CHAPTER VIII.

_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._"

"_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?

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.