THE WOMEN'S QUESTION
The desire for radical change is never so much to be dreaded as when it
attacks the home life of a nation. That quiet life so often hidden
away because of its very sacredness by the Eastern races is like
everything else in China disturbed by the introduction of Western
civilisation, and in no other part of human life will its two different
sides be more apparent. Western civilisation without Christianity will
destroy the home life as it destroys most Eastern things it touches,
and will do little to construct a new life to take the place of the one
it destroys. The Japanese complain that Western civilisation has
destroyed both the modesty and the religion of their women, and
Christianity has not yet been able to any great extent to reconstruct
on the basis of true religion new ideals of feminine life. Therefore
the Chinese, with all their enthusiasm for Western culture, are looking
a little nervously at what they see has happened in Japan. They say
that their home life is not now unbeautiful; even those who are
disposed to admit that the life of the Western woman is founded on
higher ideals than their own will not allow that their national home
life deserves unmixed {122} condemnation. Everybody agrees that the
wanton destruction of the laws which govern women's life in China may
have a terrible result when Western civilisation is unwisely
introduced, especially if it is made to appear to be a civilisation
without religion. The missionaries see in this crisis the necessity
for vigorous action; while thankful for the movement, they realise the
responsibility it puts upon Christians to see that that movement is
wisely directed. In the memorial from the Centenary Conference at
Shanghai in 1907 to the Home Churches, they say:--
"The changed attitude of China towards female education and the place
of woman, lays upon us great responsibilities. The uplifting of woman
is a first need in the moral regeneration of a people, and one of the
things in which Christianity has a totally different ideal from that
which the religions of China have encouraged. The present change of
national sentiment on the subject is one of the indirect but none the
less striking changes that the slow but steady dissemination of
Christian ideas in China during the past century has led to. Let it be
remembered, however, that it requires the Christian motive power to
make it successful and fruitful."
It is somewhat difficult to obtain information from the Chinese
themselves as to the position of women. They are very averse to
discussing the subject; in fact, it is not even regarded as good
manners for a man to ask after the health of his most intimate friend's
wife; and all the information that we could {123} get had for the most
part to be obtained by Lady Florence Cecil through feminine sources.
We may generally state, however, that the position of women in China is
neither so low as that which they occupy in India or among the
Mohammedans, neither is it in any degree so high as the position of
women in Western lands. The woman is completely subject to the man;
till she marries she is subject to her father, when she is married she
is subject to her husband, and if her husband dies she is then subject
to her son, and rarely re-marries. These are called the three
obediences. She is not educated as a rule, because both public opinion
and Chinese philosophy regard her as mentally far inferior to the man.
We shall explain later on how in Chinese thought everything is divided
into a good and an evil principle--a Yang and a Yin. The woman is
distinctly Yin. She is therefore necessary to man, but at the same
time inferior.
Again, with regard to the question of polygamy, her position is an
intermediate one between the avowed polygamy of Moslem countries and
the ill-maintained monogamy of many a Latin country. In Hong-Kong the
position was explained by a Chinaman to me thus: that when a woman grew
old it was regarded as her duty to provide a secondary wife for her
husband's pleasure and as a companion for herself--a companion with a
sense of servitude in it. If this was done in an orderly manner, it
was absolutely approved by Chinese public opinion. If, {124} on the
other hand, the husband, ignoring the wife's rights, should choose a
secondary wife for himself and set her up in another house, his
attitude would be regarded as distinctly doubtful by the respectable
Chinese. In the same way if an official were appointed to a distant
post he would probably not think of imposing upon his wife with her
deformed feet the pain and discomfort of a long journey; he would most
likely take a natural-footed woman, who will be for that reason a
slave; in fact, one gentleman went so far as to say that he thought
that the squeezed feet had a great deal to do with this institution of
a secondary wife, because he noted that the secondary wives of all the
officials when they were travelling were natural-footed women.
The secondary wife would be rarely a woman of good class; it is allowed
to be an inferior position. On the other hand, if she bears her
husband a son, and that son is recognised, all that son's relations,
and therefore all his mother's relations, become relations of the
father.
The curious tangle which such a position begets when brought into
contact with the Christian idea is exemplified in this story. A rich
Chinaman had three wives. By his lawful wife he had nine children; by
the other two he had none; but his second wife was a woman of very
strong character, and she was brought in touch with the missionaries by
the Chinese wife of a European. She apparently ruled the house with a
kindly rule to which all the others {125} bowed. She did everything in
an energetic and vigorous way, and she studied Christianity till she
was convinced of its truth, and then she demanded baptism. There was a
great difficulty; she must leave her husband before she could be
baptized. After considerable delay she accepted the condition, but
resistance came, not alone from the man, but from the other two wives.
They could not possibly get on without her; they were like sisters; and
she must be allowed to return to the house. She refused, though the
pressure was extreme. The man said that he had promised his ancestors
that none of his children should be Christians, and that his own mother
would not forgive him; but the woman held firm, and at last she was
baptized. Her face was beautiful to behold while she was accepting
Christianity and renouncing all that made life sweet to her. The
husband was so moved by her fortitude that he signed a paper promising
not to molest her, and yet to support her apart, so that she should not
be in any need.
At the Shanghai Conference there were, curious to relate, many women
who wished the Christian body to recognise existing polygamy among the
Chinese. A sentence of the resolution proposed was that "secondary
wives may be admitted to membership if obviously true Christians." Mr.
Arnold Foster resisted the inclusion of these words, and they were
lost. No doubt the Conference was wise in taking this line. It is
most essential to maintain the purity {126} of the home life, and the
difficulty that arises from secondary wives desiring to join the
Christian Church can never be a very important one, as the vast
majority of Chinese are monogamous.
A serious evil this custom creates is that of female slavery. Both in
Japan and China one of the awful penalties of poverty is that a man is
sometimes forced to sell his female children. These little girls are
bought by prudent Chinamen, first to be servants to their own wives and
then to act as secondary wives to their sons to prevent them going
elsewhere. Sometimes they are kidnapped by men who make a regular
business of this cruel traffic. Stories are told of boat-loads of
these children being brought down the Yangtsze, concealed below the
deck and terrorised to keep them quiet by one of their number being
killed before their eyes. On one occasion a missionary suddenly saw a
hand thrust through the planks of the deck, and on investigation he
discovered a dozen children hidden below, and as it turned out they had
been kidnapped, not bought, he was able to get them released. These
slaves are the absolute property of their owners, and many are the
tales told of the cruel and neglectful treatment to which they are
subjected. In Shanghai the Chinese police will report such cases, and
in consequence the ladies of the settlement have founded an admirable
institution to which they can be brought. The Slave Refuge deserves
all support. There the little girls are taught and cared for, and
helped to {127} forget the terrible experiences some of them have gone
through. Sad to relate, many of them have to be taken first to the
hospital to be cured from the effects of the ill-treatment they have
received. One poor little thing went into convulsions when a fire was
lit in the ward; it was difficult to understand the reason, but when it
happened again and the poor child uttered incoherent appeals for mercy,
it was discovered that she thought the fire was lit to heat opium
needles with which to torture her. Her system was too shattered for
recovery, but many others get quite well and form a pleasing sight at
work and play in the bright cheerful Refuge, with the happy elasticity
of youth forgetting the injuries which in some cases have left on them
permanent scars. But I fear the system of slavery continues very
commonly all over China, and such a philanthropic effort as the
Shanghai Slave Refuge can touch but a very small proportion of them.
Probably when the little slaves are destined to be wives to their
mistresses' sons they are treated less cruelly, and though employed as
household drudges, do not live actively unhappy lives.
Without stating that women as a whole are miserable, I think it would
be no exaggeration to say that they are infinitely less happy than
their Western sisters. Many of the national customs militate against
their happiness. The custom of child betrothal, for instance, condemns
a woman to live completely subject to a man for whom she perhaps {128}
has the greatest natural antipathy. Stories are told of brides
committing suicide rather than leave their father's house to be married
to men for whom they feel no affection; yet as a whole they accept
their position, and a Chinese woman has neither the will nor the power
to be untrue to her husband.
Again, the rule of the husband's mother is very often extremely harsh;
the child-wife is little better than her drudge. On the other hand,
when a woman grows older, her position is one of considerable strength.
I was assured that they take a keen interest in the management of their
husbands' properties, and often show themselves excellent business
women. The position which the late Empress of China acquired shows
that women's position is the very reverse of inferior when dignified by
age.
And now before all this woman's world glitters Western civilisation;
the greater dignity which is accorded therein to women is envied and
the laws which restrain her are misunderstood. The Chinese women hear
stories of Western life. At first such strange perversions are
believed as that in the West women rule. One missionary explained that
this absurd figment came from the rule of the late Queen; another
attributed it to the custom men have when travelling in China of
walking while their wives remained in the carrying chair. To the
Chinaman such a course admits of but one explanation: the {129} woman
must be greater than the man because she is carried while he walks.
Again, in Western China they learnt through their local press that
girls and boys received a similar education in England, and they
concluded that the dress must be also similar, and the missionaries
were more amused than scandalised at seeing a Government girls' school
turned out in boys' clothes. It was explained to us that this was far
from being an uncommon custom in China; slave-girls who have been
brought up with natural feet are habitually dressed as boys, and it is
common now for fathers of small daughters with unbound feet to avoid
the unpleasant taunts of the ignorant by allowing their daughters while
they are children to wear boys' clothes.
Still on the whole the desire for imitation of the West has been very
beneficial to the women of China, especially in this matter of
foot-binding. This disgusting custom is going out of fashion among the
enlightened and educated classes; two or three Chinese gentlemen
assured us that this was so; and in a place like Shanghai, where the
Western movement is very strong, the number of women with unbound feet
is quite remarkable; the greater number of them naturally have had
their feet bound, and as feet bound from infancy never become quite
normal, they still have something of the tottering walk which used to
be the admiration of every Chinaman; in fact, this tottering walk is
preserved as a piece of {130} affectation. A lady told us that even
her Christian girls' school was not above such a feminine weakness. As
they walked to Church they would step out with the swinging stride that
regular gymnastic exercises and a most comfortable dress have
encouraged; suddenly the lady would see the whole of her school struck
with a sort of paralysis which made them exchange their easy gait for
the "tottering-lily" walk of the Chinese small-footed women. The cause
is that the boys' school has just come into sight. I fear it must be
admitted that foot-binding continues to be practised in the interior
amongst the poorer women, who cling to the custom for fear of ridicule.
The most beneficial effect of the admiration of the West is the earnest
desire that it has given to Chinese women for education. So keen is
this desire that even married women will become children again and take
their position in the class. Husbands who have received Western
education are most anxious that their wives should share somewhat in
their interests.
Lady Florence could see over girls' schools where a man's visit would
not have been acceptable, so she visited many of all varieties,
including two at Peking of a rather unusual description. One of them
was carried on by a Manchu lady of high position, connected with a
great Manchu prince. Her attitude generally towards the forward
women's movement offends her family, as she lectures publicly on topics
of the time. {131} Her school is small, and, alas, not very efficient,
she having fallen into the usual fallacy amongst the Chinese of
believing that a Japanese instructress must of necessity be efficient.
Still her desire to give education to the children of the poor is
worthy of nothing but commendation. She looked most impressive, being
a fine big handsome woman, attired in the Manchu long robe with the
ornate Manchu head-dress. The second school my wife saw was managed by
another Manchu lady, and it seemed more orderly and more successful
than the other. These two schools testified to a desire to improve the
status of women. My wife visited many other schools, some belonging to
missions of various denominations, which attracted the daughters and
even the wives of upper-class men, who mixed quite happily with girls
of lower degree, being all united in a fervent desire for education,
the ruling desire now in China among women of all classes.
This desire for education is a great opportunity for the missionaries,
and they appeal most eloquently in the message from which we have
already quoted for help from their sisters in England. "We need more
schools for girls and more consecrated and highly trained women
competent to conduct such schools and gradually to give higher and
higher instruction in them. We need more training schools, also, for
Chinese women, to fit them to work among their sisters, and we need
educated Christian ladies from our homelands for Zenana work in the
houses of the {132} well-to-do. Such work would have been impossible a
few years ago; now the visits of such workers would in many cases be
cordially welcomed by Chinese ladies, and frequently they would be
returned, for the seclusion of women in China is not at all as strict
as it is in India. This, so far, has been a comparatively unworked
sphere of usefulness in China, but it is one full of promise and of
gracious opportunity in the present."
The difficulty of education is in one way increased and in another way
decreased by the ignorance which many women have of reading the Chinese
characters. A new system has been invented by which Chinese can be
written in our letters as pronounced. This is called by the rather
uncouth name of "Romanised." At the Shanghai Conference we were told
wonderful stories of the incredibly short space of time in which women
learnt to read by this system. A woman of sixty-seven learnt in two
months; while one lady asserted that she had taught a boy to read
between Friday and Wednesday, I may add inclusive. This extraordinary
achievement is not quite so impossible as it would be with our more
complicated languages. The Chinese have extremely few sounds, and
their language is monosyllabic in formation. However, we do not ask
our readers to accept this as the normal rate of education; still the
thing is worth mentioning, because it is possibly the beginning of a
great movement which may alter the whole of education in the Far East.
The extreme ease with {133} which Chinese can be written in our letters
may induce some daring spirit to advocate it as a system fitted for the
education of the poor, though this is at present quite improbable.
A far darker side to the introduction of Western ways is the gradual
naturalisation of the social evils of the West. Lady Florence had the
privilege of seeing some of the rescue work undertaken by devoted
missionary ladies in Shanghai. Being an open port, this town, in
common, I believe, with the other semi-Westernised ports in China,
bears a very bad character as regards purity of morals. The advent of
the foreigner has done nothing but harm in this respect. Wonderful and
horrible though it may seem, the vice-mart exists in the ports mainly
in connection with the foreigners, who appear to have shown the way to
the Chinese. There is a street in Shanghai, the Foochow Road, where
terrible scandals occur almost openly; signs whose intention is veiled
to the outsider by his ignorance of Chinese characters, boldly
advertise the merits of various houses and their inmates. Formerly
these wretched girls were even paraded in open chairs, but this has
been stopped, though they are still carried about in closed chairs.
The scenes in this street as night falls are a sad witness to the ill
effect of Western ideas without Christianity. It must never be
forgotten that the victims of this condition of things are literally
victims. They have no choice in the matter. They are sold by their
parents, even by their husbands, {134} into their terrible position;
and though some may live a life of luxury, most of them are cruelly
treated, beaten, tortured to prevent flight, and, as is proved by their
subsequent conduct, they regard the life with absolute loathing.
Inspired by profound pity for these poor creatures, these excellent
ladies started a Refuge for them with a receiving-house in the very
midst of this locality of ill-fame. To this haven the poor things
often flee even in the middle of the night, facing the unknown,
undeterred by rumours of the evil intentions of the foreigners put
about by their owners, rather than endure longer the life of
degradation and misery to which they have been condemned. The
missionaries receive them and pass them on to the "Door of Hope," the
appropriately named Refuge, which restores them to hope and peace and
happiness. There were to be seen some eighty young women living a
hard-working simple life, contented and merry, and apparently never
regretting for one moment the fine clothes and lazy luxury which many
of them had renounced. The ladies teach them useful arts, instruct
them in Christianity, and fit them for wives to Chinese Christians who
will be good to them, and, understanding well that their former life
was involuntary, are glad to have wives with a modicum of education.
The ladies will allow non-Christians to mate with non-Christians, if of
good character; but they will not permit any of their rescued flock to
become secondary wives. {135} Two things are remarkable in this work
of almost divine compassion--a relapse is practically unknown; and it
is the Chinese who are most helpful in encouraging it--more so than
foreigners; the Chinese often themselves suggest the "Door of Hope" to
these girls, and help in police cases to save them from their brutal
owners.
The risk that China runs at this moment in the home-life is the same as
the risk that she is running in every other department of her national
existence. If the materialist side of Western civilisation is the one
that is the most apparent, it is scarcely possible that it will fail to
do great damage to her home-life. A thoughtful Chinaman, talking about
the whole question, argued in favour of a complete acceptance of
Western ideas. He was afraid of a half measure. He said that there
was no question that women in the West are restrained by a mass of
conventions of whose value they are perhaps unconscious, but which are
very apparent to those who have been brought up in a different
civilisation. It is the existence of these conventions that makes
their liberty possible. If the Chinese are to accept Western
civilisation for their women, and he regarded this as inevitable, they
must learn the conventions; and therefore his solution to the problem
was that Chinese girls should be brought to England and brought up as
English girls.
But many missionaries plead for the opposite policy. They say: "Let us
preserve what is good in the Chinese home-life, let Christianity
permeate {136} that life and make it beautiful, but do not destroy it.
The Chinese home-life fits the Chinese race. The Westernised
Chinawoman will combine the errors of both civilisations and the
virtues of neither."
Without giving an opinion on this very vexed question, we may express a
hope that a policy of prudence and moderation will govern the action of
those who are concerned with women's education, for the degree of
alteration which may be necessary in women's life to make them fitted
to receive Western civilisation will be a matter rather of experiment
than of theory. At any rate let Christianity precede any large
alterations, for Christianity alone can make the life of a Western
woman intelligible and consistent to her Eastern sister.
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