CHILD LIFE.
Judging from a collection of the toys of Corean children, and from
their many terms of affection and words relating to games and sports,
festivals and recreation, nursery stories, etc., the life of the little
Kim or Ni must be a pleasant one. For the blessings of offspring the
parents offer rice to the god of the household (sam-sin-hang), whose
tiny shrine holds a place of honor in some ornamental niche in the best
room. When the baby begins to grow, cradles being unknown, the mother
puts the infant to sleep by to-tak, to-tak—patting it lightly on the
stomach. When it is able to take its first step across the floor—the
tiger-skin rug being ready to ease its possible fall—this important
household event, spoken of with joy as the ja-pak, ja-pak, is described
to the neighbors. As the child grows up and is able to walk and run
about, the hair is mostly shaved off, so that only a “button of jade”
is left on the top of the head. This infantile tuft takes its name from
the badge or togle worn on the top of the men’s caps in winter. A
child, “three feet high,” very beautiful and well formed, docile and
strong, if a son, is spoken of “as a thousand-mile horse”—one who
promises to make an alert and enduring man. A child noted for filial
piety will even cheerfully commit tan-ji—cutting his finger to furnish
his blood as a remedy for the sickness of father or mother. Should the
child die, a stone effigy or statue of itself is set up before his
grave.
In the capital and among the higher classes, the children’s toys are
very handsome, ranking as real works of art, while in every class the
playthings of the tiny Corean humanity form but a miniature copy of the
life of their elders. Among the living pets, the monkey is the
favorite. These monkeys are fitted with jackets, and when plump and not
too mischievous make capital pets for the boys. Puppies share the
affections of the nursery with the tiger on wheels. Made of paper pulp
and painted, this harmless effigy of the king of beasts is pulled about
with a string. A jumping-jack is but a copy of the little boy who pulls
it. A jerk of the string draws in the pasteboard tongue, and sends the
trumpet to his mouth. Official life is mirrored in the tasselled
umbrella, the fringed hats, and the toy-chariot with fancy wheels.
Other toys, such as rattles, flags, and drums, exactly imitate the
larger models with which the grown-up men and women amuse themselves.
All these are named, fashioned, and decorated in a style peculiarly
Corean. Among the most common of the children’s plays are the
following: A ring is hidden in a heap of sand, and the urchins poke
sticks into and through the pile to find it. Whoever transfixes the
circlet wins the game, suggesting our girls’ game of grace-hoop, though
often taking a longer time. Rosettes or pinwheels of paper are made and
fastened on the end of sticks. Running before the breeze, the miniature
windmills afford hilarious delight.
The children’s way of bringing rain is to move the lips up and down,
distending the cheeks and pressing the breath through the lips. Playing
“dinner” with tiny cups and dishes, and imitating the ponderous
etiquette of their elders, is a favorite amusement. See-saw is rougher
and more exhilarating. Games of response are often played with hands,
head, or feet, in which one watches the motions of his rival, opens or
shuts his hands, and pays a forfeit or loses the game when a false move
is made. For the coast-dwellers, the sea-shore, with the rocks which
are the refuge of the shell-fish, is the inexhaustible playground of
the children. Looking down in the clear deep water of the archipelago
they see the coral reefs, the bright flower-gardens of marine plants,
and shoals of striped, banded, crimson-tailed, and green-finned fish,
which, in the eastern seas, glitter with tints of gold and silver. The
children, half naked, catch the crabs and lobsters, learning how to
hold their prizes after many a nab and pinch, which bring infantile
tears and squalls. One of the common playthings of Corean children, the
“baby’s rattle,” is the dried leathery egg of the skate, which with a
few pebbles inside makes the infant, if not its parents, happy with the
din.
Besides a game of patting and dabbling in the water—chal-pak,
chal-pak—boys amuse themselves by fishing with hook and line or net.
One method is to catch fish by means of the yek-kui. This is a plant of
peppery taste, which poisons or stupefies the fish that bite the
tempting tip, making them easy prey. More serious indoor games played
by women and children are pa-tok, or backgammon; sang-pi-yen, dominoes;
siu-tu-chen, game of eighty cards; and chang-keui, or chess. All these
pastimes are quite different from ours of the same name, yet enough
like them to be recognized as belonging to the species named. The
festivals most intensely enjoyed by the children are those of “Treading
the Bridges,” “The Meeting of the Star Lovers,” and the “Mouse Fire.”
There is one evening in the year in which men and children, as well as
women, are allowed to be out in the streets of the capital. The people
spend the greater part of the night in passing and repassing upon the
little bridges of stone. It is a general “night out” for all the
people. Comedians, singers, harlequins, and merry-makers of all kinds
are abroad, and it being moonlight, all have a good time in “treading
the bridges.” On the seventh day of the seventh month, the festival
honored in China, Corea, and Japan takes place, for which children
wait, in expectation, many days in advance. Sweetmeats are prepared,
and bamboos strung with strips of colored paper are the symbols of
rejoicing. On this night the two stars Capricornus and Alpha Lyra (or
the Herd-boy and Spinning Maiden) are in conjunction in the milky way
[10] (or the River of Heaven), and wishes made at this time are
supposed to come true.
Chu-pul, or the Mouse Fire, occurs in the twelfth month, on the day of
the Mouse (or rat). Children light brands or torches of dry reeds or
straw, and set fire to the dry herbage, stubble, and shrubbery on the
borders of the roads, in order to singe the hair of the various field
or ground-burrowing animals, or burn them out, so as to obtain a
plentiful crop of cotton.
At school, the pupils study according to the method all over Asia, that
is, out loud, and noisily. This kang-siong, or deafening buzz, is
supposed to be necessary to sound knowledge. Besides learning the
Chinese characters and the vernacular alphabet, with tongue, ear, eye,
and pen, the children master the ku-ku (“nine times nine”), or the
multiplication table, and learn to work the four simple rules of
arithmetic, and even fractions, involution, and evolution on the
chon-pan, or sliding numeral frame. A “red mark” is a vermilion token
of a good lesson, made by the examiner; and for a good examination
passed rewards are given in the form of a first-rate dinner, or one or
all of “the four friends of the study table”—pens, ink, paper, and
inkstand, or brushes, sticks of “India” ink, rolls of unsized paper,
and an inkstone or water-dropper. Writing a good autograph
signature—“one’s own pen”—is highly commended. Sometimes money is given
for encouragement, which the promising lad saves up in an earthen
savings-bank. Not a few of the youth of the humbler classes, who work
in the fields by day and study the characters by night, rise to be able
officers who fill high stations.
The French missionaries assure us that the normal Corean is fond of
children, especially of sons, who in his eyes are worth ten times as
much as daughters. Such a thing as exposure of children is almost
unknown. In times of severe famine this may happen after failure to
give away or sell for a season, that they may be bought back. Parents
rarely find their family too numerous.
The first thing inculcated in a child’s mind is respect for his father.
All insubordination is immediately and sternly repressed. Far different
is it with the mother. She yields to her boy’s caprices and laughs at
his faults and vices without rebuke. The child soon learns that a
mother’s authority is next to nothing. In speaking of his father a lad
often adds the words “severe,” “terrible,” implying the awe and
profound respect in which he holds his father. (Something of the same
feeling prevails as in Japan, where the four dreadful things which a
lad most fears, and which are expressed in a rhyming proverb, are:
“Earthquake, wind, fire, and father,” or “daddy.”) On the contrary, in
speaking of his mother, he adds the words “good,” “indulgent,” “I’m not
afraid of her,” etc. A son must not play nor smoke in his father’s
presence, nor assume free or easy posture before him. For lounging,
there is a special room, like a nursery. The son waits on his father at
meals and gets his bed ready. If he is old or sickly, the son sleeps
near him and does not quit his side night or day. If he is in prison
the son takes up his abode in the vicinity, to communicate with his
parent and furnish him with luxuries. In case of imprisonment for
treason, the son at the portal, on bended knees day and night, awaits
the sentence that will reduce himself to slavery. If the accused is
condemned to exile, the son must at least accompany his father to the
end of the journey, and, in some cases, share banishment with him.
Meeting his father in the street, the son must make profound salute on
his knees, in the dust, or in the ditch. In writing to him, he must
make free use of the most exaggerated honorifics which the Corean
knows.
The practice of adoption is common, as it is abnormally so in all
countries where ancestral worship is prevalent and underlies all
religions. The preservation of the family line is the supreme end and
aim of life. In effect all those persons are descendants of particular
ancestors who will keep up the ancestral sacrifices, guard the tablets
and observe the numerous funeral and mourning ceremonies which make
life such a burden in Eastern Asia. Daughters are not adopted, because
they cannot accomplish the prescribed rites. When parents have only a
daughter, they marry her to an adopted son, who becomes head of the
family so adopted into. Even the consent of the adopted, or of his
parents, is not always requisite, for as it is a social, as well as a
religious necessity, the government may be appealed to, and, in case of
need, forces acceptance of the duty. In this manner, as in the
patriarchal age of biblical history, a man may be coerced into “raising
up seed” to defunct ancestors.
Properly, an adoption, to be legal, ought to be registered at the
office of the Board of Rites, but this practice has fallen into disuse,
and it is sufficient to give public notice of the fact among the two
families concerned. An adoption once made cannot be void except by a
decree from the Tribunal of Rites, which is difficult to obtain. In
practice, the system of adoption results in many scandals, quarrels,
jealousies, and all the train of evils which one familiar with men and
women, as they are, might argue a priori without the facts at hand. The
iron fetters of Asiatic institutions cannot suppress human nature.
Primogeniture is the rigid rule. Younger sons, at the time of their
marriage, or at other important periods of life, receive paternal
gifts, now more, now less, according to usage, rank, the family
fortune, etc., but the bulk of the property belongs to the oldest son,
on whom the younger sons look as their father. He is the head of the
family, and regards his father’s children as his own. In all Eastern
Asia the bonds of family are much closer than among Caucasian people of
the present time. All the kindred, even to the fifteenth or twentieth
degree, whatever their social position, rich or poor, educated or
illiterate, officials or beggars—form a clan, a tribe, or more exactly
one single family, all of whose members have mutual interests to
sustain. The house of one is the house of the other, and each will
assist to his utmost another of the clan to get money, office, or
advantage. The law recognizes this system by levying on the clan the
imposts and debts which individuals of it cannot pay, holding the
sodality responsible for the individual. To this they submit without
complaint or protest.
Instead of the family being a unit, as in the west, it is only the
fragment of a clan, a segment in the great circle of kindred. The
number of terms expressing relationship is vastly greater and much more
complex than in English. One is amazed at the exuberance of the
national vocabulary in this respect. The Coreans are fully as clannish
as the Chinese, and much more so than the Irish; and in this, as in the
Middle Kingdom, lies one great obstacle to Christianity or to any kind
of individual reform. Marriage cannot take place between two persons
having the same family cognomen. There are in the kingdom only one
hundred and forty or fifty family, or rather clan names. Yet many of
these names are widespread through the realm. All are formed of a
single Chinese letter, except six or seven, which are composed of two
characters. To distinguish the different families who bear the same
patronymic, they add the name which they call the pu, or Gentile name,
to indicate the place whence the family originally came. In the case of
two persons wishing to marry, if this pu is the same, they are in the
eyes of the law relatives, and marriage is forbidden. If the pu of each
is different, they may wed. The most common names, such as Kim and
Ni—answering to our Smith and Jones—have more than a score of pu, which
arise from more than twenty families, the place of whose origin is in
each case different. The family name is never used alone. It is always
followed by a surname; or only the word so-pang, junior, sang-wen,
senior, lord, sir, etc.
Male adults usually have three personal names, that given in childhood,
the common proper name, and the common legal name, while to this last
is often added the title. Besides these, various aliases, nicknames,
fanciful and punning appellatives, play their part, to the pleasure or
vexation of their object. This custom is the source of endless
confusion in documents and common life. It was formerly in vogue in
Japan, but was abolished by the mikado’s government in 1872, and now
spares as much trouble to tongue, types, and pens, as a reform in our
alphabet and spelling would save the English-speaking world. As in
Nippon, a Corean female has but one name from the cradle to the grave.
The titles “Madame,” or “Madame widow,” are added in mature life. As in
old Japan, the common people do not, as a rule, have distinguishing
individual names, and among them nicknames are very common. Corean
etiquette forbids that the name of father, mother, or uncle be used in
conversation, or even pronounced aloud.