[Illustration]
The houses of the wealthy inhabitants are on the east side of the
city, and are separated from the streets by high walls. On entering
the grounds, the visitor passes through several courtyards and
reception halls, supported on beautifully carved granite pillars, a
wealthy Chinese gentleman sparing no expense in the lavish and
tasteful decoration of his home. From the courtyards one enters the
gardens, in which there is invariably a pond in which water-flowers--
lilies, lotus, etc.--are grown, and in which there are shoals of
goldfish. A rockery is generally added, with quaintly contrived
approaches and caverns, and a bridge over the pond leads now and again
to a small island on which a decorated tea-house has been erected. The
bridge is always angular, like those that are seen on the old blue
china plates. In one large house, from which the owner was absent,
were some specimens of hammered iron-work that were the very
perfection of artistic workmanship. They were blades of grass, reeds,
and flowers, each specimen being placed in a window between two panes
of glass. These specimens of iron-work were made about four hundred
and fifty years ago by an artist whose name is still held in honour.
Large sums have been offered for them, but the fortunate owner holds
them more precious than gold.
A great feature of Canton is its flower-boats, of which many hundreds
are moored together, and form regular streets. These boats are all
restaurants, and here the wealthy young Chinamen entertain each other
at their sumptuous feasts. The giver of the entertainment always
engages four or five young women for each guest, who sit behind the
gentlemen and assist in their entertainment. As the feast is a long
function, consisting of many courses, it is not necessary for the
guests to be present during the entire function. Sometimes a guest
will put in an appearance for one or two courses. Music is played and
songs are sung, and possibly there may be ramifications of the
entertainment into which one does not pry too closely; but again there
are regulated customs in China openly acknowledged and less harmful
than the ignored but no less existing canker that has eaten into the
heart of Western civilization.
The wives and daughters of officials are in small towns at a certain
disadvantage, for etiquette demands that they shall confine their
visits to their social equals, who are not many. In large cities they
have the ladies of the wealthy merchants to visit, and they are by no
means devoid of subjects of conversation. They take a keen interest in
public affairs, and exercise no small an amount of influence upon
current topics. Many of the Chinese ladies are well educated, and have
no hesitation in declaring their views on matters connected with their
well-being. A very short time ago there was in Canton a public meeting
of women to protest against an unpopular measure. One result of
missionary effort in China has been the education of a large number of
Chinese women of different classes in English, which many Chinese
ladies speak fluently. When Kang Yu Wei, the Chinese reformer, was in
Hong Kong, having taken refuge there after his flight from Peking, his
daughter was a young Chinese lady who spoke only her own language. Two
years later, during which time the family had resided in the Straits
Settlements, this lady passed through Hong Kong, speaking English
fluently. She was on her way to the United States to pursue her
studies.
The movement for reform that has begun to agitate China is by no
means confined to the men. In 1900 a women's conference met in
Shanghai, under the presidency of Lady Blake, to consider the question
of the home life of the women of China. The conference sat for four
days, during which papers were read by both European and Chinese
ladies on various social questions and customs affecting all classes
of the women of China. The conference covered a wide range of
subjects:--Treatment of Children; Daughters-in-law; Betrothal of Young
Children and Infants; Girl Slavery in China; Foot-binding; Marriage
Customs; Funeral Customs; Social Customs; and its proceedings contain
valuable accounts at first hand of the conditions and customs of women
from every part of the Middle Kingdom. The following remarks were made
by the president at the conclusion of the conference.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A TYPICAL STREET SCENE.]
"We have now concluded the consideration of the subjects that were
selected for discussion at this conference on the 'Home Life of
Chinese Women.' We have all, I am sure, been keenly interested in the
excellent papers and addresses with which we have been favoured,
containing so much information from all parts of this vast empire that
must have been new to many of us. I regret to find that the lot of
Chinese women, especially of the lower classes, appears on closer
observation even less agreeable than I had thought. The hard fate of
so many of the slave-girls, for example, must excite the pity and
sympathy of all men and women not altogether selfishly insensible to
human sufferings from which they are exempt. But while we have been
gazing on a good deal of the darker side of the lives of the women and
girls of China, we must not forget that shadows cannot exist without
light, so there must be a bright side in life for many Chinese women,
and some of the papers read have shown us that no small number of
Chinese ladies, independently of European influences, extend
noble-minded and practical charity to those amongst their humbler
neighbours who may stand in need of such assistance. Possibly some of
us may be too apt to judge the better classes of the Chinese by the
standards of the lower orders, with whom as a general rule Europeans
are chiefly thrown. How would the denizens of our ancient cathedral
closes, or the occupants of our manor-houses at home, like foreigners
to judge of them by the standard of the inhabitants of the lower
stratum of our society and the waifs and strays, who too often in
other lands bring the reverse of credit to their country? I cannot
help hoping, likewise, that as habit becomes second nature--and that
to which we are accustomed seems less dreadful, even when
intrinsically as bad--so some things that to us would make
existence a purgatory may not be quite so terrible to the women of
China as they appear to us. I would fain hope that even in such a
matter as foot-binding there may be some alleviation to the sufferings
of those who practise it, in the pride that is said to feel no pain.
Of the deleterious effects of the practice--physically and
mentally--there can be no doubt, and it is most satisfactory to find
that the spark of resistance to the fashion of foot-binding has been
kindled in many parts of China. As new ideas permeate the empire, I
have no doubt the women of China will not be greater slaves to
undesirable fashions or customs than are the women of other lands. The
greater number of the ills and discomforts of Chinese women, I cannot
help thinking, must be eradicated by the people of China themselves;
all that outsiders can do is to place the means of doing so within
their reach. As year by year the number increases of cultivated and
enlightened Chinese ladies, trained in Western science and modes of
thought, while retaining their own distinctive characteristics, so
will each of them prove a stronger centre from which rays of good
influence will reach out to their country-women. I was once given a
flower that had rather a remarkable history. I was told that somewhere
in Greece a mine had been found that was supposed to have been worked
by the ancient Greeks. Its site was marked by great heaps of rocks and
refuse. The Greeks of old, great as was their genius, which in some
ways exceeded that of modern days, were not acquainted with a great
deal that science has revealed to us, and in examining these heaps of
stones and rubbish flung out of the mine in days of old, it was found
that most of it contained ore, the presence of which had never before
been suspected, but which was sufficient in amount to make it worth
while submitting the refuse to a process that would extract the latent
wealth. So the great heaps of stone were removed, for smelting or some
such process, and when they were taken away, from the ground beneath
them sprang up plants, which in due time were covered with beautiful
small yellow poppies of a kind not previously known to gardeners. It
is supposed that the seed of the flowers must have lain hidden in the
earth for centuries. May it not be like this with China? In her bosom
have long lain dormant the seeds of what we call progress, which have
been kept from germinating by the superincumbent weight of ideas,
which, while they may contain in themselves some ore worth extracting,
must be refined in order to be preserved, and must be uplifted in
order to enable the flowers of truth, purity, and happiness to
flourish in the land. Two of the heaviest rubbish heaps that crush
down the blossom progress are ignorance and prejudice. I trust that
the conference just held may prove of use in removing them."
[Illustration]
Whatever may be thought of the relative prudence of choosing one's own
wife, or having the young lady provided by family diplomacy, as is the
Eastern custom, there is no doubt that Chinese women make affectionate
wives and mothers. A forlorn woman at Macao, day after day wailing
along the shore of the cruel sea that had taken her fisher-husband,
waving his coat over the sea, burning incense, and calling upon him
unceasingly to return to her, was a mournful sight; and I have seen
distracted women passing the clothes of their sick children to and fro
over a brisk fire by a running stream, and calling upon the gods they
worshipped to circumvent the demons to whose evil action all sickness
is attributed. Indeed, the loss of the husband himself would, in the
average Chinese opinion, be better for the family than the loss of an
only son, as without a male descendant the ancestral worship, on which
so much depends for the comfort of the departed members, cannot be
carried out in proper form. That the terrors of superstition enter
largely into the Chinese mind is clearly shown, but there is also
present the saving grace of faith in the possibility of assuaging
whatever may be considered the discomforts of the after life, and
Chinese are particular in ministering to the wants of the departed. I
have seen in Hong Kong two women gravely carrying a small house,
tables, chairs, and a horse, all made of tissue paper and light
bamboo, to a vacant place where they were reverently burnt, no doubt
for the use of a departed husband. This is the same faith that raised
the mounds over the Scandinavian heroes, who with their boats or
war-horses and their arms were buried beneath them.
When a child is born, a boat made similarly of tissue paper and fixed
on a small bundle of straw is launched upon the tide. If it floats
away, all will be well; if flung back upon the shore, there is gloom
in the house, for Fortune is frowning. Or, when members of the family
are lost at sea, similar boats with small figures seated in them, and
with squares of gold and silver paper representing money placed at
their feet, are sent adrift. Such boats are constantly to be seen
floating in the harbour of Hong Kong, each one a sad emblem of
poignant sorrow, with that desperate anxiety of those bereft to reach
behind the veil that lies in the sub-conscious mind of all humanity.
[Illustration]
This is the mournful aspect of Chinese life, especially among the
poorer classes. But Chinese ladies, though they take their pleasures
in a different manner, are no less actively engaged in the amenities
of social intercourse than are their Western sisters. Violent
physical exercise does not appeal to them--our compelling muscularity
is a hidden mystery to all Eastern people--but visiting among
themselves is constant, and the preparation for a visit, the powdering
and painting, the hair-dressing, and the careful selection of
embroidered costumes, is as absorbing a business as was the
preparation of the belles of the court of _Le Roi Soleil_. To the
European man the fashion of a Chinese lady's dress seems unchanging--a
beautifully embroidered loose jacket, with long pleated skirt and wide
trousers, in strong crimson or yellow, or in delicate shades of all
colours--but Western women probably know better, as doubtless do the
Chinese husbands and fathers, who are usually most generous to the
ladies of the family. The general shape is unchanging, for in China it
is considered indelicate for a woman to display her figure; but the
Chinese milliner is as careful to change the fashion of the embroidery
at short intervals as is the French _modiste_ to change the form of
the robe. Therefore there are always to be procured in the great towns
beautiful embroidered costumes in excellent order that have been
discarded at the command of tyrant fashion as are the dresses of the
fashion-driven ladies of the West.
[Illustration]
The etiquette of the preliminaries of a visit is as rigid as is the
etiquette of all social intercourse in China; the scarlet visiting
card, three or four inches wide and sometimes a foot long--its
dimensions being proportioned to the social position of the
visitor--being first sent in, and returned with an invitation to
enter, while the hostess dons her best attire and meets the visitor at
the first, second, or third doorway, according to the rank of the
latter, and the elaborate ceremonial on entering the room. These
accomplished, the conversation follows the lines that conversation
takes where ladies meet ladies all the world over. The friendly pipe
is not excluded, and probably books, children, cooks, social
incidents, and possibly local politics, form the media of
conversation. The social customs of China do not afford much
opportunity for scandal; but who can say? Cupid even in China is as
ingenious as he is mischievous. Games, too, are indulged in, the
Chinese card games being as mysteriously intricate as is their chess.
Should the guest bring her children, the little ones all receive
presents, these delicate attentions being never neglected; indeed, the
giving of presents at the New Year and other annual festivals is a
settled Chinese custom.