CHILD LIFE
Passion amongst the Chinese for sons--Rejoicings at the birth of a
son--Sorrow at the birth of a girl--Birth of an heir to the
throne--The Great Forgiveness--Polite phrase for a girl--Amusements of
childhood--Home training to lie and swear--Going to school of the
boys--Books they read--Binding of girls' feet--Origin of this
custom--Evils connected with it--Chinese love for home.
There is no nation that is fonder of children than the Chinese. They have
a perfect passion for them, and it is, very rarely that a family can be
found without one or more of them in it. If there are none born into it,
arrangements are made to supply that deficiency by buying some, for the
Chinese seem to have a perfect dread of a childless home. If a man has the
means, he will buy several sons, who are treated as though they were his
own, and, when they grow up, they will inherit his property, and have all
the privileges that are given to those that were born in the family.
It is this passion for children that makes a man marry more than one wife.
He desires to surround himself with those who will perpetuate his name,
and who when he is dead will come to the tomb and make offerings to his
spirit, that shall in some mysterious way reach him in the dark world, and
which shall be a source of comfort to him in the gloom and shadow that
surround him there.
A childless wife in China is a person to be profoundly pitied. She is
looked down upon by her mother-in-law, who is anxious to have the dignity
and the reputation of the home maintained by the birth of a grandson, who
some day in the future, dressed in sackcloth, will act as chief mourner,
when his father shall be carried to his long home and laid to rest amongst
the hills. The neighbours, too, have an undisguised contempt for her,
which they show in only too brutal a manner, when some row takes place and
they have a chance of telling each other what their private opinion is
with regard to one another.
The worst is, her own husband begins to treat her with coldness and
neglect, when the time goes by and the home still remains without a son.
If he is very sympathetic he will buy one and make her a present of him,
though she will never occupy the place in his affections that she would if
the child were her own. If his nature is of a coarser grain, he will bring
in a second wife, who will usurp her position in the home, and make her
life one long-continued misery.
When a son is born into the family there are great rejoicings amongst
every member of it. The one most concerned in the matter, the mother, has
had her fears and anxieties for many a day, and her heart has throbbed
with doubt and fear as she has asked whether the little one is a boy or a
girl, and when she has been told it is a son, the terror has gone out of
her heart, and a sense of supreme joy has filled her with immense content.
Her position in the home and in the street or village in which she lives
is now an established one. Her husband's affections are bound to her, the
hectoring, domineering tone of the mother-in-law is softened down, and she
has a recognized place in the home that will never be questioned, whilst
she can now look into the faces of the wives and mothers of the
neighbourhood with a consciousness that no thrill of contempt will ever
taint their thought of her.
As for the father, he walks about as proud as a turkey-cock, although
according to Chinese etiquette he assumes an air of indifference as though
nothing special had happened, whilst all the time under those stolid
features that are as undemonstrative as a tombstone, a world of passion
and joyous feeling and romantic thoughts are playing their sweet music
around his heart.
And now, congratulations pour in from every quarter upon this most happy
event of the arrival of a son. It would indeed for the moment appear as
though such a thing had not happened for years, and that the coming of a
baby boy was something so rare as to transport the family and all the
numerous relatives, and even the nearest neighbours, with such feelings of
gladness, that these could only be expressed by the most exaggerated
expressions of joy at the wonderful event.
The little mite is but a speck in the great ocean of babyhood that fills
this land with its swarms of children, and yet, happily for it, it is
welcomed as though it were the only one in the Empire, and faces are
wreathed in smiles, and the choicest phrases are culled out of the
language of poetry, and minds are set to work to invent new phrases by
which to express the gladness of soul that men feel at the coming of the
little one into the world.
Let us peep for a moment into the home; it is a middle-class one, and
presents the usual untidy, slovenly and unswept appearance that is
characteristic of every such one in the country. But to-day an air of
peculiar happiness seems to pervade the house that makes one forget the
dust, and the litter, and the atmosphere of discomfort that makes a
foreigner feel as though he dare not sit down, whenever he enters any
ordinary dwelling-house. The faces are all lighted up with smiles, and
every one is prepared to say something pleasant. By and by an elderly
woman comes in with a strapping black-haired girl, her daughter, by her
side. They have come to see the baby, and they have brought with them a
fowl, a special gift for the young mother, who for the next month will
need some nourishing food. Shortly after two or three more drop in with
presents of pigs' feet, and vermicelli, and hemp oil in which the dainties
are to be fried. All these articles are supposed to be exceedingly
nutritious and exactly suited to one in the condition of the mother.
It is a pleasant picture to look upon. The great Eastern sun outside is
doing his best to flood the world with his beams, and he sends his rays
flashing into the home, and he lights the faces of the women as with
animated conversation they discuss how babies should be treated and how
the mother should be nursed to keep off the evil spirits that at this
particular crisis are roaming out seeking to find a chance of bringing
disaster upon the family, and of carrying off the infant son that has
brought happiness to the parents.
The scene presented to us on a similar occasion in the homes of the very
poor is of a very different character from the one just described. Whilst
the father and the mother have a joy as deep and as profound as that
experienced by those who are better off, they have no visits from friends
that troop in with presents and with loving greetings, and no anxiety is
shown as to whether the baby shall ever grow up to be a great man, or
whether the mother shall be so cared for that no mishap may befall her.
The poor have no time for such luxuries, and so the arrival of a son and
heir to the toils and sorrows of his parents usually makes little
difference in the daily routine of the home. A tiny stranger has arrived
with his pathetic appeal for the loving care and support of his mother,
but the poor mother has to carry on her daily duties just the same as
before, and no surprise is excited when she appears in the fields on the
very same day and performs some of the heavy duties connected with the
cultivation of their little farm.
[Illustration: LITTLE LADS.]
[Illustration: LITTLE URCHINS.
_To face p. 46._]
The birth of a son is hailed with delight in every home in China, from the
highest to the lowest. In the palace of the Emperor, when the heir to
the throne is born, there are rejoicings that extend from the capital to
the furthest extent of the Empire, and every mother's heart goes out in
sympathy and gladness for the queen who has given a ruler to sit on the
Dragon Throne. The birth of this Royal Son has brought such happiness to
the Imperial Home that it is felt that it ought to be commemorated by a
special act of grace that would bring freedom and deliverance to large
numbers of the most unhappy of the Emperor's subjects.
This is called the "Great Forgiveness," because no sooner is it known that
the Empress has borne a son, than an edict is issued, stamped with the
vermilion seal, and dispatched to the viceroys and great mandarins in
every province and department of the Empire, ordering them to at once
release certain classes of prisoners who are confined in prison, and who
without this royal clemency might lie confined within their dingy cells
for years to come without any hope of release. This is a noble act, and
all connected with the coming of a little son, who has only just opened
his eyes to the light of heaven, and who yet has had the happiness of
flinging wide the prison doors and of setting free countless numbers of
men and women, who otherwise would have pined and fretted within their
dungeons till hope had died out of their hearts, and, filled with despair,
they had closed their eyes upon life.
Let us now try and picture another scene. The little one, long expected
and long speculated about, that has filled the fancy of the mother, and
that has helped to weave a story of romance in the mind of the father,
turns out after all to be not a boy, but a girl--only a girl. The visions
die away, and the poetry loses its romance, and becomes the commonest
prose, when it is found that the stranger is a girl. It is quite safe to
make the assertion that in all the countless homes that exist in the huge
population of China not one of them is prepared to welcome a girl or to
feel that she could ever take the place of a boy.
We become convinced of this when we look upon the scene that I am
endeavouring to picture, for it is a typical one, and the ages have
stereotyped it, as one of the correct photographs of social life in this
land.
No sooner is it announced that the child is a girl than a kind of dismay
falls upon the household. The father's face becomes darkened with a scowl
that shows the passion that is raging in his heart. His very love for his
wife is for the moment turned into bitterness, for he considers that she
has wronged him and brought disgrace upon the home.
The mother, instead of being loyal to her sex and gathering the little one
to her bosom, as she would have done had it been a boy, thrusts it
indignantly from her and refuses even to look at it. She now begins to
weep and sob out her sorrow in tears and bitter expressions at the bad
fate that is clouding her life. The baby has been wrapped up hastily and
thrown with contempt upon a bench in the room, where, uncared for and
despised, as something that has brought bad luck into the home, she sends
forth her wailing cry without its once touching the mother near by.
It is at this particular period in the little girl's history that the
greatest peril to her life arises, for it is just at this point that so
many take their last look at the world and vanish into darkness. With a
mad passion of disappointment in the hearts of both parents, it is so easy
to snap the thread of the little life, and sweep away the sorrow and the
shame from their home.
On one occasion we had a nurse in our family. She was a woman of a great
deal of character, modest in her demeanour and a willing and untiring
worker. Her name was the one thing about her that was peculiar, and that
in Chinese meant "Picked up." It was a most unusual one, and I felt that
there was a history connected with it that would reveal some incident in
her early life. Anxious to learn what that was, I said to her one day,
"What an extraordinary name you have. How did it come about that your
mother gave it you?"
A smile lighted up her plain features, whilst she exclaimed, "I can easily
explain that. The name was given me very soon after my birth, in
remembrance of a rather tragic affair in which, as my mother believed,
Heaven interfered to preserve my life. The evening I was born, both my
father and mother were so distressed at my being a girl, that in a fit of
anger the former seized hold upon me and threw me out into the open
courtyard in front of our house. Fortunately it was the height of summer,
and the night air was hot and scorching, and so as I lay there all night
long, I received no injury from the wind that blew over me.
"At dawn next morning, my father came out for something, and was
astonished to find that I was still alive. He had expected that the fall
on the hard stone slabs that paved the courtyard and the long exposure
would have killed me. He was a very superstitious man, and so he believed
that my escape from death had been due to the intervention of Heaven, and
that it was designed by it that my life should be preserved. Impressed
with this idea, he picked me up and carried me to my mother, who took me
to her heart and decided that I should not be destroyed. In memory of that
eventful night, and my father's rescue of me next morning, I was called,
'Picked up.'"
There is no doubt but that countless baby girls have thus disappeared
within the first two or three hours of their birth, when the unnatural
passion of the parents has been excited by anger and disappointment. If
they are spared long enough to let that cool down, and the child still
lives, the voice of nature begins to be heard, and the mother will ask
for the little one to be given her, and from that moment there will be no
more talk of putting it to death.
Under the most favourable circumstances, and where it has been decided to
rear the child, no congratulations are ever uttered by any one on her
birth. To do so would be considered so grim a joke that it would be looked
upon as an insult so marked and so offensive that a perpetual feud would
be engendered that would never be dissolved as long as life lasted.
The neighbours who have been on the alert with their congratulations all
ready to offer to the happy parents in the event of a son being born, are
placed in the most awkward position, and they get out of it as deftly as
they can by the use of polite phrases and airy nothings of which the
Chinese language has such an abundance. In these attempts no one would
ever dream of using the common word "Girl." That would grate harshly on
the ears of those whose sensitive feelings are only too ready to think
that some reflection is intended by a reference to their daughter. A
polite phrase is used instead, which means "A thousand pieces of gold," a
title which by a subtle species of legerdemain lifts the poor forlorn
little mite, who has barely escaped drowning or suffocating, into the
region of an heiress with a large fortune with which to begin her life.
The early years of a child seem on the whole to be happy ones. In the
swarms of children that one sees almost anywhere, one gets the impression
that on the whole they thoroughly enjoy themselves. They run about and
romp and dance and gambol very much as a similar number of English
children would do on the village green, or in the streets and lanes of a
home city.
The Chinese are far from being a gloomy race of people. Their hearts are
full of fun and vigorous life, and this is seen in the sturdy urchins that
race about with each other and that fill the air with their merry sounds
of childish laughter.
[Illustration: STUDIES OF CHINESE BOYS.
_To face p. 51._]
With very young children this is all the more remarkable since so little
is provided for their amusement. Such things as pictures or story-books or
toys in the large and profuse sense with which our nurseries are supplied
in England, do not exist in this land. Childhood is left very much to its
own resources to find out the means of passing the time pleasantly. It is
pathetic to watch how, with the fewest and simplest materials, the little
ones will pass the day, with apparently perfect contentment. The method
most popular, because it involves no expense, is the making of mud pies,
and the building of miniature houses with broken pieces of tiles that can
be picked up from the streets.
The parents never seem to consider it a part of their duty to suggest
means of recreation for their children. The mothers are intensely ignorant
and slovenly, and are too occupied with their household duties to have any
time to devote to the education or amusement of their little ones, and so
they are allowed to grow up very much as nature or their surroundings
mould them, until the time has arrived, for the boys at least, when they
must enter school, and come under the discipline of a school-master.
It is interesting at this point to consider what are the moral restraints
that are at the command of the parents to train up their children to be
good and honest citizens of the Empire. Apart from the natural conscience
which no amount of heathenism can entirely eradicate, and the lofty ideals
which their sages and teachers in olden times sent forth as beautiful
spirits to permeate and wander through succeeding generations, the family
has no influence whatsoever in guiding the little ones into a noble and
virtuous life.
How could one expect that it should? There is absolutely no religion in
it, for the occasional worship of the idols, when some favour is requested
from them or some sorrow to be averted, has no moral effect upon a single
member of the home. The idols are supposed to be mysterious forces that
have great power in the supernatural world, who have to be bribed and
coaxed not to send down evil upon men, for whom in their inmost hearts it
is believed that they have a natural antipathy. They are never appealed to
as loving or caring for men. There is nothing that will bring a smile over
the yellow face sooner than to ask a man if the idols love men. It is a
question that is so brimming over with fun to a Chinaman that it is
irresistible in its effects, and the soberest face will be wreathed with
smiles whenever it is put.
There is no Bible, of course, and not a single book in the home, and if
there were the mothers could not read them. It will be seen, then, that
the machinery in the West for the training of the children does not exist
out here. There is no God, no churches, no Sunday or Sunday schools, no
pictures, and no special literature to influence the minds of the young to
withstand the evil forces that grow rank and wild all around them in
whatever grade of society they may happen to be.
It may be said without any exaggeration that it is in the home that the
children learn the evils that cling to them all their lives, and that it
is the mothers that are the principal teachers of them. Lying, for
example, as a fine art is one that is indoctrinated by the mothers'
example. It is upon it that they mainly depend for the governing of their
children. As a rule there is no proper discipline in the home, and no
attempt made to make the children obey promptly any order that is given.
The result is that the mother, who has most to do with them, depends
largely upon loud-voiced threatenings and an occasional beating when her
passion gets the control over her, though this latter is rare, since the
Chinese parents really love their children, and seldom resort to this
severe method of curbing the unruly or high spirits of their offspring.
The great weapon in her armoury in the earlier days of her children's
lives is a technical expression that is known in every family of
"Deceiving the Children." One day a visitor called upon a family with
which he was acquainted. The lady of the house was in and so also was her
little son of four or five years of age, a bright, interesting child, with
snapping black eyes, and as full of life as a healthy child could be.
During the conversation the child got restless and was inclined to get
into mischief. He was approaching a corner of the room, when his mother
called out in a loud, excited voice, "Don't go there, there is a huge rat
waiting for you, that will pounce out upon you, and tear out your eyes."
The little fellow, with terror depicted upon his face and with an agonized
cry, made a bee-line to the opposite side of the room, and crouched near
his mother in the most abject terror.
After a while, having nothing to do, he began to move about in what his
mother considered forbidden paths, when once more, with a shriek that had
assumed a natural look of alarm, she shouted in her loudest tones, "Come
away quickly, don't go there; there is a black snake hiding in the corner.
It will bite you, and you will die in a few minutes." Again a wild look of
horror on the little fellow's face, and a sudden rush to his mother's side
to escape the deadly serpent that was lying in wait for him, and sobs of
agony broke from him as he clung to her for protection.
After a while he once more, with the restlessness of childhood, began to
move about in search of something to amuse himself with, and was once more
getting on ground that his mother considered unsafe, when again, with red,
excited face and shrill tones she yelled out, "Why do you go there? Don't
you know there is a devil hiding round the corner that has a great love
for the flesh of a young boy, and he will seize you and devour you, and
crunch your bones with his great teeth?"
At this juncture the gentleman said to the mother, "How is it that you
have in a very short time deceived your son three times by telling him
that something will happen that you know cannot possibly occur? Are you
not afraid of teaching him to be a liar? He will find out in time that
what you say cannot be relied upon, and then he will lose faith in you and
learn to regard lying as a thing of no importance."
The woman's face became suffused with smiles, and then she broke out into
laughter, which for some time she could not suppress. "Oh," she said, "I
did not think of all the terrible things that you talk of so seriously. I
merely wanted to keep the little fellow quiet. I knew that he would not
obey me if I simply asked him to be a good boy, and so I thought I would
frighten him. Everybody uses this plan in China, and I don't see that
there is any harm in it."
Another exceedingly injurious habit that is learned in the home is
swearing. It seems an incredible thing, but it is no doubt a fact that
every one swears in China, without distinction of sex or position in
society. The rough coolies that one meets with on the roads interlard
their ordinary conversation with the foulest expressions, but only let two
of them fall out with each other, and there will be such a torrent of
obscenity and such a bombardment of one another by filthy epithets that
one recoils with disgust at the degrading terms that flow from their lips.
You are standing talking to a fine, scholarly gentleman. His home near by
is a perfect mansion as compared with the hovels that press up against the
wall that surrounds his property. You are charmed with his manner, so
elegant and refined is he in his conversation with you. His talk, too, is
high toned, and shows that he has been imbued with the ethics of the great
sage Confucius, who drew a wonderful picture of the ideal man, that he
called "The son of a King," and that he has been studying his lineaments
so that he might copy him in his own life.
All at once two coolies come along with a steady run, bearing between them
a great heavy pig, that squeals and grunts with pain from the ropes that
cut into its feet. The road is rough and uneven, and they make a false
step and bump heavily against the scholar, who falls to the ground. The
transformation that takes place in this refined and gentlemanly person is
instantaneous and amazing. His company manners have fled, the picture of
the ideal man has vanished from his brain, and he now stands on the level
of the most profane coolie, that has never read Confucius, and has never
studied etiquette of any kind. The language that flows from him is obscene
and so filthy, and of such a Sodom and Gomorrah character that you turn
away from him in absolute loathing as a man that would pollute and
contaminate you by his very presence.
Two women have a difference, and, like all Chinese quarrels, it has to be
fought out in the open street, where every one can hear and decide for
himself the merits of the case. They begin with a few desultory remarks,
not very highly complimentary, and with just sufficient edge in them to
show that each of them means war to the knife, and that they are now
fleshing their swords for the real encounter that is imminent. By and by a
single word is shot like a poisoned arrow by one of them that inflames the
other to madness. The flood-gates are now open, and there pour from the
lips of each a perfect cataract of foul and obscene language, that makes
many of the bystanders, whose minds are stored with these very terms,
actually shudder with a vague sense of abhorrence.
Now all this is learned in the home. The first notes of this terrible
language were first heard from father and mother, but mainly from the
latter. In her anger and passion she will hurl epithets at her daughter
that will describe her as one of the vilest of her sex, whilst the boys,
from the awful terms she uses about them, might be the very refuse and
offscourings of the earth. The little ones can say nothing, but they store
up in the innermost recesses of their minds these awful phrases, to be
used as the years go by when passion stirs up the fiercest elements of the
heart into wild bursts of fury.
And thus the years go by for both boys and girls, with nothing very
eventful in the lives of either, until they are about eight. The Chinese
are not an idle race of people, and as soon as the little ones can put
their hands to anything, their small services are utilized for the general
benefit of the home. If they are poor, the boys go out and gather grass
and fallen twigs to be used as firewood, whilst the girls help as far as
they can in the ordinary duties of the household.
Their main occupation, however, is play, and the most of their hours are
devoted to that. Chinese children develop slowly. Neither in intelligence
nor in physical development are they at all equal to the boys and girls in
England, so up till they are ten years of age it is considered that their
services are of no material value to the family, and that their time is
best spent by doing nothing but running wild.
At about eight preparations are made for the lad to go to school. Terms
are made with the school-master of the nearest school, a certain number of
books splashed and dotted over with mysterious-looking hieroglyphics are
bought, and one morning at early dawn, just as the pale grey light begins
to colour the landscape, the little fellow finds his way along the silent
road to the school-house. Here for six or seven years he will spend the
best part of his days in the study of books that contain the ideals of the
nation.
[Illustration: A BOY CARRYING BASKETS.
_To face p. 56._]
They are the driest of dry books, and were really written for scholarly
men, and for men of thought, whose thinking powers were considerably
developed. There is not a single story in their pages. No child or woman's
voice is heard from beginning to end, and no laughter, and no sob of pain,
or any touch of the finer qualities of the human heart.
The boy begins at eight not with "Jack and Jill," or the "House that Jack
built," or with any nursery rhyme that would appeal to a child's
imagination, but with the solemn statements on high ethical questions that
some of the greatest thinkers and teachers of China have produced. Some
idea of the style of the books that these little urchins have to grind at,
may be gathered from the fact that the first book that is put into the
hands of that eight-year-old scholar is called _The Three Words Classic_,
from the fact that each sentence is made up of three words rhythmically
set. It is about as crabbed and as profound a piece of writing as exists
in the whole language. Its first sentence makes a dogmatic statement which
has not been generally accepted in China, viz. "Man by nature is
originally good." Just imagine a boy of ten, accustomed till to-day to run
as wild as a climbing plant, that creeps up trees, or over ruined walls,
or down the side of a precipice, brought face to face with a statement
like this, instead of the conventional one, "My dog," or "His cat," that
confronts the English lad as he first enters the domain of learning.
Try and conceive the wear and tear upon a child's spirit in having for
years to shout and scream out at the top of his voice, as Chinese scholars
do, such profound teaching as the above, and you will then have caught a
glimpse of the steep and precipitous way along which these eight-year
scholars have to travel in their pursuit after knowledge. A more dreary
system of education, where imagination and humour, and poetry and romance,
and all the finer emotions of the soul are rigorously excluded, it would
be impossible to conceive than that which every Chinese scholar has to go
through in every school throughout the Empire to-day.
And so the years go by, childhood is being slowly left behind, and young
manhood comes with its own responsibilities and its own ambitions. It is a
dreary road along which the young scholar travels. He gets no knowledge of
life that will make him tender and sympathetic with his fellow-men in
their sins or their sorrows. He acquires a profound contempt for every
other country but his own. His natural hardness and selfishness of heart
are intensified by a pride that nothing can soften, whilst his antipathy
to any change or progress either in his own village or in his country is
deeply rooted and the adoption of new ideas or liberal thoughts is
considered a heresy so abominable as to brand any one that adopts it with
the terrible name of "Barbarian," a term from which every self-respecting
Chinaman shrinks as from a plague.
With the leaving of school, childhood has passed away, and now the lads
will have to select the occupations they are going to pursue in the
future. Some elect to be scholars, especially if they have shown
proficiency in their studies, and they finally join the great army of
school-masters that are required for the countless schools throughout the
country. Others become clerks in business houses, but as arithmetic is not
a branch of school education, they are obliged to pay a small premium and
learn the use of the abacus or counting boards, in one of the cash shops
in the town. Others, again, engage themselves as book-keepers or shop
assistants, or in some of the many employments that are open to young men
who can read and write.
Not a few of them drift into evil habits and finally become opium-smokers
and gamblers. If they are clever scamps, which this class usually are,
they turn their attention to medicine, and gathering together a few herbs
they travel through the country as strolling doctors, professing to cure
every disease to which the human frame is heir, and living a most
precarious and, on the whole, a very wretched life.
About the same time that the great change takes place in the experience of
the boy, the girl too comes to a point where the easy conditions under
which she has hitherto lived suddenly stop and the great trial of her life
begins. I refer to foot-binding.
In every home that professes to any respectability, foot-binding is an
absolutely essential thing for the girls in it. To neglect this would be
to confound them with slave girls, whose feet are never bound, and with
the children of the very lowest classes whose poverty would not admit of
their adopting this polite custom. It has been found by a very large
experience that a girl must be eight years old before her feet will bear
the tremendous strain that is put upon them, in the effort to destroy the
handiwork of nature.
It is true that in some of the more wealthy homes, where a very small foot
is a sign of blue blood, they begin as soon as the girl is six to put her
to the torture, but this is not the general rule. By the time the girl is
eight, the bones of the feet have become sufficiently hardened to bear the
incessant pressure that is put upon them to contract the feet into such a
small compass that they will go into a shoe of two or three inches in
length.
The process begins by turning all the toes, except the large one, on to
the sole of the foot. This of course is a slow but an exceedingly painful
one. It is continued week after week and month after month for several
years until the toes have been thrown back, at the expense of the instep,
which is made to bulge out by the pressure of the bandages; until finally
the "Golden lilies," as these unsightly objects are called, are complete,
and the poor girl is a veritable cripple for life.
The cruelty that is practised upon these poor children during the initial
operation of binding is very severe. The first few weeks are so very
trying that attempts are made by the girls to tear the bandages from their
aching, tortured feet. This is resisted by their mothers, who have to
resort to brutal methods to keep the little hands from endeavouring to
relieve themselves of the pain that has become intolerable.
Tears and shrieks and groans that last all day long, and are heard through
the sobs of the poor things, as sleep, restless and disturbed, comes to
try and make them forget the agony they are enduring, are the constant
experiences in that unhappy home.
The girl begs and entreats the mother to loosen the bandages a little so
that the agonizing pain may be diminished, and life may become somewhat
more tolerable. The only reply is a tighter wrench upon them, and a
strain, that were not nature so elastic, would send the poor thing mad.
The morrow comes and the rebandaging takes place. For an instant, as the
feet are relieved of the old bandages, and they are shown inflamed and
discoloured, a momentary relief is felt by the poor girl who has slept in
fitful dozes during the past night, but the moment they are rebound by the
new ones, a cry of horror proceeds from her as though a raw sore had been
touched, and the house resounds with her screams, whilst the mother,
apparently untouched by the agony of her daughter, proceeds with her
revolting task, as though she had no heart and no feeling left in her
heathen soul.
This terrible martyrdom goes on with scarcely any alleviation for three or
four years, the poor victim to fashion suffering acutely all the time.
There are moments often repeated when the poor child actually quivers all
over from excruciating pain, and it would seem as though flesh and blood
could no longer endure the frightful strain put upon her, but must
dissolve in tears and groans and unutterable agony.
Foot-binding is one of the most senseless and cruel customs it is possible
to imagine. Its origin is dimly hidden in the maze and mist of the past,
and no one can say positively how it originated. Tradition holds that it
arose in the palace of an Emperor, who had a most beautiful concubine, but
whose feet were deformed. To hide their defect they were so manipulated
that their glaring deformity was concealed, and the ladies of the court in
order to gain her favour bandaged their own in such a manner as to be an
exact imitation of those of the royal favourite. From that time, it is
said, the insane and hideous custom began to spread from the court into
the capital, and from there it began to be copied by the women of the
Empire.
The popular legend makes this woman to be T'a Ki, the famous concubine of
Show Sin, the last ruler of the famous Chow Dynasty (B.C. 1146). She is
said to have been the most beautiful woman that ever lived, but to have
been inhuman and vicious beyond anything that human language can express.
She was the cause of the fall of the dynasty, a dynasty in which was
enshrined the great names of Confucius, Mencius, Tau-tze the founder of
Tauism, and Wu Wang.
To account for the fatal influence of this famous beauty, it is declared
that she was a fox fairy, who had assumed the form of a woman in order to
be able to hurry on the ruin of China. In the transformation everything
was changed but her feet, and in order to disguise these she had to resort
to the most ingenious methods. To curry favour with her the
ladies-in-waiting in the palace bound theirs to imitate the appearance of
hers, and so the custom of foot-binding was commenced that has lasted all
these ages.
This legend has become part of the national faith and is firmly believed
in by every one. Of course it is absurd, and one that originated in an
after age, but with the innate love of the Chinese for the mysterious and
the supernatural, it is transmitted age after age as though it were part
of authentic history.[1]
Foot-binding is a lifelong misery even after the first few years during
which the feet are being tortured into such a hideous mass of deformity
that no women will willingly show them to any one. Nature never becomes
reconciled to the cruel caricature they present. She continues to make a
vigorous protest by pains and suffering that more or less last as long as
life itself. The bandages may never be loosed even for a single day, for
nature, as if on the eternal watch, would at once begin to revert to the
original size and shape with which she was born, and the feet would
gradually return to their original shape, though with marks of the cruel
treatment to which they have been exposed, and which can never be entirely
effaced, no matter how long the owner may live.
The girls are employed in household duties, in learning to embroider, to
weave cotton cloth, to make their own shoes, and to learn all kinds of
sewing. The years pass on, and when they reach the age of sixteen their
childhood begins to vanish, and womanhood, with its responsibilities and
its stern demand that the girls shall leave their own clan and become
members of others, looms up before them. The transition stage may be
delayed for a year or two, but when a girl gets to be eighteen it is
considered ample time for her to open her wings and to fly for ever from
the parent home.
We have thus taken a very rough and bird's-eye view of Child Life in
China. There are countless details that might have been gone into, but
they would have required an entire book for themselves. The main outline
that has been given will suffice to convey a very general idea of the
kind of life that the black-eyed children of the Empire have to go
through.
There is one thing about which there can be no manner of doubt, and that
is that the children never forget the home in which they were reared. The
home is to the Chinese what the country is to the most devoted patriot of
other nationalities. The home is larger and dearer than the nation. It is
the one thought that is always enshrined in his inmost heart, and which
never dies out. A Chinaman went abroad and lived for a quarter of a
century in Australia. He married an Irish woman, had several almond-eyed
daughters, who had caught the brogue of their mother and might have been
emigrants from Cork or Kerry. He had a thriving money-making business, he
possessed a vote, and he was a man of substance in the community.
One day the home hunger came upon him. He handed over his business to his
wife and daughters, took his balance out of the bank and returned to his
home in China. This was situated by the edge of the sea on a sand dune,
the most forlorn and mouldy-looking place one could possibly imagine. He
regained his spirits as soon as his feet touched the desolate spot that
lay within a few yards of the home where his childhood was spent, and
nothing could induce him ever to think of returning to the far-off land
where the family he had left behind him were living.
A strong and vigorous coolie showed symptoms of being far from well.
Physically there seemed nothing the matter with him. Gradually he lost his
appetite and his spirits. He occasionally acted as though his mind was
affected. One day he said to his master, "I must go home. I feel very ill,
but I am convinced that no medicine that I can take will cure me. Let me
go home." The _mal du pays_ of the Switzer was upon him, and when
permission was given him, his eye brightened and his step became elastic,
and by the time he reached the old homestead every trace of disease had
entirely vanished.
A man becomes a mandarin and is sent to another part of the Empire. He is
gradually advanced in rank until he becomes a Viceroy of two Provinces,
and rules over thirty millions of people. He marries, and has sons and
daughters, and he amasses property in the place where his greatest honours
have come to him.
He never has time to get away to his ancestral home, which is more than a
thousand miles distant, but it is never out of his thoughts, and when he
dies full of honours and wealth, his coffin is carried to his far-off
village where he was born, and he is laid to his final rest almost in
sight of the house in which his boyhood was passed.
The Americans are greatly distressed because when the Chinese come to
their country they do not bring their wives and families with them. The
fact is to do so would be opposed to the spirit and genius of their race.
It would tend to alienate them from their home, which they intend to
revisit as soon as ever they can, and to finally lay their bones amongst
their kindred there. Every merchant and scholar, every coolie that lands
with but the clothes he has on his back, every spendthrift and
opium-smoker and gambler, and every millionaire of the Yellow race in the
United States has one dream that never dies out of his brain, and that is
the picture of his home, which either in life or in death it is his
unalterable purpose to visit. To move their families and become denizens
of their adopted country would be to run counter to one of the strongest
instincts of their race.
[Illustration: AN IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN TEMPLE.]