Part 13
Most of those who enter the Door of Hope, after a few months or a year, become earnest Christians, and sooner or later are married to Christian men. In China it is considered no disgrace to marry a fallen girl, provided she has changed her way of living. One girl who was recently married to a minister made such a favourable impression on her husband’s friend that he went to the Home begging that he be given a wife just like her. “But how are these poor girls for whom often a very large sum of money has been paid, rescued from their owners?” asks the puzzled caller. Ah, it is here that a ray of light streams through the darkness. There is a law in China, yes, and a very old law too, that no woman can be made to lead a life of shame against her will. If she has a chance to express herself in court, she may choose the better way, and no one is allowed to oppose her. The difficulty is to escape from bondage and secure the chance to voice a protest. Besides, many are too young to speak for themselves, like the baby of three, who the other day was carried to a brothel in the arms of her own father and offered for sale. The keepers prefer to buy very young children, as they cost little and can be used as singing girls during their early years.
Five miles out from Shanghai, in a pleasant farming district, is the children’s branch of the Door of Hope. In this beautiful protected spot, a hundred and sixty little ones, snatched from the horrible pit in which they had been thrown, live happily together. With the blessed forgetfulness of childhood, the past soon fades into indistinctness, till it is well-nigh effaced from their memory. The cottage system is in vogue, and the big family is divided up into groups of about twenty. Each cottage has its house-mother, one of the older, trusted girls from the City Home, and all are under the care of two devoted foreigners. The hours are filled with house-work, studies, simple industries, gardening, play. If a girl shows special aptitude, she is sent in time to a mission school, where the curriculum is broader and better adapted to her largest development. As soon as the children are old enough, they are trained in evangelistic work, such as teaching in Ragged Sunday-Schools and holding village prayer meetings. Practically every one ripens into a genuine little Christian.
Two of the most striking philanthropies in Shanghai are conducted by the Roman Catholics. If there is a class of society that draws on one’s sympathies even more than friendless children, it is friendless old people, since their capacity for conscious suffering is greater. A most admirable characteristic of the Chinese is their usually kind treatment of the aged. Filial piety shines its brightest in poverty stricken homes, where real sacrifice is required to provide for the parents, who are often much better able to care for themselves than their children are for them. But very many are left alone in the world without food or shelter, or money to buy a coffin in which they would so gladly lie down and die.
The Catholic Home for indigent old people is popularly known by the name given to the Sisters of Charity in charge of it, “The Little Sisters of the Poor.” The capacious three-story building shelters a hundred and fifty old men and as many old women, which is all it will hold. But as fast as any die others are ready to take their places, for there is always a long waiting list. The only conditions of admission to the Home are that the applicant must be over sixty and wholly without means of support. Most of those taken in are seventy or more. One might easily imagine that a place like this, which gathers under its roof so many old people, whose lives for the most part have been spent in the midst of poverty and filth, and with never an idea of cleanly habits, would be anything but inviting. Yet it is a sort of Eden, not a speck of dirt on the well-scrubbed floors, not a bad or even a close smell in the big airy rooms, not a spot on the white bed curtains and pretty patch-work coverlids made by the old people from the scraps sent in from the shops. And as for the inmates enjoying themselves, why the faces of the dear old souls fairly radiate happiness! They are allowed tobacco and plenty of tea and chatter like magpies over their pipes and cups. In order not to make life under the new conditions terrifying for them, a weekly bath is not insisted on, but clean, neatly mended garments are donned every Sunday morning. When sick, the simple-minded folk are attended by old-fashioned Chinese medicine men, instead of foreign trained doctors whose new-fangled ways the patients would spurn. All who are able to work have regular duties, spinning, laundering, tailoring, nursing. The women’s quarters are on one side of the building, and the men’s on the other, with the chapel between them. “Yes,” says the Sister Superior, stopping a moment as she passes in front of the altar to kneel and make the sign of the Cross, “the chapel is in the centre, so you see it is God who divides and God who unites us.” Several of the Sisters are Chinese, and one round-faced novitiate works in the kitchen, where the shining brass and copper vessels call to mind “Father Lawrence” and his immaculate domain. No Chinese girl can enter as an “aspirant” to the privileges of sisterhood, unless she belongs to the third generation of Christians.
Shanghai’s great show-place is the Catholic institution at Siccawei, a suburban village named after the Jesuit missionaries’ patron saint. No one coming to the city willingly leaves without seeing it, certainly not if the visitor is a woman. For the laces and embroideries made under the direction of the French Sisters are the very quintessence of artistic loveliness, and the salesroom is seldom empty.
More than fifty years ago, at the close of the T’aiping Rebellion, the Jesuits, after many persecutions and vicissitudes, returned to Shanghai, from whence they had fled, and settled at Siccawei. There they began a small work, which has steadily grown till it has reached almost gigantic proportions. Clustered about the Cathedral, glaringly modern and capacious, whose tall spires are a landmark in all the country round, are the old church, a men’s college and theological seminary, observatory, museum, orphanages, schools, and industrial plants. The women’s and girls’ buildings are on one side of a tidal creek, and those of the men and boys on the other. Asked some question by a stranger about the boys’ work, the Sister addressed replied in a tone of finality, “I can’t tell you. I know no more about what is going on over there than you do.” Each Sister is assigned her own duties for which she is responsible, and gives herself to them exclusively. There are fifty Sisters, more than two-thirds of whom are Chinese. The spirituelle expression seen sometimes on the faces of these Chinese recluses, is most remarkable. The foreign Sisters are all French. No one can doubt their devotion. They take no vacation; they never go home on furlough. Several have been at their posts over forty years.
It is a large household the Sisters have under their care, averaging in number seventeen hundred, but the work is so divided and runs with such systematic regularity that there is no suggestion of friction or confusion. First in order come the foundlings. Each day, tiny, new-born babes are brought into the Home, or often left at the gate in the darkness of the night. None are turned away. They are washed, dressed, laid in clean little cribs, and as soon as possible baptised with a Christian name in the chapel on the premises. Many are so frail when they enter, that a few brief hours or days end their troubled existence. Next are the day-schools of various grades for Catholic children, the large orphanage, and the boarding-school for non-Christian or pagan children, as the Sisters call them, with playground, dormitories, dining and school rooms entirely separate from the others. In a secluded corner of the grounds live the sixty unfortunates, who are either blind, crippled, or mentally deficient. Their chief occupation is spinning cotton by the aid of crude spinning wheels, something the dullest are found capable of learning to do.
But it is through its industrial department that Siccawei is best known to the general public. Hundreds of women are employed in making lace and embroidery, most of them having been reared in the Home, and married from it to Catholic husbands whose earning capacity is insufficient for the family needs. A day nursery and school is maintained for the babies and young children of the employees. The work rooms are of enormous size and well lighted. In the centre of each one, on a raised platform, sits a Sister, overlooking the women. The proceeds from the sale of work are very large.
The industrial plant for the men and boys, on the other side of the creek, is even more elaborate. It includes many departments, wood-carving, carpentry, shoemaking, work in iron and brass, glass-blowing, painting in oils and water colours, and a printing establishment. The genial Father in charge of the wood-carving and carpentering, is in his line a genius. Some of the work turned out under his supervision is wonderfully beautiful, and ranks among the finest specimens of Chinese art sent to the Panama Exposition. The youngest apprentices, lads of ten or twelve, begin their industrial training by making little coffins for the foundlings across the way. “Yes,” Father B. is in the habit of remarking, pointing to the boys with a smile, “they start in life where others leave off.” The Siccawei Mission is self-perpetuating within the limits of its own constituency. Growth comes through the ever inflowing stream of helpless humanity. But no effort is put forth, either by the missionaries or Chinese communicants, to reach the unevangelized masses. Formerly this work was subsidized from France, but it now depends for support wholly on the sale of its industries and voluntary contributions.
All Shanghai philanthropies from time to time receive liberal donations from the Chinese themselves, many of whom understand and genuinely appreciate what is being done for their people. The recent founding of the Society of Organized Charities (Protestant) has aided greatly in carrying on systematic work in behalf of the deserving poor.
XIII
CHINESE SUCCESSES IN SOCIAL SERVICE
Several years ago a company of lepers numbering about forty, living in one of the southern provinces of China, were driven from their miserable shacks and burned alive. When the official by whose order the atrocious deed was committed was called to account for it, he excused himself by saying that since the lepers were public nuisances, mere cumberers of the ground, he decided that the sooner they were out of the way the better. Such was his idea of social service and he represents a class in China who regard calamities like famine, flood, and pestilence as heaven-sent blessings to relieve the land of its superfluous population. But to the educated youth, touched by the spirit of a common brotherhood, and to the better elements of an earlier generation the incident just related is as abhorrent as it can possibly be to a Westerner.
Philanthropy of a certain kind is not new in China. Almsgiving for the sake of winning and storing up merit is centuries old. But galling poverty, the fierce struggle for existence, strange customs and superstitions, have all contributed to deaden the sensibilities and quench the naturally kind impulses of the heart. For example, to care for a man lying sick by the roadside means to the rank and file that the Good Samaritan brings down on his own head the ill-luck that followed the poor unfortunate, and to carry him into his house to die involves not only the obligation of paying for his coffin and burial, no small matter in China, but of answering to his relatives, if he has any, for his decease. Not long ago in the Chinese City a humble dwelling-house took fire and quickly burned to the ground. The family barely escaped with their lives, a mother with a new-born baby, and a troop of older children, one of them sick. The father was away, presumably at work. A missionary passing through the narrow street saw the poor things huddled together in a forlorn little group and her heart was stirred with pity. “Why don’t some of you take them home?” she asked of the crowd looking on. “Her husband is coming, we must wait for him,” they answered. An hour or two later, on returning, the lady found the family in the same spot, the woman weak and weary, pressing her infant to her breast. A cold rain was falling. “If you don’t give these people shelter I shall take them home with me,” she exclaimed indignantly to a bystander. “The husband will be here soon, we dare not interfere,” he said in tones of sharp decision. The next morning, unbelievable as it seems, the woman and her children were still on the street, unsheltered and uncared for. At once they were hurried to the mission hospital and tenderly nursed. Then, and not till then, did the real truth in the case come out. Had any one befriended these outcasts, the evil spirit that caused the destruction of their house, would in anger have entered the home of their benefactor and wrought disaster. Hence the only safe course, since they had incurred the displeasure of the gods, was to let them severely alone. Yet to offset this circumstance is the sweet story, and by no means an isolated case, of the old Chinese grandmother, who when a little foreign babe was rescued from drowning, but chilled to the marrow and ready to die, quickly opened her padded coat, and pressed it to her warm bosom, till it revived, thus saving its life.
The recent revolution ushered in many innovations, but nothing that is destined to result in larger good to China than the practice of social service as understood in the West. The idea has met with a quick and enthusiastic response by the Chinese, Christians, and non-Christians alike, and is already yielding notable results in many places. “Why should we not do for ourselves what foreigners have so long been doing for us?” the leaders are asking one another, and hospitals, orphanages, model prisons, refuges, industrial plants, are rising up here, there, and yonder, till it is scarcely possible to open a newspaper without reading of some new project afloat. In progressive Shanghai social service is fast becoming a slogan. An unusual opportunity is afforded here of contrasting the old style of philanthropy with the new, and the study is valuable as well as interesting.
The local Charitable Society that antedates all others has its headquarters, known as The Hall of United Benevolence, in the Chinese City. Its exact age is difficult to determine as no one seems to know. Some say it has as many as three hundred years to its credit. A managing board of ten men, with offices in a Chinese house of spacious dimensions, does the business of the Society, which is very wealthy, owning large tracts of public land. Its chief work is to donate lots to philanthropic institutions, furnish coffins to paupers, subsidize various existing charities, and dispense free of charge Chinese medicines. This Association is held in the highest regard by all classes of Chinese, and may be called the fountain-head from which most of the existing charities have sprung.
One of the older philanthropies, started more than fifty years ago, is the Home for Widows in the Chinese City. It receives widows without money or relatives to support them, who have determined not to re-marry, a most praiseworthy resolve according to Chinese standards. The house-mother, an old woman of seventy, delights to tell that she has been an inmate of the Home for forty years, and certainly the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked dame is as good an advertisement as the place could have. Widows with young children are allowed to keep their little ones with them till the girls are betrothed and the boys able to go out to work. In the meantime they are sent to day-schools in the city. A family of three hundred is crowded into the rambling old house, the gift of a former governor, which consists of a series of small courts shut in by low two-story buildings. Each woman has her own little room, or perhaps more than one if her family is large. The premises are fairly neat, but what troops of children swarm around, noisy and undisciplined, and as a Chinese caller once pointedly remarked, “How the women must quarrel!” Their salvation evidently lies in their industrial work, for while food and shelter are given them, the able-bodied are expected to provide their own and their children’s clothes. So they spend their days making articles which are sold and yield a slight revenue, chiefly Chinese shoes, idol money, and clothing.
The Widows’ Home, despite its limitations, commands a degree of genuine respect, but not so the two Foundlings’ Homes that awaken only pity and almost fierce resentment. They are meant to do good, yet alas, what a travesty on the real thing! The institution inside of the Chinese City is the oldest philanthropy in Shanghai and dates back to 1710. From the Hall of United Benevolence that fosters it an occasional report goes forth telling about this work. The reports are written in the usual florid Chinese style, and after describing at length the virtuous motives of the founders and supporters, give the rules governing the organization. For instance the age of each child is registered, a note made of its appearance and condition, also “of the lines and fashion of its fingers, five senses and four limbs.” Wet nurses are made to draw lots for the babies in order to avoid partiality. Close to the street entrance is a perforated drawer in which the foundling is to be left. The one who brings the baby must rap on the door with a stick that hangs beside the drawer to announce its arrival. These and many more minute directions are recorded with painstaking elaboration.
They read well, but what are the facts? It requires considerable tact and insistence for a visitor to gain access to the inner rooms of the Home, where the real life of the babies is dragged out. Two or three of the well-favoured will be brought in the arms of nurses to an outer court, but when permission is asked to go inside there is evident reluctance and many excuses are offered. Sometimes the only sure open sesame is the official card of the City Magistrate. Apparently no cruelty is practiced, but it is the gross ignorance and negligence of the caretakers that makes so pitiable the brief life of the babies, for most of them die after a few weeks or months. Each wet nurse is given the charge of two foundlings. The nurses may remain at the Home or if they prefer take the little ones to their own home, in which case they receive somewhat larger pay. If a sufficient number of wet nurses can not be secured, the foundlings, irrespective of age, whether a few days or several months old, are fed on rice water sweetened with coarse brown sugar. Scarcely any reach the Home in a normal condition. Diseased, weak, bruised, one coming with a terrible gash in its neck given with intent to kill, the death-knell of the puny things is generally sounded before birth. The rooms where they are kept are small, and as a rule almost devoid of light and air. In one of the Homes even through the heat of a Shanghai summer the babies not only sleep in stifling rooms but on beds surrounded by closely-woven cloth curtains. In the other Home they lie the long day through in bamboo cribs, their little bodies eaten with flies and poisoned with mosquitoes. The chorus of feeble wails that constantly arises pierces the visitor’s heart, as does the sight of the tiny skeleton-like limbs. With scarcely an exception the fifty babies in each of the Homes, and the far larger number that are put out to nurse, are girls. Just one thought comes as a slight comfort, that wretched as is the condition of the children they are certainly quite as well, or even perhaps better off, than they would be in their own homes. No wonder physicians in China say the mortality among children reaches as high as seventy or eighty per cent.
In happy contrast to these Homes, is the Hospice of St. Joseph, which has gathered into its safe shelter nearly eleven hundred of Shanghai’s sick and poverty-stricken Chinese. But the story is too good not to be told from the beginning. Four years ago two Christian men, members of the Catholic Church, determined to found a philanthropic institution. One holds several highly responsible offices in the Chinese Municipality. The other is a successful business man. Many of the tramcars in the International Settlement, and all of those under Chinese control, were turned out from his foundry. His snug steamers ply the waters of the upper Yangtse as far as Chungking, conquerors at last, after many futile efforts, over the difficulties presented by the dangerous rapids. He subscribes for American journals on mechanics which he studies diligently through an interpreter, and after absorbing ideas gleaned from them, invents and adapts machinery for use in China. It is his desire to see Chinese farmers follow improved methods of agriculture, and to encourage them he occasionally presents a village with a modern threshing machine made in his foundry. His Sundays are frequently spent in evangelistic work in the country, and busy man that he is, he makes it a practice as often as possible to leave his work and go to the Arsenal to pray with condemned prisoners before they die. Recently the President honoured him with a medal rarely bestowed, and all who know him, Protestant and Catholic alike, pronounce him a “rare character.”
The land for the Hospice was donated by the Charitable Society of the Hall of United Benevolences, and the Chinese Municipality gave bricks (those bricks seem to multiply miraculously!) from the old city wall for building material. The colony includes a men’s hospital, a women’s hospital, a home for boys, a refuge for girls, an asylum for the blind, a chapel, dispensaries, kitchens, quarters for the insane, for opium patients, and prisoners from the jail in the Chinese City. These buildings are already completed and others are projected. While the two founders direct the business affairs of the institution, they have given the care of it to twelve Sisters of Charity, four of whom are Europeans and the rest Chinese.