parents of the boy to those of
the girl, assumes for all practical purposes the aspect of a purchase,
which, pure and simple, it often is. But in other parts of China we never
hear of such a transaction, but only of a dowry from the bride's family,
much in the manner of Western lands at times. Vast sums are undoubtedly
squandered by the very wealthy Chinese at the weddings of their daughters,
and it is a common adage that to such expenditures there is no limit. But
in weddings in the ordinary walks of life, to which all but a small
fraction of the people belong, the impression which will be made upon the
observant foreigner will generally be that there is a great amount of
shabby gentility, a thin veneer of display beneath which it is easy to see
the real texture.
In this as in everything relating to Chinese usages it is impossible to
make general statements which shall at the same time be accurate. There
are regions in northern China where the money exacted from the family of
the future bridegroom is so considerable, that what remains after the
real bridal outfit has been purchased is a positive source of profit to
the father. There are also other districts where local custom requires the
bridegroom's family to give very little or even nothing at all for dowry,
but exacts heavily from the bride's family. There must be a large supply
of clothing, and bedding; even when at her own home the young married
woman must sew for her husband's family, and the one which furnishes the
bride is subject to a constant series of petty exactions.
The bridal chair is often itself a fit emblem of a Chinese wedding. Looked
at from a distance, it appears to be of the most gorgeous description, but
on a nearer view it is frequently perceived to be a most unattractive
framework covered with a gaudy set of trappings sometimes much worn and
evidently the worse for wear. In some cases there is a double framework,
the outer of which can be lifted entirely off, being too clumsy to be got
into a courtyard. The inner chair can be carried through the narrow doors
of any Chinese yard, or, if required, into the house itself.
The bride is no sooner out of the chair than the process of dismantling
the bridal chair begins, in the immediate sight of all the guests, and as
a matter of course. The Chinese is not a victim of sentiment, and he fails
to see anything incongruous in these proceedings. It not infrequently
happens that the resplendent garment worn by the bride is hired for the
occasion, a fact of which the guests present are not likely to be
ignorant. We once saw a garment of this sort which the bride had just
taken off, delivered to the headman in charge of the bridal chair and of
the accompanying paraphernalia. Upon examining it to make sure that it was
in as good condition as when it was hired, this man found, or professed to
find, a grease-spot upon it, which not only attracted his attention but
excited his wrath. He began to talk in loud and excited tones, waxing more
and more furious until the guests were all called away from their other
occupations to listen to the dispute. Yet the foreign spectator was
probably the only person present to whom it occurred that this was an
untimely and unseemly proceeding, out of harmony with the time and the
circumstances.
The arrival of a first baby is, in the life of a Chinese wife, a very
different event from the like occurrence in the life of a wife in
Occidental lands. If the child is a boy, the joy of the whole household is
of course great, but if on the contrary it is a girl, the depression of
the spirits of the entire establishment is equally marked. In such a case,
the young wife is often treated with coldness, and not infrequently with
harshness, even if, as sometimes happens, she is not actually beaten for
her lack of discretion in not producing a son. If she has had several
daughters in succession, especially if she has borne no son or none which
has lived, her life cannot be a pleasant one.
There is a story of a certain noble English lord, who had more daughters
than any other member of the aristocracy. When on the Continent
travelling, he walked out one day with six of his daughters. Some one who
saw him, remarked to a companion, "Poor man." The noble lord overheard the
observation, and turning to the person who made it, replied, "Not so
'poor' as you think; I have six more at home!" It is questionable whether
any Chinese could be found who would not sympathize with the comment of
the bystander, or who would agree with the reply of the father. Indeed, we
have serious doubts whether, among all the innumerable myriads of this
race, there ever lived a Chinese who had twelve daughters living at once.
It is one of the postulates of Chinese propriety that however much a wife
may continue to visit at the maternal home, (and on this point the usages
in some regions are very liberal), her children must all be born at their
father's house. This is a rule of such unbending rigour that a breach of
it is considered a deep disgrace, and in the effort to avoid it women will
sometimes submit to extreme inconveniences, and run the most serious
risks, not infrequently, it is said, meeting in consequence with painful
and humiliating accidents. To the Occidental question as to the reason for
this powerful prejudice against a confinement at a mother's home, the
Chinese are able to give no better reply than an affirmation that, if such
an event should happen, the mother's family may be expected to become very
poor. This superstition is so strong that in some localities, if such an
event has happened, it is customary for the family of the husband to
harness a team to a plough, and, proceeding to the home of the girl's
parents, plough up their courtyard. The son-in-law must also cook a kettle
full of millet or rice for his mother-in-law, by which means the dire
extremity of poverty may be avoided. Perhaps, after all, the idea at the
bottom of these singular performances is merely the thoroughly Chinese one
that, if a married daughter and her children are to come upon her mother's
family for their support, poverty will be the certain result, a view which
has in it some reason.
A description of the ceremonious superstitions common among the Chinese on
occasion of the birth of a child, especially of a son, and most especially
of a firstborn son, would fill a volume. These are far more rigorously
observed in the southern part of the empire than at the north, and more in
cities than in the country village, where many of these customs may be
wholly unknown.
There is the highest Chinese classical authority for the proposition that
if a mother is really anxious to do the best that she can for her infant,
although she may not succeed perfectly, she will not come far short of
success. There is equally trustworthy Occidental medical authority for the
statement that, as applied to Chinese women, this proposition is a gross
error. Undoubtedly superstition directly or indirectly destroys the lives
of many Chinese children. But this cause, which is complex in its
operations, is probably much less efficient for evil than the utter lack,
on the part of the parents, of the instinct of conformity to the most
obvious of Nature's laws.
The newborn infant is laid upon the k'ang where it is sometimes warmly
covered, and sometimes exposed to excessive changes of temperature. Many
children continue to nurse at the breast for a series of years, and
whenever they cry this is the sole method of effectually quieting them,
even though they be thus fed an hundred times a day. When the baby is
large enough to eat miscellaneous food, there is almost no restraint
either upon the kind or the quantity. He is allowed to swallow unripe
fruits and melons to almost any extent, and raw sweet-potatoes or turnips
are gnawed on by very small infants in arms.
When children are able to run about they are likely to be constantly
nibbling at something, often sucking their father's tobacco pipe,
sometimes producing serious weakening of the system and atrophy. In Shan
hsi mere babies learn to smoke opium, which thus becomes at once a natural
and an invincible appetite.
Taking into account the conditions of their early life, it is by no means
improbable that more than half the whole number of Chinese infants die
before they are two years old. This result is greatly promoted by many of
those superstitions which sometimes have more than the force of law. Thus
in some regions there is an absolute interdict on seeing either mother or
child until forty days shall have elapsed from its birth. During this
critical period myriads of young lives disappear almost without the
knowledge of near neighbours. Similar bans are laid upon the period of
some of the most common and most fatal of infantile diseases, such as
measles, diphtheria, and smallpox, the mortality frequently attending
which is enormous.
Multitudes of Chinese children die in fits, the causes of which are
sufficiently obvious to foreigners who see the carelessness with which
Chinese children are handled. We have known a Chinese mother, in a moment
of dissatisfaction, to throw her young and naked infant out of doors into
a snowbank. Another cut off one of her baby's fingers with a pair of dull
shears, to save it from fits, and was rewarded by seeing it die in
convulsions. Such a practice is said to be not uncommon. "Who would have
supposed that it would have done so?" her mother remarked to a foreigner.
But even if the young mother were endowed with the best of judgment, it
would still be impossible for her to secure proper care for her children,
for the reason that she is herself only a "child"[4] and in her management
of her children, as in other affairs, is wholly subject to the dictation
of her mother-in-law, as well as to the caprices of a platoon of aunts,
grandmothers, etc., with whom nearly all Chinese courtyards swarm.
The severe labour entailed upon Chinese women in the drudgery of caring
for large families, assisting in gathering the crops, and other outside
toils, and the great drafts made upon their physical vitality by bearing
and nursing so many children, amply suffice to account for the nearly
universally observed fact that these women grow old rapidly. A Chinese
bride, handsome at the age of eighteen, will be faded at thirty, and at
fifty wrinkled and ugly.
It has been already remarked that the life of the Chinese village woman is
an apt illustration of the inherent impossibility that woman's work should
ever be _done_. Before her own children have ceased to be a constant care
by day and by night, grandchildren have not improbably made their
appearance, giving the grandmother little peace or rest. The mere
preparation of the food for so many in the single kettle which must serve
for everything, is a heavy task incessantly repeated. All articles of
apparel, including shoes, are literally manufactured or done by hand, and
so likewise is the supply of bedding or wadded quilts which like the
wadded garments must be ripped open from time to time, cleaned and
renewed.
Women and girls take their share of watching the orchards and the melon
patches, etc., by day, and sometimes by night as well. When the wheat
harvest comes on, all the available women of the family are helping to
gather it, and in the autumn harvest likewise every threshing-floor
abounds with them, and their countless children. In cotton growing
districts the women and girls are busy a large part of the time in the
fields, and often earn the only pin-money which they ever see by picking
cotton for others.
The preparation of this indispensable staple for use occupies the hands of
millions of Chinese women, from its collection in the field--a most
laborious work since the plant grows so low--to its appearance as
garments, and its final disappearance as flat padding to be used in
shoe-soles. The ginning, the "scutching" or separation of fibres, the
spinning, the cording, the winding and starching, and especially the
weaving are all hard and tiresome work, and that too without end in sight
while life lasts. In some regions every family owns a loom (one of the
clumsy machines exiled from the West a century ago) and it is not uncommon
for the members of a family to take turns, the husband weaving until
midnight, when the wife takes up the task till daylight, (often in cellars
two-thirds underground, damp, unventilated, and unwholesome). Even so it
is frequently difficult to keep the wolf away from the door. Within the
past few years the competition of machine twisted cotton yarns is severely
felt in the cotton regions of China, and many who just managed to exist in
former days are now perpetually on the edge of starvation. This is the
"seamy side" of "progress."
The fact that Chinese girls are married so young, and that they have not
been taught those lessons of self-control which it is so important for
them to learn, suffices to demonstrate the absolute necessity for the
existence of the Chinese mother-in-law as an element in the family. A
Chinese married woman must address her mother-in-law as "mother," but for
precision is allowed to refer to her as "mother-in-law mother." A Chinese
woman calling on a foreign lady asked the latter (in the presence of her
husband) about her family in the homeland. The lady mentioned that she had
"a mother-in-law," upon which the Chinese woman in an awed whisper
pointing to the foreign gentleman, inquired: "_Won't he beat you for
saying that?_"
A great deal is heard of the tyranny and cruelty of these mothers-in-law,
and there is a firm basis of fact for all that is so often said upon that
point. But it must at the same time be borne in mind that without her the
Chinese family would go to utter ruin. The father-in-law is not only
unfitted to take the control which belongs to his wife, even were he at
home all the time which would seldom be the case, but propriety forbids
him to do any such thing, even were he able. In families where a
mother-in-law is lacking, there are not unlikely to be much greater evils
than the worst mother-in-law. Abuse of the daughter-in-law is so common a
circumstance, that unless it be especially flagrant, it attracts very
little attention.
It would be wholly incorrect to represent this as the normal or the
inevitable condition to which Chinese brides are reduced, but it is not
too much to affirm that no bride has any adequate security against such
abuse. It assumes all varieties of forms, from incessant scolding up to
the most cruel treatment. If it is carried to an extreme pitch, the
mother's family will interfere, not legally, for that they cannot do, but
by brute force. In a typical case of this sort, where the daughter-in-law
had been repeatedly and shamefully abused by the family of her husband,
which had been remonstrated with in vain by the family of the girl, the
latter family mustered a large force, went to the house of the
mother-in-law, destroyed the furniture, beat the other family severely,
and dragged the old mother-in-law out into the street, where she was left
screaming with what strength remained to her, and covered with blood, in
which condition she was seen by foreigners. These proceedings are
designed as a practical protest against tyranny and an intimation that
sauce for a young goose may be in like manner sauce for an older one also.
One would suppose that the only outcome of such a disturbance as this
would be a long and bitter lawsuit, wasting the property of each of the
parties, and perhaps reducing them to ruin. But with that eminent
practicality which characterizes the Chinese, the girl was carried off to
the home of her parents, "peace-talkers" intervened, and the girl was
returned to her husband's home upon the promise of better treatment. This
would probably be secured, just in proportion to the ability of the girl's
family to enforce it.
In another case reported to the writer, similar in its nature to the one
just mentioned, the girl was sent to her husband, after "peace-talkers"
had adjusted the affair, and was locked up by the mother-in-law in a small
room with only one meal a day. Within a year she had hanged herself.
It is not the ignorant and the uneducated only who thus take the law into
their own hands on behalf of injured daughters. We have heard of a case in
which the father of the girl who drowned herself was a literary graduate.
He raised a band of men, went to the home of his son-in-law, and pulled
down the gate-house to the premises, and some of the buildings. In the
resulting lawsuit he was severely reproved by the District Magistrate, who
told him that he had no right to assume to avenge his own wrongs, and that
he was only saved from a beating in court by his literary degree.
A still more striking example was offered by an official of the third
rank, whose daughter's wrongs moved him to raise an armed band and make an
attack upon the house of the son-in-law. This proved to be strong and not
easily taken, upon which the angry Tao-t'ai contented himself with
reviling the whole family at the top of his voice, exactly as a coolie
would have done. Wrongs which can only be met with such acts as this, on
the part of those who are the most conservative members of Chinese
society, must be very real and very grievous. In the very numerous cases
in which a daughter-in-law is driven to suicide by the treatment which she
receives, the subsequent proceedings will depend mainly upon the number
and standing of her relatives. The first thing is to notify the family of
the deceased that she has died, for without their presence the funeral
cannot take place, or if it should take place the body would have to be
exhumed, to satisfy her friends that the death was a natural one, and not
due to violence, which is always likely to be suspected. A Chinese in the
employ of the writer, was summoned one day to see his married daughter in
another village, who was said to be "not very well." When the father
arrived, he found her hanging by her girdle to a beam!
In cases of this sort, a lawsuit is exceptional. There are several
powerful considerations which act as deterrents from such a step as
sending in an accusation. It is almost always next to impossible to prove
the case of the girl's family, for the reason that the opposite party can
always so represent the matter as to throw the blame on the girl. In one
such instance, the husband brought into court a very small woman's shoe,
explaining that he had scolded his wife for wearing so small a one, which
unfitted her for work. He alleged that she then reviled him, for which he
struck her (of which there were marks), whereupon she drowned herself. To
a defence like this, it is impossible for the girl's family to make any
reply whatever. The accusation is not brought against the husband, but
against the father-in-law, for practically the law does not interfere
between husband and wife. It is only necessary for the husband to admit
the fact of having beaten his wife, alleging as a reason that she was
"unfilial" to his parents, to screen himself completely. We have heard of
a suit where in reply to a claim of this sort, the brother of the girl
testified that she had been beaten previous to the alleged "unfilial"
conduct. This seemed to make the magistrate angry, and he ordered the
brother to receive several hundred blows for his testimony, and decided
that the husband's family should only be required to provide a cheap
willow-wood coffin for the deceased.
Another even more efficient cause deterring from such lawsuits, is the
necessity of holding an inquest over the girl's body. This is conducted
with the utmost publicity, upon the Oriental plan of letting the public
see how the matter really stands. A threshing floor is turned into an
official arena, a set of mat-sheds are put up, and the whole village soon
swarms with yamAȘn-runners. The corpse of the deceased is laid uncovered on
a mat exposed to the sight of every one, before and during the inquest. In
order to avoid the shame of such exposure, and the great expense, the most
bitter enemies are often willing enough to put the matter in the hands of
"peace-talkers." These represent the village of each of the principals,
and they meet to agree upon the terms of settlement. These terms will
depend altogether upon the wealth or otherwise of the family of the
mother-in-law. If this family is a rich one, the opposite party always
insist upon bleeding it to the utmost practicable extent. Every detail of
the funeral is arranged to be as expensive to the family as possible.
There must be a cypress-wood coffin, of a specified size and thickness, a
certain variety of funeral clothes, often far in excess of what the coffin
could by any possibility contain, and some of them made perhaps of silk or
satin. A definite amount is required to be spent in hiring Buddhist or
Taoist priests, or both, to read masses at the funeral. It is considered
disgraceful to compound with the family of the mother-in-law, by receiving
a money payment, instead of exacting all this funeral show, but doubtless
such compositions are sometimes made. As a business arrangement merely, it
is evidently more to the interest of all parties to pay the girl's
relatives say two hundred strings of cash, rather than to expend a
thousand strings on a funeral which can do no one any good. But Chinese
sensitiveness to public sentiment is so extreme, that such settlements for
a mere transfer of cash must be comparatively rare.
The wedding outfit of a bride is often very extensive, but in case of her
suicide none of it goes back to her family. We have heard from
eyewitnesses of many cases in which huge piles of clothing which had been
required for the funeral of such a suicide from the family of the
mother-in-law, have been burnt in a vast heap at the grave. We know of one
instance in which all the wedding outfit, which had been a large one,
wardrobes, tables, mirrors, ornaments, etc., was taken out upon the street
and destroyed in the presence of the girl's family. The motive to this is
of course revenge, but the ultimate effect of such proceedings is to act
as an imperfect check upon the behaviour of the mother-in-law and her
family toward the daughter-in-law, for whom while she lives the laws of
the land have no protection.
When the funeral actually takes place, under conditions such as we have
described, there is great danger that despite the exertions of the
"peace-talkers" from both sides, the dispute may break out anew. At sight
of the girl's livid face, the result of death by strangulation, it will
not be strange if, excited by the spectacle, her family cry out "Let her
be avenged! Let her be avenged!" To keep the women of the girl's family
quiet at such a time, is beyond the power of any collection of
"peace-talkers," however numerous and respectable. If the respective
parties are restrained from mutual reviling and from a fight, the funeral
is regarded as a successful one. The girl's family complain of everything,
the coffin, the clothing, the ornaments for the corpse, and all the
appointments generally. But they are soothed by the comforting reminder
that the dead are dead, and cannot be brought to life, and also that the
resources of the family of the mother-in-law have been utterly exhausted,
the last acre of land mortgaged to raise money for the funeral, and that
they are loaded besides with a millstone of debt.
It is an ancient observation that one-half the world does not know how the
other half lives. It is quite possible to dwell among the Chinese for a
long time without becoming practically acquainted with their modes of
settling those difficulties to which their form of civilization makes them
especially liable.
The best way to study phenomena of this sort is through concrete cases. A
single instance, well considered in all its bearings, may be a window
which will let in more light than a volume of abstract statements. Whoever
is disposed to enter into such studies will find in China the material
ready to his hand, and it will not be strange if it is forced upon his
attention whether he desires to contemplate it or not, as happened in the
following highly illustrative case. Many years ago a Chinese teacher in
the writer's employ had leave of absence for a definite period, but when
that period had expired he failed to make his appearance. This is so
common, or rather so almost universal an occurrence in China, that it
might have passed with only a temporary notice, but for the explanation
which the teacher afterward gave of his inability to return, an
explanation which appeared to be so peculiar that he was requested to
reduce it to the form of a written statement, of which the following is a
synopsis.
An elder sister of the teacher was married to a very poor man in a village
called the "Tower of the Li Family," an insignificant hamlet consisting of
only four families. In a year of great famine (1878), both the sister and
her husband died, leaving three sons, all married. Of these the second
died, and his widow remarried. The wife of the elder nephew of the teacher
also died, and this nephew married for his second wife a widow, who had a
daughter of her own, twelve years of age. This widow enjoyed the not very
assuring reputation of having beaten her former mother-in-law, and also of
having caused the death of her first husband. The wife of the third nephew
was a quarrelsome woman, and the two sisters-in-law were always at sword's
points, especially as all four of the adults and their four children
shared the house and land together.
In the month of August of that year the third nephew started for a
distant market, with a boat-load of watermelons. On leaving he ordered his
wife to fetch his winter garments, which she refused to do, upon which
they had a fight, and he left. The next day was cold and rainy. The elder
nephew was sitting in a neighbour's house, and heard his wife engaged in a
violent quarrel with her sister-in-law, but he did not even rise to look
into the merits of the case, and no other neighbour intervened to exhort
to peace. The younger sister-in-law left the house in a fury, and from
that time she disappeared. About noon her continued absence became
alarming to the elder brother, who searched for her till dark, and then
sent word to her mother's family at a village called "The Little Camp" two
_li_ distant. This family, upon hearing of the disappearance of their
daughter, raised a company of ten or a dozen persons, went over to the
"Tower of the Li Family," entered the yard, and smashed all the water-jars
and other pottery-ware which they could. "Peace-talkers" emerged, and
succeeded in preventing the attacking party from entering the house, or
the damage would have been still greater.
After they had gone, the "Lord-of-bitterness" (_i. e._, the elder brother)
begged his friends to interfere and "talk peace," for as he was a resident
of a small village, he could not for a moment stand before the men of "The
Little Camp," which is a large village. These latter belonged to one of
the numerous small sects which are styled "black-doors," or secret
societies. In these societies there is often a class of persons called
"Seers" or "Bright-eyes" (_ming-yen_), who profess to be able to tell what
progress the pupils have made in their learning of the doctrine.
Sometimes, as in this instance, they also undertake the functions of
fortune-tellers. To the Bright-eye of their sect, the Little Campers
applied for information as to what had become of the missing woman. In
response they learnt that she had been beaten to death and buried in the
yard of the "Lord-of-bitterness." Upon hearing this, the family of the
murdered woman went to every door in their village, making a kotow at
each door, a common and significant mode of imploring their help. Thus a
large force was raised, which went to the "Tower of the Li Family," armed
with spades to dig up the body. Warned of their coming, all the male
residents of this latter village fled, the family of the
"Lord-of-bitterness" taking refuge at the village in the house of the
local constable who had charge of several villages. The teacher in
question, being a near relative of the "Lord-of-bitterness," and a man of
intelligence and pleasant manners, was asked to look after the house of
his nephew, which he did. Owing to his presence and his politeness, no
further damage was then done to the property, but the whole yard was dug
over to find the body. On the failure of this quest, the Bright-eye
modified the former announcement by the revelation that the body was
outside the yard, _but not more than thirty paces distant_. The search was
kept up with spades and picks by day and by night for a week. After
repeated attempts had been made by the Lord-of bitterness to get the
matter adjusted, and after the other party had refused to listen to any
terms, the latter lodged an accusation in the District Magistrate's yamAȘn.
The Magistrate heard the case twice, but each time the family of the
missing woman behaved in such an unreasonable and violent manner that the
official dismissed their case, merely ordering the local constable to
enlist more peace-talkers, and make the parties come to some agreement.
It happened that about that time another case somewhat resembling this had
occurred in that neighbourhood, in which a woman was suspected of having
drowned herself. On this account a sharp watch was kept at the ferry of
the District city, some miles lower down the river, for any floating body.
About the time of the Magistrate's decision, a woman's body appeared
abreast of the ferry and was identified as that of the missing woman from
the Li Family Tower. The official held an inquest, in which all parties
made diligent search for wounds, but none being found the Magistrate
compelled the family of the woman to affix their thumb marks to a paper
recognizing this fact. He ordered the Lord-of-bitterness to buy a good
coffin, clothes, and prepare other appointments for a showy funeral,
including chanting by Buddhist priests, and to have the body taken to his
house. He also instructed the constable once more to secure peace-talkers,
to arrange the details and to hold the funeral.
But the Little Campers proved to be the most obstinate of mortals, and
would not only listen to no reason, but drove the peace-talkers from their
village with reviling language, never so exasperating to a Chinese as when
employed against those who are sacrificing their interests for those of
the public. At this juncture the husband of the drowned woman returned
from the watermelon market, went himself to the home of his late wife, and
expostulated with her family and also urged peace through still other
third parties. But the Little Campers insisted upon funeral paraphernalia
which would have cost 10,000 strings of cash.
One more effort at compromise was made, by the visit of an uncle of the
teacher who was guarding the house of the Lord-of-bitterness, to the
Little Campers. The latter now altered their demands to a payment of 800
strings of cash, which by much chaffering was eventually reduced to 400.
The Lord-of-bitterness offered 250 strings, but this was rejected with
disdain.
Upon the failure of these numerous negotiations, the local constable
presented another complaint to the Magistrate, reciting the facts in the
repeated refusal, on the part of the family of the woman, to come to any
terms. The Magistrate, recognizing the case as one in which the relatives
were resolved to make the utmost possible capital out of a dead body,
ordered eight men from his own yamAȘn to go on that very day and attend the
funeral, in order to insure that there should be no breach of peace. These
yamAȘn-runners, after the customary Chinese manner, hoped to be bribed to
do as they were ordered and did not go to the place at all. The
Lord-of-bitterness and all his neighbours continued in obscurity, but in
the interval the men from the Little Camp again gathered their hosts, and
made four more visits to the premises at the Li Family Tower, breaking
everything which they could lay their hands upon. The next day the
yamAȘn-runners arrived, and the Lord-of-bitterness, now thoroughly
exasperated, succeeded in collecting a force of several hundred men from
other villages, intending at all hazards to hold the funeral and also to
have a general fight, if need arose. But the men of the Little Camp failed
to put in an appearance at this time, and the funeral accordingly at last
took place. The friends of the woman, however, obstinately refused to
consider the matter as settled, at which point the curtain falls, with a
plentiful promise of future lawsuits, fights, and ruin.
The reader who is sufficiently interested in the inner-working of the life
of the Chinese to follow the tangled thread of a tale like this, is
rewarded by the perception of several important facts. It is an axiom in
China that the family of the married daughter holds its head down, while
the family of the man whom she has married holds its head up. But in case
of the violent death of the married woman all this is reversed, and by a
natural process of reaction the family of the married woman becomes a
fierce and formidable antagonist.
Principles such as these have but to be put in issue between two large
villages, or families, and we have the well-known clan fights of southern
China, in all their perennial bitterness and intensity. One of the weakest
parts of the Chinese social fabric is the insecurity of the life and
happiness of woman, but no structure is stronger than its weakest part,
and Chinese society is no exception to this law. Every year thousands upon
thousands of Chinese wives commit suicide, tens of thousands of other
persons are thereby involved in serious trouble, hundreds of thousands of
yet others are dragged in as co-partners in the difficulty, and millions
of dollars are expended in extravagant funerals and ruinous lawsuits. And
all this is the outcome of the Confucian theory that a wife has no rights
which a husband is bound to respect. The law affords her no protection
while she lives, and such justice as she is able with difficulty to exact
is strictly a _post mortem_ concession.
The reality of the evils of the Chinese system of marriages is evidenced
by the extreme expedients to which unmarried girls sometimes resort, to
avoid matrimony. Chinese newspapers not infrequently contain references to
organized societies of young maidens, who solemnly vow never to wed. The
following paragraphs are translated from a Chinese newspaper called the
_Shih Pao_:
SUICIDE AS A VIRTUE.
There is a prevailing custom in a district called Shun-tAȘ in the Canton
province, among female society to form different kinds of sisterhoods such
as "All pure" sisterhoods, "Never-to-be-married" sisterhoods, etc. Each
sisterhood consists of about ten young maidens who swear vows to heaven
never to get married, as they regard marriages as something horrid,
believing that their married lives would be miserable and unholy; and
their parents fail to prevail upon them to yield.