LITTLE CHU AND WOO-URH.
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NO more story Peep-shows of what might be seen in China, no more
wondering what the Celestials would be like, for Sybil and Leonard had
now landed on Chinese soil, and were themselves at Shanghai, face to
face with its inhabitants.
Shanghai seemed, and was, a very busy place, but not a town of very
great importance in itself, owing, really, its recent prosperity to
having opened its port to foreign commerce. The custom-house, through
which the Grahams' boxes had to be passed, struck the children as a
very strange and beautiful building, quite different from anything that
they had seen before; and there was a great noise of chattering going on
outside, which sounded most unintelligible. Coolies were carrying bales
of silk and tea to and fro; there were also, ready at hand, some of the
sedan-chairs that Sybil had longed to see, and everywhere "pig-tails,"
or cues, as they were called, seemed to meet Leonard's gaze.
But the ships! Watching them was what he enjoyed better than anything
else. The town of Shanghai is situated on the River Woosung, a tributary
of the Yangtse-kiang, just at that point where it joins the great river,
and about one hundred ships were anchored before this busy, commercial
city. Many families resident there have their junks and a little home on
the river. There were some very pretty buildings to be seen at Shanghai,
and at one of these our little party stayed--on a visit to another
missionary from the Church of England--for the three days that they
remained there.
At some cities and towns, on the banks of rivers, floating hotels are to
be seen; and as people generally have to travel by water, and the
Chinese are not allowed to keep open their city-gates after nine o'clock
at night, these hotels prove very useful to those arriving too late to
enter the city. Lighted with lanterns, they look very pretty floating on
the water, and both Sybil and Leonard were very pleased to be taken over
a large floating hotel before they left Shanghai. Leonard was very
anxious to know how long this town had been open to foreign commerce,
and was told since the Opium War, which lasted from 1840 to 1842, when
the British, having occupied several Chinese cities, and having
captured Chinkiang in Hoopeh, were advancing to Nanking, and the Chinese
suing for peace, a treaty was concluded which opened the ports of Amoy,
Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo, in addition to Canton, to the British,
who were henceforward to appoint consuls to live in these towns.
The Chinese are very polite to foreigners in Shanghai; and as the kind
missionary who bade the Grahams welcome to his home endeavoured, during
their short stay, to interest and show them sights, they enjoyed
themselves very much. Sybil and Leonard could not help noticing how very
many people they met in spectacles, but they were told that the Chinese
suffer very much from ophthalmia, and that when they wear spectacles,
some of which are very large, they often have sore eyes.
"There is one thing I cannot understand the Chinese doing," Leonard said
one day to Sybil: "and that is, everybody that we have seen, as yet,
spoiling their tea by not taking any milk or sugar in it; and father
says all the Chinese drink tea like that, and call milk white blood, and
only use it in medicine."
"Tea like that would not suit us," Sybil answered, "as we like plenty of
both milk and sugar; but I dare say they think we spoil our tea by
putting such things into it."
A visit to some rice-fields, a little sight-seeing, a little more
watching of ships carrying rice and other products away, and then it was
time for the Grahams once more to take their seats on board.
[Illustration: THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, SHANGHAI.]
We can imagine how both children strained their eyes, as they steamed
farther and farther away from Shanghai, to see what that port looked
like in the distance, and how Sybil examined her map as they left the
province of Kiang-su, to see at what port, and in what province, they
would next touch.
This was Ningpo, in Che-kiang, but they did not land here; neither did
they go on shore at their next halting-place, Foochow, in the province
of Fu-kien. It was at Amoy, in the same province, where their father had
a missionary friend, who had invited them to pay him a few days' or a
week's visit, as would suit them best, that they next purposed landing,
and this they did about four days after they left Shanghai.
"Whoever thought," Sybil said one day on board, "that we should actually
be on the Yellow Sea ourselves? It seems almost too good to be true
now."
"I never knew people like to stare more at anybody than they seem to
like to stare at us here," Leonard thought to himself when first at
Amoy.
He and Sybil were then being very carefully observed by a group of
natives of that place, but Leonard had yet to become accustomed to being
stared at in China.
"And, father," he said later, "I wonder why so many of them wear
turbans? I did not notice people doing this at Shanghai."
[Illustration: A FLOATING HOTEL AT SHANGHAI.]
Mr. Graham did not know the reason of this either; but he and Leonard
were later informed that the men of Amoy adopted the turban to hide the
tail when they were made to wear it by their conquerors, and that they
never gave it up. Leonard was also told that they were good soldiers,
which, he said, he thought they looked. One thing remarkable about the
people of Amoy was that the different families seemed to consist
almost entirely of boys. A great many of the inhabitants were very poor,
living crowded together in dirty houses very barely furnished. Mrs.
Graham had not to be long in China to discover that cleanliness is not a
Chinese virtue. Sybil bought some very pretty artificial flowers of some
of the inhabitants of Amoy, which they had themselves made. They
manufactured them principally, she heard, to be placed on graves.
[Illustration: THE PORT OF SHANGHAI.]
Like other Chinese, these people were very superstitious. Here and there
large blocks of granite were to be met with, which were regarded by them
with reverence, and looked upon as good divinities. On one the Grahams
saw inscriptions, which related some history of the place.
Granite seemed to abound here, for the temples and monasteries were, for
the most part, erected on the heights between rocks of this description.
Two days after reaching Amoy, Sybil was dreadfully distressed, and
shocked, to see a little girl named Chu, of eleven years old, put up for
sale by her own parents. At ten dollars (L1) only was she valued; and
for this paltry sum the parents were ready to sell her to any one who
would bid it for her. They were very poor, and could not afford to keep
her any longer. She had four sisters and only two brothers; the youngest
of all, the baby, was to be drowned by her father, later on in the day,
in a tub of water. They had never done anything like this before: this
man and woman had never killed a child, although they had had five
girls, and many of their neighbours had thought nothing of destroying
most of their daughters so soon as they were born; but now, as the man
was ill, and able to earn so little, they had resolved to rid themselves
of two of them that day. If the baby lived, the mother comforted herself
by saying, she must be sold later, or grow up in poverty and misery.
Parents think it very necessary that their children should marry, and
sometimes sell, or give them away, to their friends, when they are quite
little, to be the future wives of the sons of their new owners.
If sold, they will then fetch about two dollars for every year that they
have lived; so a child of five years old would fetch ten dollars; and
this little girl, put up for sale, was now eleven years old; therefore
she was being offered, poor little thing, below half price. And some
little girls of Amoy have been even offered for sale for a few pence!
[Illustration: A FAMILY OF AMOY.]
It seemed incomprehensible to Sybil, as it must to us, that a mother
could wish either to kill or to sell her little child, but neither the
one nor the other event is uncommon in some parts of China, where the
parent is poor; and even amongst the well-to-do classes little girls are
sometimes put to death, if the parents have more daughters than they
care to rear, not only at Amoy, but at other places in the
neighbourhood; and even Chinese ladies will sometimes have their poor
little daughters put to death.
"Why do people not kill their boys too?" Sybil asked, when she heard all
about this.
[Illustration: THE MISSIONARY'S TEACHER.]
"Because when they grow up they can earn money that girls could not
earn; and not only can they help to support their parents when old, but
they can worship their ancestral tablets and keep up the family name."
"I am sure a girl would do this too."
"Her doing so would be considered of little use."
[Illustration: A VIEW OF AMOY, WITH A BLOCK OF GRANITE IN THE
FOREGROUND.]
It seemed that the very day before Mr. Graham arrived in Amoy, a widow
lady there had had her little baby girl destroyed, and then, in her
widow's dress, had sat down quietly to talk matters over with her
sister-in-law, who thought that she had acted very wisely. Killing a
daughter, in China, is hardly looked upon as being sinful. A widow's
mourning consists of all white and a band round the head, white being
Chinese deepest mourning.
[Illustration: LADIES OF AMOY.]
[Illustration: LITTLE CHU.]
Whilst Mr. Graham stood by, a purchaser for little Chu stepped forward,
holding the ten dollars in his hand; but the missionary was before him,
and through a teacher, whom he had already been able to engage, offered
the father twice that sum not to sell the little girl at all, but to let
him have her for a servant. He hesitated, as though he would rather sell
his child right off to any Chinaman than trust her to a foreign
"barbarian." But the sum tempted him; and although he could not
understand how receiving it did not give Chu altogether to her
purchaser, he seemed to be contented, especially when the teacher
explained that she would not be a slave, but would be paid for what work
she did. Little Chu was well off to have stepped into so happy a
service, and the baby was rescued also. A certain sum was to be paid
weekly to the father, towards her support, until he recovered his
health, if he would only spare her; and both parents, who really fondly
loved their children, were very glad to spare their baby, fifth girl
though she was. Her name was Woo-Urh, which means fifth girl.
It did not take long to have little Chu tidily dressed, with money that
her new master supplied, and her poor mother, who had some beads stowed
away, now looked them out and also put these on her. Chu was only eleven
years old, but poverty and care had given the little one an old
expression beyond her years. Chinese children of from ten to sixteen
years of age--about which time they are supposed to marry--have a fringe
cut over their foreheads, and Chu wore this fringe now. It has to grow
again before they marry.
That evening Chu was sent round to Mr. Graham's brother missionary's
house, where, as Sybil's little maid, she was housed for the two or
three days longer that they would spend at Amoy; and though Chu had come
to live with foreigners, in the family of a "barbarian," as her father
thought, we can well imagine that she had never been so happy in her
life. Mr. Graham had told her parents that when they reached Hong-Kong
he should send her to the mission school.
"And the father would have killed the baby himself!" said Sybil. "How
could he have done so?"
"That is the marvel; but it is generally the fathers who commit the
deed; other people might be punished if they interfered."
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