_THE POSITION OF WOMEN._
Official Honours to Women.--Modesty.--Conjugal
Relations.--Business Knowledge.--Opium-smoking.--Typical
Women.
A man once quaintly said to me, "Whenever I want to know what men
really are, I consider what they have made of their women." We may
also learn something by considering what men say they admire in women.
And for this purpose a few extracts from the _Peking Gazette_, the
oldest newspaper in the world, and to this day the official organ of
China, will go farther than a hundred pages of hearsays. Let us
consider three cases from one year only.
"_May 2nd, 1891._--The Viceroy at Canton submits an application which
he has received from the elders and gentry of the district of
Shun-teh, asking permission to erect a memorial arch to an old lady
who has seen seven generations of her family, and is at present living
under the same roof with four generations of her descendants. The
lady, whose maiden name was Lin, is the mother of the distinguished
General Fang Yao, and is in her eighty-second year. She has six sons,
forty grandsons, one hundred and twenty-one great-grandsons, and two
great-great-grandsons. Her life has been one of singular purity and
simplicity, fully entitling her to the honour bestowed by law upon
aged people of distinction.--_Referred to the consideration of the
Board of Rites._"
[Illustration: MEMORIAL ARCH LEADING TO CONFUCIUS' GRAVE.]
"_February 6th, 1891._--Li Hung-chang submits a case of filial piety
which was brought to his notice by Wu Fu-lun. An assistant deputy
magistrate on the Chihli expectant list had a daughter renowned for
her docile disposition and her filial piety. In the summer of the
present year her father was deputed to look after some work in
connection with the river embankments. While he was away, his wife
became dangerously ill, and was most tenderly nursed by her daughter,
who went the length of cutting off a piece of her flesh to make soup
for the invalid, and who offered to give up her own life should that
of her mother's be spared. When her elder brother proposed to go and
inform the father of the dangerous state of his wife's health, she
prevented his doing so by pointing out that her father had enough to
do looking after his own work, and to add to his anxiety by conveying
to him such news would serve but little purpose. Two days after
Pʽeng-chu's return his wife died, and the daughter refused to take any
food for several days. Seeing by so doing she was causing great grief
to her father, she forced herself to take a little gruel. Some time
after he was ordered away on river-work, and during his absence she
again refused to take any nourishment. While away he was taken ill,
and asked for leave to return home. On his arrival he was met by his
daughter, who informed him that she dared not die without first
telling him, but that now he had come back she wished to state that it
was her intention to go and wait on her mother in the shades below. In
spite of all entreaties she then resolutely abstained from all food,
and died some days after. Memorialist agrees in thinking that it
would be a thousand pities to pass over such a remarkable instance of
filial devotion without remark, and would ask that the Board be
directed to make out a scroll to her memory.--_Request granted. Let
the Board of Rites take note._"
It will be noted, in both these cases, it is rather what may be called
the domestic virtues that have won attention. General Fang Yao's
mother is honoured for her numerous offspring, as also for the
singular purity and simplicity of her life; Wei Pʽeng-chu's daughter
for her devotion to her mother. But the next case is of quite a
different character, and shows once more how China is always the land
of the unexpected. In advanced America, have women ever yet received
decorations for heroism in war? Whilst here, in old-fashioned China,
in the _Peking Gazette_, we read:
"_January 23rd, 1891._--In 1858 Liuchou, a city in Kwangsi, fell into
the hands of rebels. A great number of its inhabitants died in its
defence, or, preferring death to dishonour, committed suicide rather
than submit to their conquerors. Nor did the men alone show forth
their bravery in this respect; their example was largely followed by
the women. When the city was recaptured, orders were issued that a
list should be prepared of all those who had suffered, in order that
some steps might be taken to commemorate their self-sacrifice. At the
time when these orders were issued, every one's attention was
concentrated on suppressing the rebellion, and it was not easy to give
effect thereto. When peace was restored, instructions, however, were
again given that inquiries should be made from time to time as
originally directed. Ma Pi-yao, the Governor of Kwangsi, accordingly
submits a list drawn up by the Mahʽing District Magistrate of the
names of thirty-four women who died in those troublesome times, and
thus preserved their honour. Memorialist thinks that the memory of
these women is worthy of all honour, and would suggest that the Board
be instructed to prepare a posthumous testimonial of merit
commemorative of their action. Thus will their pure souls be set at
rest, and others be encouraged to follow in their footsteps.--_Request
granted. Let the Board of Rites take note._"
It will be observed that several years had been allowed to elapse
before these thirty-four women received official honour. Yet is it not
the case that in most other countries they would have remained
unnoticed to all time? The wording is also noteworthy: "a posthumous
testimonial of merit commemorative of their action" is to be prepared.
"Thus will their pure souls be set at rest, and others be encouraged
to follow in their footsteps."
It is the custom of most men to write of the mock modesty of the women
of China. They may have very good reasons for doing so of which I know
nothing. With regard to women, as with regard to everything else in
China, I can but write of them as I have found them. To establish the
truth of any fact or any series of facts needs an amount of research
and study I have not been able to give; nor does this book aim at
being a storehouse of learning and a book of reference for all time,
but rather at giving a picture, for those who know nothing of them, of
a people among whom I have at least lived on somewhat intimate terms
for the last eleven years. At the same time, in writing about Chinese
women I am burdened by the reflection that possibly I am in some ways
better able to express an opinion about the men, and men about the
women. To tell what I can, however: doubtless Chinese ladies' speak of
many subjects with the freedom of the days of Queen Elizabeth; but how
women can be called mock modest who always remain fully clad in such
damp heat as leads men to strip to the waist in all their shops, as
also at their dinner parties, when summer is at its height, I cannot
understand. The amount of suffering from heat that must be undergone
by women in consequence of their observance of decorum seems not at
all to have been sufficiently appreciated. I have never yet seen a
Chinese woman insufficiently clad, nor committing any act that could
possibly be considered indecent. The whole behaviour of Chinese ladies
would lead me to suppose that they would shrink from anything of the
kind. It is not in accordance with their etiquette that they should
talk to men--not their own relations; yet whenever I have seen them
brought into intercourse with foreign men, or even Chinese men, on
matters of business, I have been struck by both their ease of manner
and their quiet dignity. It is true they are rather given to rising
to address a man, as if he were a superior being; but, further than
that, they in nowise convey the impression that they are accustomed to
consider themselves as at the service or pleasure of men. It must be
understood I am here simply writing of the ladies, with whom I have
held friendly intercourse, not of poor peasant-women, nor of those
whose society European men in treaty ports most frequent. Although for
these last I must add that, however immodest their conduct may be,
their manners and behaviour have none of that repulsive disregard of
decency, that makes it to a woman so painful to hold intercourse with
those acting in a similar manner in London, New York, or, worse still,
Paris. It is not unnatural that this should be so. The women leading a
vicious life in China have for the most part been sold into slavery in
their childhood, their families not having enough rice to feed them;
and it is from no bad inclinations of their own that they are found in
the houses where foreign or Chinese men find them. Doubtless there are
in China, as in other countries, women who prefer vice to virtue; but
if I am any judge of expressions or manners, these last must be rarer
in China than in any other country with which I am acquainted.
At a ladies' dinner party, the conversation turning upon a new
Governor, who had just arrived with several concubines, I found all
the ladies at table expressing a horror at the idea of being, or
letting any one of their relations become, the number two of any man;
whilst my hostess explained to me that concubines were, as a rule,
women of lower birth, or sprung from families fallen into indigence.
But what struck me most was that there was no tittering, nor
appearance of innuendo, whilst discussing the subject, which simply
came forward, because none of the ladies saw how they could
interchange visits with the ladies of the new Governor; and they also
thought an official of such habits of life was not likely to
administer the district well. The coarseness and directness of Chinese
women often shock European ladies very much. But whilst glad that we
have ourselves so far improved in this respect, I have never felt sure
that the fine ladies of Queen Elizabeth's time were not more modest
really than the fine ladies of Queen Victoria's.
It is certainly true that all we European ladies who go up-country in
China have to alter our wardrobes very considerably, _if_ we mean to
be on friendly terms with Chinese ladies; whilst the wife of a French
Consul had to replace in its case an old master she had brought out to
China, such an outrage upon decency was it considered. The German wife
of a Commissioner of Customs, regardless of its effects upon her
husband's official visitors, amused herself by decorating her hall
with life-size pictures of nude female figures. She was rewarded by
her man-servant always pointing them out to visitors, when she was
out, as the pictures of herself and her various friends. Without
entering upon the vexed question as to the decency of the undraped,
it can be imagined that no pictures of the kind exist in a country
where no woman ever bares any part of her person in society. And far
from this indicating mock modesty, it appears to me the natural
outcome of a classic literature, every passage of which might be put
into the hands of the traditional young girl. When it is further
considered that, unlike the images of the two adjacent countries of
India and Tibet, the images of China are quite untainted by any
suggestion of impropriety, I think I have some grounds for saying
that, at all events, virtue is sufficiently in the ascendant in China
for vice to pay it the compliment of hypocrisy, if no more. And has
any nation yet got farther than this?
It is, of course, well known that as a Chinaman gets richer he buys
more concubines. These do not take rank as his wife, and the whole
proceeding is considered rather as a concession to weakness than as a
practice to be admired. He is, however, careful to get them from as
respectable families as he can. A Chinaman also takes a concubine into
his house for life; he has no idea of enjoying the few fleeting years
of her youth and prettiness, and then setting her adrift with a little
sum of money. She becomes from the moment she enters his household as
much a charge to him as his wife is, and her children are just as much
his lawful children as his wife's are. At the same time, concessions
to weakness are said to open the floodgates to yet greater evils; and
it may be so in China.
At a dinner party I was asking after the pretty, bright little
daughter of my host, who in company with another pretty doll of a girl
and an infant prodigy of a younger brother had paid me a visit the
year before, when a lady beside me, putting up a warning hand across
her lips, just after the fashion of a regular fine lady of Europe,
spoke in easy accents from behind it: "Best ask no questions. They are
by another woman. His wife has but this one daughter that you see."
The speech and the manner of it seemed to give me a new insight into
Chinese life. The year before the other woman had been living in his
house, his wife had herself brought the infant prodigy often to see
me. The little girls had come more than once. Now a time of financial
crisis had passed over the city, he had established his number two
with her children in a little shop near by, and the subject was not to
be mentioned in the hearing of his wife and daughter. Further inquiry
revealed that he had done a thing outrageous, not to be spoken of
except in a whisper. Under stress of poverty he had sent another
concubine into a convent to be a nun. This was atrocious, for by all
Chinese rules she was a member of his family, for whom he was bound to
provide for the rest of her days.
What is the position of women when they are married? It is so hard to
describe this in any country. And the difficulty is increased in
China, because we are so prone to connect the idea of marriage with
love and love-making. There is nominally none in China, where as a
rule the young man does not see his bride until she is his wife. She
then becomes the household drudge, wears poor clothing in comparison
with the daughters of the house, and is the servant of her
mother-in-law. Often and often have I wished that it was not so, and
that in going to a house I could talk with the wistful young
daughters-in-law, who glance at me from under their eyelids, and look
as if they would be so receptive of new ideas, being, like most
ill-used people, quite ready for a revolt of some sort. But it is the
elder lady who does the honours, entertains the guests, and regulates
the household. And who more set in her ideas than a grandmother of
many grandchildren?
[Illustration: A COUNTRY HOUSE PARTY.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
[Illustration: FOOT SHUTTLECOCK.
_Lent by Scotch Presbyterian Mission._]
There is one Chinese family that has for many years shown us
kindliness. We have assisted at its weddings and its funerals, and its
young men have spent long hours of the days, when they had nothing
else to do, at our house. One day the ladies announced they were
coming. And they came; but, alas! as is usual, in such numbers, and
with so many women attendants, it was difficult to find chairs enough
for all, much more conversation. How merry they were, as they looked
about at all our foreign things, all new to them! But their especial
delight was our battledore and shuttlecocks. They had been accustomed
to use the heels of their crippled feet for battledores, and were not
easily tired of playing in our pleasanter fashion. It was one of these
girls who afterwards at a dinner party consented to show me her foot.
For a year after that she was busy with preparations for her
trousseau, all apparently made at home under her own supervision; and,
to my great regret, I have seen nothing of her since her marriage. We
were away for a time, and since then she has had a child. A Chinese
lady never goes about whilst expecting, nor whilst her child is very
young--at least, those I know do not. Curiously enough, for a month
after child-birth Chinese coolies object to even carrying a woman in a
sedan-chair. There are in China many curious traces of the same idea,
that led to the service for the churching of women. There is some
objection to women sleeping upstairs in a house frequented by men; and
when a woman in our house was put to sleep in a room that happened to
be over the entrance, some Chinese considered it very damaging to my
husband's business. In China a husband and wife very rarely go out or
travel together. On one occasion, as I relate elsewhere, an
old-fashioned inn actually refused to receive us on that ground, and
we were nearly benighted before arriving at another village, where our
servant had the assurance to pass me off as a man.
It must not, however, be assumed from all this that Chinese women take
no part in affairs. A Governor's wife is always supposed to be the
keeper of his official seal, and is therefore never expected to go out
and pay visits. When my husband was obliged to go to Shanghai on
business, it was his Chinese employés who immediately suggested that I
should keep the keys of the safe, and supervise the accounts in his
absence, this being what they said the wife of a Chinese man of
business would undertake. Nor is it unusual, my husband says, for a
business man to say to him, "I must go home and consult my wife before
concluding this bargain." When we first arrived in Chungking, the wife
of a formerly very wealthy merchant came at once to see me, begging
that some place might be found in my husband's business for her
husband, who had unfortunately become impoverished. I promised to
mention the matter; but as she proceeded to enter into details, and my
knowledge of Chinese was even less then than it is now, I called for
our cook to interpret, and to my amusement presently heard him say, "I
don't know why you trouble my mistress about all this. Foreign ladies
are not like our ladies; they don't understand anything about
business, and take no part in their husbands' affairs." This he said
in a tone as if explaining that we were ignorant, frivolous creatures;
and it must be remembered that, like most Chinese who go into foreign
employ, he had been uniformly in service with foreigners since his
earliest years.
When a young man in my husband's business was taking to dissipated
courses, it was his mother who came off in her sedan-chair into the
country to interview my husband. And very definitely she knew what she
wanted,--that her son should be given employment at a distance, and
thus separated from the many undesirable acquaintances he had formed.
She begged my husband also to give him a talking to, and told him
exactly what she thought he had better say; then, having laid her
point of view very clearly before him, begged that her visit might be
kept a secret from her son, and so departed. I must add that, for all
her being a lady, she went on her knees to my husband on arrival, and
tried to do so again on going. But in conversation with him she was
anything but on her knees.
Except among the poorest of the poor, who do field-work or carry
water, the women of China do little beyond suckling children and
making shoes, except in the treaty ports, where now large numbers of
them are employed in the factories lately started. They smoke and
gossip, give and go to dinner parties, and one of their great delights
is to go on pilgrimages to distant shrines. It is sometimes stipulated
before marriage that a woman shall go on so many pilgrimages during
the year. Even when nuns invite ladies to come and enjoy themselves
with them, it means drinking wine, smoking, and playing cards; and not
uncommonly, in the west of China at all events, smoking includes
opium-smoking. The ladies who are regular opium-smokers sit up late at
night, and do not get up till five or six in the evening. They mostly
have bad health, and generally say they have taken to opium-smoking
because of it. Whatever effect opium may have upon men, the various
ladies I have seen at ladies' dinners generally return from the
opium-couch with their eyes very bright, their cheeks very red, and
talking a great deal of nonsense very excitedly. But afterwards they
look yellow and unhealthy, mostly with sunken cheeks. They seem no
more ashamed of it than ladies are of taking wine in England. But
those who do not smoke seem to think it a rather disgraceful
proceeding. A lady will draw herself up, and say, "None of the members
of my family smoke opium--not one." But at a good many dinner parties
the opium-couch is prepared with all its elegant accessories. And at
the only Chinese country house, at which I have stayed, the ladies'
one idea was to ask me into their bedrooms to smoke opium. Naturally,
my acquaintance is rather with Szechuan ladies. Cantonese seem
altogether different. And I gather that there must be a much more
cultured set in some parts of China, judging from the ladies engaged
in starting the High School for Girls in Shanghai. Of those I know in
the west, only one young girl could read and write. She was talked of
with admiration by young men, who asked if I knew her, and if she were
not awfully clever.
Foreign men often get the idea that women rule the roost in China,
because when they want to buy a house or bit of land the sale is often
delayed owing to some old woman of the family not agreeing to it. And
the scolding tongue of an old woman has before now proved too much for
a British Consul to withstand. But it must be remembered what a dull,
mulish obstinacy is that of the Chinese man, and that somehow or other
the Chinese woman has to get on with him. At Ichang, in one street at
least, the men were said to be constantly beating their wives; and I
recollect once seeing a woman, who, after a storm of invective against
her husband, threw herself down on the road there and kicked and
screamed. She was very red, as if she had been drinking too much wine;
and I still remember the sheepish air of the man, as he stood and
watched her kicking. He certainly did not attempt to lay a hand upon
her whilst we were by. But during all the years I have been in China
this is the only case of the kind I have seen. In a Chinese city one
does not at night hear the cries of women as one too often does in
London. And on the whole it would appear as if husbands and wives got
on very well together, if without very much affection. A woman who
kills her husband is still condemned to death by the lingering
process, namely, to being sliced to death; but though this shows the
horror entertained of so dastardly a deed, yet in reality, even for
such a crime as this, she is put to death first and cut in pieces
afterwards.
Meng Kuang is one of the typical women of China. Contrary to the usual
custom, she seems to have chosen her own husband, and went to his
house dressed in all the splendour of a Chinese bride. For seven days
he did not speak to her, nor answer one of her questions. At last he
told her he did not like silks of various colours, nor a painted face,
nor blackened eyebrows. At once she transformed herself into a plainly
dressed, hard-working wife; she became noted for her virtues; and her
name is on the lips of all the people of China, somewhat after the
fashion of the patient Griselda of old.
A prettier story is told of the wife of the Emperor Yuan-ti in the Han
Dynasty (about the third century A.D.). The Emperor was inspecting a
collection of wild animals, tigers and others, when a bear broke
loose. Climbing up the railing of the enclosed space, he was getting
to the top, and all the other women were running away, when Chao I.
advanced as if to meet the bear, standing fearlessly in front of him
with a determined air. The guards happily killed the bear, before he
could attack her; but the Emperor turned to Chao I., and asked her how
it was she was not afraid. Her reply is beautiful: "Wild animals are
generally content with one victim. I advanced to place myself as a
shield for you." For this she was greatly honoured in her lifetime,
and has ever since been held up as an example of womanly courage and
devotion.
It only remains to add that whilst a roomful of Chinese ladies
presents a very pretty appearance, from the exquisite gradations of
colour of their embroidered skirts and jackets, the brilliancy of
their head ornaments, and their rouge, yet, taken individually,
probably no other nation is so deficient in charm. Their idea is that
is it indecorous to show the figure; therefore only their deformed
feet, cased, it is true, in beautifully embroidered little shoes, and
their faces, are seen; even the hands, which are small and very
elegantly shaped, with taper fingers and filbert nails, are concealed
in their large sleeves. Their faces at parties are often so rouged as
to look like masks, their lips coloured, their eyebrows darkened, and
their hair so anointed as to give a shining, semi-metallic setting to
the face. Their skirts are very prettily made, in a succession of tiny
pleats longitudinally down the skirt, and only loosely fastened
together over the hips, so as to feather round the feet when they move
in the balancing way that Chinese poets liken to the waving of the
willow. Their outer jackets in winter, often of plum-colour satin,
with gold-embroidered sleeves, are rather like old-fashioned spencers
and unobjectionable; but the under-jackets--at a party a lady often
wears three--are of an ugly cut, especially in the back, where they
are made so as to stick out instead of hanging flat over the
shoulders. And when the ladies divest themselves of their skirts--you
always ask a Chinese lady to lay aside her skirt, as in England you
ask her to lay aside her cloak--any dress more ugly could hardly be
imagined than the long, sloppy-looking under-jacket over rather full,
straight-cut trousers, possibly of red satin, gorgeously embroidered
with life-size butterflies. There is no single feature in the face
that we could call pretty, and in accordance with etiquette the face
is entirely devoid of expression. I have never been able to find
anything pretty about a Chinese woman except her hands and arms, both
of which are very prettily modelled. Doubtless her feet and legs
would be too, if let alone. Now her poor legs are like two sticks.
Although often what one must call very well bred, there is nothing
pretty or taking about Chinese ladies' manners. But whether in spite
or because of this want of charm, the women of China give me the idea
that, if once set upon their feet again, they will become a great
power in the land--not witching men's hearts away, but guiding them in
childhood in the way in which they should go, and in after-years
pre-eminently calculated to be companions, counsellors, and friends.
Confucius and Mencius are both said to have had remarkable mothers;
and it is at least noteworthy that, since the Chinese have taken to
mutilating the feet of their women, there has not been one man whom
they reckon great born among them: so true it is that any injury to
the women of a nation always reacts upon the men with redoubled force.