THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE
The home must have its basis in marriage, and to that important episode
in woman’s life the greatest attention is given. In China, as in India,
the betrothal ceremony is as binding as the marriage, although I am told
that the “new woman” of China is rebelling at the child betrothals and
the lack of freedom granted her in the choice of a mate. It is said that
in Shanghai a couple who have been betrothed in childhood by their
parents, on arriving at marriageable age, may go before a magistrate and
repudiate the agreement, and in many instances their cases have been
upheld even against the protests of father and mother. This shows the
most extreme progressiveness of present-day China, as hitherto a child,
especially a girl, was simply a chattel to be disposed of according to
the dictates of the nearest male relative. Still, with the exception of
the foreign settlement of Shanghai, the old customs of betrothal and
marriage prevail, and the principals in the marriage have very little to
say in regard to the disposal of their future. Often children are
betrothed before their birth by parents, who, being good friends and
desiring to unite the families, agree that if a boy is born in one
family and a girl in the other, they shall marry. Other matches are made
by a professional “go-between,” who is employed by the parents of either
the boy or girl to find a suitable alliance for their child. This
“go-between” is so thoroughly recognized that the Chinese have a saying,
“Without a go-between no happy marriage can be effected.”
After the search culminates in the discovery of the bride and groom of
equal social standing and endowed with the proper amount of this world’s
goods, the names of the girl and boy are written upon a paper and taken
to the necromancer, who decides whether the marriage will be fortunate.
Every child is born under the protection of some animal; if the
protecting animal of the daughter is a sheep and that of her fiancé a
lion, naturally they should not marry. But if the guardian animal of the
bride-to-be should be a bird, they will live in peace with one another.
The girl must be thirteen or fifteen or seventeen years of age, as an
even number would be most unlucky. Seventeen years is about the average
marriageable age of a Chinese girl at present, although formerly they
married when hardly more than children.
The marriage customs are essentially the same all over China. The
husband gives a certain sum of money to the bride’s parents, which
varies with the position of the families. Among the poor the girl is
practically sold, although the money is supposedly used for the purchase
of the wedding outfit. The bride’s standing in the family of the husband
often depends largely upon the trousseau and the furnishings she takes
with her to her new home.
The outfit a girl of the middle class should take with her, in order
that she might command the proper respect of her new relatives, should
include three red trunks, one table, two chairs, one wardrobe, three
tubs, two buckets, one washstand, one dressing-case, a set of scissors,
a footstove, a teapot, wine-pot, two candlesticks, a basin, sugar-bowl,
tea-caddy, one set of cups, a complete set of bowls and dishes, two
wadded quilts, two embroidered pillows, embroidered curtain for the bed,
and a complete outfit of clothing.
This donation of the bride’s parents to the formation of a new home is
carried before the bride in the wedding procession. Often musicians
herald the coming of a bride, who, from her closely covered red chair,
watches with beating heart the procession taking her to her new
mother-in-law, who can make of her future home a prison or a palace of
love. When she finally arrives at the house, that is decorated with red
hangings and long scrolls of red silk and flowers, both real and
artificial, she sees her husband for the first time as she steps over
the threshold. After the one quick look, they go before the ancestral
tablet, and, kneeling, touch their heads three times to the floor. Thus
she shows that she is now one of the family, worshipping her husband’s
ancestors instead of those of her own family; and after prostrating
themselves before her husband’s parents and drinking from the same cup
as a symbol of their unity, they retire to a room, where they sit upon
two red chairs and the merry-making begins. Their friends come in, and,
facing them, try to make the bride laugh, showing that she will be a
most frivolous woman. There is much music, feasting, and playing of
tricks on this joyous occasion, and for this little woman, dressed in
red satin embroidered in gold, with a big crown upon her head and
bead-fringe hanging over her face, the three days of the wedding
festivities are most wearying. But she realizes that she must enjoy them
if she can, because after they have passed she settles down into the
daughter-in-law, which too often proves to be almost the place of a
slave, or at the most a household drudge. One can imagine the discord
and strife there is within a household where there are several sons who
are married, each bringing his wife to his parents’ home. I knew a
family of grandparents, parents, and children numbering thirty-eight,
all living in one modest house. We can understand the Chinese savant
making the character for discord a roof with two women under it.
Often in a rich girl’s dowry are slave-girls, and although it is really
against the law to own slaves, it is, in fact, one of the great evils of
China. These helpless people are owned by even the poor. The mother of
my maid possessed two slave-girls whom she had bought when very young.
She treated them well, and when they grew to marriageable age expected
to find husbands for them, giving them an outfit of clothing and a small
dowry. In times of famine girls are sold for very small amounts of money
or exchanged for the more precious rice. This seems most cruel; but in
order that the rest of the family may live, one must be sacrificed. When
everything of value is sold, when the winter clothing is in the
pawnshop, when there is no rice to give to crying children, then there
is but one thing left for the despairing mother, she must sell her
daughter. Chinese mothers are the same as mothers from all over the
world, and she only parts with her little girl as a last resort, to the
merchants who follow the disasters and fatten on the misery of the
Chinese peasant. When it has become known that a famine has made
desperate the poor of a province, the merchants from the tea-houses and
the brothels of the great cities go to the little towns and villages in
the track of the famine, and buy the girls from the fathers and mothers,
who can see nothing but death ahead for all unless they sacrifice one.
The clever, pretty girls are trained for the tea-houses, inmates of
brothels, or concubines of rich men. The ugly, stupid ones are
domestics, and often are most cruelly treated.
The owners prefer buying the girl very young, from five to seven years
of age, when she can be more easily trained. If she is a pretty girl,
her feet must be bound, and if this is a cruel operation under the
tender hands of a mother, how much more dreadful it may become when
attended to by some one whose only thought is to profit by the girl’s
beauty!
The slaves in a rich family fare very well. Each child is given one or
two personal servants, and when the children grow up and marry they
follow them to the new home. Often a pretty, attractive slave-girl
becomes the secondary wife of her master, and if she should be so
fortunate as to bear him sons, she ranks with her mistress in the honour
given her within the household.
There is a home in Shanghai for the rescue of little girls whose
mistresses are more than ordinarily cruel. There is also a branch of the
Florence Crittenden work for the rescue of girls sold to tea-houses. It
is very hard for the people who are engaged in this good work to obtain
the girls unless they are so badly treated that it comes to the notice
of the magistrate, who may send the girl to the home for a given period.
I saw a pitiful case at a hospital at Soochow. We were sitting in the
clinic when a very pretty woman came in and threw herself on her knees
before the doctor and began to cry. She said between her sobs: “Oh,
foreign doctor, help me to get away, help me, help me!” She was a
respectable girl from Ningpo who had been sold by her husband to a place
in Soochow for four years. She loathed the life, and when for the first
time she had eluded the old woman who always goes out with these
unfortunates to see that they do not get away, she had appealed to the
only hope she knew. Yet that appeal was useless, as nothing could be
done for her. She was nothing but a chattel of her husband, according to
Chinese law, and he had a perfect right to sell her if he wished. I saw
another pretty girl of sixteen who had been sold for eighty dollars to
the same place. She came to the hospital to have her back treated, as
she had been severely beaten with a brick because she would not make
herself sufficiently pleasing to a guest.
But the average Chinese girl goes to her husband’s home quite likely
within a short distance of her girlhood village, and passes a most
uneventful life, one day being exactly like another unless broken by the
ceremonies attending the births, weddings, and deaths of her husband’s
people. Every village is surrounded by trees and is exactly like its
neighbour, with its one-story, thatched-roof houses, or, perhaps, if the
owner is especially prosperous, the pointed roofs may be formed of
blue-grey tiling. Part of the front yard is beaten and made smooth to be
used for threshing the rice, the front room of the house is used for the
storing of the farming implements, and the other rooms are given to the
different members of the family according to their needs. There is no
light and little ventilation in these rude village homes. Windows are
expensive and cold, as the houses are not heated in the winter. The
mothers may be seen sitting in their doorways, holding in their hands
brass hand-warmers, in which are a few burning coals of charcoal, and
under their feet are the braziers which provide the only heat for these
poor people during the cold months of the year.
[Illustration:
RAIN-COATS OF CHINESE WORKMEN.
To face p. 246.]
The life lived by these village people is life reduced to its simplest
form. The main food is rice and a little cabbage. Meat is an unknown
quantity unless on special feast days. Beef is not used, as the cow is a
beast of burden, and the Chinese have the same feeling in regard to its
flesh that we have for the flesh of horses. Ducks, chicken, eggs, fish,
crabs, snails, and clams are the poor man’s luxuries. No hole is too
muddy nor water too filthy for a fish-net to be drawn across it, or for
the little crowd of boys who catch the crabs to help fill the family
pot.
The question of clothes is a simple one and easily solved. The father
wears a pair of blue cotton trousers in the summer, while the mother
wears the same style garment with the addition of an apron effect which
covers the bust. An amulet and a string are sufficient clothing for the
children during the warm days, but when winter comes the wadded clothing
must be brought forth, often from the pawnshop, where it goes in the
spring to obtain money to buy the seed for planting.
The great prayer which rises from the heart of all Chinese women, rich
and poor, peasant and princess, is to Kwan-yin for the inestimable
blessing of sons. “Sons, give me sons!” is heard in every temple. A
woman is not honoured until she has sons to worship at the tablets of
her husband’s ancestors. One of the chief reasons for divorce in China
is the lack of sons, and if the first wife has no male children, and the
secondary wife has borne sons to her lord, the lot of the first wife is
very bitter. In one of the foreign hospitals in Shanghai for Chinese
women, the wife of an official in Tientsin gave birth, much to her
sorrow, to a girl. She was inconsolable, and would not allow the
dreadful news to be sent to her home, and the doctors feared that she
would take her life. But through a servant the unhappy woman saw a way
to regain the love and respect of her family. At the same time that the
daughter was born to her a beggar-woman in the charity department gave
birth to a boy. She bought the boy and telegraphed her husband, “Thou
art the father of twins.”
One of the upper servants in a consulate, growing rich on the foreign
spoils, took to himself a second wife, giving as his excuse that he had
four daughters and no sons. At the birth of a son to the new wife the
first wife tried to starve herself to death, and failing that, took
opium and gained her wish. She could not survive the ignominy of being
only the mother of girls.
Sons mean so much to a Chinese mother that she feels that the gods must
be jealous of her happiness, consequently she puts an ear-ring in one
ear of her boy to deceive the god and make him think the loved one is a
girl. She also calls him her “ugly one,” her “stupid one,” or simply
gives him a number so the gods will not see how much he is loved and
covet her treasure. There is an economic reason behind all this love for
the man-child. A poor Chinese, a workman, cannot save enough money to
provide for even his simple wants in his old age. Try as he may, he can
only earn enough to live upon from day to day, but if he has sons he
knows that when old age comes, and he can no longer work, that care will
be given him and he will not want. There is no crime so great as the
lack of filial piety, and the State punishes severely the son who does
not provide for his aged parents. Indeed, of the five punishments of the
criminal code directed against three thousand offences, disobedience or
neglect of parents is the most severe.
An illustration of this occurred not long ago in the interior of China.
A man arose in the night at the sound of a burglar, and in the struggle
in the dark the robber was killed. On bringing a light it was found that
the robber was the father of the man whose house he entered. He was
known to be a ne’er-do-well, but the unparalleled act of killing one’s
own father aroused intense excitement in the whole province. The case
was deemed of such importance that it could not be tried by the local
magistrate, but it was transferred to the courts in Peking, which
condemned the man to death, not because he killed the robber, but
because his father had evidently been compelled to rob for a living.
Another similar case came to the notice of the foreigners in Shanghai. A
man accidentally hit his father with a hoe, causing his death. The whole
village took the man to the city, but while on the road they met the
magistrate, who asked them not to bring the dreadful case before him
officially, but for the clan or village to mete out the punishment and
then report to him. They buried the son alive.
Missionaries from a town in the interior asked the American Consul to
intervene in the case of a boy nine years old, who, while in play,
allowed a stool accidentally to slip from his hand, hitting his mother
on the head and killing her. He was condemned to death, but because of
his youth was to be kept in prison until he was sixteen, when he would
pay the penalty. The Consul did all in his power to save the boy, but,
outside of friendly arguments, nothing could be done, as he was a
Chinese subject and came under the jurisdiction of Chinese courts of
law.
Because of this necessity for the provision for the old age of parents,
there are no homes for the aged nor houses for the poor in China, unless
one excepts those established through foreign influence. Each family
must take care of its own helpless, and if a person is so unfortunate as
to have no family, the begging-bowl by the roadside is the only recourse
when the years are many and the once strong arms are weak.
The filial piety and respect for parents that are so strongly entrenched
in the Chinese character causes the son to obey his father until the day
of his death. I know a man fifty years of age who was offered the post
of secretary of the Embassy in London, but who declined this very
advantageous position because his mother did not want him to go to a
foreign land. He gave up willingly the chance of a lifetime rather than
cause sorrow to his mother in her old age.
A mission in a certain town was very desirous of buying a certain piece
of ground on which to erect a church, and the plan was balked by the
local official. The missionary conducting the negotiations could find no
suitable reason for the official’s action in the matter, and finally
asked the help of his consul. The taotai was firm in his refusal, and
offered the mission land in another part of the city for their church.
When pressed for a reason for his refusal he finally said: “My mother
passes that place each time she goes to her favourite temple, and she
objects to a building holding a foreign god being erected there. She
thinks it would pollute the good spirits of the air. I know it is what
you call superstition, but she is my mother and I must obey her wishes.”
Family life has been from time immemorial the foundation-stone of the
Chinese Empire, and filial piety is the foundation-stone of the family
life. The Chinese is taught that the interest of the family is always of
greater importance than the interest of the individual. This respect and
veneration is not only for the living, but also for the dead. The death
days of two generations of parents are kept sacred with solemn rites,
and every home has its family shrine, to which all the members must pay
due reverence.
This respect and worship is paid by the woman to the ancestors of her
husband’s family, as it is her destiny on reaching womanhood to go to a
new home and live in submission to her new parents, and burn incense
before the shrines of her husband’s people. When she marries she
practically leaves her home for ever. If she is returned to it—that is,
if she is divorced—“shame shall cover her to her latest hour.” Divorce
is very rare in China, but there are seven reasons given for divorcing a
wife. The first is disobedience to father- or mother-in-law, barrenness,
lewdness, leprosy, overmuch talking, and stealing.
The woman is taught that her lifelong duty is obedience. Her husband
must be looked upon as “heaven itself,” and she must pay all outward
respect to his parents. Her first duty each morning is to bring a cup of
tea to the bedside of her husband’s mother, and to bow her head before
her as a sign of submission and respect. She is taught that the only
qualities that benefit a woman are gentle obedience, chastity,
quietness, and mercy, and that the five worst infirmities that may
afflict a female are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy, and
silliness. Confucius says: “These five vices are found in seven or eight
out of every ten women, and it is from these that arise the inferiority
of the sex.”
Generations of this teaching has made the Chinese woman into a modest,
quiet, lovable woman, to be protected and cared for, appealing to all
that is chivalrous in her menfolk, her very weakness her greatest
strength.