THE LADY OF CHINA
It is not easy for the woman of the Occident to understand the life of
the woman of the Orient. The woman of the West, in her freedom, her
complex social life, her husband’s love, looks pityingly upon the
Eastern woman in what appears to be a seemingly restricted sphere—the
home. It is known that she is practically a prisoner, not by force but
by custom and convention; that the wall of the compound are the walls of
the world to her. It is not realized, however, that there she is
supreme, and from within those compound-walls, she sways to a great
extent the thought and life of China.
The Chinese lady does not lead a life of leisure or indolence. The
picture of the Eastern woman sitting upon divans and eating sweetmeats
does not apply to the women of this country. If she is the wife of an
official or of a man of wealth, she has a large household over which she
must preside. If the husband has a mother living the mother is the head
of the house, and her will is absolute. This was shown rather forcibly a
few years ago in Peking. The son of a Chinese official while abroad
married a European woman. She returned to Peking with her husband, and
within a few months fled to a foreign embassy and asked protection, as
she believed her life in danger. The mother-in-law had said: “While I
was in Europe with you I was powerless, but here I am absolute. I could
even kill you and no one would question the act. It is my right to do
with you as I wish.” The minister could do nothing, as by her marriage
the girl had become a Chinese subject and was under the laws of China,
which gave the mother of her husband absolute control over her life and
person.
Often there are an incredible number of people living under one
roof-tree, as all the sons bring their wives to their father’s home
instead of establishing separate households. Sheng, the director of
railways, told me that there were 250 people who took rice each day
within his compound. The walls of his garden enclosed a small village.
There was a large building containing his office and residence.
Radiating from this there were rows of smaller houses, where his
brothers and married sons lived with their numerous families.
A Chinese house, even of the very rich, is a shabby affair, judged from
Western standards. It is always surrounded by a wall, generally painted
white. Within the entrance gate is a large wooden screen, placed to
insure privacy, and also to guard the doorways from evil spirits, which
are known to travel only in straight lines and to abhor corners. If the
family is large the home consists of a series of houses built around
courtyards. Across the first court are the master’s rooms and offices;
then come the houses of the different families, as each wife has a suite
of rooms for herself and her children. Some of the wives of the more
wealthy Chinese occupy an entire building. The kitchen and the servants’
quarters are at the end of the last courtyard.
The floors of all the rooms are of rough boards, with great cracks
between them, sometimes covered with a rug but more often bare. The
walls are composed of the same wide boards, with here and there an
embroidered hanging or a scroll bearing the words of some honoured sage.
The furniture of the reception-room consists of small tables alternating
with straight-backed chairs, arranged with mathematical precision around
the three sides of the room. Opposite the doorway is the seat of honour,
or an opium-couch. Often the furniture is elaborately carved or inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, but it looks formal and precise. The chairs, with
their red embroidered cushions, are very uncomfortable for the
Westerner, because of their straight, low backs and high, narrow seats,
that make one long for a footstool. There are no buffets nor sideboards
in the dining-rooms, and stools are used in place of chairs. The tables
are square, seating eight, and neither tablecloths nor napkins are
considered necessary adjuncts to dining.
The bedrooms are small, and filled wellnigh to overflowing by an
enormous carved bed, with red embroidered curtains hanging from the
heavy canopy and long silken tassels draping the four posts. The Chinese
do not indulge in mattresses nor springs, sheets, nor pillow-cases. The
pillows are small bolsters, and the bedclothing consists of a series of
wadded “comfortables” made of silk or cotton. Their dislike of springs
is very intense. A hospital for the Chinese was opened in one of the
interior towns, and the doctors, wishing to do the very best they could
to make their patients comfortable, bought, at great expense, foreign
beds with springs. They found, to their disgust, that the patients, as
soon as the nurse turned her back, insisted on placing the bedclothing
upon the floor and lying there, instead of in the nice comfortable beds
that had been provided for them. They claimed that the springs made them
“seasick.” When Chinese ladies are calling upon a foreign woman, one of
the chief ways to amuse them is to take them over the house and permit
them to see the furnishings of the homes of the people from over the
sea. They are always intensely interested in the beds and look at the
springs from all sides, sitting on them and pressing them down with
their hands, finally shaking their heads, as much as to say, “It is past
all belief what these strange people will have in their houses.”
[Illustration:
CHINESE WOMEN WARMING HANDS AND FEET WITH BRAZIERS.
To face p. 214.]
The chief article of furniture in the kitchen is the stove, a huge
affair made of brick. This stove has generally three holes, in which are
set the iron cooking-pots, shaped like large washbowls and made of very
thin metal, in order that the ingredients may cook with the smallest
amount of heat necessary, as the question of fuel is a serious one in
China. In the country around Shanghai, rice-straw and faggots are the
main fuel, while on every hillside in the country one sees women and
children cutting the dried grass and gathering every available thing
that may be burned. Because of the lack of body in the fuel it keeps one
person busy feeding the fire while another attends to the cooking.
The food served at a feast, and which the average foreigner sees, is
quite different from that eaten every day. At a feast there are often
twenty or thirty courses. Swallow’s-nest soup, shark-fins, pigeon eggs
cooked with nuts, ducks prepared in many ways, fowl, fish, and
innumerable sweets. Rice is served as the last course, while at the
ordinary dinner it is the principal dish. It is to the Chinese what
bread is to the European or potatoes to the Irish. The food is cooked in
vegetable oil, made from beans or cabbages, or, for the richer class,
from peanuts. The chief meat is pork, which is cut into little bits and
cooked with a vegetable. Beef is not used by the average Chinese. The
cow is a beast of burden, and none of her products are eaten. I have
seen a great official, on being told that the ice-cream he was eating
was made of milk, deposit upon his plate the contents of his mouth with
more haste than grace. One receives the impression from pictures that
the Chinese politely picks up a few grains of rice with his chopsticks
and carries them slowly to his mouth. This is a picture of Occidental
imagination rather than Oriental reality. He takes with his chopsticks
some vegetables from the dishes in the centre of the table, to which all
have access, and, after depositing the chosen morsel on the top of his
rice, he lifts the bowl to his face and uses his chopsticks to shovel as
much of the rice into the opening as its capacity will permit. The
Chinese are supposed to be a slow and phlegmatic race, but if one were
to judge by the rapidity with which a bowl of rice will disappear, one
would easily give them a place among the most rapid and progressive
races of the world.
Food used by the Chinese is very cheap. The Viceroy at Nanking, a man of
unlimited wealth and power, told me that the food for himself did not
cost more than twenty cents a day. The servants in the American
Consulate had their food bought by the second cook, paying him five
shillings each per month, which sum included food, cooking, and service.
On board a foreign houseboat the captain is paid four shillings per day
for the hire of six men, and they are fed by him out of this sum. It is
made possible by the cheapness of the vegetables. I have seen him buy
three bushels of a curly-leaved vegetable resembling spinach for
twopence.
The lady of China takes no part in her husband’s business or social
life. Much of the business in China among the official and rich class is
transacted socially, and the dinners are generally given at a tea-house
or restaurant, or on the pleasure-boats kept for that purpose. Even the
very finest of these entertainment-places are very shabby affairs, from
a Western standpoint. They are also extremely dirty. The floors are made
of unmatched boards that have never seen the scrubbing-brush, and the
guests throw their fish-bones, cigarette-ends, etc., under the table.
The Chinese understand the art of dining, and we who simply go to eat
cannot appreciate the social side of this form of entertainment as does
the Eastern man. He eats a few courses, sheds a jacket, loosens a belt,
talks to a singing girl, smokes, then eats a few more courses, gambles a
while, and really enjoys himself for four or five hours. When he enters
the room for the feast he is given a slip of paper, on which he writes
the name of his favourite singing girl and her place of residence. When
all the guests arrive the slips are taken by a servant to the different
places, and at intervals during the dinner the girls arrive. These girls
are owned by men or women who bought them when they were very young, and
have trained them for singing girls or professional amusers. They sway
in on their tiny bound feet, beautifully dressed, painted and powdered,
and take their place behind the man who sent for them. They sit on a
narrow stool, chat with the man, have a few puffs from a water pipe, eat
melon-seeds (they never eat or drink anything from the table); then
their maid brings them their musical instrument, and they sing, in a
high falsetto voice, a song or two. If the song and the singer are
admired, the guests show their approval by loud “Hah, hah’s.” After her
song the girl arises, says good-bye to her patron, and leaves for her
next engagement. The girl’s owner receives from four to sixteen
shillings, according to the fame of the girl; she receives nothing,
unless a present is given her by some admirer. Many of them have
beautiful bracelets and hair ornaments of pearls and jade, and many own
gold water pipes that are very costly. They all carry little makeup
boxes, and powder their noses whenever the desire seizes them. To
Western eyes they are not pretty, with their red and white faces. They
paint their forehead, nose, and around their mouth white, the cheeks and
under-lip bright red, and to obtain the proper willow-leaf pattern for
the eyebrows their own are shaved and others more slanting are painted
in their place. It is hard to see any charm in these little women. They
sing through their noses, talk very little, and that the most inane
gossip, powder themselves, then bow and go away. They seem to have
neither ideas, expression, nor figure.
[Illustration:
CHINESE WOMEN AND CHAIR-BEARERS.
To face p. 218.]
With each one of these entertainers is a maid, who supports her as she
sways along on her little feet, and who sees that she does not try to
run away from her master. If the girl is popular and in much demand she
has a sedan chair and two bearers; if a very young girl, she is carried
on the shoulders of a strong, husky coolie. Many of them lead pitiful
lives, and a singing girl’s only hope of escape is to become the
secondary wife or concubine of a rich man; then, if she should be so
fortunate as to bear a son for her husband she would hold an honourable
position, and nothing could be said against her because of her former
life.
A Chinese gentleman is out to dinner practically every night, or else he
is entertaining friends. He sleeps until noon, goes to his particular
club for amusement and to meet his friends in the afternoon, and returns
to his home in the wee sma’ hours of the night. The wife or wives stay
at home and take care of the house and children. No Chinese lady ever
dines at a restaurant; in fact, no Chinese lady ever eats at the same
table with her husband; he would “lose face” if he ate with a woman.
Although a lady is never seen dining in public, she frequently gives
dinner parties to her friends and relatives. The courtyards are then
filled with the chattering chair-bearers, who, squatting on their
haunches as only an Eastern servant can, drink innumerable cups of tea
served by the servants of the hostess. The guests are met at the
entrance to the women’s quarters by the lady of the house, and a great
many bows are made, varying in depth according to the rank of the guest.
Each guest has a maid, who from time to time brings her mistress a
vanity box, from which is extracted powder and rouge; and she, like her
frailer sister, the sing-song girl, applies a little more white to her
already whitened nose, or rouges her cheeks, or touches a little red
paint to the lower lip. Paint and powder are not confined to the women
of the amusement class, as the Chinese lady (that is, the younger ones;
older women do not make up at all) paints her face more than is
beautiful to foreign eyes. Even the hands are not forgotten, and within
the palms the rouge brush is used. The hands of a Chinese lady are
beautiful—long, slender, and delicate, looking as helpless as a flower.
In the olden time long fingernails were worn as a mark of ladyhood, and
were often covered with jade or gold, telling plainly that the wearer
belonged to the leisured class and did not need to toil. In fact, the
whole expression of a Chinese lady is helplessness. From her exquisitely
coiffured head, with its mass of pearl and jade, to her tiny feet, on
which she sways instead of walks, she impresses one as a dainty piece of
jewellery, too fragile for real life. The small feet accentuated this,
but now they are passing, and the new woman of China is not binding her
daughter’s feet.
[Illustration:
BOUND FEET OF CHINESE WOMAN.
To face p. 221.]
The curse of footbinding does not fall so heavily upon women who may sit
and embroider, or if needs must travel can be borne upon the shoulders
of their chair-bearers; but it is upon the poor girl, whose parents hope
to have one in the family who may better their fortunes by a rich
marriage, and, hoping thus, they bind their feet. If this marriage fails
and she is forced to work within her household, or, even worse, if
poverty compels her to work in the fields, or add her mite gained by
most heavy labour to help fill the many eager mouths at home, then she
should have our pity. We have seen the small-footed woman pulling heavy
boats along the tow-paths, or leaning on their hoes to rest their tired
feet while working in the fields of cotton. To her each day is a day of
pain, and this new law forbidding the binding of the feet of children
will come as a blessing from the gods. But it will not pass at once, as
so many now loudly proclaim; it will take at least three generations:
the children of the present children will quite likely all have natural
feet. The people in the country, far from the noise of change and
progress, will not feel immediately that they can wander so far afield
from the old ideas of what is beautiful in their womenkind.
The most noticeable thing about a Chinese woman, poor as well as rich,
is her hair: it is jet-black, and made shiny and smooth with a paste
until not a strand is out of place. At certain times of the year small
wreaths are made from tiny yellow flowers and placed around the knot at
the back. The hair is never untidy, and the artistic disorder of the
hair of the foreign woman is secretly much disliked by the Chinese. The
late Empress-Dowager once gave the wife of a foreign Minister a set of
combs as a present. The Minister’s wife was delighted, as the gift was
enclosed in an elaborate silver box, and she did not see the subtle
suggestion in the present, over which the Chinese of the province
chuckled for many a day.
A party of Chinese ladies presents a very gay appearance. They wear silk
or satin, nearly always brocaded and often heavily embroidered. In the
winter, as the houses are not heated, many furs are worn, but almost
entirely, except in the case of sable, as linings for the silken coats.
One garment is put on over the other until the right degree of warmth is
obtained. Instead of speaking of degrees of cold, the Chinese say it is
three-coat weather or five-coat weather. The children are clothed in
wadded garments, so thick that the overdressed babies look like little
round balls and can scarcely move. In the summer the ladies wear
delicate gauzes over their undergarments of grass-linen.
Nearly every province in China has its own customs and peculiarities in
dress as well as in everything else, but they all agree on the rich reds
and blues, the purples and mauves for the making of their jackets, while
their wide, skirt-like trousers are often of a much deeper colour than
the jacket and trimmed with a wide band of black. The mixture of tints
sounds most incongruous to foreign ears, but Chinese women have the
faculty of weaving the most clashing hues into a work of harmonious art.
Except in the case of an old lady, black is seldom worn, and as white is
the colour of mourning, it is seen only on occasions of sorrow. A
Chinese lady can never understand why European babies are dressed in
white. Children are the symbols of happiness, and it seems to them most
inappropriate to garb them in sorrow’s colours. All the gayest and
brightest colours of China’s dye-pots are made to produce the clothing
for China’s children.
The dress of the Chinese woman, rich or poor, is very modest, fastening
close around the neck, with sleeves coming to the hands and the loose
jacket formed so as to disguise the lines of the body. European women
are severely censured in China because of their _décoletté_ gowns and
tight dresses, which seem to the Chinese the height of vulgarity. When
one of the Imperial princes was _en route_ to England, he attended his
first foreign dinner in Shanghai. About twenty-five of the guests were
English and American ladies, dressed in their most elaborate gowns,
which means extreme _décoletté_. The attachés of the prince had tried to
prepare his highness for the sight he was to witness; but they had
evidently underestimated its startling qualities, because when the
prince arrived and gave one amazed look at his hostess and the line of
waiting ladies he was nonplussed. He looked pitifully for his
interpreter, and, not receiving aid from him, put down his head, shut
his eyes, and bravely stumbled around the room, groping blindly for each
lady’s hand, as he had been informed that he should shake hands with
them. This was another serious breach of Chinese etiquette, as no
Chinese man must ever touch a woman. The Chinese views in regard to
modesty connected with the dress of women has caused the missionaries in
the interior to expurgate from the magazines that may by chance fall
into the hands of Chinese visitors all pictures of lightly clad ladies
who are used to advertise soaps and powders and the underwear of our
American markets.
The Chinese are very fond of their children. They say, “In the children
our parents return to us; in the children we live again.” When ladies
visit each other they always ask for the children, who are brought in by
the nurses. With their jackets of red, their trousers of bright green or
purple, their baby-caps with its rows of tiny brass Buddhas that shine
and glitter like gold, and the mark of red paint on the forehead or on
the tip of the tiny nose, they look like brilliant little elfs. The
girls are dressed quite as richly as the boys, and it is to the interest
of the nurse to make the children as attractive as possible, because the
pleased visitor generally gives her a small present of money wrapped in
red paper.
[Illustration:
AN OLD-FASHIONED CHINESE GIRLS’ SCHOOL.
To face p. 224.]
Visiting a high-class Chinese lady, one is impressed with the number of
children and servants that seem to be swarming over the place. When one
of a family has distinction or wealth, all the poor relatives come to
dwell with him. Li Hung-chang built a home in Shanghai in which to live
when he should retire from private life. When asked why he built so far
from his home province, which was contrary to Chinese custom, he said he
built as far as possible from his native town, hoping that his poor
relations could not obtain the money with which to come to Shanghai.
The servants in a Chinese family are not expensive, so far as wages are
concerned, but they cost a great deal in perquisites. They rarely
receive more than eight shillings a month, but they are given their
food, and they help themselves lavishly to anything they may desire.
They dress themselves from the old clothing of the family, freely take
the hairpins and the toilet articles of the mistress, clothe their
children from the common wardrobe, and, in fact, are a part of the
family.
There is a peculiar democratic custom which servants may claim, but
which is seldom used—the right of reviling the family when discharged.
The youngest son of Li Hung-chang lived next door to me, and an old
serving-woman was discharged for a reason that evidently did not appeal
to her sense of justice. She sat beneath the gateway and for three hours
called down curses upon the Li family at the top of her voice. This
happened on one of the principal residence streets of Shanghai, and the
police passed and repassed, but no one tried to stop her. The house
steward made two or three feeble attempts to persuade her to leave, but
she would turn her facile tongue upon him, and he would gather his
skirts in his hands and start on a most undignified run for the house,
evidently believing discretion to be the better part of valour. At the
end of three hours, when she was completely exhausted, she was led away.
The Chinese lady and her servants gossip together as friends, rooms are
entered without warning, conversations interrupted, and suggestions
offered which, to the foreigner, seem to be of the grossest
impertinence. This intimacy is due partly to the restricted life the
lady leads, and partly to the fact that many of the servants are distant
relatives. Practically the only news from the outside world that comes
to the woman behind the walls is brought by her sons or by the servants.
She makes few visits, and these usually at the home of some relative,
entering her closely covered chair within her courtyard and carried
swiftly to the courtyard of the house where she is to visit. There is no
such thing as “calling” between the wives of men who are mutually
interested in affairs or who are business associates. The wife of a
Treaty Commissioner called upon the wives of the Chinese officials who
were associated with her husband in conducting the treaty. They were
very polite and returned her call, but are still wondering _why_ she
called.
The wife of a consul wished to give a luncheon to the wife of the Mayor
of Shanghai. She asked the interpreter who was assisting her in the
arrangements if other Chinese ladies of the same rank might be asked.
The interpreter said, “No; a Chinese lady would rather not meet women
other than relatives.”
The Chinese wife lives entirely for her family and with her family. She
rarely goes to a public place of amusement, although in some of the
ports, like Shanghai and Canton, entire families are seen at the Chinese
theatres. Theatrical companies come to the houses of the rich and
official class for the amusement of guests, and story-tellers and
musicians, nearly always blind, go from door to door asking to be taken
into the women’s courtyards to help while away the dreary hours.
Astrologers and fortune-tellers pass along the resident streets,
striking their little gong to attract the notice of the women behind the
walls. They are extremely clever, and cast horoscopes in a manner
similar to that of the Egyptians of olden times. They are very popular
among the Chinese women, as are fortune-tellers with women of all races.
We are prone to sympathize with the Chinese woman because of the
plurality of wives, but one sees little evidence of the need of our
sympathy. The Chinese have a saying: “The head wife should cherish the
inferior wives as the great tree cherishes the creepers that gather
round it.” I do not know whether this sage advice is always followed,
but I have seen the several wives of many officials, all friendly as
sisters and all working for the common good of the home.
I called upon the wife of an official and was met at the door by two
ladies. One of them was a very old Chinese lady, with the smallest bound
feet that I have ever seen; they could not have been more than 2½ inches
in length. She was partially supported on one side by a servant, and on
the other by a beautifully dressed Manchu woman. After I was seated in
the place of honour at the left of the elderly lady, and tea was
brought, I asked the usual question, “What is your honourable age?” She
replied, “Sixty-two”; then, as always follows, I said, “How many
children have you?” She replied, “Five.” I asked their ages, and, to my
astonishment, heard her say that the eldest was seventeen years and the
youngest two months. When I could find words to continue the
conversation, I turned to the Manchu lady and asked her practically the
same questions. She replied that she was thirty-five years old, was the
mother of five children, the eldest being seventeen years and the
youngest two months. Then I realized that the first wife had no
children, but, according to Chinese custom, claimed as her own all
children born to the secondary wives.
The custom was further exemplified by the wife of a magistrate who was
calling upon me, accompanied by the second wife. After the usual
questions in regard to age and health, I asked this lady how many
children she possessed. She looked at me in a puzzled manner for a
moment, then turned to the other wife and, keeping track of the names by
turning down a finger at each count, said: “Let me see—how many children
have I? Tsai-an has three, Wo-kee has five—that is eight; Ma-lu has
two—ten; Sin Yun has four—fourteen; Sih-peh two—sixteen; and you have
three”; then, turning to me, she said, “I have nineteen children.”
I have a Chinese friend who lived in Canton until he became involved in
some political trouble that caused him to leave for Shanghai, where he
would be under the protection of the foreign settlements. He left behind
him his mother, four wives, and sixteen children. He became lonely in
his exile, and asked his mother to send him a couple of his wives. She
wrote him that they were busy attending to the education of their
children, and that they did not speak the dialect in Shanghai and would
feel like strangers; consequently it would be better for him to marry a
couple of women native to the province, who would be more contented. He
took her advice.
There is an American woman doctor in Shanghai who goes to the homes of
the rich Chinese in the practice of her profession. I asked her one day
if she knew the wife of Mr. Lu, a prominent merchant who had a most
beautiful home on the smart drive in Shanghai. She replied that she knew
a part of her—numbers one, four, seven, and eleven. A rich man is only
restricted in the number of wives he may possess by his ability to
support them. Gossip says—I do not know how true it is—that Yuan Shi-kai
has the unlucky number of thirteen wives beneath the roof-tree of the
President’s palace in Peking.
One would naturally suppose that endless complications of a disagreeable
nature, leading to quarrels and bitterness, would arise, yet there does
not seem to be more unhappiness in the average Chinese home than in
those of any other country. The first wife, she who has been chosen by
the parents, is the head of the household, and her word is law, the
other wives practically occupying the position of servants. That is the
theory, but in actual practice she who is fortunate enough to be the
mother of sons, or perhaps the last girl-wife, is generally the
favourite, and wields great influence over the master of the household.
I said to a woman calling upon me one day that I should not feel so
badly after the first wife was chosen to replace me, but that the choice
of my immediate successor would make me very unhappy. She looked
astonished, and said: “That depends entirely upon the woman. If she is
agreeable and pleasant, it is a pleasure to have her in the family.
Often a first wife chooses a second.”
We of the Western world look upon a great many wives as a luxury only to
be enjoyed by the very rich. I have a friend who is very intimate in a
Chinese family in which there are five wives. Since hearing her talk I
have changed my mind in regard to the luxury of the plurality of wives.
In this household the first wife lives with the husband’s family at
their country place; the other four live with him. The husband supplies
a cook for the common use of the family, and this cook provides rice,
the staple article of food for the household. Each wife is given a
servant and one pound a month with which to buy her luxuries, and once a
year she is given a complete suit of silk or satin clothing, and if a
favourite, I presume she receives jewels, etc., from her husband. A man
told me that in the interior of China (Shanghai, Peking, and some of the
larger cities are much more expensive) he could support easily his four
wives and fourteen children on an income of £200 a year.
There are many foolish women who marry attachés of the Chinese embassies
in England and America, or, more foolish still, who marry a Chinese
merchant. They are, in fact, marrying the romance of the East
represented to them in the person of the suave little almond-eyed man,
and they pay bitterly for their mistake if they ever return to their
husband’s country. They are recognized by neither Chinese nor
foreigners, have no social standing in any community, and lead an
existence that calls for pity.
There lived in Shanghai a man who had once been a secretary of the
Legation in London. He had a great career ahead of him until he married
an Englishwoman, when he was ordered home, degraded, and lived for years
as the petty official in the office of the mayor of the city, at a wage
scarcely liveable even for a Chinese. His wife, recognized by neither
English nor Chinese, became addicted to opium and drink, and died after
a few years of unhappiness. A woman doctor told me that she found the
body lying in an outhouse, on a bundle of straw, waiting for burial,
where finally it found a resting-place in a Chinese cemetery.
A few years ago a woman came to the English Consul in Nanking and asked
for protection. She had married a Chinese merchant in London, and on his
return to his own country he met with business reverses that reduced him
practically to the position of a coolie. She had been forced to go into
the paddy-fields transplanting rice. It is bad enough to see a Chinese
woman standing in the mud and water to her knees, doing this
back-breaking work, but it would be heartrending to see a woman of our
race toiling alongside of the ignorant Chinese peasant, under the rays
of the tropical sun, which beats down so pitilessly upon the exposed
rice-fields. The Consul was extremely sorry for the woman, but could not
interfere in the domestic life of a Chinese subject. When she found
nothing could be done for her, she took the little round ball of sleep
with which so many Chinese wives pass across the bridge of death—opium.
If these women who think that it would be such a wonderful experience to
live in the glorious East, of which they have read most glittering
tales, would realize that when the man returns to his homeland his
parents have the right of choosing a wife for him, who is his real wife,
and the poor foreign woman is reduced to the position of a concubine, I
think many of them would not take a step so fatal to happiness. Dr.
Barchet, of the Baptist Mission near Ningpo, saw an American woman
living in a small village who was one of four wives, all occupying the
same peasant’s cottage. When asked why she did not return to her
homeland, she said that she was ashamed to have her people learn of her
great mistake, as she married against their wishes. The bad air and
coarse food were having their effect upon this delicately raised girl,
and she was a victim to the great white plague that claims so many lives
in China.
Suicide is very common among the women of China. When the mother-in-law
becomes too oppressive, or life becomes intolerable from other causes,
the wife often takes the law into her own hands and takes opium or jumps
into the well. She then not only receives surcease from her sorrows,
but, according to Chinese superstition, her spirit will linger around
the home, haunting and tormenting the person who was the cause of her
taking the fatal step.
There is very little intercourse between foreign and Chinese women. The
latter do not seem to care about making the acquaintance of the women
from over the seas. It is only of late years that the wives of foreign
officials in Shanghai have had any intercourse with the families of the
local officials. Such intercourse consists simply in an interchange of
calls, and a luncheon given once a year by the wife of the senior
Consul, and returned by the wife of the Chinese taotai or mayor. There
can never be any degree of friendship between the Chinese woman and the
European. Their lives are radically different; the Chinese woman’s
ideals are not the same as those of her foreign sister. Their only
common subject of conversation is in regard to their children; and even
there a bar is soon put across the conversation, as the Chinese mother
has different hopes and ambitions for the future of her children than
those of the woman from England or America. She knows nothing of the
outside world, and her only subjects of conversation relate to household
gossip, clothes, and the actions of her friends. In Shanghai a society
is formed that is trying to bring the women of all nationalities into
touch with one another, but it is not a very great success so far as the
Chinese lady is concerned. She feels awkward and ill at ease in the
presence of these women, who talk so easily on matters of which she
knows nothing, and she much prefers the quiet of her courtyards, amidst
the life she understands.
When a Chinese lady is persuaded to go into the world she is always most
dignified, even under embarrassing circumstances. I once gave a luncheon
for the wife of a Governor of a province, to which the wives of the
consuls and a few other ladies were invited, about twenty in all. When
the guest of honour arrived all the other guests rose to meet her. As
she entered the doorway her tiny bound feet stepped upon a rug, which
slipped from beneath her, and instead of swaying gently across the room
she sat down and slid to the feet of her astonished hostess. She was
helped to rise by the frightened guests, and turned and shook hands with
them gravely, without a flicker of the eyelids to indicate that sliding
was not the usual mode of entering a drawing-room.
The Chinese lady is trained not to show emotion of any kind. Her face,
to be beautiful, must be absolutely placid, care-free, “like unto the
full moon in its glory.” They consider the foreign woman extremely ugly,
with their long, care-lined faces. They say that if it were not for the
clothing they could not distinguish men from women. Their faces, with
their prominent noses and deep-set eyes, appear to them coarse and
unrefined. I have seen children when suddenly confronted with a foreign
woman scream in terror.
The Chinese do not impress the casual visitor as a nervous people. It is
said that they can bear without murmuring the most severe punishments,
and a torture that would reduce a foreign man to frenzy will elicit only
a groan from a member of this phlegmatic race. The women seem to share
with their menfolk in this lack of “nerves.” I once made a visit to the
wife of the city magistrate, whose home was in the official “yamen.” She
showed me over her house, and on entering her bedroom I went to the only
window in the room to see what kind of a view was to be obtained. What
was my horror to find that the window looked directly upon the
punishment courtyard, where a man was then being held down upon his face
and a bamboo vigorously applied by the lictor. The moans of the victim
could be faintly heard, and what it would be in the summer-time, when
the windows were open, could very well be imagined. I turned to my
hostess and said, “How frightful! How can you stand it?” She shrugged
her shoulders and said, “Oh, one becomes used to it.”
The Chinese woman is very devout, and observes all the feast days and
days of fasting. It is really the woman who keeps up the religion of
Confucius and Buddha. An official who had just returned from sacrificing
to the dragon who was supposed to have swallowed the sun at the time of
an eclipse, was asked if he believed in this dragon. He laughed and
said, “Of course not.” “Then,” the curious questioner continued, “why do
you do it?” He said, “Why do men in America go to church? Mainly because
their wives wish them to go. It is the same here. It is the women who
are the spiritual force of China. It is they who are devout, and it is
they who keep open the temples and preserve the belief in the gods.”
[Illustration:
WHEELBARROW AND COOLIE—USED IN PLACE OF WAGONS IN TOWNS AND COUNTRY
VILLAGES NEAR SHANGHAI.
To face p. 236.]
The Chinese woman’s religion is difficult of definition, but whatever
she is, a follower of the teachings of Confucius or of the Great Buddha,
she turns to her gods both in time of trouble and in time of
thanksgiving. It is a real factor in her life. Buddhism has a great
festival in the spring, about the time of our Easter. Then the roads are
covered with processions of women going or coming from the temples. All
ranks are seen—the lady borne swiftly along in her sedan chair with the
spirit money hanging from the poles; the middle-class woman riding on
the passenger wheelbarrows with four or five of her friends, with her
incense and candles in her lap; and the poor woman trudging along the
stone-covered road, carrying her offerings in a basket of rice-straw
which she has woven at home. When they arrive at the temple they are all
of one great sisterhood. The spirit money of rich and poor alike is
placed in the great incense-burner in the outer courtyard, where it goes
up in flames to the gods. Then the temple is entered, the candles are
lighted, and the incense is placed before the particular deity whose
kind offices they implore; the head is touched to the floor, prayers are
uttered, and the woman returns to the courtyards, where she may pass the
time with her friends, feeding the carp in the ponds or admiring the
great trees which are found within the courts of many of the big
temples. If a special boon is to be asked, or if there is doubt and
trouble, she takes a hollow bamboo vase, about the size of a quart
measure, in which are a couple of dozen sticks of slit bamboo. She
kneels three times, touching her head to the floor each time, then
shakes the bamboo with a rotary motion until one of the sticks detaches
itself from the others and falls to the floor. This she takes to a
priest, who reads the number upon it and gives her a slip of yellow
paper covered with Chinese characters, and from it she will find the
answer to her prayers. It takes considerable imagination to obtain
solace from one of these pieces of paper, as they are made to fit all
cases, and carry about as much meaning as does the “fortune” on the card
handed one by the figure in the slot-machine for which we pay a penny.
The gods are not only worshipped at the temples, but religious adoration
plays an important part in the home life. Over the kitchen stove, in a
niche, reposes the household god. From that high place he watches all
that goes on within the household. He knows the sins of commission and
the sins of omission. Once a year he is taken down and with great
ceremony burned and sent up to the Great God to report upon the actions
of the household for the year, and a new god is installed in his place.
In the meantime he is propitiated in various ways. The first thing in
the morning a small bowl of rice and another of water is placed before
him, and incense and candles are burned daily at his feet to gain his
favour.
Priests are frequent visitors at the homes, and religious ceremonies
attend all the great family events, like the first shaving of the baby’s
head, or that most important day when the mother attains her fiftieth
year. This is a day of general rejoicing, when her children unite and
buy the happy mother the greatest and most precious present she can
receive—her grave-clothes. They are presented amidst much feasting, and
chanting of prayers, and burning of candles and incense, and the mother
is congratulated by all her friends for the blessing of such filial
children.