HOME LIFE IN CHINA BY ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND PH.D., PROFESSOR IN PEKING UNIVERSITY n WITH FOUR PLATES IN COLOUR AND TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 1914 TO Mr WIFE 328261 PREFACE THE home life of a people is too sacred to be touched except by the hand of friendship. The doors of our homes all open inward, and our latch should not be lifted except by those who love us. Enter if you will as brother, sister, friend ; but once you have entered, go not away to scoff or ridicule. Our enemies may enter our yamens, our factories, our business, but they come not into our homes. Our doors are closed to strangers, locked to enemies, and opened only to those of our own race who are in harmony and sympathy with us. In this study of Chinese Home Life I have not sought things to criticize ; I have not hunted for comparisons with our own which might appear often as odious to us as to them ; I have not tried to find things to commend ; I have simply tried to find them and tell them as they are. But I have always done it in a kindly spirit. My readers will find many things omitted that they will wish had been told ; they may find some things which might well have been omitted ; they may wish that it had been a woman who Vll viii HOME LIFE IN CHINA had written the book instead of a man, for only a woman, we are often told, can appreciate the things of women, children, and home. Be it so —but still the largest women's journals are edited by men. I. T. H. HOME LIFE IN CHINA ■ '. ' . - i J V I S 1 N ( ; 1 N CONTENTS CHAP. I. Introductory PAGE I II. Children and Child-Life . 9 III. School Life of Children . • 23 IV. Education of the Poor . . 42 V. Rules of Behaviour for Children . 49 VI. Girls . 61 VII. The Classic for Girls . 69 VIII. Marriage . 81 " IX. Women ■ 89 X. Housewives . 102 XI. Motherhood .... . 109 XII. Concubinage .... • 113 XIII. Religion ■ 123 XIV. Family Ceremonies . . 131 XV. Marriage Ceremonies . 141 XVI. Funeral Ceremonies . . 147 XVII. Ancestor-Worship • 154 XVIII. Servants . 161 XIX. Food . 171 XX. Shops and Markets . . 182 XXI. Expense of Living . . 192 XXII. Travel : Inns and Restaurants . 202 IX HOME LIFE IN CHINA CHAP. XXIII. Summer Resorts . rAut . 211 XXIV. How the Poor Live . 219 XXV. Peasant Life . 226 XXVI. Oddities of Every-day Life • 235 XXVII. Chinese Names and Nicknames • 243 XXVIII. Chinese Superstitions . • 257 XXIX. Chinese Humour . 269 XXX. The Unscientific Chinese . 280 XXXI. Dress and Hospitality . . 288 XXXII. Doing Things Backward . 296 XXXIII. Recent Changes in Home Life . 301 Index • 315 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Chinese Singing Girl . . . frontispiece From a drawing by Vera Waddington. FACING PAGE A Young Mandarin 10 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. The Warriors 24 From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi. The Toilet 62 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. The Bride 82 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. 'Hsiao Ch'ing, Little Bright, the Singing Girl 100 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. A Sage in Winter 128 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. A " Boy " eating his Dinner on the Deck of a Native Boat 166 From a photograph by H. S. Elliott. Children at Play 184 From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi. The Courtyard of a Chinese Inn . . . 204 From a photograph by Dr. Marcus L. Taft. A Beggar of Canton 220 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE A Typical Native Hut 226 From a photograph by Dr. Marcus L. Taft. A Girl with a Bird 240 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. Children's Games : The Musicians . . 274 From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi. Beggar Children, Canton .... 302 From a drawing by Vera Waddington. A Game of Dominoes 312 From a painting on silk by Yang Clm-hsi. HOME LIFE IN CHINA CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTORY I WISH to say in the beginning that it will not be my design to give a dark picture of the Chinese home, neither will I try to paint any pictures in high colours. There will be bright as well as dark pictures in poor as in rich homes. There are many people who suppose that because a child is poor it leads a dull life. Now it was my fortune — as it was yours — to be born a barefoot child. But it was my good fortune — as it may not have been yours — to have grown up a barefoot boy, for no one who has been raised in affluence and ease can appreciate the joys and sorrows of the poor. A farmer's boy, compelled to struggle from morn till night, to help to pay rent and make a living, can have more fun on a single fourth of July or Christmas holiday, with twenty-five cents to spend, than a son of wealth, with three hundred and sixty-five days of idleness and an unlimited bank account, can have in a year. We will therefore not take it for granted that a 2 HOME LIFE IN CHINA child is not happy because it is poor, nor will we suppose that a child is happy because it is rich. It is a great thing to have been born poor and to have grown up through all grades of society. It helps you to understand chil- dren. It helps you to understand men. It helps you to see the occasions for smiles as well as for tears in the homes of all grades of society. It is hard to judge properly what you have not yourself lived through. Let us now take a peep at a Chinese home, — or the house that makes the home. It may be of any grade, from a mud hut or a bamboo shack in a little country village, to a brick house with black ebony carvings and green glazed tile roof in the capital of the empire or republic. The little folks will be the same. The general structure of the buildings will be the same. The plan and architecture will be the same. The customs will be the same. The furniture will be in general the same, though withal common and coarse or rich and fine. They will eat the^r food with the same kind of utensils, in the same general way, and it will be in a measure the same kind of food. Their clothes will be of the same pattern, made in the same style. They will dress their hair in the same way, paint and powder their faces in the same way, and make their shoes and stockings with the same kind of needle and thread. And they will have done this for so many centuries that they will think the same INTRODUCTORY 3 kind of thoughts in the same way, until they sit, and walk, and talk, and get angry and revile, or be happy and sing, in the same way, and it will all be different from the same things when done in any other country in the world. The house, then, that we call the home will be a one-story building with three rooms in a row. The door will enter the centre of these three rooms, which will be reception room, parlour, dining room, hall, and general living room. Opposite the door, against the wall, there will be a square table with a straight- backed chair on either side, while stands, with chairs beside them, will occupy the centre of each side wall. Above the table, decorating the wall, may be four written scrolls, or a painting in the form of a hanging scroll (kakemono, the Japanese call it, though the Chinese call it chung tang), with a written scroll on either side. The partitions between the rooms, if it is an adobe house (dried brick), will be dried brick walls ; but if it is a brick house of the middle or better class, the partitions will be panelled board up four or five feet from the floor, with panelled lattice to the ceiling, papered with thin white paper, and a small painting either in colours, or black and white, in each of the panels. The ceiling will be of paper, made in squares of about 18 x 20 inches, finished or glazed on one side with fish-bone or fish-scale dust 4 HOME LIFE IN CHINA (oyster-shell dust), and pasted on a framework made of broom-corn stalks, stiffened with a wooden panelling. The house will face south, if it is in the north of China, and the upper half of the south wall will be lattice windows, covered with thin white paper instead of glass. This is for the purpose of getting all possible sunlight into the room during the winter, while they live and work out of doors during the summer. The wealthier homes, where they have no concern about fuel, may have a narrow five-foot veranda extending the whole length of the front side of the house, while the poorer ones may erect a mat awning during the hot summer months. The end rooms of the building will be alike, from ten to fifteen feet square, depending upon the wealth of the person. The south half of the floor in North China will be built up eighteen inches above the other half. This constitutes the bed. It is built of brick or dirt, with flues under the top layer, and a fire- place under the front with a place for a pot over the fire. In the morning, and in the evening, or, if they can afford it, all day, they build a fire under the bed. The smoke, soot, gas, and ashes all go up through the flues and heat the bricks of the bed, so that when you retire, instead of having one hot brick in your bed you go to bed on a bed of hot bricks. Someone has facetiously called this " solid comfort." They go to bed on top of the q INTRODUCTORY 5 stove. The fuel is usually cornstalks, grass, weeds, old matting, or anything that will burn, or, best of all, coal balls made of anthracite coal dust mixed with clay, which supports complete combustion. It will be observed that the bricks of this brick bed, or stove — for the people literally sleep on top of the stove — take all the heat out of the fuel so that none of it is wasted by going up the chimney — which, by the way, is no part of the ordinary Chinese house. Why have a chimney to carry off three-fifths of your heat ? The smoke and gas come out into the room. You open the windows and doors and let it out, and you keep all the heat inside. The better class homes heat the houses with brass or clay stoves or braziers, with coal balls or charcoal for fuel, which are lighted outside until the gas is driven off and then carried into the house, while the fireplace under the bed is on the veranda instead of in the room. Such is the simple Chinese home where father, mother, and children dwell. But very few Chinese homes are simple. As soon as the boys are old enough to marry, as we shall show in a later chapter, a wife is found for each of them in order, and they bring their wives, not to the parental roof, but to the parental en- closure, for another three-room building, the exact counterpart of the one we have just described, is erected, and the young couple start in life under the direction and super- 6 HOME LIFE IN CHINA intendence of the boy's parents — the girl's parents-in-law. This continues for years and centuries, each home losing all of its girls, who are scattered into the homes of as many other people. In this way a single three-room cottage eventually becomes a village, which goes under the name of the Liu village, the Yang village, the Wang village, the Chang village, or the village of the particular family who happened to first live there. These villages of from one hundred to four or five thousand or more are more thickly scattered over the habitable portions of China than single farmhouses over Kansas, Nebraska, or Iowa. In the above description we have had in mind a family in medium circumstances, who were able to build their house of brick, with tile roof, and with fairly decent furniture. From them we may go in both directions until we come to the poor beggar who lives " from hand to mouth," or, as he says, " yu i wan, ch'ih i wan" — "have a bowl, eat a bowl," or to the sons of wealth who have every luxury that their intelligence or the intelligence of their race can provide. From our point of view these are not many. For the floors of their houses are of brick. They are without bathroom, water, light, or heating system, except such as we have de- scribed — no electric call-bells, though they have human call-bells, in the form of servants, INTRODUCTORY 7 always waiting to do their bidding, for few people in the world are better served than the Chinese. They know how to be served, and they understand how to be servants. There is no well-flushed sewage system, and the streets, courts, and homes are not clean according to our view of cleanliness. The porous bricks of the floors of ordinary homes contain the sputum and fluids of years, if not centuries, and would violate all our rules of sanitation, and contain microbes enough to depopulate all Europe and America in a single generation. Their sleeping arrangements are neither clean nor comfortable. On top of the brick bed is a reed mat, and, if they can afford it, a wool or camel-hair rug. On this, when they are about to retire, they spread a ju tzu, or mattress, about as thick as our grandams' wadded com- forters, then with a small pillow about the size of a brick, stuffed with grass seed or chaff, many of which have a hole in the centre for the ear to rest in, and another comforter or two to spread over them, or to wrap themselves in, they lie down to pleasant dreams. The common people use no sleeping garment, and spread their clothing over them at night in lieu of a sufficient amount of bedding. They go to bed shortly after dark, as the " light of Asia," until recently, has been a tallow dip or a bowl of oil with a rag for a wick, and get up at daylight. In the morning when they arise the bedding 8 HOME LIFE IN CHINA is aired, then folded up and put away in chests, or piled up on one end of the brick bed, where it is ready for the following night. They do not use sheets and pillow-cases as we do, and hence — but I do not need to remind my readers of what their imagination may do in a more delicate way. But I must call their attention to the fact that human parasites — and I wonder if any of my readers have ever been able to answer the question why those things were created (I suppose it was done to keep us clean, for they only go where there is a reasonable amount of dirt) — human parasites of every description abound wherever man is found. And what better than a brick bed as an in- cubator for the cimex lectularius, or for that matter any of that species. Suffice it to say that all these things take away from the com- forts of home life, and make the word for home, chia (a shackled pig under a roof), seem significant, and are sufficient reason for the ejaculations of Chinese ladies when visiting a foreign home, which are " kan ching I ts'ui kan ching ! " — " clean ! very clean ! " It is in such a home that the Chinese child is born and reared, and be it remembered to the credit of the child that there are more than 400,000,000 of him without any scientific system of medicine, and in spite of microbes and sanitation. CHAPTER II CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE THE Chinese word for child is made up of two characters — that which means boy, and that which means from g-n p.m. I leave my readers to work out its origin ac- cording to their own tastes and experiences. The word for good is made up of the two char- acters for woman and boy — a woman with a son is good. That this was the original meaning of the word we would not pretend to say, though in the construction of characters the Chinese have exercised great care, and I know of no more interesting pastime than the study of the structure of the Chinese ideographs. The Chinese fondness for children can be paralleled only by that of the Hebrew. A woman never reaches the acme of womanhood until she becomes the mother of a boy, which means, at least, if it means no more, that the Chinese child comes to a home where it is wanted, and will be appreciated. We are told in the " Four Books for Girls " that : " Boys and girls we take for granted Will be found in every home ; And their study from their childhood should be regularly done, 9 10 HOME LIFE IN CHINA The direction of their studies is their mother's, as a rule, For her son she calls a teacher and she places him in school, Where he writes and sings short ballads, Studies how to be discreet, Loves his teacher and rewards him both with money and with meat," — a reference to the old custom of the teacher receiving a part of his salary in the form of dried meat which was brought by the students. The book from which this quotation is an excerpt was written more than a thousand years ago, and it is unnecessary to state that this old custom had fallen into disuse before the recent reforms began. When a child is born, if it happens to be a boy, it is looked upon asa" great joy," and all the congratulations that come to the parents come in the form of " ta hsi, ta hsi " (great happiness, great happiness). But if it happens to be a girl — as it is as frequently as a boy — it must be confessed that if there is a surplus of girls in the family before its arrival, the old nurse goes about with the appearance of having stolen it from somewhere, and if congratulated, as she always is, she will reply in the stereo- typed phrase, " Only a small happiness, ' hsiao hsi,' but even girls are useful." This does not mean that girls are not wanted, or that they are not loved. A family with a surplus of boys is as anxious for a daughter as a similar family in Europe. And I happen to know what that feeling is, for in my father's family A VOUNC MANDARIN CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 11 we had eight boys before the first daughter came, and I sympathized with that little chap who, when the fifth boy came into their family, without a girl, said as he stood looking at the child in the cradle for the first time — " Well, I'd like to know who's been praying for him ! " Girls in China, as in all the rest of the world, for that matter, are a cause of expense rather than a source of income during all their years at home, and it is this which accounts for many of the customs of China as well as of India. Where the struggle of life is not for luxuries but for sheer necessities, and for existence, people may be pardoned for listening to the cry of an empty stomach, and hoping for a hand to go with the mouth that is born, rather than having a mouth without the helping hand. In this country when we speak of people we estimate them by their hands, but in China if you ask a man as to the number of persons in his family he will answer, " In our family we have ten mouths." In spite of their poverty the Chinese have never approved of very early marriages on the part of their daughters, as they have in India. They have the same conditions, the same dangers and the same necessities as in India, but they have solved the problem in a much more masterful way. Their conditions of want, need, and poverty are as great as in India ; there is the same danger of a girl going 12 HOME LIFE IN CHINA wrong — and it is this danger, as well as their poverty, that leads the Hindoo father and mother to part with their little girl at such a tender age, putting the responsibility of her development and her virtue on the man whose wife she is to become, rather than keeping it upon themselves. In China they have solved the problem in this way : The prospective mother-in-law, among the poor, occasionally takes the child and brings her up with her son in her own family. This teaches her obedi- ence, enables the children to get acquainted, and puts the burden of the girl's support upon the family which is to reap the results of her labour or her reproductive capacity, though they do not allow them to marry until they are at an age which would be considered marriageable in Europe or America. During its babyhood the Chinese child is well cared for. It is not washed until it is three days old, the ceremony of which will be found in another chapter, but in all cases where it is possible to do so, it is nursed by its mother. This might be the result of sheer necessity, if not from desire, for the Chinese use little milk, and they have no artificial foods of any kind for infants. In case nature does not provide the mother with food, a wet- nurse is employed, who, if she is allowed to do so, will feed her own child after she has satis- fied that of her employer. If the family can afford it, each little girl CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 13 has her own separate nurse, who remains with her as long as she lives, acting as her nurse when she is a child, as her maid when she grows older, going with her to her husband's home when she is married — presumably to keep her from becoming lonely in her new surroundings — and becoming nurse to her children, or at least superintending nurse, when they are born. These old nurses are very important personages in a home — next in importance, though in a different way, to the mother-in-law. The girl becomes so dependent upon her that she does not understand how she can get along without her. But there are other reasons than poverty why a girl child is less welcome in a Chinese home than a boy. Apart from the economic, the chief reasons for disappointment are that a daughter cannot offer the ancestral sacrifice, she cannot glorify the family by official ap- pointment as the result of her literary attain- ments, nor can she ever hope to perpetuate the family name. In a condition of society where reverence for the old has become ancestral worship, these considerations assume a degree of importance rarely found among any other people. Before going to China I could not but wonder, when I saw a Chinese or Japanese doll, why it was that they made such unnatural- looking things for babies to play with. On reaching the Orient, the whole matter was ex- 14 HOME LIFE IN CHINA plained by the first Chinese or Japanese baby I met. The doll looks like the child ! A Chinese baby is a round-faced little piece of helpless humanity, whose eyes appear as if they were simply two black marbles over which the skin had been stretched and then a slit made on the bias. His nose is nothing more than a little kopje in the centre of his face, above a yawning chasm which requires constant filling to secure the preservation of law and order. On his head are left small tufts of hair in various localities, which give it the appearance of the plain about Peking, on which the traveller sees, here and there, a bunch of trees about a village or cemetery, the remainder of the country being bare. Whether he is clothed or not depends upon the season of the year. If he happens to be born in the spring-time, he has the pleasure of passing the first six months of his life like his first parents in the Garden of Eden, and is not ashamed. If he happens to die during the first six months after his birth, he is carefully wrapped up in a piece of old matting, if his parents are poor, and tenderly placed on some street corner, where he is picked up by the driver of the big black cart, to which a gentle but very big black cow is hitched, and taken outside the city, where he and a large company of other small unfortunates, who were not able to cope with the microbes of their surroundings, are buried side by side or one on top of the other CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 15 in a common hole, without a monument to mark his resting-place. I am not talking about something of which I do not know. I have seen that big black cart, drawn by the big black cow, come down the great Hatamen street in Peking, morning after morning at about nine o'clock, and I have seen the man who went with the cart picking up the pathetic little packages, and sticking them into the back end of the cart as we used to put wood on the waggon on the farm. And one cold winter's day, as I was coming home from church in Peking, a lot of poor beggars' shacks had been built up against the city wall. A babe had been born in one of them during the night, had been thrown out on the sand, and there it lay like a dead rat frozen in the sun- shine. On another occasion when walking on top of the city wall just at dusk, I stumbled upon something, and on looking down to see what it was, I found it to be a child's head, the body having been devoured by the dogs. Such things were not common even under the old regime, but the cart and the cow were of daily occurrence. If the little one lives, his life will depend upon several very important considerations, chief among which are, whether his home is a palace or a hovel, whether he is a boy or a girl, what kind of children have preceded him, and what kind of parents he has succeeded in securing. If, as we have already indicated, he is a boy, 16 HOME LIFE IN CHINA and the majority of his predecessors are boys, well, " can do," the parents and nurse will say, but if he happens to be a girl, he may be de- cidedly superfluous. The presumption is that a Chinese child is born with the same general disposition as the European or American child. And I presume he is. But he certainly does not grow up with it. Early in life he begins to develop a disposition which is peculiar to the Chinese child. He is T'ao ch'i. That almost means mischievous ; it almost means troublesome — a little Tartar — but it means exactly T'ao ch'i. A T'ao ch'i child that spends a good deal of its time with a nurse may become a little tyrant. I have known cases in which father, mother, uncle, aunts, and grandparents were all made to do his bidding. In case any of them seemed to be recalcitrant, the little dear would lie down on his baby back on the dusty ground and kick and scream, and literally raise the dust, until the refractory parent or nurse had re- pented and succumbed, when he would get up and good-naturedly go about his play and allow them to go about their business. This is a peculiarly Chinese baby trick or disposition — at least I have never seen it in any other country, though I once found my own little boy at about two or three years of age try it on his nurse. I saw him ! I ran to him, picked him up, put him across my knee, CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 17 gave him three quick, sharp spanks, that sur- prised, without hurting him very much, then I sat him up straight, and emphasizing it with my index finger, I said : " My son, Chinese babies do that, but American babies never do. Now you must never do that again, will you ? " He promised he would not. Then I turned to the nurse — an absolutely reliable Chinese woman — and said to her, that the child might hear it : " Hsin Nai-nai, if my little boy ever does that again you will tell me, won't you ? " She promised she would, and it never oc- curred again. In general a baby girl receives the same tender care as a boy. Her head is shaved when a month old, all except the " soft spot," and some part of the head is shaved every week or ten days until the age of puberty. One of the favourite methods of decorating the head with tufts of hair is to leave a bunch on top and another on the back of the neck. But the favourite decoration is obtained by shaving a round spot on the scalp, and then in a like manner shaving all the rest of the head up to within an inch of this, leaving a circular tuft of hair around the scalp, which grows out like a dark halo. When it has grown to the length of three or four inches it is braided into small queues with red cords, which gives him a charming, not to say cunning appearance. 18 HOME LIFE IN CHINA As they grow older only the front of the head was shaven under the old Manchu regime, the remainder being allowed to grow. This was braided into a single queue on boys and girls alike, and was to the Chinese boy what the first pair of trousers or a pair of red-top boots was to his antipodal neighbour. His first baby shoes are often made in the shape of a pig, and are called piggy shoes, his mittens in the form of a tiger's head, and the bonnet which he wears in winter in the form of a cock or a phcenix or some other bird, while golden dragons decorate his coat and vest. The little boy of the middle or better class, or even the poorer class if they can afford it, is dressed exactly like the man, while the little girl is dressed like her mother. The one does not have to go through the period of stockings and knickerbockers, nor the other through short skirts ; the difference between the child and the youth or the man is indicated by the hair rather than the clothing. The clothes of boys and girls as little children are about the same — shoes, made of cloth with thick soles ; stockings, made of white muslin, not knit ; trousers, wide and baggy, with a wide white band about the top, where they are held about the waist with a girdle, and with no openings except at the top and the bottom of the legs. They step into them much as one would step into a bag, girdle them about the waist, and bind them about the ankle with CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 19 narrow ties called ankle-bands. These are to the Chinese what a cravat is to a European or American boy. If he has a very pretty pair of ankle-bands, he will bind them in such a way as to have them come loose often, so as to attract the attention of his associates. His coat is a long smock made of silk, satin, or common blue muslin, which reaches to his shoes, while his sister's reaches only to her ankles or calves, the long straight lines of which are broken by a short coat, called a horse-coat, ma kua, or a vest, which reach only to the hips. The chief difference between the clothes of the boys and the girls is in decora- tion. The little girl, like her sister all over the world, decorates herself very much more elaborately than her brother. One of the most interesting things about the life of a child in China is the way it learns to talk. To learn to speak the Chinese lan- guage is, I think, no more difficult than to learn any other language. Each word is a single syllable. It has no declension of nouns or pronouns, no conjugation of verbs, no com- jparison of adjectives. But each sound may ; be pronounced with any one of four or more I different inflections, which are very difficult for the foreigner to acquire. The nurse is the first teacher of the child. She goes about with the little one, saying over and over again, until one would think the child would tire of it : " This is a flower," and the child repeats, " Yis i ! 20 HOME LIFE IN CHINA is a fower " ; " This is a stone," " Yis is a tone," &c. &c. My little boy was asked to write a letter for a magazine in New York. He wrote the following : " My dear Circle, — My home is in Peking. I am nine years old. I can talk Chinese. I learned it before I did English. It's dead easy. You talk it just the same as you do English, only the words are different " — which will give some idea as to what children think of the relative difficulties of the two languages. The most attractive thing about the early life of a Chinese child, as I think, is the nursery rhymes. I gathered up six hundred of these ditties in two of the eighteen provinces, trans- lated one hundred and fifty of them into English, took the children to the photographers, posed them and photographed them, and printed them in a Chinese Mother Goose book, the popularity of which is the best testimony of their interest. Every good old nurse is full of these rhymes, and can reel them off to the children as rapidly as an English nurse can our own Mother Goose. I caught an old nurse one day repeating this rhyme to the little one she was caring for : " He climbed up the candlestick, The little mousey brown, CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE 21 To steal and eat tallow, And he couldn't get down ; He called for his grandma, But his grandma was in town. So he doubled up into a wheel And rolled himself down." Now that rhyme contains all the character- istics of " Old Mother Hubbard." The reader will remember that that old dame went to the cupboard to get a bone for her dog. She found it bare, and "so the poor dog had none." The person who made that rhyme did not understand the child, for no normal child will allow its pet dog, even in imagination, to be without a bone all through its existence, and so it said, " then what ? " Someone else who did not understand the child went to the baker's ! to buy him some bread, but found the dog | dead on his or her return. That did not satisfy j the child, nor did anything until both the dog I and the old dame were out of their dilemma. Notice the little mouse. He is in trouble trying to steal and eat tallow. In his distress he calls for the one person in the world who would be likely to help him down — his grand- mother. She would not come, and in order I to satisfy the child someone had to make him double up into a wheel and roll himself down. That rhyme is as widely known throughout China as " Jack and Jill " is among English- i speaking children. Now, the fingers and toes, the eyes, ears, and 22 HOME LIFE IN CHINA nose are the first things that interest a child. I have therefore found no less than three rhymes which correspond to our " Little pig went to market." Here is one of them : " This one's old, This one's young, This one has no meat, This one's gone To buy some hay, And this one's on the street." The same is true of the features — the eyes, ears, and nose, ending with the mouth, or the tickling of the neck. Who does not know the " Forehead bender," or the " Knock at the door " rhymes, in our own language ? One day I caught an old nurse, who protested that she did not know any of these rhymes, with my little girl on her knee, and as she tapped her on the forehead and the other features she repeated, in Chinese, of course : " Knock at the door, See a face, Smell an odour, Hear a voice, Eat your dinner, Pull your chin, or Ke chih, Ke chih." Lest this chapter be out of proportion to the other chapters of the book, I will reserve what I have to say on other phases of child- life for the following chapter. Those who wish to know more about their nursery rhymes will find them in my " Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes." CHAPTER III SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN THE school for the Chinese child under the old regime was for the most part in the home. It is a mistake to suppose that girls were not taught ; the fact is that they were taught, but not the same as boys. Up to the age of five or six the boy and the girl grow up together, and " she participated in all the privileges of her brother, excepting those which would tend to make her a ' Tomboy.' " At the age of five or six, however, the line of demarca- tion is drawn between the girl and the boy, and the mother is instructed in the " Primer for Girls," that : " When he grows to years of boyhood, Then a teacher call at once, Who will books and manners teach him, that he may not be a dunce. Lazy habits in his study will good people all annoy, And his indolence the prospects of his future life destroy. " For your daughter in her girlhood To learn fancy-work is best, Ne'er allow her to be idle, — lolling to the east or west. If in youth you do not teach her, when full-grown 'twill be too late ; When she marries it will bring her only shame, disgrace, and hate." 23 24 HOME LIFE IN CHINA In this chapter I shall attempt to describe the old style of education for the Chinese boy, and the same for the girl, after which I shall try to picture the changes that have come about during the past dozen years. As indicated by the above quotation, families which were able to do so called a teacher to their home, and while theoretically only the boys were allowed to study with him, practically, in very many cases, the girls were put into school with the boys until they reached the years of eight or nine or more. In this way they would begin to recognize characters (jen tzu), and would read the first three primers, namely : " The Trimetrical Primer," " The Hun- dred Surnames," and the " Thousand Character Classic." The first of these is a touch of almost everything he will have to learn throughout his life. He is told in the first sentence that : " Men one and all in infancy are virtuous at heart, Their moral tendencies the same, their practice wide apart " — a sentence, the remotest meaning of which he does not comprehend. After this tough intro- duction, instances are adduced of youthful learning and precocity, all tending to show the necessity of education. Categories of the numerical series, of which the Chinese are so fond, follow, such for example as the three powers — heaven, earth, and man ; the five cardinal virtues ; and six kinds of grain. A 1 HK WARRIORS SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 25 list of books to be learned is next enumerated, followed by an epitome of Chinese history in the tersest possible form, and the book ends with what, if it were only in an intelligible form for the boy, would be the most interesting part of all, viz. instances of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, which are used to goad the future aspirant for literary fame on in the course. The stories are after the style of the follow- ing : He is told how the great historian and statesman, Ssu-ma Kuang, used a round wooden pillow when he slept, so that when he became restless and tossed about, he would roll off his pillow, wake up, and settle down to study. Another tied his hair to the rafts above him, so that when he nodded over his work the jerk would arouse him, and he would continue diligently at his books. Other stories told to children I have put into verses as follows : Sun K'ang was a diligent boy, As almost all of you know ; For he studied at night by the pale moonlight, Reflected from the snow. Little Ch'e Wu Was diligent too ; For he studied at night, By a fire-fly's light, As diligent boys should do. K'ang Hung's house was a house of clay, He studied hard throughout the day, 2C HOME LIFE IN CHINA And made a hole through his wall at night, To study by his neighbour's light. Sitting on a rock, the student, Who assistance will not ask, Takes advantage of the moonlight To prepare to-morrow's task. Others pricked themselves with pins to compel themselves to keep awake. Still others are said to have studied by the light of a glow- worm. They have a saying that, " When you turn over in bed it is time to turn out." Of Chu Fu-tzu, the greatest of the Confucian com- mentators, it is recorded that, if he awoke before daylight and was without a light, he sat up in bed and meditated until morning, and when daylight came he recorded his thoughts upon paper. Stories are told of mothers who made their sons eat pills made of bear's gall, as a lesson on the bitterness of poverty ; of those who cut in twain the web they were weaving to illustrate the injuries of playing truant. When Con- fucius said that he so loved his books that he forgot that he was growing old, he expressed a sentiment that has found lodgment in the hearts of many of the youth of the Flowery Kingdom. Chinese history is full of the names of men who, by energy, industry, and ambition, raised themselves from positions of servitude to places of power. Liu Pei was a seller of straw sandals SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 27 when a boy, and one of the rulers of the Three Kingdoms when a man. The builder of the Great Wall of China was the son of a secretary, but he overthrew Chinese feudalism, united the warring states, and left China the greatest of Oriental empires, two centuries before the Christian era. Shun, the second of the early Sages, was first a farmer, then a king, but children are told that while a farmer or labourer, he did all his work so perfectly that not a man who laboured with him would turn out a bad piece of work while he was present. He is the first of the twenty-four " Patterns " that follow. In addition to the above stories they have twenty-four other incidents of as many re- markable persons, about whom children are told, and whom they are expected to imitate. These are : The Twenty-four Patterns of Filial Piety i. Shun. — Shun was the second of the great Sages who lived 2317-2208 B.C. His mother died when he was a child, and his father, marrying again and preferring his stepbrother to himself, repeatedly tried to put him to death by setting fire to his house, making him descend a deep well and then filling it up, but in each case he was miraculously preserved, and notwithstanding it all, he never lessened his regard for his father, his stepmother, nor his stepbrother. 28 HOME LIFE IN CHINA 2. Wen Ti. — The son of the founder of the Han dynasty, 180 B.C. During his youth his mother was ill for three years, all which time he waited on her with such patience and diligence that he never even left the room nor changed his clothing. 3. Tseng Ts'an. — The second of the disciples of Confucius (505-437 B.C.). Author of the " Great Learning " and the " Canon of Filial Piety." One day when following the master he suddenly felt his heart throb, and returned home. "Ah," said his mother, " I was longing to see you, and just bit my finger." One day while hoeing melons he accidentally cut the root of one, whereupon his father beat him until he fainted. Confucius blamed him for not having gotten away, " for by quietly submitting to such a beating you might have been killed, and what unfilial conduct that would have been ! ' But after the death of his father he could never eat a date-plum, because that was his father's favourite fruit. He spared the life of a wounded crane and cured its injuries, and after the bird had flown away it returned with its mate, each bearing a pearl in its bill. 4. Min Sun. — Another disciple of Confucius. His mother died when he was a child, and his father married again. His stepmother treated him badly, clothing him only in garments made from rushes, while her own two sons were warmly clad. One day he was driving his father in a carriage, and was so cold that the SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 29 reins fell from his hands. His father, discover- ing the reason, threatened to divorce his wife. " No, father," said the boy, " it were better that one boy should be cold than that three should be motherless," and he thus won her affection. 5. Chung Yii, better known as Tzu Lu. — The first in history to give utterance to the negative form of the " Golden Rule," so often attributed to Confucius. It was probably a proverb at that time. He was a favourite disciple of Confucius, entered official life, and became wealthy. While a poor boy he was accustomed to carry rice from a distance for the support of his parents, while he lived on bishopwort himself. After the death of his parents, while he " sat on double cushions and ate from an array of dishes," he sighed, " Oh for the days of rice-carrying and bishopwort." He was the Peter of the disciples — rash to a fault. But the master said, " If I were to sail the ocean on a raft I should want Tzu Lu in charge." 6. Lao Lai Tzu. — It is said that at the age of seventy he would dress himself up in fantastic garb, and cut capers before his parents, who were in their childish dotage, to make them forget that they were old, without any thought of his own infirmity. Chuang Tzu tells us that he once lectured Confucius on the right conduct of life. 7. Yen Tzu dressed himself in deer's skin 30 HOME LIFE IN CHINA and waited in the forest till he could mingle with a herd of deer and get milk of a doe for which his parents had expressed a longing. 8. Tung Yung. — When his father died, he borrowed 10,000 cash to pay the funeral ex- penses, agreeing to become a bondsman if he failed to repay the debt. Returning home after the funeral he met a beautiful damsel, who asked him to marry her. They first went to the creditor to arrange about the debt. The latter demanded 300 pieces of silk, whereupon the young lady set to work, and within a month had ready the amount. She then turned to Tung Yung and said : "I am the Spinning Damsel (a Lyra). God sent me to help you as a reward for your kindness to your parents." The story of the spinning girl will be found in another part of this book. 9. Chiang Ko. — The most important thing about Chiang Ko is that at six he was good at composition, at sixteen he rescued his mother from a band of robbers, and rose to a high position in the service of his country about 525 A.D. 10. Huang Hsiang. — He lost his mother when a child and became a perfect skeleton from excessive grief. He then devoted himself to his father, in summer fanning his pillow to make it cool, and in winter lying down in his couch before he retired to make it warm. He then entered upon an official career and rose to the post of Governor, and distinguished SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 31 himself by his liberality at a time of flood and famine. ii. Wang Hsiang. — His stepmother was very fond of fresh fish. The pond being frozen he lay naked on the ice until his body melted it, when out jumped a pair of carp, which he carried home in triumph. And to this day, whenever that pond freezes, the outline of the body of a man can easily be discerned on the ice. (185-269 a.d.) 12. Wu Meng. — In summer he would not drive the mosquitoes away from himself, but let them feed until they were full, lest they go and bite his parents. (Fourth and fifth cent, a.d.) 13. Kuo Chii. — In the second century A.D. Kuo Chii's family consisted of himself, his mother, his wife, and his little boy. They were so poor they did not have food enough for them all. Kuo therefore said to his wife : " The boy eats so much that there is not food enough for mother. Now we can have other sons but we cannot have another mother/' They there- fore agreed to bury the child. But when digging the hole they came upon an ingot of gold inscribed with these words : " God's gift to Kuo Chii. Let no official deprive him of it, and let no one else take it." 14. Yang Hsiang. — When only fourteen years of age his father was attacked by a tiger, where- upon he threw himself upon the beast, and by the sacrifice of himself was enabled to save his father's life. (First century a.d.) 32 HOME LIFE IN CHINA 15. Ts'ai Shun. — He was once called from the forest where he was gathering firewood by his mother biting her finger, at which he felt a pain in his heart. During a famine he nourished her with wild berries (first century), giving her the ripe ones and living on the unripe ones himself. When mourning by her coffin he was told that the village was on fire. He refused to move, and their house remained un- harmed, though the others were consumed. Because his mother feared thunder, he sat by her grave whenever there was a storm, saying, " Fear not, mother, I am here." He refused official position on the ground that he could not leave his mother's tomb. 16. Lu Hsu (first century a.d.) was an official who attracted attention during a famine by distributing food only among persons of a different surname from his own, and who could not therefore be members of his own family. He was unjustly accused of rebellion and thrown into prison. While there his mother brought him some food which when he saw he recognized as coming from her hand by the mincing of the meat and onions, though he had not seen her, and burst into tears. When this was reported to the Emperor, he was set at liberty. 17. Wang P'ou (third century a.d.). — His father was beheaded for remonstrating with his prince and attributing to him a defeat from the enemy. Wang P'ou from that time lived in retirement, taking pupils ; and it is said he SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 33 leaned against a pine tree near his father's grave and wept till his tears caused the tree to decay. His mother, being afraid of thunder, like Ts'ai Shun he would sit beside her grave and say, " I am near you." On reading the Odes he would weep whenever he came to the passage, " O my father and my mother, how toilsome was my birth for you." His pupils, therefore, always skipped that particular ode lest they awaken his grief. 18. Meng Tsung (third century a.d.) would never taste anything just when it came into season until after he had offered some to his mother. His mother, expressing a desire for bamboo shoots before the season had arrived, he went to the grove bewailing the fact that he could not obtain them, when at once the bamboos began to put forth their shoots all about him. 19. Yu Ch'ien-lou (fifth and sixth centuries a.d.) gave up his office ten days after his ap- pointment that he might return home and care for his sick father. He used to turn daily toward the north and pray that he might be allowed to die in his father's stead, after whose death he rose to high rank in the service of the Government. 20. Ts'ui Shih, the only female among the twenty-four patterns of filial piety. It is said that when her mother-in-law was old and toothless she nourished her with milk from her own breast, by which means she was able to keep her alive. 3 34 HOME LIFE IN CHINA 21. Chiang Shih (first century a.d.) is rivalled in his filial piety only by his wife. The latter walked several miles every day to get river water for her mother-in-law because she pre- ferred it to that of their well. She also made a similar effort to provide the old lady with minced fish. As a reward for her filial conduct a spring burst forth near their home in which a pair of carp was found daily. When the Red-Eyebrow Rebel, Fan Ch'ung, learned of their filial piety he bade his soldiers spare their village. 22. Ting Lan (first century a.d.) had a carved effigy made to represent his mother after her death, and served it as he had his parent. One day a neighbour came in to borrow something, but when the figure was consulted it shook its head, whereupon the neighbour struck it on the face. When Ting Lan came in he saw an expression of grief on the face of the image, and on hearing of the incident he went and gave his neighbour a sound thrashing. Being sued for assault, the officers came to arrest him, but seeing tears trickling down the figure's face, he was not only acquitted, but the Emperor sent an order for his portrait. 23. Chu Shou-ch'ang (1031-1102 a.d.) was the son of a concubine, who gave birth to him shortly after the father's departure for his post as Governor of the Metropolitan District. As a child he was sent to his father's home at the capital, and heard no more of his SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 35 mother. Later he entered official life, where he distinguished himself by his energetic ad- ministration. A longing to know his mother overtook him, but for a long time all his efforts to find her proved unavailing. He tried various Buddhist methods, such as cauter- izing his back, burning his scalp, and writing out sutras with his blood. Finally he gave up his office and set out in search of her, and his efforts were crowned with success after a separation of fifty years. It is gratifying to know that he was restored to office and be- came a Minister of State. 24. Huang T'ing-chien (1060-1110 a.d.) used to say that if a man were commonplace there was no hope for him. Those who were not commonplace, under ordinary circumstances, behaved like ordinary men ; but when some crisis came, their real value would appear. He was greatly distinguished as a poet and calligraphist, and was ranked as one of the four great scholars of the empire, though his official career was somewhat chequered as a result of his fearless tongue. When his mother was ill he watched for a whole year without leaving her bedside, or even taking off his clothes, and at her death he mourned so bitterly that he nearly lost his life. Now it may seem to some of my readers that I have given more space to these " twenty- four patterns of filial piety " than they de- 36 HOME LIFE IN CHINA serve. To such I would say that I would really like to add all the instances of her " Second Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety," for she has a " Second Twenty-four," and it is such stories as these that have gone far toward making the Chinese people what they are. In the West, society is based largely upon the young, and the parents are expected to care for the children. In China, on the other hand, society, under the old regime, was based upon the old, and the business of the children was to serve their parents. Which of the two is the better social system I shall not undertake to say. That based upon the old is conservative, that based upon the new is progressive. It may be that China overdid the matter in her control of the young, and it may also be that we are overdoing the matter in the liberty — not to say license — that we, especially in America, are giving to boys and girls. But however this may be, it still re- mains a fact, that the results which China has secured have been obtained largely by such stories as we have given, and others which we shall give in other chapters. And so I say the above examples will give some idea of the stories told to children, and take the place in child-lore that the hatchet and the cherry-tree, or the figuring on the barn door of Newton, or writing in the sand of Spencer, take with European and American children. Another primer, " The Rules of Behaviour for Children," SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 37 I deem of sufficient importance to print in this book, as only by having one of their primers before us can we understand the character of the old education, and the kind of information and development that was given to the child. These, with the " Four Books " and the " Five Classics," had to be committed to memory, in the classical language, entirely alien to that spoken by the child, before they were ex- plained. It was such a tremendous tax upon the memory, and required so many years for its accomplishment, that there was no chance for Reason and the higher faculties. The girl may be taken out of this home class, or domestic school, at any period of her progress, relegated to the women's apartments, where she is put to studying, or allowed to read a series of books of an entirely different nature. These may be " The Filial Piety Classic for Girls," " The Classic for Girls," and the " Four Books for Girls," studies that have been prepared definitely and distinctly for women. A per- usal of " The Classic for Girls," a translation of which we give in another chapter, will enable us to form a better opinion of what the Chinese, under the old regime, considered a proper education for girls, than any number of opinions from one of an alien civilization. I wish I might insert the whole " Four Books for Girls ' here, a translation of which I have in my possession, for only by the reading of such literature can one form an adequate opinion of 38 HOME LIFE IN CHINA what they thought the education of a girl ought to be. The Chinese, without any influence from or association with Europeans, originated the biggest educational system ever made by a non-Christian people. It was entirely a moral system which had to do with man's relation to his fellow-man. The basis of his whole educa- tional scheme was Confucianism, his greatest moral, and his best religious system. What now has happened to this enterprize which it took him fifteen hundred years to develop ? Credit should be given to whom credit is due. China has given up this whole old educational system. Why, and for what ? When the truth is known, and the world is ready to admit the truth, it will be found that the missionary, during the past century, but more especially during the past fifty years, has been estab- lishing schools, colleges, and universities all over the empire, has been translating books of Western science, philosophy, literature, and common school text-books into the Chinese language, and it was the practical character of these books, as well as the practical character of the education of the young men and women who went out from these mission schools, that led the State to request such men as Dr. W. A. P. Martin, Dr. C. D. Tenney, Dr. W. M. Hayes, Dr. E. T. Williams, Dr. John C. Ferguson, Dr. Timothy Richards, and Miss Gertrude Howe, all of whom went to China as missionaries, to SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 39 establish schools for the Government, until as a result of these schools China has thrown over- board the old system which it took her fifteen hundred years to develop, and has adopted the system introduced by the missionaries, about which we shall have more to say when we speak of the education of the poor. When the new regime began there was tre- mendous excitement. Schools began to be opened in the homes of the middle and wealthy classes all over the empire. The first thing these students desired to do was to discard the old smock or long garment worn by the people, and adopt a uniform, with cap and shoes, after the style of those worn by the foreign soldiers whom they had seen, but especially after the style of the Japanese. The more gold braid they could get upon their garments the better. This was carried at times to almost a ridiculous extent, though at other times their clothing was perfectly plain — blue cloth in winter and white muslin or khaki in summer. Naturally they were not able to adopt the entire Western outfit, for they had no method of laundrying collars, cuffs, and shirt, and so they had their coat buttoned up to the neck in military style, and dispensed with the linen. Foreign trousers, too, supported by suspenders, was foreign to their uniform, as their own were always held in place by a girdle about the waist. This not infrequently caused them to appear most ridiculous. 40 HOME LIFE IN CHINA One day while attending the sports on " field day " at the Imperial University, a warm day in spring or early summer, in Peking, I observed the vice-president of the University, clothed in woven underwear, with a duck coat, military style, unbuttoned all the way down, and his trousers also unbuttoned, but one side drawn as far as possible over the other and held up by a girdle, the most ridiculous sight on the part of a high official, I think, that I have ever beheld. The boys in many of the schools had orchestras, consisting of all kinds of brass instruments and drums, and were willing to come to the Peking University and entertain us with their music. Their repertoire, though not large nor varied, made up in volume what it lacked in variety, and they did not hesitate to repeat again and again what they had already played. But of all the interesting years I have spent in China, none were more entrancing than those years which found young China with only a Derby hat, a vest, or a pair of leather shoes, to indicate that he had broken from the dead past, and was a part of the living, moving, pulsating present. Nor were the girls behind the boys in their desire and effort to break from the past. I remember on one occasion, while on Liu Li Chang, the great book and curio street of Peking, I was told by the shopkeepers that a Chinese circus was in operation in a vacant SCHOOL LIFE OF CHILDREN 41 lot near by. I went to see it. Women with bound feet were riding horseback after the style of our own circus women. Others, on the trapeze a hundred feet high, were twisting themselves up in ropes so far apart that they could only reach them with their hands and feet. They would then twist the ropes held by hand and foot about each other until they were wound tight together, then letting loose they whirled about in the air, until finally they let go their hands as though about to fall, but hung by one small bound foot caught in the noose of the other rope. But the interesting part of it to me, as I passed in, was my being greeted by a princess — I do not need to mention her name, my friends in Peking will recognize who it was — who had her whole school of some forty or fifty girls in a private box made of reed mats, witnessing the performance. It was this same princess who drilled her girls and had them appear on a public platform in recitations and calisthenics before a mixed purely Chinese audience, that had gathered in memory of a principal of a school who had taken her own life because the officials did not respond to her call for support for her school. CHAPTER IV EDUCATION OF THE POOR IT is a serious matter to try to say what people love learning most. It is also very difficult to determine what class of any people are most deeply intent on acquiring knowledge, but I would not be inclined to put the Chinese second even to the Germans in their love for learning. And if I were to select a particular class of the Chinese who are most willing to sacrifice to secure an education, I think I would select the students who come from the homes of poverty. The reason for this is perhaps because they know the privations of poverty, and the possibilities of relief in an education, but I am more inclined to believe that it is pure love of learning, and this for the reason that Chinese history is so full of stories of poor boys who became great scholars under the most self-sacrificing circumstances, and then either refused to take office, or accepted it under protest. I would not depend, however, upon Chinese history for my information. For sixteen years I have been a teacher of Chinese boys in the Peking University, where boys — poor boys 42 EDUCATION OF THE POOR 43 from the farm — have lived without complaint on seven shillings a month — a month, I say ; have been compelled by the rules of the school to put out their lights at ten o'clock, and have exemplified all the stories of diligent students I have ever found in history. Added to this, let me say that forty of the first fifty-two graduates of the school accepted positions as Christian teachers or preachers on salaries of twenty shillings or less a month, when they were offered five to ten times that amount if they would go into business. While many of those who entered business, either because they were not fitted for a professional life, or for other personal reasons, agreed to put some other poor boy through college. I have therefore seen so many of the historical inci- dents embodied in real life that I am convinced that they are not without foundation. Nothing is so much of an honour to a village as a scholar. Though the great Han Yii (768-824 a.d.) was born in Teng-chou in Honan, because his ancestors came from Ch'ang-li in Chihli, that village claims him as her son, and of nothing else is she so proud. And well she may be, for the great poet and essayist Su Tung-p'o says that " from the age of the Hans, the Truth began to be obscured, and literature to fade. Supernatural religions sprang up on all sides, and many eminent scholars failed to oppose their advance, until Han Yii, the cotton- clothed, arose and blasted them with his 44 HOME LIFE IN CHINA derisive sneer." He left a poem written to his son on the importance of education, a part of which is as follows : " If you want to know the effect of an education, It is that the wise and the fool are of the same origin. Two families each have a son : The skill of the two babies is the same. When they are a little older, They play together like a couple of fish. Up to the age of twelve or thirteen, There is but little difference in their appearance, At twenty, they are more unlike : One is a clean canal, the other a cesspool. At thirty, their physical development is certain. But one is a hog, the other a dragon. The latter flies away, And cannot help the toad upon its way, The former is the driver of a horse. His back is flogged and becomes the bane of insects. The other is a duke and a minister, Living in a mansion in a magnificent manner. Ask you, what is the reason ? Education and ignorance. Gold and jade although so dear, Waste away and disappear, Education is kept within you, While the body lives it is abundant. Whether people are high or low Is not on account of their parents. Don't you see the duke and the minister, Being developed from the farmer ? Don't you see the descendants of the nobles, Hungry and cold, go without even a donkey ? " Such is the advice of the " cotton-clothed " philosopher, poet, and statesman to his son. EDUCATION OF THE POOR 45 I wish I could add that his son took the advice, but I cannot. My biographical dictionary of great men does not contain his name. It is not only the hope of every village that it may have a scholar, but the hope of every family. In every village, therefore, we find a school. The homes in which the people live may be of sun-dried brick, but poor indeed is the village which does not have a temple built of brick, in some part of which is a school. Not infrequently the school is separate from the temple. A teacher is called by the village, who is allowed to live in the schoolroom, or in some room connected with the school, and the pupils not only receive his instruction, but some one or more of them may be appointed to serve him. They become his disciples in a truly Oriental fashion — a way that is not known in the West. It was one of the common sights in the city, as well as in the country, under the old regime, to see a company of small boys, at or before sun up, trudging along the road to school, a little bundle of books done up in a blue cotton square of muslin, in their hands or under their arm. The books may be those used by their elder brother, their father, or even their grandfather, for their curriculum, as we have already indicated, has changed but little during the past centuries. Some of these books were written by Confucius and his disciples twenty- four centuries ago, one by Mencius twenty- 46 HOME LIFE IN CHINA two centuries ago, another by Chu Hsi seven centuries and more ago, and they have not changed. And indeed why should they change ? They are for the most part on morals and not on science, and the moral laws continue from age to age, while the theories of science are ever in flux. An education with a Chinese boy had much to do with the end of life, rather than the means of living. With him it was how to live right, morally ; with us it is how to live comfortably, scientifically. There are no classes in these village schools. Each child is given his book and his task. No boy can keep any other back ; none can hurry any other forward. Here we have individu- ality. Each boy begins his book alone. If he is diligent and clever he may learn his task in half the time used by a companion who enters the same day with him. Of the first books he studies he does not understand a word, all he is expected to do is to learn the names of the words. It is a prodigious feat of memory, as though he were learning ten thousand A.B.C's by sight. But this he does. When his task is completed, all studying aloud, and the teacher can readily distinguish a mispronunciation, he takes his book to the desk, turns his back to the teacher, and repeats, not recites, it. In case there are any mispronunciations, they are corrected, and the teacher then allows him to read over another task, telling him the names of the characters he does not recognize, that EDUCATION OF THE POOR 47 he may return to his seat and memorize it as he has done the other. At about 9.30 the children go home for their breakfast, returning at once to their task, and continuing until about four in the afternoon, when they have their second meal. They eat only twice a day, spend about eight or nine hours in study, and are allowed to play from supper till dark. All kinds of stories are told to children to spur them to diligence in their work of securing an education. One of their stock stories is of the mother of Mencius, the Paul of Confucian- ism. After the death of the boy's father, she lived near a cemetery, and she soon discovered that her son began to reproduce the scenes which were constantly being enacted before his eyes. "This will not do," she said to herself. " I cannot allow my son to be always playing at funerals," and she moved to a house in the neighbourhood of a meat-market. It was not long until she found her son playing at butcher- ing animals. " Such games will ruin the dis- position of my son," said she, and she changed her residence, this time taking a house in the neighbourhood of a school. Little Mencius soon began to play that he was a scholar, to the great joy and satisfaction of his mother. How- ever, when the real work of preparing lessons came, there were times when, like most boys, he failed to prepare his task, and one day when he came home in a lazy mood, he found his 48 HOME LIFE IN CHINA mother spinning, and when she discovered that he had neglected his studies, she took a pair of shears and cut her web in half, that she might impress upon him that such neglect in his boyhood would ruin his whole life. The lad then buckled down to study, and made a name for himself which stands second only to that of Confucius. I know of nothing that will better illustrate the nature of their study than my translation of their " Book of Behaviour for Boys," given as the following chapter. CHAPTER V RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN K PREFACE ULES of behaviour for brothers and sons, Teachings of ancient and virtuous ones ; First be you filial and brotherly, then Try to be faithful and earnest as men. Love in each heart for all people should spring, Specially to the benevolent cling ; Strength if you've left, be it small, be it great, Spend it in study, both early and late. FILIAL AFFECTION Whenever the summons of parents you hear, Answer at once, do not tardy appear ; Whenever the mandate of parents you know, Heed them at once, never lazily go. To every instruction of parents you need To respectfully listen, with deference heed ; Parental reproofs, if they ever should come, Kindly receive, and with lips that are dumb. Warm well their couch on the cold winter days, Fan their couch cool from the sun's scorching blaze. 1 Greet them and serve them whene'er you arise, See to their wants before closing your eyes, Tell them your errands when leaving your home, Returning, announce it as soon as you come. 1 A reference to Huang Hsiang, page 30. a 49 50 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Every young man should have definite work ; This he should neither abandon nor shirk ; Always in e'en the most trifling affair He the parental opinion should share : Once by neglecting with them to consult, Failure in duty will be the result. From parents at home the most trivial toy Conceal not for personal use to employ ; If aught you for personal use should conceal Wounded the hearts of your parents will feel. Whatever your parents delight to possess, Strive to obtain, be it food, be it dress : Whatever your parents regards with displeasure, To remove from their presence, employ every measure. If ever you injure your body, be sure Sorrow your parents will have to endure : If ever you sully your virtue, your blame Will redden the cheeks of your parents with shame. When parents bestow upon children their love, To be filial to such very easy will prove, But those who from parents receive only hate And still remain filial, their virtue is great. If faults in your parents by chance you should see, Reprove them and help them to virtuous be : Reprove with the love-lighted face of a child, Reprove with a voice that is gentle and mild ; Reproof that is slighted may give your heart pain, But joyfully, kindly reprove them again ; Follow with tear-streaming eyes and reprove them, Murmur not though they should beat you, but love them. Should your parents by illness be ever laid low, First taste of their potion, its safety to know ; By day and by night your best services give, And stay by their bedside as long as they live. RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN 51 Mourn for three years from the time they are dead ; Let them be bitter the tears that you shed : Of meat you should neither partake, nor of wine, To dwell in poor quarters should be your design. Perform ceremonial rites every year ; Each sacrifice offered should prove you sincere ; In a word, the dead parents of you who survive, You should serve with the fevour you served when alive. BROTHERLY KINDNESS The duty of elder to younger is love, Of younger to elder respect all approve ; Fraternal agreement they cannot neglect, For wrapped up within it is filial respect. Possessions they neither should greedily prize ; Then how could such feelings as hatred arise ? If each in his language should gently forbear, Then anger, self-conquered, must vanish in air. When brothers are drinking, or when at their meat, When brothers are seated, or walk on the street, The elder should always the younger precede, The younger should follow, — thus men have decreed. If the elder should summon a person by word, The younger should hasten to make the call heard ; In failing to find him, your duty is plain, From taking his place not a moment refrain. RESPECTFULNESS Men who are older, whenever addressed, Never their name but their title is best ; When you talk with those older, whatever you feel, Your talents with diligence strive to conceal ; In walking, whenever those older you meet, Approach with a bow, and with reverence greet ; If it be not his wish to express his respect, Retreat and respectfully stand up erect. 52 HOME LIFE IN CHINA When riding or driving, you always descend From your horse or your cart when you meet with a friend, Nor mount till your friend has passed by, I should say, A hundred, or more than that, steps on his way. When those older are standing it never is fit, Whether indoors or out, that a young man should sit ; When an old man is sitting a young man should stand, And wait to be seated till he shall command. Whenever grown people are present, a child Should speak with a voice that is gentle and mild, Not too low for the elder to hear what you say, No advantage arises from speaking that way, Approach him with haste, then all will admire, Withdrawing, you always should slowly retire ; When answering questions, politely arise, Nor move from one side to another your eyes. From service of uncles you never should swerve, But serve them the same as your parents you serve, And cousins who chance to be older than you, You should do to them just as to brothers you do. DILIGENCE Awake in the morning, arise with the sun, Retire late at night when your lessons are done, Remember that age will come easily on, Utilize youth, for 'twill quickly be gone. Wash in the morning your hands and your face, Rinse well your mouth, or 'twill be a disgrace ; Your hat should be straight and not worn on one side, Your clothing be buttoned, not left gaping wide. Your shoes and your stockings should both be on right ; Make sure they are neat and make sure they are tight ; In order your hat and your clothing to trace, Assign to each one a particular place. RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN 53 If thrown in confusion they'll quickly be soiled, And all of your clothing will surely be spoiled ; In cleanliness beauty of clothing consists, But beauty in gorgeousness never exists ; Yourself and surroundings should harmony show, Beyond your resources you never should go. When eating or drinking of this have a care, Do no picking or choosing, wherever you are ; If good be the food, do not make matters bad By saying that other much better you've had. In youth or young manhood, wherever you dine, Let this be your motto, — " I'll never drink wine " ; If once you are drunken, you lose your good name, And how loathsome it is, and how great is your shame ! When walking, walk straight, do not swaggering go, When you stand, stand erect, that you handsome may grow; Let your bow be profound to the persons you meet, And greet with respect whomsoever you greet. Stand not on a doorstep, stand inside or out, Lean not against aught that by chance is about, Do not sit like a dust-pan, your legs spreading wide, Nor back and forth move them from this to that side. Raise slowly the screen when you enter a room, That clatter may never announce you have come ; In turning a corner in wide circle move, To bump 'gainst the corner will awkwardness prove, When you bear empty vessels, be careful to go, So that empty or full, people never can know. When you enter a room, you should act on the minute, As though many people already were in it ; Perform duties slowly and cultivate taste, For a homely old proverb says, — " Haste maketh waste." 54 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Never fear your work arduous, show yourself true, Nor look lightly on what you're expected to do. A public disturbance 'tis manly to fear, And excepting on duty, to never draw near ; A knowledge of vice you should never desire, And of matter corrupt you should never inquire. Whenever you enter a house, it is clear, You should ask as you enter, " Is anyone here ? " When to enter a house you design, have a care With some kind of noise to announce you are there. If asked, " Who is there ? " to avoid any blame, You should answer the person at once with your name ; If you answer, " Tis I," as the vulgar oft say, They will not understand who is coming their way. If another man's things you by chance wish to use, You should ask for them, giving a chance to refuse ; If you use without asking, that manner of dealing By men is considered no better than stealing. Whenever you borrow be sure that you learn, The thing, after using, to promptly return ; If others to borrow of you be inclined, If you have, you should lend, with a generous mind. FAITHFULNESS When speaking, let this be your motto, from youth,- The first of all things in importance is truth, And words of deceit or expressions untrue, Should ne'er be reported as coming from you. Let others' loquacity constantly teach That for you it were well to be sparing of speech; For the truth of whate'er you report to a friend, For proof, on your eloquence never depend. RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN 55 You should never insult any person 'tis plain, Nor utterance give to expressions profane ; 'Gainst market-place habits and street talk keep guard, That your speech be not sullied, your manners be marred. Where proof is deficient and evidence weak, Of any such matters you never should speak ; Unless you are certain your proof is exact, You should never so much as refer to the fact. Things barren of profit, which often cause harm, You never should rashly agree to perform, And about a rash promise, if ever you make it, 'Tis wrong if you keep it, and wrong if you break it. Whenever with others you chance to converse, To enunciate badly, you could not do worse, Unless you should speak in too rapid a way, Or mumble the words you are trying to say. When you hear a man argue a thing thus and so, And another declare an emphatical no ; If the matter is one of no moment to you, Not to utter a word is the best thing to do. You should think when a virtuous person you see, " Such virtue is possible also for me," And though far below him you move at the time, By striving you yet to his level may climb. If wickedness under your vision should come, Examine yourself lest you also have some ; Repent if you find in your heart aught of sin, Let your care be increased, if you find naught within. Your virtue and learning examine with care, Your talents and skill, though they may not be rare, If to those of your friends they inferior prove, By putting forth strength e'en the world you may move. 56 HOME LIFE IN CHINA If your clothing and shoes are not just to your mind, If when you examine your food, you should find It is not quite so good as the people's around you, Be sure you allow no such matters to wound you. When friends mention faults, if your anger is raised, Or should you be happy whenever you're praised, The friends who are hurtful will gather anon, While those who are helpful will quickly be gone. When others extol you, let fear be your choice, When others find fault, 'tis a time to rejoice ; Then those who are upright, and scholars sincere, Though slowly, yet surely, to you will adhere. When wrong not intended is done by mistake, We call it a " fault " for the wrongdoer's sake, But wrong that is done with intention is blamed, And such by all people is " wickedness " named. The faults you repent of are nevermore seen, But are reckoned with others which never have been ; But if ever a failing you try to conceal, Your efforts a greater will surety reveal. LOVE ALL, ESPECIALLY THE BENEVOLENT To the people around you, below or above, Your duty is clear, everyone you should love ; One circling heaven is over all spread, One flowering earth produces our bread. If your conduct is that of a nobleman pure, Of fame and esteem you are certainly sure, And honour, if honour upon you should fall, Will not be for outside appearance at all. If your talents are brilliant, however attired, You will always be courted, and greatly admired, RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN 57 But others, to second your efforts, you'll find, Will never, because of your talk, be inclined. If of skill or ability you are possessed, You should never let selfishness enter your breast ; When ability likewise in others is praised, A thought to defame them should never be raised. With flattery never the rich seek to gain, With pride in your heart, ne'er the poor man disdain ; Your back never turn to old friends tried and true, Nor rejoice beyond measure in those who are new. Men not at leisure, or men having cares, You never should trouble with other affairs ; When men are disturbed, or have other employ, You should never by talking such persons annoy. If your lot with a wrongdoer ever be cast, Remind him not daily of that which is past, The personal secrets a man would conceal, You cannot by right to another reveal. To speak of the good that in others you find, In you is considered benignant and kind, For when they discover you speak in their praise, They will earnestly seek to still better their ways. To speak of the faults that in others you find, In you is considered bad taste and unkind ; You soon will receive and will merit their hate, And disaster will come when alas ! 'tis too late. If to good you each other incite, nothing loath, You soon will establish the virtue of both ; If faults in each other you do not correct, In the duty of each there will be a defect. Receiving or giving, make sure that both know, The amount you receive, the amount you bestow ; 58 HOME LIFE IN CHINA When giving, give much, is the best I should say, And when taking, take little, — a very safe way. What you think proper treatment for others would be, First ask : " Would this conduct be pleasing to me ? " If you would dislike it if done unto you, Do not do what you would not have other men do. You should recompense favours whenever bestowed, And offences forgotten will lighten your load ; If ever you punish, you lightly should do it, But recompense freely, — you never will rue it. Your treatment of servants, 'tis surely decreed, Majestic should be if you wish to succeed, But while majesty is in a master a beauty. To be gracious and kind is as truly a duty. For if by authority men are controlled, Their hearts you will never be able to hold ; If their hearts you secure in a virtuous way, They are satisfied then and have nothing to say. All people are men, but examine their minds, And you find there are many and different kinds, That the mass follow custom is painfully true, While benevolent people are certainly few. But those who benevolence follow in truth, Are respected by all, — men and women and youth ; In the ring of their words is no recondite sound, Their appearance seductive will never be found. If thus to benevolent persons you cling, To you 'twill unnumbered advantages bring : Your virtues will daily increase it is true, And your faults will diminish as rapidly too. If to cling to benevolent men you refuse, Untold will the injury be that you choose ; Mean people will gather, encompassing you, And spoil all the good you might otherwise do. RULES OF BEHAVIOUR FOR CHILDREN 59 SPEND YOUR SURPLUS STRENGTH IN STUDY If these things you neglect, as some people have done, And spend all your time in book study alone, You'll become superficial though much you may know, And to what sort of man can you hope thus to grow ? If you practise these rules and continue their use, But study no books, you will then be.obtuse : You will see things from only your own point of view, And thus subvert principles useful and true. Your method of study the poet here sings, Should have a foundation of three little things : The heart, eye, and mouth, for each one is a link, And all are important in study, we think. When you study a book, let your thought be confined And banish all other good books from your mind, For before you've completed the reading of one, You should never be wishing another begun. Take time to complete it, you ne'ertheless ought To be diligent still in your study and thought, For when to your work you with diligence go, Each obstacle you will with ease overthrow. If of aught in the book you should have any doubt, Write it down ; 'tis the thing to ask questions about ; Inquire then about it again and again, In order its meaning to clearly obtain. Your room should be neatly and orderly kept, The walls should be spotless, the dust from them swept ; The tables be clean, and of dust without traces, Your pen and your ink-stone arranged in their places. If your ink-stick you rub in a one-sided way, Your heart is not upright, good people will say ; Do you lack in respect for the characters, then Your heart is already corrupted by men. 60 HOME LIFE IN CHINA In order that each of your books you may trace, For each you should have a particular place, And when you have finished the reading of one, Put it back whence you took it before 'twas begun, And though you should be in a hurry, you ought To wrap up the books just as when they were bought ; If a torn place in one you should ever discover, Then neatly repair it by pasting it over. Unless 'tis a sacred or classical book Reject it, nor ever vouchsafe it a look, For such will intelligence only impede, And injure the mind 'twas intended to feed. Ne'er violate self with o'erburdensome cares, Nor waste noble traits upon trifling affairs ; Then virtue like those who are holy and pure, You by gradual growth may expect to secure. I cannot help adding a word here to those who have turned over this chapter. Nothing that any alien can write can exhibit the home life, or the mind of the Chinese, like the trans- lations of these primers that are embedded in their memories. This is what they teach, what they think, what they do, what they live. Much of what foreigners write about them is only their own imagination of what they do. If you want to get at the motives back of Chinese conduct read the translations of what they learn. CHAPTER VI GIRLS WHAT is more interesting than a young girl ? Not to men merely, but to women as well. I remember that in 1896 my wife returned to America, after having spent eight years in China, and she wrote : " You ought to be here and see the beautiful, rosy-cheeked girls." Now let us remember that the Chinese are just folks — just human beings like ourselves — and a thing that is fraught with so much interest to us cannot be without interest to them. The whole type of their civilization, however, is different from ours. Their society is based upon honour for the aged, while ours is based upon the development of the youth ; theirs is, therefore, conservative, ours is progressive. In China the young honour, obey, and serve the aged ; in the West the old live for the develop- ment of their children. China emphasizes solidarity, and the household hangs together until it becomes a village — except that the girls go out to help make other homes or villages, while other girls from other homes come in to help make theirs. The girl, there- 61 62 HOME LIFE IN CHINA fore, is not a permanent part of the home in which she is born. The West emphasizes indi- vidualism where each man and woman make their own home — a new home in which they start as equals. Through the centuries this has had a tendency to give man a kind of a per- manency, while woman has seemed transient. In China, again, the family is a co-operative community, much like the West was before the advent of factories and machinery. The men gathered the raw material such as wheat, corn, rice, millet, and the various kinds of foodstuffs, while the business of the women was to grind and prepare them for use. The men got the hemp, flax, cotton, and skins, and the women spun them into thread and weaved them into garments. The men were strong, the women were weak, and all their labour had a tendency to develop these characteristics. Again, the bearing and rearing of children must necessarily determine the place occupied by women. The only place she could live was in the home if she performed her functions and her duties. She is protected, he is the protector. This, again, has a tendency to em- phasize and increase weakness, while the act of defence and protection has a tendency to develop strength in the man. And so the woman is called the nei jen, the inside person, while the man is left on the outside to do battle with the world. But the final and determining factor in the /"N THE TOILET GIRLS 63 relegation of the woman to the home is the desire to preserve her virtue, and the fear that it will be impossible to do so if the sexes are allowed to commingle promiscuously as they do in Japan and in the West. Whether the Western world has yet reached a final con- clusion on this matter, let our schools and colleges answer. Is it not pertinent to ask, have we reached a final conclusion on the separation of the sexes ? And is it not fair to ask if the Chinese method of segregating the sexes is an error in which there is no compensation ? In general a baby girl in China receives the same tender care as a boy, and it is not an uncommon sight to see a father within the confines of his own courtyard dancing his baby daughter on his knee with as much fondness as he would his son. Up to the age of five or six the girl participates equally with her brother in all the privileges of the home ex- cepting those which would tend to make her a " tomboy." At this age the lines are drawn. The feet of the girl are bound. I can see the eyebrows of my female readers go up as they say, "What a cruel custom!" So it is, so it is ! But the disposition to want little feet, or little waists, will lead girls to endure great discomforts, and induce them to submit to customs which make them weaker and more helpless than they are by nature. At first small feet were only a form of beauty, later 64 HOME LIFE IN CHINA they became a mark of gentility, and finally they became a sine qua non of a bride. Miss Tsao, who knows what she is writing about, says : " The duty of administering this unnatural torture devolves upon the mothers who, in stamping their own flesh with the mark of gentility, have for generations gone about the task with dogged determination, and often- times with many a bitter tear. Fond fathers have interceded in vain against this invulner- able custom which has served time and again as a cause for an unquiet house. Rare ex- ceptions are known when both parents agree to supply their daughters with stilted shoes as a means of defeating the practice. Generally, the mothers have forgotten their past suffer- ings, and, feeling proud of their own small feet, apply bandages to those of their daughters." The girl is thus placed in a different sphere from that of the boy. Personally I have known two ladies of two of the best families in Peking who wore stilted shoes on their toes to prevent having their feet bound. The education received by a Chinese girl before the advent of mission schools was a negligible quantity. Under the old tutorial system, education had as its aim the training of men for business or government service, and since women were not supposed to enter official service their education was not deemed necessary. This, however, does not imply the utter negligence of female education, for loving GIRLS 65 parents have often given their daughters the rudiments of knowledge in common with their sons under the same family or village tutor, while the desire of the girls themselves to read the many books that were about them led them to complete their education. Under such circumstances the children of the poor were often wholly neglected, " but in the upper and middle classes girls generally go to school till the age of adolescence, when it is considered improper for them to be seen con- stantly out of doors, so that it is only in families where tutors could be afforded M that their education was continued in the regular way. This implies a general knowledge of reading, writing letters, and ciphering. From that time till marriage the greater part of her time would be devoted to sewing, embroidery, painting, cooking, and general domestic arts. These duties often mean an endless task in helping to furnish the household with simple articles of dress and food, such as hats, shoes, socks, shirts, coats, trousers, under and outer clothes, preserves, pastry, &c. In households of reduced circumstances piecework in sewing, pastry, lanterns, making match-boxes, weaving baskets, and the minor employments of the silk and tea industries, might be carried on as a means of helping to keep the wolf from the door. A Chinese girl has little social life. There are no parties nor balls for her, no dinners nor 5 66 HOME LIFE IN CHINA teas at hotels or public places, no summer outings nor picnics, no visits for week-ends to country nor city cousins. The few social en- joyments usually mean dressing up and being on her good behaviour. The chief occasions that send a ripple of cheer and excitement through the heart of a Chinese girl is when she has the prospect of attending a fair held at some temple, a theatrical performance, perhaps in her own courtyard, or it may be at the theatre, a sewing circle, a birthday or a wedding feast. Short trips are sometimes made to gardens during the flowering seasons, to a temple for worship, or to witness a religious procession. But upon all occasions she is chaperoned. She is never allowed to go out in company with a young man, unless it be a " near relation or an intimate friend of the family in case of parties." The first landmark in the life of a girl is the binding of her feet, the second her engagement, and the third her marriage. The first is at the age of five or six, the second at twelve to fourteen, and the third at sixteen to twenty. Engagements and marriages are arranged by parents through middlemen, who by the way are usually women. The wife is usually selected by the mother, while the husband is selected by the father, and this because the mother knows the girls and has to live with them after they are brought to her home, while the father knows or may easily learn about the boys. It GIRLS 67 is unnecessary to say that parents are usually careful, and while tragedies sometimes occur, in general the marriages are not unfortunate. The young people have no love affairs, and hence are without comparisons, and each accepts the other and tries, let us hope, to be what the other expects them to be. " Marriage in the West often means the removal of senti- mental masks of mutual consideration," says Miss Tsao, " while in the East it is the begin- ning of love-making." " To sum up briefly, we cannot say that the children have no voice in the engagement, neither can we say that marriage is not sacred, for only the first wife enjoys the privilege of a wedding ceremony, and this binding tie is very difficult to annul : nor can we say that there is no love, although neither party ever openly admits it." In conclusion, a girl's life has none, or but few, of the privileges and pleasures of her sister of the West. She has less education, fewer social privileges, less experience of the world, and is taught to be filial and submissive to all the older members of her family. But her parents see to it that she is married, and unless her family is poor, she is not expected to earn her own living. Her Western sister is better educated, more independent, has more social privileges, more temptations to over- come, more battles to fight, and is expected to take care of herself. 68 HOME LIFE IN CHINA One phase of the education of a girl will be found in the following chapter, in which the reader will find, if he but gives it close atten- tion, that her trials are mostly the result of the communistic character of their family life — the effort to live in peace and harmony with all her sisters-in-law. CHAPTER VII THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS T NU ERH CHING SECTION I HIS instruction for my sisters I have called the NU Erh Ching ; All its precepts you should practise, all its sentences should sing ; You should rise from bed as early in the morning as the sun, Nor retire at evening's closing, till your work is wholly done. Then by wrapping in a towel, So that clean your hair may keep, You should early take your brushes and should neatly dust and sweep. Pay particular attention that the dust may not arise, Clean your own apartments neatly, and 'twill glad your parents' eyes. Then your hair comb smooth and shiny, And your face no dirt should show, To your needle-work and cooking, very early you should go. And embroider well the pheasant, and the phoenix, and the drake. Idle visits to your neighbours you should very seldom make. Though the Changs may all be perfect, And the Lees imperfect be, Their perfection or their failings you should never deign to see, 69 70 HOME LIFE IN CHINA And your relatives and neighbours, if on you they ever call, With politeness entertain them, and converse with one and all. Don't say : " Father's sister's ugly, But my mother's sister's good," Though your neighbours thus discuss them, you most surely never should, And as long as you're a maiden, you at home should always stay, And be very, very careful, of whatever you may say. When the day is dead and buried And the moon is very small, As a maiden, in the darkness you should never walk at all, If to go is necessary, you should summon as a guide A good servant with a lantern, who will linger by your side. Let your laugh be never boisterous, Nor converse in noisy way, Lest your neighbours all about you hear whatever you may say, Then be dignified in walking, and be orderly in gait, Never lean against a door-post, but in standing, stand up straight. SECTION II FROM SEVEN TILL TWENTY When the wheel of life's at seven, You should study woman's ways, Leave your bed when day is breaking, early thus begin the days, Comb your tresses smooth and shiny, keep yourself both clean and neat, Bind your "lilies" 1 tight and tidy, never go upon the street. 1 The small feet of a Chinese woman. THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS 71 When the wheel's at eight or over, While you gradually grow, Both your old and younger brothers, you should intimately know, And while peacefully partaking of the tea and rice and wine, About eating much or little never quarrel while you dine. When the wheel at ten is turning, You should never idle be, To the making of your clothing and the mending you should see. Your position should be daily sitting at your mother's feet, Nor, excepting on an errand, should you go upon the street. When the wheel has turned eleven You have grown to womanhood, And all culinary matters should be clearly understood. If from fancy-work or cooking you can save some precious hours, You should spend them in embroid'ring ornamental leaves and flowers. When the wheel has turned to thirteen You propriety should prize. When your presence people enter, you politely should arise. Toward your aunts, your father's sisters, and his younger brothers' wives, You should not neglect your manners from the nearness of your lives. When the wheel has turned to fifteen, Or when twenty years have passed, As a girl with home and kindred, these will surely be your last. While expert in all employments that compose a woman's life, You should study as a daughter all the duties of a wife. 72 HOME LIFE IN CHINA SECTION III A wife's virtues First, though not the most important, Is that filial you should be. Filial piety and honour heaven naturally will see. For the favour of your parents is as deep as earth and heaven, You should recompense their kindnesses as long as life is given. Then respect your elder brothers, And your elder brothers' wives, For disturbance has no foothold in a home where virtue thrives, And a girl possessed of virtue, when no jealous thoughts can come To her well-developed nature, is the jewel of the home. Then a third important virtue Is to save the rice and flour, For economy in trifles such as oil and salt has power. When provisions are abundant, think of when they will be scant, And prepare in time of plenty for a future time of want. You should well prepare the cooking, Be the food however plain, And be able in receiving to politely entertain. Things when first they come to market, though you purchase do not eat, But your own and husband's parents with such dainties you should treat. It is also quite important, — Listen, girls, to what I mean, — That your old or new-made garments all be scrupulously clean ; THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS 73 For if, diligent and tidy, you yourself do not neglect, Who of relatives and neighbours such a one does not respect ? If again, I may advise you, Tis that evil thoughts are sin, Love no other one's possessions, covet not a single pin. If you slight your neighbour-duties and their love you do not prize, You, your parents and your brothers, all will utterly despise. Then a meek and lowly temper Is restriction number seven, Your relation to your husband is the same as earth to heaven, Where the hen announces morning, there the home will be destroyed, 1 You from lack of woman s virtue neighbour's scorn cannot avoid. This the eighth you may rely on, By you all it should be known, If you diligently manage you can make a happy home. As a filial son will never house and home from parents tear, So a wife her wedding garments should not always wish to wear. Ninth, a girl should prize her virtue, And of goodness never tire, For, a jade that's pure and flawless, who does not with joy admire ? Anciently a girl was guarded, from her virtue would not part, Pure as diamonds was her body, firm as iron was her heart. 1 This sentence is found in the Book of History — Shu-Ching — Legge, vol. iii., part ii., p. 302. This Shu-Ching was edited by Confucius more than 580 years B.C. 74 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Tenth and last that I would offer Is, be cautious all your life, Once you marry 'tis for ever, once you may become a wife, Three dependencies, four virtues, let them all be perfect : then, Who can say that 'mongst our women, there are no " superior men " ? x SECTION IV THE THREE DEPENDENCIES " Girls are difficult to manage," This is often said as true, So from youth till grown to teach them is the best that we can do. If she disregards instruction and refuses to be good, Husband's parents will abuse her, as indeed they often should. Girls have three on whom dependent, All their lives they must expect, — While at home to follow father, who a husband will select, 2 With her husband live in concord from the day that she is wed, And her son's directions follow if her husband should be dead. 3 SECTION V THE FOUR VIRTUES There are four important virtues Which a maiden should possess. I will one by one rehearse them that your minds they may impress. 1 I have given the ordinary translation of the words Chiin-tzu. a The father selects a husband for his daughter. He knows the boys. 3 The son is the business head of the home, but the mother may whip him even after he is a man. THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS 75 First, like Lady T'sao 1 be perfect, and your happiness secure, Who in virtue, and deportment, and in words and work was pure. First of all a woman's virtues Is a chaste and honest heart, Of which modesty and goodness and decorum form a part. If in motion, or if resting, a becoming way is chief ; You should guard against an error as you guard against a thief. In your personal appearance You should ever take delight. Ne'er depend upon cosmetics, whether they be red or white ; Comb and bathe at proper seasons ; all the dirt remove with care ; In the washing of your clothing no exertions should you spare. Of the virtues of a woman, Conversation is the third. By your friends 'tis often better to be seen than to be heard, But to speak at proper seasons will incur no one's disdain, And one fit word o'er a thousand will the victory often gain. Fourth, the duties of a woman, You should never dare to shirk. Know that drawing and embroidering is not all of woman's work, You should labour at your spinning all the time you have to spare, And the flavourings for cooking you should constantly prepare. 1 Author of the first of the four books for girls. 76 HOME LIFE IN CHINA SECTION VI DUTIES TOWARD OTHERS As the favour of your parents Is as great as heaven's joy, To be filial to your parents you should all your strength employ, As Ti-ying, that filial maiden, who, her father's life to save, By presenting a petition him thus rescued from the grave. All your father's elder brothers, And his younger brothers too, Are your intimate relations — the same bone and flesh as you. You should ne'er expression utter which would break the family chain, Thus denoting you forget those who in youth did you main- tain. Of the wives of these your uncles, Old and younger just the same, If unfilial in your girlhood you will surely be to blame. Though they manifest no anger, if you thus unfilial prove, All your faults will be detected — you will lose your neigh- bour's love. You should honour elder brothers And their wives you should respect, Nor should treat them badly, hoping you your parents will protect. All the members of your household should in peace and quiet dwell, Then no wrangling nor disturbance will your disagree- ments tell. With the fam'lies of your neighbours, Whether Chang or whether Lee, Let your intercourse exhibit fellowship and harmony. Do not constantly require that your wishes they indulge, Do not carry idle gossip and their secrets thus divulge. THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS 77 SECTION VII REASONS FOR CERTAIN CUSTOMS Have you ever learned the reason Why your ears should punctured be ? 'Tis that you may never listen to the talk of Chang and Lee. True the holes were made for ear-rings that your face may be refined, But the other better reason you should ever keep in mind. At your throat you wear a button, It should teach you as a guide, That you never should while walking, turn your head from side to side, And the layers of your clothing have a lesson for you too, They should decorate your body as the clouds adorn Mt. Wu. Then a woman's upper garment, And her skirt should teach again, That, though living with her husband, she is on a differ- ent plane, She should follow and be humble, that it ne'er be said by men, That " the morning there is published by the crowing of the hen." Have you ever learned the reason For the binding of your feet ? 'Tis from fear that 'twill be easy to go out upon the street. It is not that they are handsome when thus like a crooked bow, That ten thousand wraps and bindings are enswathed around them so. 78 HOME LIFE IN CHINA SECTION VIII DUTIES AS A WIFE As a wife to husband's parents, You should filial be and good, Nor should suffer imperfection in their clothing or their food. Be submissive to their orders, all their wants anticipate, That, because his wife is idle, they your husband may not hate. Be submissive to your husband, Nor his wishes e'er neglect, First of all in this submission is his parents to respect. Economical and active you should ever strive to be, Nor complain that Chang has nothing, and that few are poor as Lee. With his brothers' wives be peaceful, And his sisters all respect, And affectionately treat them, nor their company neglect. Let not sisterly affection be by servants' stories killed, Nor with smiles your face be covered while with hate your heart is filled. Though your husband may be wealthy, You should never be profuse ; There should always be a limit to the things you eat and use. If your husband should be needy you should gladly share the same, Being diligent and thrifty, and no other people blame. For your guests arrange in order, Both your table and your dress, Be not stingy in providing, nor yet lavish to excess. Ne'er in treatment of your callers over-closely count the cost, But if lavish in expending all your wealth will soon be lost. THE CLASSIC FOR GIRLS 79 SECTION IX DUTIES AS A MOTHER Of pre-natal education Be attentive as a mother, For the influence is mutual of each upon the other. Whether walking, standing, sitting, or reclining, have a rule, E'en in eating and in drinking have a care yourself to school. Ne'er by fondness spoil your offspring, Whether it be girl or boy ; By indulgence soon its temper you will utterly destroy. Tho' in youth it matters little, yet the time will surely come When your children are indifferent to themselves and to their home. When he grows to years of boyhood Then a teacher call at once, Who will books and manners teach him that he may not be a dunce. Lazy habits in his study will good people all annoy, And his indolence the prospects of his future life destroy. For your daughter in her girlhood, To learn fancy-work is best, Ne'er allow her to be idle — lolling to the east or west. If in youth you do not teach her, when full-grown 'twill be too late, When she marries it will bring her only shame, disgrace, and hate. When your son arrives at manhood, Then a wife for him secure, 1 Never mind about her parents, whether they be rich or poor. 1 The mother selects her son's wife as the father his daughter's husband. The father knows the boys, the mother knows the girls. 80 HOME LIFE IN CHINA If the maiden have but virtue, if the maiden have but health, She will manage well her household, she will bring her husband wealth. When your daughter weds she then is To her husband's family brought, To be frugal in the household she by parents should be taught. To his parents, as a daughter, she should kind and filial be, And submissive to her husband, to his home should gladly see. Should your sons, when you are aged, Other people's daughters wed, If impartially you treat them they will easily be led. Don't because the one is wealthy and the other one is poor, Treat the one as though a goddess, and the other as a boor. And the children of your children, Boys or girls, no matter which, You should love them as your jewels, whether they be poor or rich. To your neighbours be a neighbour that no person may declare, That you love your kindred only, but for others do not care. Thus we end the woman's Classic. You should learn it part by part, And should practise it and keep it always living in your heart. If you learn but do not heed it you will simply be, of course, Though arrayed in women's garments, as a cow or as a horse. CHAPTER VIII MARRIAGE A WEDDING in China is a gay and noisy affair, and is always accompanied with L big and elaborate feasts, each invited guest taking, in a red envelope, a sum of money sufficient to a little more than pay for the food that he eats. If you were to ask, What is " merrier than a marriage bell " ? I would at once answer, " A Chinese wedding feast." It is far more gaudy and expressive of merriment than an American or English wedding, but not so solemn. There is no occasion, unless it be Chinese New Year, that brings more pleasure to a whole village than a wedding. Everybody in town sees the parade, and everybody who can raise the requisite amount of silver may partake of the feast. A wedding is not confined to a single day. It begins ten days before the marriage with the " passing of the big parade," made up of the gifts from the bridegroom's family to the parents of the bride. These presents are carried by twenty or thirty, or even more, men, dressed in gay costumes, on trays measur- ing two by four or three by six feet. Each 6 si 82 HOME LIFE IN CHINA tray contains a gift, some larger, some smaller, but mostly of eatables, such as nuts, cakes, candies, ham, cooked and live geese, chickens and ducks. Accompanying these there will be hair ornaments for the bride, together with a small sum of money. These things are accepted by the bride's parents, and in each tray they return small sums of money, wrapped in red paper, as expressions of their gratitude, to- gether with a roast pig or two, which are signs of prosperity. As no one family could con- sume all that is sent, they distribute them among their friends and relatives, thus com- municating their joy to the neighbourhood. While they are distributing these presents they invite their wedding guests, while at the same time both families are busily engaged in completing their preparations. When the fact of her coming marriage is announced to the daughter by her mother, the girl runs to her room to hide and weep, presumably because of her sadness at leaving her home. She refuses to eat with the family, and her intimate friends come to condole with her and cheer her up. Trunks are packed with everything the daughter has expressed a liking for, and tailors are called to make her wedding garments and bedding, unless she is poor, when they are made by her family or even by herself. Packers come to put her furniture together, decorators to arrange her trunks, bureaus, chairs, tables, cooking utensils, and everything she has, that ■ *?£$ ■- Ml I - * , ■3 THE BRIDE MARRIAGE 83 it may appear attractive in the parade, and these things are taken to the home of the bridegroom three days before the wedding, that they may be properly arranged in her apartments. On the wedding day, at the time set by the augur, a long procession of lanterns, bands, flags, clowns, and a red or gilded sedan chair, reaches the door of the bride's home. In ancient times the groom accompanied this pro- cession, which was called the rite of personal receiving, but in modern times, when the pro- cession returns to his home, accompanied by her brothers, the bridegroom meets the chair, taps on the door with his fan, bows to the chair, then to each of the bride's brothers, and then returns to the house.. The bride is then taken out of the chair by her maids or brides- maids, and led into the house, where she and her future husband kneel side by side before the ancestral tablets and household gods, and pay their respects to their aged relatives in the form of a kowtow. The bride is then led to her room, where she awaits the coming of the groom to lift the bridal veil. When the veil is removed she puts on a beautiful court robe and a pearl-like crown, and is ready to appear before the relatives and friends of her future home. Assisted by her servants, she bows and serves them tea. In the South each guest in return for this service hands her over a present of 84 HOME LIFE IN CHINA money, the amount varying according to the wealth of the donor. In the North the fore- head of the bride is now shaven so as to make it high and square, or the hair is plucked therefrom, and is never allowed to grow again. After the feasting, and as a means of amusing themselves, and testing the temper of the bride, the female guests play all kinds of jokes and make all kinds of remarks about her. They make the embarrassed creature guess conundrums, solve puzzles, and do tricks which belong only to magicians, and answer all kinds of embarrassing questions. Should she lose her temper, or refuse or fail to answer, she is com- pelled to pay a forfeit in money or in kind, and this joking lasts all the night. While this is going on in the inner apart- ments the groom, dressed in official robes, perhaps borrowed for the occasion, is going through a similar test, or furnishing like sport for the male guests. Suffice it to say that everybody is happy, or trying to be happy, and this at the expense of the bride and groom. On the third day after her marriage the bride visits her parents, and on the evening of that same day the groom first pays his respects to his parents-in-law, who, on this same even- ing, give a feast in his honour. Thus ends the wedding of a Chinese bride. It begins ten days before the wedding day, and ends three days after, making thirteen days in all — " an MARRIAGE 85 unlucky number to be feasting over a wedding," I imagine I can hear you say. The words used for the marriage of a man and that of a woman are not the same. He " takes " a wife, she " passes out of the door," and so when the great procession comes to the bride's home, it comes to take her away, and when she passes out of the door of her father's house she ceases to be a member of his house- hold and becomes a member of that of her husband. When we consider the whole Chinese system, and remember that the separation of the sexes through life is the result of a desire on the part of the people to preserve the virtue of their women, we can begin to appreciate the in- tensity of this desire. Innumerable stories are told in Chinese literature of women who have given up their lives rather than sully their virtue. The married life of a Chinese girl is twofold — her relation to her husband and to his family. She is married to his family more than to her husband, and his father governs his son even in his relations to his wife. After his wedding day the boy is separated from his wife until after the feast at the bride's parents, and all the associations of the boy and his wife are under the surveillance of his father. And the one thing that a boy fears most from his com- panions is being teased for hanging about his wife. 86 HOME LIFE IN CHINA The bride then is received into the home of her mother-in-law as an additional child to be trained in her duties of life. She is not mistress in her home, neither is she servant — though she serves — she is simply daughter-in-law, and if she understands her duties in this new re- lationship, and performs them as she should, being submissive and humble, she will be loved and honoured. But a wilful bride and an un- reasonable mother-in-law — and China has both of these — may reach a degree of strained relationship that can scarcely be duplicated anywhere else in the world. Those critics who quarrel with this condition of things need not complain of the bride nor of the mother-in-law but of the system. I have heard say that " no house is big enough for two families " ; if that is true, what of a Chinese house where there are anywhere from two to half a dozen families living together ? My mother has nine sons. Each of them has a wife, all of them good women, though there is none of them that I would have chosen, and none of my brothers would have chosen my wife. This is not saying anything against my wife or my sisters-in-law. We are a very chummy family, while we each have our own homes with our thirty-five children and grandchildren. But now just suppose that all those nine sons were to have brought those nine wives, and to have tried to raise those thirty-five grand- children under the parental roof: with all MARRIAGE 87 deference to our chummy disposition, there would have been hot times in that home on more than one occasion. The parents keep the closest possible super- vision over the young people. I had a friend in Peking — a man who would rank as a farmer — who came one day to invite me to the wedding of his son. " But," said I, ' your son is rather young to be married, is he not? He is only sixteen." " Quite right," he answered, " but the girl is eighteen, and my wife needs someone to help in the home, and the boy would be just as well married." Now that instance, simple as it is, will suffice as a sample of a large proportion of the marriages of the common people, though it would not in any way represent a wedding among the student or better classes. Another friend had engaged her son when a child to the girl child of a friend. She was in better circumstances than the girl's parents, and though she had eight children of her own, in order that the girl might be properly brought up she took her as a child, put her into school, and educated her with her son. And the close supervision of the parents over these married children, as they might be called, is the same as over their sons and daughters, for the young wife is kept in the women's apartments and the young man in the men's, and there is but little chance for them to be together in many of the ordinary homes. It is a principle with the Chinese that a man 88 HOME LIFE IN CHINA may not marry a woman of the same surname, the reason being that she might be his relative. As a matter of fact there are those who marry women having the same family name as them- selves, though public sentiment is against it. The reason given in the Classics is that their children do not prosper and multiply. No prince, nor even the Emperor, under the Manchu dynasty, was allowed to marry a princess for the same reason. A prince must marry a com- moner, who was raised to the rank of a princess, likewise a princess must marry a commoner — or she might marry a Mongol prince, when she took the rank of her husband. It was a custom, too, with the Chinese princes that when a wife was brought to his palace she was allowed to live there for three months before the marriage was consummated, in order that her mother-in-law might discover her temper and her character. If she proved to be of a bad disposition, or lacking in such character as would add to the princely char- acter of the home, she was allowed to return to her parents. No wrong had been done her. Everything depended upon herself. My readers will say that no such test was put upon the man. Quite right, there was none. We are not trying to justify this, or any other Chinese custom, but only to call attention to some of the more common customs of marriage. I may just add that this was a custom in ancient times which has probably fallen into disuse. CHAPTER IX WOMEN SOCIETY, according to Hsun Tzu, is based on justice ; according to Pan Ku, on love ; and according to Liu Chung-yuan, on necessity. But whether legal, ethical, or economical, society exists, and as the basis of government is man, so the basis of the social system is woman. This is as true in Asia as in Europe. And now we would like to discover what position woman occupies in the Chinese social system. And first, what is her standing ? According to Chen Huan-chang, Ph.D., author of the Economic Principles of Confucius, the word wife means" equal. The Canon of Poetry urges the Chinese to " love your bride as your brothers." As a matter of fact the Chinese woman preserves her own name when she marries. For example, we will suppose a Miss Wang marries a Mr. Liu, she is always spoken of thereafter as Mrs. Liu of the Wang family. The separation of the sexes as we find it in China prevents any social system such as we have in Europe or the West. Women, for the sake of the preservation of their virtue, have no 89 90 HOME LIFE IN CHINA social intercourse with men. What a tremen- dous love of virtue a people must have when they will forego all social pleasures for the sake of the virtue of their women ! This being shut away from the men, be it understood, is no worse on the women than on the men. It is a knife that cuts both ways. If she must forego all the pleasure of his company, he must forego all the pleasures of hers, and may we not suppose that many skeletons have been kept out of closets by the fact that neither the man nor the woman has had an indefinite number of love affairs before marriage ? My dear readers, if I knew all the social secrets that your minds hold, I could write a book that would astonish the world. In ancient times women were appointed commissioners for the collection of poetry from the people. As a matter of fact a large number of women have distinguished them- selves as poets, and in a great biographical encyclopaedia of 1628 volumes, 376 are devoted to the lives of great Chinese women. In a biographical dictionary of Chinese art of 24 volumes, four are devoted to the lives of great women artists. When the Emperor of the Han dynasty had built a gallery for the preservation of the portraits of his great generals, the Empress had written for her the biographies of the great women of ancient times as an inspiration to the women of her day, a book which has come down through edition after edition for WOMEN 91 twenty centuries. I only wish I might put in here a picture in my possession painted by Wu Chuan, the wife of Wang Po-yu, that you might see her work as an artist. Notice that though she was the wife of Mr. Wang she always signed her paintings with her maiden name. Whether her husband was a worthless fellow or not we do not know, but we are told that she " cultivated the field of her ink-slab for a living." As an artist the Chinese say she rivalled the greatest of her men contempo- raries, and her bamboo, rocks, and monochrome flowers were not only true to life but superior to any of those of the men of her times. In her youth she was a diligent student of poetry, both ancient and modern, and was celebrated both as a poet and penman. Her most pains- taking work was done on her pictures of birds, one of the finest specimens of which, in my possession, is a picture 6 ft. 4 in. by 22 ft. of one hundred birds worshipping the phcenix. The male and female phcenix are near the centre of the picture, and the hundred birds are flying, resting, or swimming with their heads toward them as though in adoration. What now is the position of the Chinese woman ? for it is the woman makes the home. On the one hand she has been considered labour-burdened and oppressed, and on the other hand the mother-in-law has been always described as a tyrant of the home. How do you account for these extraordinary differences 92 HOME LIFE IN CHINA of opinion ? What is the true character and position of the Chinese woman ? My answer to this question would be that the Chinese woman is just a woman. What you find woman all over the world, that you will find the Chinese woman. Do you know what woman is ? I wish I did. When I have decided what she is, I find her to be something else. Take her physically if you please. Cut her in two at the waist, and the heavy end of her would be down. Her contribution to the world must be in her reproductive capacity. In the words of Kipling : " She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great, As the mother of the infant, and the mistress of the mate." Cut a man in two at the waist, and the heavy end of him will be up. His shoulders are his stock in trade. He must do the work of the world if it is to be properly done. I know that there are primitive states of society in which women have been made to plant and hoe, but in no country have the people risen to a high state of civilization, or physical or financial prosperity, where the women have had to harvest the grain. Her place is, therefore, in the home. And so the Chinese call her the nei jen or " inside person." A woman's place in China, then, is in the home, and in that capacity she rules supreme. WOMEN 93 In the home a man takes second place. He may be the " Lord of the home," but he is only lord of the home over which his wife is the socially-appointed presiding officer. This is true in all grades of society, from the poorest peasant to the imperial palace. Of the latter this has been abundantly illustrated during the past fifty years by the Great Dowager, as well as her successor. For forty-seven years the Great Dowager ruled 400,000,000 of Chinese people with an iron hand. This has been a constant surprise to all Europe, and there has been a continual wonder as to how she could do it. There is only one answer to the question. China is a paternal form of government. The Emperor and the Empress are the father and mother of the people, and it follows, as it does in every home, that the Empress Dowager is the mother-in-law of the empire. This was not only true of the Great Dowager, but it was true of all Dowager Empresses. Much as I have studied the Chinese woman, I was not a little surprised during the recent rebellion to find that it was not the baby Emperor nor his father — the regent, Prince Chun — who gave up the throne, and appointed Yuan Shih-kai to establish a republican form of government, but it was the Empress Dowager, the wife of the late Emperor Kuang Hsu, who, by the way, has always been supposed to be a weak character. It was she also to whom Yuan Shih-kai promised $2,000,000 a year as 94 HOME LIFE IN CHINA an allowance. It was she to whom he accorded the Forbidden City as a place of residence. And now I read in the papers that : " The Dowager Empress has offered to hand over to the reformers the halls of the erstwhile forbidden city, which for hundreds of years (since 1644) harboured the Manchu dynasty. She will, at the same time, transfer the imperial family to the summer palace, at the hills, fifteen miles west of Peking. " She was impelled to this act by a desire to provide suitable accommodation for the Chinese Government, which apparently intends to accept the offer when funds are available to carry out the necessary repairs." I can hear some of my readers exclaim : " Extraordinary that a woman should have such authority in China ! " I answer, not at all extraordinary, if you but remember that her realm is the home, and that in that realm she is absolute monarch, and that China has always had a patriarchal or paternal form of govern- ment, in the palace of which the Empress Dowager is the mother-in-law. We carry with us to China a lot of preconceived notions of our own superiority, and of their ignorance and inferiority, and then hunt for incidents to prove our theories, instead of remembering that, when our ancestors were clothed in skins, and living in caves and mad huts in Europe, or squatting on their haunches gnawing a bone, the Chinese were clothed in silk, living in brick WOMEN 95 houses with tile roofs, sitting on chairs, eating from tables with earthenware utensils, and had a great government, a great literature, and a civilization which was a thousand years ahead of our own. In this connection may I call attention to another matter, viz. that the Chinese have a civilization of their own which they have always considered as much superior to yours as you have considered yours superior to theirs. They were ignorant of yours, you were ignorant of theirs. Theirs is moral, yours is material. Theirs is built upon the relation of man to man in government, in society, in the home, in business, and be it said to the credit of the Chinese that the two oldest governments in the world to-day — China and Japan — are built upon the Confucian system. Be it said to their credit again that the bankers and other business men of Europe, who have firms or houses located in the East, frankly admit that there are no better or more reliable business men in the world than the Chinese. Be it said to their credit once more that they have worked out a definite domestic and social system which permeates all grades of society, to break any rules or laws of which is almost as great a crime as to break the laws of government or of business. As an evidence of this fact China, under the old regime, had six Boards — Li, Hu, Li, Ping, Hsing, Rung — the third of which was the 96 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Board of Rites or Ceremonies, which placed this important function on a level with that of the Treasury, War, Works and Punishment. No other country in the world, so far as we know, has ever placed as much stress on the social relations as has the Chinese, and it is for this reason that they have regarded us as bar- barians. One of their Five Classics, moreover, is the Book of Rites. I recognize the fact that the word "rites" here has a much broader meaning than our word " ceremonies," because the Chinese have carried it to an almost un- limited extent. This book tells us that : " The rites have their origin in heaven : their movement reaches to the earth : their distribution reaches to all the business of the world : they change with the times : they agree with the variations and skill of man. When they come down to man they serve to satisfy the human wants. They are practised by means of wealth, efforts of labour, words and postures of courtesy, eating and drinking, in the observances of capping, marriage, funeral, sacrificing, games of archery, district-drinkings, princely visiting to the Emperor, and diplomatic intercourse." It will be impossible for me to say enough in a chapter of this kind to impress the reader with the importance that the Chinese attached to rites and ceremonies. " Rites," said Con- fucius, " should be most carefully considered. They are the standards above which it is too WOMEN 97 much, and below which it is too little." A large part of the education of a child consists in teaching it how to act, and putting it through the practice of how to behave, under all possible circumstances — in advancing, in retiring, in greeting, in serving tea, in presenting tea, in standing aside when a teacher or superior passes, in all kinds of calling, in every con- ceivable position under which one may be placed. I remember one day in Peking Mrs. Sun, the daughter of the Viceroy Li Han-chang, brother of the great statesman Li Hung-chang, came to call at our home. She had with her her two little boys of about five and seven years. I was invited into the parlour to meet her. Now in all my life I have never felt, as I stepped into the drawing-room, that I was in the presence of a more refined woman than Mrs. Sun. Her hand met mine with the most perfect com- posure, though it is the custom of the Chinese in greeting to shake their own hands. After speaking a few words to her, I turned to the elder of the two boys. His hand was given me without the least embarrassment, and without any word from his mother, as was likewise the hand of the five-year old. The children had been instructed in our method of greeting before they came, and they had the most perfect poise. On another occasion Mrs. Conger, through Mrs. Headland, had invited a number of Chinese ladies of the very highest rank in 7 98 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Peking to a luncheon at the American Legation. These ladies first came to our home, and then went from there to the Legation. It happened that the day set was the anniversary of the death of a former emperor, and hence two sets of ceremonies had to be observed. In going to the American Legation they should wear their official garments, but on the anniversary of the death of their monarch they should not do so. And so the wife of the Grand Secretary in- quired when she arrived as to whether Mrs. Sun had worn her coat with the square of pictured silk, the insignia of her husband's rank (fiu-tzu), on the front and back, that she might not be found wearing one kind of coat while the other ladies wore one of a different pattern. And just here it might be pertinent to re- mark that a Chinese woman is entitled to the rank, and to wear all the insignia of the official position of her husband, and in all social functions, even though she have no title of her own, she takes her seat according to the rank of her husband. In the ownership of property her rights are included in those of her husband, and a man cannot sell property without the consent of his wife. In case her husband is dead and she has no son, she succeeds to the property, or may sell it for her support, if she is poor. According to the commercial code of 1903 " a wife or a daughter above the age of sixteen WOMEN 99 may be a merchant, and may use her own name to own the business. A wife or a daughter, however, must register as a merchant, either directly or indirectly, in the Department of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, and a wife must also get the written consent of her husband, while he cannot relieve himself from liability." Those who have any doubt as to the position and character of the Chinese woman" should take into consideration these important facts : i. It was a Chinese woman, contemporaneous with the Apostle Paul, that wrote the first book that was ever written anywhere in the world for the instruction of girls — the Lady Tsao. 2. The first woman's daily newspaper ever published was edited and published in Peking by Mrs. Chang. 3. During the Boxer movement in 1900 the girls and women were organized as the Red Lantern Society to inspire and encourage the men to drive out the foreigners who had taken possession of all their principal seaports. 4. When the rebellion arose against the Manchus the girls and women organized them- selves into companies, clothed themselves in military garb, armed themselves with western equipment, and called themselves the " Dare to Dies." 5. Miss Chin Chi-lan, an actress, was be- headed by the Manchus in 1911 for spreading rebellion among the people. Miss Chu Chin 100 HOME LIFE IN CHINA was arrested and tried in 1908, but defended herself in a paper of ten pages. Madam Su, a woman of sixty-five years, swayed audiences of no less than 1200 students in Tokio by her eloquence. The Misses Wu visited both London and Tokio in the interests of republican government in China. Miss Ying, with nine of her Red Cross nurses, did valuable service in the rebel army. And a Japanese writer says : " Heaven and earth know, or should know, that Mrs. Conger's estimate of the Dowager Empress is much nearer the truth than those horrid nightmares, fashioned out of whole cloth by some copy-manufacturing newspaper imagi- nation. As a matter of fact the new woman of China is not quite new. The position of women among the Chinese has always been high. The late Empress Dowager, who in her time received a deal of free advertising not of the kindliest brand, was no more a freak and exception among the Dowager Empresses of China than she was a monster. In Japan the abdication of a sovereign in favour of his successor has been common. In China it has rarely occurred. Naturally during the minority of the reigning sovereign a Dowager Empress has always been the sovereign de facto, and that was precisely what happened to the late Dowager Empress. " Mr. Okudo, a secretary of the Japanese Legation in Peking, made a study of the com- mercial and social life of China, on which /• * HSIAO CH'ING' LITTI.K I'.RH'.HT. THK MMilM: t.lkl. WOMEN 101 subject he wrote a book. He says that petti- coat government is a common thing in China, that the position of her women is higher than that of her Occidental sisters. China is a country that respects and values her women exceedingly, a country whose woman's power is strong. Even among the lower classes the husband cannot lay a violent hand upon his wife, and the matrimonial quarrel has only one end — that in which the wife comes off the victor." The Chinese themselves, under the energetic leadership of the Princess Kalachin, have organized a club called Nil tzu tzu chen ch'ung shih hui, The Women's Mutual Improvement Club, for the discussion of questions specially interesting to women. No foreigner has any- thing to do with this club. Such topics as Opium, Cigarette Smoking, Concubinage, Foot- binding, &c, have been a part of their pro- gramme. Every six months an "At Home ' is held, to which is invited some hundreds of guests of many nationalities. The Chinese ladies carry through those " Literary, Artistic, and Musical Conversaziones " entirely without foreign assistance. Those who think that the women take no interest in government affairs should remember that when the men cut off their queues many of the women asserted their individuality by adopting new styles of hairdressing and attire. CHAPTER X HOUSEWIVES ONE day at Shan-hai-kuan, the city where | the Great Wall dips into the eastern sea, I was about to make a call upon the city official with the Rev. Te Jui. We sat in his home and talked until the time for the visit came. He was dressed in an ordinary blue muslin short coat, except for a pair of silk over-trousers, and I wondered if he pro- posed to go calling in this outfit. His wife, a neat, trim, clean housekeeper, went about her duties until a few moments before the hour for us to start. She then went to a chest and, without saying a word to her husband, took out a number of garments and a fan, laid them near him, opened up one of them, and held it for him while he put it on, without breaking the thread of our conversation, and in a moment we were ready to start. She did not ask him what garment he would wear ; she did not wait to be asked where his garments for this particular occasion were ; she did not do it in any servile way. We were in her realm. She did it as though she was the officer in charge of this realm, and rather than 102 HOUSEWIVES 103 any servility, there was an air of superiority in all her movements, and it added a touch of refinement to her and her home. From such a home a husband could go out with the appear- ance of a man of dignity, force, and power. This is one phase of the duties and responsi- bilities of a housewife in a Chinese home. Now let us leave this common home of a Christian preacher, a typical, well-kept home of the middle classes, and go to the palace. As spring comes on in North China, we are told by the Princess Der Ling, " The young Empress went to see the silkworms and watch for the eggs to be hatched. As soon as they were out the young Empress (the present Dowager) gathered mulberry leaves for the worms to feed upon, and watched them until they were big enough to commence spinning. Each day a fresh supply of leaves was gathered, and they were fed four or five times daily. Several of the court ladies were told off to feed the worms during the night, and see that they did not escape. These silkworms grow very rapidly, and we could see the difference each day. Of course when they became full-grown they re- quired more food, and we were kept busy feeding them. The young Empress was able to tell by holding them up to the light when they were ready to spin. If they were transparent they were ready, and were placed on paper and left there. When spinning the silkworm does not eat, therefore all that we had to do was 104 HOME LIFE IN CHINA to watch that they did not get away. After spinning for four or five days their supply of silk becomes exhausted, and they shrivel up and apparently die. They were then collected by the young Empress, and placed in a box, where they were kept until they developed into moths. They were then placed on thick paper and left to lay their eggs. " If left to themselves the silkworms, when ready for spinning, will wind the silk around their bodies until they are completely covered up, gradually forming a cocoon. In order to determine when they have finished spinning it was customary to take the cocoon and rattle it near the ear. If the worm was exhausted you could plainly hear it rattle inside the cocoon. The cocoon is then placed in boiling water until it becomes soft. This, of course, kills the worm. In order to separate the silk a needle is used to pick up the end of the thread, which is then wound on a spool and is ready for weaving. A few of the cocoons were kept until the worms had turned into moths, which soon ate their way out of the cocoons when they were placed on sheets of paper and left to lay their eggs, which are taken away and kept in a cool place until the following spring, when the eggs are hatched and become worms. All this was done to set the people a good example, and to encourage them in their work." I have given this long quotation from the Princess, with whom I am acquainted, because HOUSEWIVES 105 it is the first description that has ever been given by an eye-witness and participant of this royal example set for the Chinese house- wife. This is one of the first duties of every thrifty housewife. What we have described as taking place in the palace may be seen in the early springtime in millions of Chinese homes. One of the first requisites of life is clothing. The Chinese have made a sharp distinction between the duties of men and those of women in supplying this necessity. The man culti- vates the field, or tends the flocks, and furnishes the raw material in the way of flax, hemp, and skins, while the business of the women, as in the case of our own ancestors, is to spin and weave them into usable form, and make them into garments. But in the case of the silk- worm even the supply of raw materials is a part of the duty of the thrifty housewife. As spring arrives, and the time comes for the farmers to plant their crops, the Emperor goes to the Temple of Agriculture, where he prays for a good harvest. " Then he proceeded to a small plot of ground situated in the temple enclosure, and after turning the earth over with a plough, he sowed the first seeds of the season. This was to show the farmers that their labours were not despised, and that even the Emperor was not ashamed to engage in this work. Anybody could attend this cere- 106 HOME LIFE IN CHINA mony, it being quite a public affair, and many farmers were present." Now let us enter the palace again, after all the harvests have been gathered, and watch the ceremonies at the closing of the year. " The next thing was to prepare cakes, which were to be placed before the Buddhas and ancestors during the New Year. It was neces- sary that her Majesty (the Great Dowager) should make the first one herself. So when she decided it was time to begin, the whole court went into a room specially prepared for the purpose, and the eunuchs brought in the ingredients — ground rice, sugar, and yeast. These were mixed together into a sort of dough and then steamed instead of baked, which caused it to rise just like ordinary bread, it being believed that the higher the cake rises, the better pleased are the gods and the more fortunate the maker. The first cake turned out fine, and we all congratulated her Majesty, who was evidently much pleased herself at the result. Then she ordered each of the court ladies to make one, which we did, with disastrous results, not one turning out as it should. This being my first year there was some excuse for my failure, but I was surprised that none of the older court ladies fared any better, and on inquiring from one of them the reason, she replied : ' Why, I did it purposely, of course, so as to flatter her Majesty's vanity. Certainly I could make them just as well as she, HOUSEWIVES 107 if not better, but it would not be good policy.' After we had finished making our cakes the eunuchs were ordered to make the rest, and needless to say they were perfect in every way. "The next thing was to prepare small plates of dates and fresh fruits of every kind, which were decorated with evergreens, and placed before the image of Buddha. Then we pre- pared glass dishes of candy, which were to be offered to the God of the Kitchen. On the twenty-third day of the last moon the Kitchen God left this earth to go on a visit to the King of Heaven, to whom he reported all that we had been doing during the past twelve months, returning to earth again on the last day of the year. The idea of offering him these sweets was in order that they should stick to his mouth and prevent him from telling too much. When the candies were prepared we all ad- journed to the kitchen and placed the offering on a table specially prepared for the purpose. Turning to the head cook the Empress Dowager said : ' You had better look out now ; the Kitchen God will tell how much you have stolen during the past year, and you will be punished.' " These quotations not only give us a glimpse into the royal home, but they might serve as a description of what goes on in practically every home in China about New Year's time. But the chief reason why I have given them is to indicate another great phase of the Chinese 108 HOME LIFE IN CHINA social structure. The man — the farmer — pre- pares or provides a second great necessity of all life — the raw material for food. He plants and hoes and harvests — furnishes all the grain and vegetables in their raw state. When they are brought to the home two women may often be seen grinding or hulling a bit of corn or wheat or millet, and preparing it for domestic consumption. During the summer-time it is expected of the women that : "When provisions are abundant, think of when they will be scant, And prepare in time of plenty for a future time of want." She is to see to it that ducks and geese and chickens are raised in great numbers, that soy and pickles and grain fill every bin and crock, and that : "Wife and husband may together be hilarious with joy." The supposition with the Chinese is that " great wealth " comes from the competence of the men, " small wealth " comes through the dili- gence and economy of the household — that a woman can throw more out of the window than a man can bring in at the door, and that a man never has good luck who has a bad wife. CHAPTER XI MOTHERHOOD THE crowning glory of a woman in China is motherhood. In spite of cares for the young, in spite of all the worries over household affairs, in spite of her social duties, and above all desire for ease and pleasure, a Chinese woman wants to be a mother., 5 No fear uf danger or of pain could deter her — she would rather die in child-birth than live in barrenness and ease. Her old age is a continuation of motherhood, when she rules supreme in the family in the absence of her husband. Her past sufferings, maternal cares, and experiences, all combine to make her a matron, obeyed by her children, loved by her grandchildren, and respected by the community. The Great Learning tells us that " there never has been a girl who learned to nourish a child, that she might afterwards marry," the implica- tion being that every married woman must know how to nourish a child without special training. But when a woman marries and be- comes pregnant she is put into the school of " gestatory education," if such it may be called, in order that she may be able to impart to the child a proper disposition before it is born. 109 110 HOME LIFE IN CHINA According to the Elder Tai's Record of Riles the first thing in gestatory education is the choice of the mother. This will devolve upon the parents in the choice of a wife for their son. They should select her from among those families which have had a high standard of morality for many generations. There are five classes of women who should not be taken in marriage : (i) the daughter of a rebellious house ; (2) the daughter of a disorderly house ; (3) the daughter of a house that has produced criminals for more than one generation ; (4) the daughter of a leprous house ; (5) the daughter who has lost her mother and has grown old. When a woman becomes pregnant she should separate herself from her husband until after the birth of her child, and this is the under- lying principle of concubinage. While sleeping she should lie on her back ; while sitting or standing her body should be in an upright position, and the weight evenly distributed. She should not laugh loudly. She should not eat food of bad flavours, nor anything that is not cut properly. To eat hashed-up food will give a careless disposition to the child, as it is an indication of a careless disposition on the part of the mother. She should not sit down on a mat that is awry, but first turn it square about, for the same reason as the above. Her eyes should not see bad colours, nor should she see bad sights, nor look at obscene pictures. Her ears should hear no obscene sounds, nor MOTHERHOOD 111 should she gossip or listen to improper con- versation. Her mouth should utter no bad words, and she should be careful of all her language. She should read good poetry, and tell good stories, and when about to retire at night she should call in blind story-tellers, and listen to beautiful tales from them, so that while sleeping her mind may dwell upon these things. All the months of her pregnancy she must be watchful of the things by which her mind is affected, and keep a strict guard upon her temper. If she is affected by good things the child will be good ; if by bad things the child will be bad. If she is careful to obey these rules, when her child is born it will be physically, mentally, and morally in a perfect condition. These are some of the rules of gestatory educa- tion. I know that some of our physiologists and psychologists are opposed to the theory that any mental or moral bent can be given to a child during the period of its gestation. To such I would say that I am not advancing a theory, but simply giving the Chinese modus operandi, but incidentally I do not hesitate to say that I would rather be borne by a mother who had followed these rules than by one who had disregarded them. For some years after the child is born it receives its impressions almost entirely from its mother, or from the members of its own family before it goes to school. So Confucius tells us that " When a child is trained com- 112 HOME LIFE IN CHINA pletely, his education is just as strong as his nature," and whatever he practises perpetually he will do naturally as a permanent habit. We are told by the Pattern of the Family that " the son of the great official has a nurse, while the wife of the student nourishes her child herself," and I am told that this condition is very prevalent throughout China to-day. Mr. Chen Huan-Chang says that " the wives of students and common people must nourish their own children, although the empress, the princesses, and the noble ladies may hire nurses." CHAPTER XII CONCUBINAGE TO understand concubinage it is not neces- sary to understand the underlying prin- ciple which led the Chinese to adopt this practice. But one cannot comprehend the Chinese character in this particular respect without knowing something of what led them to introduce such a practice into their homes. What we have said in another chapter on pre-natal education may have given a sug- gestion as to what must be said here. The Chinese believe that when a woman becomes enceinte she should separate herself from her husband until after the birth of her child, in order to impart a pure disposition to her off- spring. And Jndeed may she not have reason for such a belief ? Where in the world can you find another female mammal that will allow any such associations with the male during the gestation of her young ? Indeed may we not believe that the story of the fall of man, as we find it in Genesis, has no other interpretation ? They knew they were naked after they had done what no other animal would allow. Cain turned out a murderer as a result, 8 113 114 HOME LIFE IN CHINA and Abel and Seth were both good men, and the only basis upon which one can blame the fall upon a woman is that she is the only female in the world that will allow such liber- ties. And it was allowing, not tempting, that brought on her the blame. However this may be with the Hebrew story, the Chinese hold this view, and in order to satisfy her husband and protect herself, she gives him a concubine during this period. While the custom started in this way, be it understood that we do not pretend to say that it is practised for this same reason. The more 1 hi see of men all over the world the better I like nogs, for the social impurity of all countries is because of him and not of her. l • The Chinese woman gives a concubine to her husband just as Sarah gave her maid to Abraham, and sometimes, as we shall show, for the same reason, for there are good, pure homes in China as well as in Europe or America. When the Chinese ladies hear that a certain woman is about to give a concubine to her husband, they simply say of her that she is " going to eat vinegar." And that in a large number of cases is what it is, for a woman's trials in China begin, continue, and end in the home among the women. One day the head eunuch from the palace of one of the leading Princes of Peking was calling at our home to request Mrs. Headland to go to see one of the concubines who was ill. While CONCUBINAGE 115 sitting in my study, gazing at the picture on the wall, and thinking, no doubt, of the things that were taking place, or about to take place, in their palace, he ejaculated : " Our Prince is going to take on two more concubines at Chinese New Year." I turned from my desk where I was writing and exclaimed : " Doesn't he have three concubines already ? ' " Oh, yes, but he is entitled to have five." " Doesn't it make trouble in a home for a man to have so many women around ? ' " Ah," he said, with that peculiar wave of the hand that only a Chinese knows how to express, " that is a matter difficult to talk about. Naturally when this woman sees him talking to that woman, this one is going to eat vinegar." And she does. Mrs. Headland went with him to their palace to see the concubine, but, of course, was taken at once to the apartments of the Princess, who had full control of all the affairs of the women. The Princess took her to see the concubine. As they entered the room they noticed an old nurse with a little girl in her arms with a blotch on her face. Now a blemish on a little girl in China does as much to disfigure her as it would a little girl in any other country. On a boy it would not matter, for a man with a bald head can marry any woman he could marry without a bald head. 116 HOME LIFE IN CHINA But a woman with a bald head is quite a different proposition. And so the Princess asked if it could be removed. The doctor examined it, and answered that it could by a slight operation. Now " opera- tion " in Chinese is la, " to cut," and the nurse, thinking that the child was about to be seriously cut, stole away while the doctor was examining the patient, and another nurse with another child entered the room. In examining the concubine the doctor talked with the Princess, who interpreted it to the concubine, though the latter understood her as well as the Princess did. Then the con- cubine talked with the Princess, who inter- preted to the doctor, though she understood the concubine as well as she did the Princess. When the concubine had been attended to the Princess turned to the nurse and said : " Bring the child here and let the doctor take the spot off its face." " But," said the nurse, " this is not the same child." " There," said the Princess with a sigh and a smile. " You see I do not know my own children ! " for all the children of her husband,, no matter by whom borne, belong to the wife and call her " mother," while they call their own mother " nurse." What we have just given might be taken as a fair sample of the home with concubines ; we CONCUBINAGE 117 wish now to describe two others, both homes of the highest class of people, for only those who are wealthy can afford this luxury, as is indicated by this story told me by Sir Robert Hart : " One day," said he, " the newly-appointed minister to the Court of St. James's came to call upon me before starting upon his journey. After talking for some time he said : " ' I believe it is proper in calling on a foreign gentleman to see his lady. I should be very glad to pay my respects to Lady Hart.' " ' I should be very glad to have you do so, but Lady Hart is in England educating our children. I have not seen her myself for many years.' "'Ah,' said he, ' then I should be very glad to see your second wife.' " ' And I should be very glad to have you see her if I had one, but my miserable country will not allow us to have a second wife — indeed they would imprison us if we had one.' |" ' Oh, indeed,' he continued, ' your honourable country does not appreciate the advantages of some of the customs of my miserable country.' " The first incident I am about to relate happened in the home of a Chinese friend who lived very near me in Peking. If I had been selecting from among all my friends a scholar and a Chinese gentleman, I should have selected him, and I would never have suspected that this could have happened in his home. ' 118 HOME LIFE IN CHINA His wife discovered that one of her slave girls was in a condition in which she should not be, and on inquiry she discovered that her husband was the cause of this irregularity. Not wishing to create a disturbance or reveal her disgrace, she decided secretly to give the slave girl away to anyone who would accept her. When her husband learned what she was about to do he objected, and there was a family disturbance. Not such a row as would occur among the uncultured or unrefined, but a dispute such as might occur in refined society anywhere in the world. There was a difference of opinion. She proposed to give the girl away, he decided that she should not. The strife became bitter. He had invaded her realm without her consent, which is contrary to all Chinese customs in the matter of concubinage. When they could not settle the difficulty themselves he called in another of our mutual friends, one of my former pupils, to shuo ho (make peace). For three days this young man went from husband to wife, and from wife to husband, to try to induce them to compromise. Finally he said to the man : " There is no use of my remaining here any longer. You will not relax, she will not relent. I can do nothing for you ; I am going home." " No, you must not go home ; go to her again — she must give in." After other fruitless efforts to induce them to yield he stole away, and I have never learned CONCUBINAGE 119 how the matter was settled. No one but them- selves know. She was the daughter of the governor of a province, and he one of the finest scholars in the country, a Hanlin or LL.D., as well as a Censor, or adviser to the Emperor. In China that woman, refined, cultured, of gentle birth, has no appeal to the law. ' She must give in." In Europe or America she could obtain a divorce, not so in China. There are seven reasons why a man may divorce his wife in China : i. Disobedience to parents-in-law. 2. Not giving birth to a son. 3. Adultery. 4. Jealousy of her husband's attentions to other inmates of his harem. 5. Leprosy. 6. Talkativeness. 7. Thieving. But there are three considerations which may overrule these grounds : 1. Having no family to return to. 2. Having passed through the three years' mourning for his parents. 3. Having married her when he was poor, and now having become rich. But in the whole Confucian writings, and in all the laws of China, there is no provision for a woman to obtain a divorce from her husband, except with his consent, which is tantamount to his obtaining the divorce from her. 120 HOME LIFE IN CHINA My last incident of concubinage was one which occurred in the palace of another of the Princes in Peking. Now it happened that this Princess was the mother of three girls without any boys. In their simplicity they supposed that there was something wrong with her, and that she could not have male children. A discussion arose between her and her husband, and, in order to settle the matter, she gave him her maid, as Sarah did Abraham, in the hope that they might have a son who would be heir to their principality. It so happened that the maid also had a daughter. " Ha," she ex- claimed, ' it is not my fault at all, it is your own fault," and the maid had no more children. In due time the Princess gave birth to another child and it was a daughter, and she was more than ever convinced that the fault lay in her husband and not in herself. When the maid's little girl was about eight years old she fell ill with diphtheria. Some days later the youngest daughter of the Princess also fell ill, and then they sent for Mrs. Head- land. As soon as she saw the children she told the Princess what the matter was, and that she must hurry home and get antitoxin with which to treat them. " That medicine is very expensive, is it not ? " for it was expensive at that time in Peking. Mrs. Headland answered that it was. CONCUBINAGE 121 " Could you not get a cheaper grade for the maid's child ? " she inquired. " I can/' answered my wife, " but I would not advise doing so." " You get the cheaper grade for her," the Princess ordered. The Prince sat near by listening to all this conversation without saying a word. He was a good Prince, she was a good Princess, and the maid was a good maid. He was in her realm, and he had nothing to say. Mrs. Headland hurried home, got the medi- cine, and was changing her clothing, prepara- tory to going and remaining night and day with the children, for she feared for the maid's little girl, when the Prince with his outriders drove pell-mell into our back gate. He came into my study and talked for a few moments, though I saw that he seemed to be excited, and after a very short time he asked : " Is Mrs. Headland at home ? " " She is just now preparing to go to your excellency's palace," I answered. " I would like to speak with her before she goes," he said. I called my wife to speak to him, and she told me later that he said : " Mrs. Headland, I heard the Princess tell you to get a cheaper grade of antitoxin for the maid's little girl than you get for her own. Now, you get the same grade, but say nothing 122 HOME LIFE IN CHINA about it : just send the bill to me and I will pay it." Mrs. Headland did so, but in spite of all she could do, the maid's little girl died. Now a maid has a heart the same as a Princess, and this maid was heartbroken at the death of her only daughter. As I have said, the Prince was a good Prince, the Princess a good Princess, and the maid a good maid, and the Princess allowed her to have another child — and it was a boy — and you never saw a happier Princess than she was that they had finally secured an heir to their principality. CHAPTER XIII RELIGION WHEN a missionary or tourist returns from the Orient, one of the questions that is commonly asked him is : " Are those Asiatics religious ? " Are they religious ? They are nothing but religious. They eat their religion, they sleep their religion, they walk their religion, they talk their religion, they work their religion, they carry on their business in a religious way. They have a shrine in every kitchen, in every home, in every shop, in every factory ; even on the housetops and in the gateways they have shrines. Little shrines stand by the roadside, where the traveller, as he trudges wearily on his journey, may stop for a moment and offer a bit of incense to a dilapidated idol. They have shrines by the wells, where they may worship as they draw water. They have shrines carved on the solid granite of the mountain-side, and caves cut out of the rock, where some devotee has spent years with his simple instruments, drilling and chipping, until he finds and leaves an idol on the face of his cavern a dozen feet beneath the surface. Are they religious ? Are you religious ? 123 124 HOME LIFE IN CHINA |Has it ever occurred to you that every re- ligion that the world has ever made that has been worth propagating, was made by the Asiatic ? Where are the religions made by your ancestors, Greek, Roman, Teuton, Slav, Norman, Anglo-Saxon ? Only the Asiatics have been, and for that matter are, religious. The Jew is religious, you are not. The Hindoo is religious, you are not. The Mohammedan is religious, you are not. Begin to talk religion to an American or European business man, and he closes up like a clam. Why ? You are talking about something he knows nothing about. Talk to a Hindoo, a Mohammedan, or a Jew — not an Americanized or Europeanized Jew, but an Asiatic Jew — and he will talk religion as he takes his food. You are not religious — you are intellectual — and the type of your civilization is material, while his is moral or religious. You seek for the means of living, he seeks for the end of life. You think in terms of atoms, molecules, corpuscles, microbes, bacteria, electrons ; he thinks in terms of eternity, infinity, right, duty, gods, demons. You make sciences, he makes religions. One day as I came along the street of Peking I saw a Buddhist priest, boxed up in a little four-by-four shanty, with a piece of iron a foot long and two-fifths of an inch in diameter — about the size of an ordinary poker — stuck through his two cheeks and his mouth, to RELIGION 125 induce the people to contribute money for the support of his temple, and for repairs. You ask, Are the Chinese religious ? I answer, No, not as the Jew and the Hindoo are religi- ous. So far as I can discover (and I have studied the matter for almost a quarter of a century) , the Chinese have never made a religion of their own, nor an idol to worship. Their] two native systems — Taoism and Confucianism,! with Moism — are simply systems of morality, in which they try to discover man's relation to man in government, in society, in business, in the family ; and they neither manufactured nor worshipped idols until the Emperor Ming Ti, about a.d. 65, introduced Buddhism from India. The Chinese are, therefore, moralists, and be it said to their credit that they have developed the biggest (observe, I do not say the best) moral system the world has ever known, and so the two oldest governments in the world to-day are the result of Confucianism. . But all men are religious, and so the Chinese are. All men have reason and an intellectual nature which links them with things ; a con- science and a moral nature which links them with their fellow-men ; and faith and a religious nature which links them with God. And when psychologists begin to study man, mind, self, in this threefold way, psychology will begin to be a science — not till then. The Chinese are religious, but not like the Hindoos. The Chinese disposition to worship — 126 HOME LIFE IN CHINA his religious nature — has been largely misdirected toward his fellow-men. He worships his an- cestors, but of this we will speak in another chapter. But the want of a native religion gave Buddhism its opportunity, and between the first and the sixth centuries it was estab- lished all over the empire. But now a non-scientific people cannot understand the laws and forces of nature, and attribute them to spirits, gods, or demons. And so the Chinese, after the introduction of Buddhism, began to substitute idols, by the worship of which they hoped to avoid the calamities of nature's laws or their own neglect. It never occurred to the Oriental that cholera, or any of the great Asiatic plagues, is the result of dirt, and so they make an image and worship that to avoid the disease. In a village near our North China summer resort, during August of 1905, the cholera ap- peared, and the people worshipped the idols, even going to the extent of celebrating their New- Year's festival, which does not occur until January or February, in the hope that they might pacify, cajole, or deceive the god into leaving the village. But all to no purpose. Finally they made a paper image and carried it over to the European settlement of our summer resort, where they left it. It so hap- pened that a gentleman had been brought from Tang Shan ill the day before, and about the time the image was brought from the village RELIGION 127 he died, and the people were convinced that they had hit upon the right idea. The cholera was rife throughout the whole country, and people were dying by the hundreds. One of the young men from another village was calling at our house, and I said to him : " How is the plague in your village ? " " We have had no plague," he replied. " How is that ? " I inquired. " Well," said he, " our village elders clean out our village well every spring, and then wrap up a big package of medicine in lotus leaves, and put it in the well, and we never have cholera." " And why don't the others do that ? " I inquired. " Who knows ? " was his only answer. The kinds of worship in China are so numer- ous that we can only name a part of them here. In the first place, there is the worship of the Emperor, who is the parent of the people, and does worship at the Temple of Heaven, the Temple of Earth, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Moon, as well as the Temple of Agriculture. These are five great national temples. The Temple of Heaven has two altars, the open and the covered altars, both in a large enclosure, occupying almost a square mile of the southern city of Peking. The covered altar is the most beautiful piece of architecture in China — a triple-roofed circular dome over an altar about ninety feet in dia- 128 HOME LIFE IN CHINA meter, covered with blue encaustic tiles, each made to fit its place, though made a thousand miles away. The open altar has three terraces, of white marble, and is the most sublime conception I know of anywhere in the world — a circular altar, ninety-nine feet in diameter, with three tiers of nine steps each, on the east, west, north, and south, leading from the ground to the top terrace. In the centre of this top terrace is a circular stone, around which are nine circles of stones, of 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, &c, to 81, or 9 times 9 in the outer circle. When the Emperor kneels on the round stone in the centre, at sunrise, there is nothing to cover him but the dome of the heavens while he prays to Shang Ti — the Emperor Above — or the God of the Universe. There are no idols, no images, no pictures, nothing but the Emperor and his God. In another chapter we have referred to the worship at the Temple of Agriculture. Similar worship is done at the temples of the Earth, Sun, and Moon. These are situated — the Earth to the north of Peking, the Sun at the east, the Moon at the west, and the Temple of Agriculture in the southern city, opposite the Temple of Heaven. Each has a great open altar, surrounded by groves of cedar, in which are located the various buildings which contain the ancestral tablets or other fixtures for the altar during worship. _«..--. A^B%* A SAGE IN WINTKK RELIGION 129 Next to the imperial worship comes that done by the officials. This is at the Confucian temple. Here, as in the other temples, at certain seasons the officials offer sheep and pigs, as cattle are offered at the Temple of Heaven. This worship is done only by the officials and scholars. Next comes the worship at the Buddhist temples, where men or women at any time may go and burn a bit of incense, and offer a prayer to whatever particular idol one feels inclined to invoke. Here we find the Three Precious Ones, the Goddess of Mercy (whom some think is an adaptation of the Virgin Mary), the Goddess that gives children (to whom the childless wife often prays with all earnestness for years to no avail), or any one of ten thou- sand other bits of clay or wood or gilded bronze. The mountains are filled with these temples, which we shall have occasion to mention under " Summer Resorts," though to some of these temples, such as Wu Tai Shan, or Tai Shan, tens of thousands of men and women make long pilgrimages every year. I have seen them going hundreds of miles, measuring their length on the dusty road at every third step. As they near the temple, passing up the mountain side, they purchase great staffs which they carry back to their homes. After this we have the special kinds of worship for illness, for special sorrows, for childlessness, for deliverance from plague, or 9 130 HOME LIFE IN CHINA at wells, at shrines, at trees that have ch'eng shen, become divine on account of their age ; or they worship the fox or the dragon. In every kitchen, as we have indicated in another chapter, they have the Kitchen God, which they worship at the New Year. In every home they have their ancestral tablets, which we will have occasion to refer to under "Ancestral Worship," while every shop, or store, or factory, however large or small, has its God of Wealth, and of all the gods that of the Kitchen and of Wealth are worshipped with most devotion. CHAPTER XIV FAMILY CEREMONIES A MONG the most interesting family cere- /-\ monies are those connected with the * *■ New Year, the birth of a child, birth- days, feast days, and the various festivals. We have already described on page 107 the attentions paid to the Kitchen God in the palace. This is done with various modifica- tions throughout the whole empire. On the twenty-third of the last moon, seven days before the New Year, the people prepare dishes of candy, and place it before the Kitchen God, whom they then proceed to worship. Then they smear his mouth with sweets of various kinds, depending upon whether they are in the city or the country, in the north, centre, or south, after which they burn him, and, amid the firing off of crackers, this deity of the culinary department is sent up in a chariot of smoke and fire to a conference with the king of the celestial regions. The idea of smearing his mouth with sweets is that he might not say anything but honeyed words, or that his lips may stick together and so prevent his talking too much. This is a habit 131 132 HOME LIFE IN CHINA a Chinese has in dealing with all kinds of con- ditions. He will give presents to a person from whom he expects to ask a favour until he puts them under such obligations that they find it difficult to refuse. From this time until the end of the year business men are doing everything in their power to get money to pay off all their debts, for a Chinese cannot pass over the year (kuo nien) until all his obligations are paid or pro- vided for, a system which I would commend to our friends of the West. In all homes, or if not in the homes, from all bakeries, the people bake or buy small cakes, made of rice, flour, and sugar, which, with fruit and dates, they put on plates, and place before the image of Buddha. This is the one time of the year when everybody is religious. New door-gods are pasted upon the doors. These consist of coloured prints of the reputed like- nesses of two great warriors of ancient times, who were supposed to be defenders not only of the country but of the home. Fresh mottoes are written on strips of red paper, and pasted upon the door-posts and gate-posts ; and on the wall across the street, just opposite the front gate, is a strip of red paper on which is written Ch'u men chien hsi, " As you go out of the gate may you meet happiness." For a week at New Year's time all shops are closed, and for two weeks all shops that can afford it do not open their doors. Some have FAMILY CEREMONIES 133 a small square opening in the door, much like the " General Delivery " in a post-office, through which they serve customers who must have provisions. Some have bands of music which keep up a constant entertainment throughout the day and long into the night. New Year's eve and night is a pandemonium of fire-crackers and calls and barking of dogs, while the first day of the year the streets are deserted, with wrappers of bursted crackers scattered all about, and it is the only day of all the year that looks like Sunday. The people are either feasting or sleeping in their homes — probably both. The second night there are more crackers, but only during the early part of the night, and the next day they begin their New Year's calls. This calling is kept up for a week or ten days, during which time every man who possesses one, or who can afford it, rents a beautiful garment and hat, and goes to wish his friends a " happy New Year." This is the time also when everybody who can afford it sends a present to all his friends — it is the Christmas season of present-giving in China. And the same thing occurs there as here, as is indicated by the following para- graph from the Princess Der Ling : " The court ladies also exchanged presents among themselves, which often led to con- fusion and amusement. On this occasion I had received some ten or a dozen different presents, and when it came my turn to give 134 HOME LIFE IN CHINA something, I decided to use some of the presents I had received from my companions. To my surprise, the next day I received from one of the court ladies an embroidered hand- kerchief which I recognized as the identical handkerchief I had myself sent her as my New Year's present. On mentioning the fact, this ladv turned and said : ' Well that is rather funny. I was just wondering what had made you return the shoes I sent you.' Of course everybody laughed very heartily, and still further merriment was caused when, on com- paring all the presents, it was found that quite half of us had received back our own presents. In order to settle the matter, we threw them all into a heap and divided them as evenly as possible, everybody being satisfied with the result." Aren't they a tremendously human lot of folks ? On the morning of the last day of the year the people worship their ancestors and the Buddhas, and on New Year's Day they worship the God of Wealth for having brought them safely through another year. A Westerner cannot understand the importance that an Oriental, held in the clutches of poverty, attaches to " passing over the year." The New Year celebration usually ends with the Feast of Lanterns on the fifteenth day of the first moon. I wish I could take my readers down Lantern Street in Peking between the first and fifteenth and let them have a view FAMILY CEREMONIES 135 of the shops. Lanterns of all sizes and de- scriptions are displayed for sale. Some repre- sent animals, some flowers, some fruit, some in the shape of dragons, all made of cotton or silk gauze, painted in the most gorgeous and beautiful colours at the command of the artists. Some of these lanterns are really works of art, and are very expensive. Artists have been working for months getting ready for this feast. Sometimes one sees a lantern in the form of a dragon ten to fifteen feet long, carried on ten or a dozen poles, with some- one going in front with another in the form of a pearl which the dragon seeks to devour. The fireworks at New Year's time are just for noise, but during the feast of lanterns they have beautiful displays of fireworks. They re- present scenes in Chinese history, mythological tales, grape vines, wisteria blossoms, and all kinds of flowers. This is in some respects the most beautiful festival of the year. After this comes the spring festival of ploughing and planting, and the rearing of silkworms, which we have described elsewhere, and which need not be repeated here. Almost every month has its festivals. On the third of the third moon the fairies come to visit their votaries. On the fifth of the fifth moon is the Dragon Boat festival, in memory of one of the patriotic officials of ancient times, who threw himself into the river because he failed to save his prince, since which time the Chinese wrap 136 HOME LIFE IN CHINA rice in corn blades and throw it into the river. The people eat these balls of rice at this season. On the seventh of the seventh moon they celebrate the festival of the two stars, Nin Lang, the Cow-herd, a large star in Capricorn, and Chih Nii, the Spinning Maiden, a Lyra, who are supposed to be the patrons of agri- culture and weaving, and who, according to one of China's most beautiful fairy tales, were at one time husband and wife. As a result of a neglect of their duties after their marriage, they were separated by the Heavenly River — the Milky Way — and were allowed to come together but once a year, the seventh of the seventh moon. As there was no bridge on which to cross the river, the magpies hovered wing to wing, and on their backs the fairy feet of the spinning maiden was able to cross to her husband. They could remain together but for the day, and when evening came the magpies again formed the bridge for her to return. They were sad at having to part, and shed copious showers of tears, which is the cause of the heavy rains that occur at this season of the year. In the homes at this time the people drop tiny cambric needles upon the surface of basins of water on which the sun is shining. These cast shadows across the bottom of the basin. The shadows take different forms according to the positions of the needles. If they take certain prescribed forms, the person casting in FAMILY CEREMONIES 137 the needles is supposed to be both clever and lucky, while if they take other forms they are supposed to be despised by the gods as being ignorant. At this time the people worship these two stars. On the eighth and the fifteenth of the eighth moon, which is the mid-autumn feast, the Chinese celebrate the Moon Festival. The Chinese suppose that the moon is never round except on this particular day. The Chinese worship the moon at this time, and in every home or bakery they prepare and eat a small round cake. This festival is sometimes cele- brated by theatrical performances, which de- scribe the following scene in the moon : In the moon there dwells a beautiful maiden named Ch'ang O., her only companion being a jade rabbit (white), whose time is spent pulveriz- ing the elixir of life. The rabbit on one occasion escaped from the moon, came down to the earth, and became a beautiful girl. Now in the sun there is a golden one-legged cock, which when he learned that the rabbit had gone down to the earth, left the sun, came down to the earth, and transformed himself into a handsome prince. Of course, they soon met and fell in love. Now on the earth there was a red rabbit, which, when he learned what was transpiring, changed himself into a prince, and began to make love to the maiden, with the object of supplanting the cock. As he was unable to change the redness of his face, he found himself 138 HOME LIFE IN CHINA unsuccessful, and the sun-cock had things all his own way. When the maiden of the moon dis- covered that her rabbit was gone, she sent her heavenly soldiers to capture her rabbit and carry her back to the moon, and when the cock was left alone there was nothing for him to do but to return to the sun, where he remains to-day. The festivals that are most intimately con- nected with the family have to do with birth- days and the life of the children. On the third day after a child is born it is given its first bath. The special women friends of the family are in- vited to witness the ceremony, and anyone who fails to appear on this day may not see the mother for a month, lest her presence take away the mother's milk and leave the babe to grow up a puny, sickly child. The second festival in the life of a child is when it is a month old. On this day the mother is supposed to be up and able to receive her guests. The head of the child is shaved before the guests arrive and the infant is on exhibition. A feast is prepared by the parents, and presents are brought by the guests. These presents may be lacquered boxes in which are cakes in the form of the peach of longevity, or round cakes in which the character for long life is stamped or written with red ink ; or boxes filled with ver- micelli, which when cooked is in long strings, in- dicative of a wish that the child may have a long life. The maternal grandmother makes the child its first suit of clothes. FAMILY CEREMONIES 139 When the child is a year old they have still another feast. The friends gather as before, bringing all kinds of appropriate presents for the child. During the day a number of things are arranged on a platter, and the child is al- lowed to see them and to make a selection. The first thing it takes in its hand is supposed to indicate the profession or calling it will follow. If it chooses a pen, an inkstone, or a book, it will be a scholar ; if an abacus, a merchant or a banker ; if any kind of a tool, a tradesman. If the child is a girl, a different class of things will be placed on the platter — scissors, thimble, or other things that will be appropriate to indi- cate the scope of a girl's life. When the child is old enough to begin to study, the calendar, and the soothsayers if necessary, are consulted, and a lucky day is selected, and after worshipping the ancestral tablets and that of Confucius, it enters upon its interminable task. When born it was given a milk name such as " got-a-man," " got-a-moun- tain," " got-a-fish," or " sheep," " cow," " dog," or " pig." When he enters school, his teacher selects a school name, usually of two characters, and a peculiarity of this name is that all the members of that generation — all the cousins — have one of those characters in his name. This will be best understood when I say that the given name of the great Viceroy, Li Hung-chang, was Hung-chang, while his brother, also a viceroy, was Han-chang, the character chang being a part 140 HOME LIFE IN CHINA of the name of all the boys of their generation. Later in life, his friends give him an honorific title which harmonizes with his school name, and which they use whenever they refer to him, never calling him by his milk name or his school name. CHAPTER XV MARRIAGE CEREMONIES A LL the arrangements for the marriage of Z-\ boys and girls in China are made by their -*■ ■** parents, with the assistance of a middle- man, who, by the way, is very often a woman. It is usually the father who does most towards the selecting of the husband for his daughter, while the mother takes charge of the selection of the wife for her son. This is the most natural thing to do, for the father knows or can easily find out about the boys, while the mother, on the same principle, can most easily learn the charac- ter of the girl. Besides, since the girl is to come to live with her in her home, it is important that she be satisfactory to her mother-in-law. The marriage of a girl is more important than that of a boy, because with her it is once and once only. " Once you marry 'tis for ever, once you may become a wife," we are told all through Chinese literature. An exception is made to this in the case of a widow under fifty, whose son is under fifteen and not old enough to manage the busi- ness. The Record of Rites says, " Once mated with her husband, all her life she will not change 141 142 HOME LIFE IN CHINA her feelings of duty to him ; hence, when the husband dies she will not marry again." But as we have indicated, if her age be under fifty, and that of her son below fifteen, while at the same time she has no close relatives on her father's side to take the economic re- sponsibility off her shoulders, she may marry again. It should be remembered that it is not the practice of the parents to disregard the wishes of their children, though, as a matter of fact, the children can have but little opinion about the matter. They have had no love affairs, no ex- perience, and can have no choice, and so they have to trust their parents and their go-between, though Chinese literature is not without in- stances of young people who have fallen in love and married. The one story that I remember, which every Chinese knows and approves of, and which breaks all Chinese ideas of propriety in this matter, is the following : The poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, while wandering about the country with his guitar, was once met at an inn by a wealthy merchant, who was so entranced with his poetry and music that he in- vited him to go with him to his home. Now it happened that the merchant had a beautiful widowed daughter, who was as much entranced with Ssu-Ma's poetry as her father had been, while the poet at the same time fell desperately in love with her at first sight. It is not neces- sary to ask how they made known their affec- MARRIAGE CEREMONIES 143 tion for each other — " hearts have tongues that are not made of flesh." At any rate, they found means of communicating, and finally eloped. They were poor, and when the father discovered that they had fled together he disinherited his daughter, and would have nothing to do with his son-in-law. Ssu-Ma finally opened a wine-shop in which his wife served his customers, while he enter- tained them with poetry and music. Officials passing along the road, stopping at the inn on their way to the capital, heard the music and poetry, and carried the news to the Emperor, who forthwith ordered the poor poet to appear before the imperial presence, and it was not long until his fame had spread to all parts of the realm. Of course his father-in-law heard of him, and was as anxious to be reconciled to his son- in-law as his daughter was to be forgiven by her 1 father. This, of course, was easily brought , about, and the Chinese tell this as an ideal love ; affair between a young widow and a poet who I eloped. There were no rites performed at their i engagement or their wedding. There are six rites for marriage. After the family of the girl has accepted the proposal, the I first rite to be performed is " giving a choice." This consists of the father and mother, through the intervention of a go-between, selecting, and receiving the consent of her parents, in case all other things are favourable, to become the wife of their son. 144 HOME LIFE IN CHINA The second rite is " inquiring into the name " of the girl. No one is allowed to marry a girl having a name like his own. Smith could not marry Smith in China, lest she by chance might be his relative, and the Chinese say that one should not marry his relative though she be re- moved by a hundred generations. Thus it is that a prince may not marry a princess, and even the Emperor must marry a commoner. The above rites are consummated at the same time. The third rite is " giving the lucky result " of divination. The Chinese have twelve animals, under one or the other of which everyone must be born, as well as a definite system of astrology, and the star under which one happens to be born may have a good deal towards quieting one* s mind in case she has a difference of opinion with her husband. Now it is evident that one born under the fox could not marry one born under the chicken. And so all these things have to be decided before the wedding is finally settled upon. The fourth rite is " giving engagement " pre- sents. These consist of a bundle of silk and two pieces of deer-skin, which may be used for cloth- ing. The bundle of silk contains five rolls, three black and two crimson. The fifth rite is " inquiring about the date " of the calendar, and the selection of a lucky day. MARRIAGE CEREMONIES 145 The Astronomical Board, in making the annual calendar, decides upon the lucky and unlucky days, and no sane person will think of marrying, or burying a friend, upon an unlucky day. In any city in China, on certain days the streets will be thronged with funerals and weddings, or long processions of wedding presents such as we have described under the chapter on marriage. The sixth rite is that of "■ personal receiving," an act of the bridegroom himself in ancient times. He was expected to go to the bride's home and receive her himself. No one was exempt from this rite, not even the Emperor himself. This, however, is not done now. The bridegroom sends a sedan chair in which the bride is brought to his home. He meets the chair, taps on it with his fan, bows to her atten- dants, then her women take her into the house, and his first act is to remove her veil. The girl may have a good deal to say as to the importance of these rites. In the Book of Poetry there is a poem written by a heroic girl. She had promised to marry a man of Teng, and his family wanted to receive her before the rites of marriage had been completed. She re- fused to allow them to do so, on the ground that marriage is a most sacred thing, and cannot be consummated without the full observance of rites. His family prosecuted her and brought her to court. But she insisted that if all but one present had been given and all but one rite 10 146 HOME LIFE IN CHINA had been performed, she would not leave her home even if she sacrificed her life. With the exception of the rite of engagement, the other five are each accompanied by a goose. Other wedding ceremonies will be found under Chapter VIII on marriage. CHAPTER XVI FUNERAL CEREMONIES THE most expensive thing about a man in China is his funeral, and perhaps the Last expensive thing about a child. During the old regime the very poor not infrequently wrapped the dead bodies of little infants up in old matting or old cloth, and laid them out on certain street corners, where a man with a black cart drawn by a black cow passed along every morning, gathered them up, drew them out of the city, and buried them all in one hole. It would not be surprising to find those same poor people go hopelessly into debt in conduct- ing the funeral ceremonies of their parents. This, of course, is easily understood. One has to be associated with another a certain length of time before very much impression is made, and so few funeral rites are ever paid anywhere in the world to still-born infants. As to the clothing and coffins used I wish to quote Dr. Chen Huan-chang. He says : " At the ceremony of ' slighter dressing ' of the dead, the sheet for a ruler's body is embroidered ; for that of a great official, white silk ; for that of a student, black silk ; each has one sheet. But 147 148 HOME LIFE IN CHINA there are nineteen suits of clothes for each of them ; a suit is made up of a long robe and a shorter one placed over it, and there must be the upper garment together with the lower garment. At the ' fuller dressing,' each of them has two sheets ; but a ruler has one hundred suits of clothes ; a great official, fifty ; and a student, thirty.. For the coffins, the longest or outermost coffin of a ruler is eight inches thick, the next six inches, and the innermost four inches. The larger coffin of a great official of the highest grade is eight inches thick, and the inner six inches ; for one of the lowest grade, the dimen- sions are six inches and four ; the coffin of a student is six inches thick. For the outer shell of a coffin, the ruler uses pine ; a great official, cypress ; a student, various kinds of woods. The shell of a coffin for the common people should be five inches thick, the coffin four " ; but as a matter of fact, we find them all thicknesses, from a half or three-quarters of an inch for paupers up to six or eight inches for the wealthy. One of the most appropriate presents of a son to his father or mother when they are old is a coffin, and one very often sees a present of this kind in a shed or room in the courts of the middle classes. There are certain contributions also made at the time of a funeral. According to the Canon of Rites these contributions may be divided into three kinds. First, contributions for the dead. Some are called " shroud," such as the sheets FUNERAL CEREMONIES 149 and clothes. Some are called " gifts," such as the " spiritual vessels." The value of these con- tributions depends upon the rank or wealth or intimacy of the contributor. Second, the con- tributions for the mourner. These are called " helps," and are usually in the form of money or other gifts which will prevent the mourner from going too deep in debt. Third, the con- tributions for both the dead and the mourner ; such, for instance, as silk, carriages, horses, sheep, &c. These are used both for the obse- quies, and for the financial assistance of the family. " By these contributions, society is interwoven like a net, and wealth is distributed to and fro like the tide." It will be observed that these funeral rites are of four kinds : ethical, aesthetic, social, and eco- nomic. Notice them first from the ethical point of view. The whole underlying foundation of the Confucian code is filial piety. To be filial to a parent while living is easy, but one's genuine affection is best shown when the parent is dead, and hence exhibited in his treatment of his parent's burial. But the expensive funeral cannot be accounted for on ethical grounds alone. There is a social or aesthetic side. How much of our expense in life would be saved were it not for the necessity of appearing well in society. How much of our expense in death might also be saved were it not for the fact that our friends would lose face if we were carried to our grave in an inexpensive 150 HOME LIFE IN CHINA casket. It is partly because they love us, but more largely because society demands it, or because our own sense of the fitness of things demands it. It is expensive to be civilized. But the fourth reason for an expensive funeral is the economic. There are men who make a business of burying people. They learn their business so thoroughly, they can do it in such a genteel way, that we prefer to have them take charge of it. Besides, we do not care to take charge of such things ourselves. Our hearts are sore. We are willing to sit down with this one person, or let some intimate friend or relative sit down with this person, and say how much we are willing to give for a nice funeral, and then allow him to take charge of it. How differently we treat a funeral from a birth — though for every birth we know that there must be a funeral ; but though we rejoice at the birth, we hope that someone else may have charge of the funeral. Now it is to the interest of the one who has charge of it, to surround it with as many rites as possible, for people will spend a larger amount of money if we can get them to do it in driblets. The shrewd business man will not, but then most people are not shrewd business men. And so, the Chinese have a host of other funeral rites. For instance, when a person of note died, espe- cially under the old regime, a large catafalque was placed in the middle of the street — the largest highway at the mouth of his own hutung, or lane — where it was left for a week or ten days, FUNERAL CEREMONIES 151 while everybody, great or small, had to drive down on the side walk in order to pass. His family had to pay the funeral director for that display. Again, the family all dress in white for some weeks or months, which, while it is in itself inexpensive, is an additional expense to what they would have but for this ceremony. After the catafalque has been removed, the family bring to this same spot houses, horses, carts, servants, sedan chairs, rolls of paper-silk, all made of paper and broom-corn stalks, to- gether with everything that they can think of that pleased the departed while in this life, arrange them neatly together, and send them all up to heaven in smoke and flame — or a chariot of fire — where they may serve the spirit of their friend. This is an expensive bonfire, for men have spent weeks in preparing these various paraphernalia, but it is the custom of the country, and may be a contribution from some friend of the family who feels that this must not be neglected. Then there must be a certain number of bearers to carry the coffin. The Emperor Kuang Hsu was carried to his grave by not less than six hundred pole-bearers, while the poor beggar who dies on the street may be car- ried out of the city on the shoulders of two men, though his body be twice as heavy as that of his late Majesty. As the funeral passes along the street, round pieces of paper with a square hole in the centre, made in the shape of copper 152 HOME LIFE IN CHINA cash, will be scattered along the road, or tossed up into the air, where it will be scattered by the breeze, for the future use of the spirit. And after he is buried the friends will visit the ceme- tery at least once a year, and send ingots of sil- vered or gilt paper to the spirit of the departed in that very convenient chariot of fire. But the most expensive thing about the funeral of one's father or mother to an official is that he must give up his official position, and go into a period of mourning for at least three years. And it has not infrequently happened that officials have come to the European phy- sicians and begged them to keep their father or mother alive, so that they may still retain their office. Now it should be remembered that the Chinese make no distinctions in the obsequies of their parents, whether they be father or mother. Men and women fare the same. After Mencius had buried his mother, who, by the way, is one of the most famous women in all Chinese his- tory, his pupil, Chung Yii, asked about the woods of the coffin, which seemed too good. Mencius replied : " Anciently there was no rule for the size of either the inner or the outer coffin. In middle antiquity (1900 to 1100 B.C.) the inner coffin was made seven inches thick, and the outer one the same. This was done by all, from the Em- peror to the common people, and not simply for the beauty of the appearance, but because they FUNERAL CEREMONIES 153 thus satisfied the natural feeling of their hearts. If prevented by statutory regulations from making their coffins in this way, men cannot have the feeling of pleasure. If they have not the money to make them in this way, they can- not have the feeling of pleasure. When they were not prevented, and had the money, all the ancients used this style. Why should I alone not do so ? Moreover, is there no satisfaction to the natural feelings of a man, in preventing the earth from getting near to the body of his dead ? I have heard that the superior man will not, for all the world, be niggardly to his parents." CHAPTER XVII ANCESTOR -WORSHIP ANCESTOR - WORSHIP for many cen- /-\ turies has been the state worship — the **■ *• universal worship of the Chinese. Some were Buddhists, some Taoists, some Confucian- ists, some Mohammedans, but all were ancestor- worshippers. In a sense this is a species of re- ligion, but it is more especially a social or ethical custom. It is largely for the purpose of de- veloping that one great principle of all the Chinese civilization, the foundation of all the Chinese social and ethical system — filial piety. No one can understand China and the Chinese until he has burned into his thought the fact that filial piety lies at the base — nay, is the base, the corner stone, the whole foundation, one might almost say — of the whole Chinese domestic, social, religious, and civic life. The Chinese have what they call the Doctrine of Name. It is based upon certain Confucian sayings, such as : " The superior man hates that his name will not be praised after his death." Again he says : " When we have established our personality and diffused our principles, so as to make our name famous in future ages, and there- by glorify our parents : this is the end of filial 154 ANCESTOR-WORSHIP 155 piety." Mr. Chen Huan-chang tells us that " The relation between father and son is the strongest tie of Chinese society, and it is the basis of Confucius' philosophy and religion." The affection of a father for his son, Mr. Chen assures us, is stronger than that of a husband for his wife. Then taking this natural love as a basis, Confucius establishes the doctrine of filial piety, the Canon of which thus sums up the duties of a son : " The service which a filial son renders his parents is as follows : In his general conduct to them, he manifests the utmost reverence ; in his nourishing of them, his endeavour is to give them the utmost pleasure ; when they are ill, he feels the greatest anxiety ; in mourning for them dead, he exhibits every demonstration of grief ; in sacrificing to them, he displays the utmost solemnity. When a son is complete in these five things, he may be pronounced able to serve his parents." But the last analysis of it all is the desire on the part of every man to pre- serve his name for future generations, and, if he is not able to perform great things, and thus be remembered by posterity, he at least may be remembered by a son, a grandson, a great-grand- son, and so on ad infinitum, in the hope that some- one some time, in his line, may make a lasting name for the family. For the individual, then, ancestor-worship preserves his name, and for the ethical system it develops the doctrine of filial piety. 156 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Now for the method. When a man decides to build a house, his first consideration should be the ancestral temple. This should be built before the house. The sacrificial dress should be prepared before his own wardrobe, and even though he was cold he should not wear the sacri- ficial robes for protection. Then he must have sacrificial vessels, and these should be provided before those that he uses for his own family. These vessels should not be sold for the relief of the family in time of poverty. In other words, the things necessary for the worship of their ancestors should take precedence of their daily necessities. Then they should have offerings — and these include everything that heaven and earth produce, and should be offered according to the seasons. Of course, poor families cannot have a temple, they may not be able to afford sacrificial robes nor vessels, but they must have tablets, and a sacred place in the home for the tablets, and must perform this worship accord- ing to the times and the seasons, the same as those in better circumstances. Nor is anyone exempt. According to the Law Code of the Ch'ing Dynasty (the Manchu dynasty) all the monks and nuns of the Budd- hist and Taoist temples were required to kneel before their parents, to worship their ancestors, and to follow the system of mourning prescribed for the people. If they did not obey this law, they might be punished with one hundred blows with the long stick, and be driven from their ANCESTOR-WORSHIP 157 monastery to their home. This shows the im- portance the Chinese attached to ancestor- worship. They allowed everyone to have perfect freedom of belief, but they compelled all to per- form these social and ethical duties. " There- fore, according to this view of the Chinese, ancestor-worship is not a religious rite, but a social and ethical obligation." Now we may learn another thing about Chinese customs and ideas. God, according to the Confucian teaching, is the common father of all mankind ; while each man is a sort of com- panion to God, but his vicegerent or deputy on earth for the propagation of the race. And so Confucius says : "By the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, we are to serve the Supreme God ; and, by the ceremonies of the ancestral temple, we are to worship the an- cestors. One who understands the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the meaning of the several sacrifices to ancestors, will find the governing of the kingdom as easy as to look into his palm." We learned in Chapter XIII that the Emperor, as the civic father of the people, stands in this double relation. He worships God at the Tem- ples of Heaven and Earth, and is the only person in the empire who may properly do so, while at the same time he worships his ancestors, and the Emperor who performs all these rites and cere- monies in a proper way may find it as easy to govern a kingdom as to look into his palm. 158 HOME LIFE IN CHINA However this be, we learn that he is the only one in the empire who is allowed to worship Heaven and Earth, and that the Chinese are therefore not a religious but an ethical people, whose whole concern is their relation to each other. Does Confucius believe in the soul ? That he does, is evidenced by the fact that it is the soul to which the worship is directed. As soon as the dead is buried the soul at once returns to the home, and is represented by the ancestral tablet. This is nothing more than a small board, made in the form of a miniature grave-stone, which thereafter represents the departed one. Of course, the soul could not dwell in the tablet, else how could there be so many tablets of Con- fucius in so many different Confucian temples ? Confucius himself says : " The physical body goes downwards, but the intelligent spirit is on high." Again he says : " The bones and flesh moulder below, and, hidden away, become the earth of the fields ; but the spirit issues forth, and is displayed on high in a condition of glorious brightness." However, Confucius does not try to prove the existence of the soul, for the Record of Rites tells us that : " The flesh of the victim may be pre- sented raw, and as a whole, or cut up in pieces, or sodden, or thoroughly cooked ; but how can we know whether the spirit does enjoy it ? It is simply that the sacrificer shows his reverence to the utmost of his power." The sacrifice is, therefore, not so much for the sake of the de- ANCESTOR-WORSHIP 159 parted spirit as for the filial development of the son. " If the soul is unknowable, why does Con- fucius make ancestor-worship necessary ? It is only on the ethical ground. As we have already said that filial piety is the chief virtue of his moral system, should a son stop observing such an important principle after the death of his parents ? Certainly not. It is by ancestor- worship that the nourishment of parents is fol- lowed up and filial duty to them perpetuated. Confucius says : ' Serving the dead as they were served when alive, and serving the departed as if they were still abiding among us ; this is the summit of filial conduct.' Therefore, ancestor- worship is exclusively for the sake of virtue, and the worshipper does not seek anything for his own benefit. This," adds Mr. Chen, from whom this quotation is taken, " is the noblest character of the religion of Confucius." We have tried to give in this chapter the an- cestor-worship of the Chinese from their own point of view. It is impossible to understand it clearly without going into their homes, seeing their tablets, or their temples, and witnessing the importance they attach to this cult. One of the officials, whose sons one of my pupils was teach- ing, once came to Mark (my pupil) and said : " Teacher Liu, there is just one objection I have to your honourable religion." (Mark is a Christian.) " Yes," answered Mark, " what is it ? " 160 HOME LIFE IN CHINA " You do not worship your ancestors," said the official. " You do worship your ancestors, do you not ? " said Mark. " I do, regularly," answered the gentleman. " You worship your father ? " " Yes." " And your grandfather ? " " Yes." " And your great-grandfather ? " " Yes." " And your great-great-grandfather ? " " K'e pu chih tao t'a shih shut (I do not know who he was)." " Well now, will not the spirit of your great- great-grandfather feel grieved to know that his son, and grandson, and great-grandson are wor- shipped while he is neglected ? " " Met hsiang tao (I never thought of that)." " Well now, we just worship our Father in Heaven, and that takes in all our ancestors," ex- plained Mark, and the official never raised any further objections. CHAPTER XVIII SERVANTS FEW Americans know how to serve, and few know how to be served. I think I should be inclined to put Australians, so far as I know them, and Canadians in the same class with the Americans. In these countries there is so much room, and so much opportunity for a man to be a man — a woman to be a woman — that no one is inclined to be a servant. I have heard Englishmen boast — and, as my father was an Englishman, I am not inclined to make dis- paraging remarks about that side of our house — but I have heard Englishmen boast of the fact that they have been servants in certain families for twenty or thirty years. I doubt if you could find one American among her whole ninety mil- lions, who would be inclined to boast, or even admit a fact of that kind. But the Englishman knows how to serve, and he knows how to be served. But in the matter of service and serving even the Englishman must take a second place. For the Chinaman has specialized service in a way that it has never been done in Great Britain. We sometimes think we are specialists in the II 161 162 HOME LIFE IN CHINA West. We have our eye-specialists — a species of servants, of course, though I simply use them to illustrate what I wish to say here — though they usually combine with the eye, the ear, nose, and throat. They have not got down to a last analy- sis of specializing as the Chinese doctor has, as witness the following story, the truth of which I am not willing to vouch for, though it is told by the Chinese to illustrate the point in hand. A man had been shot with an arrow, the head of which was buried in the flesh. He tried to pull it out, but the skin had closed over the head and he could not do so. He went to a phy- sician to get him to remove it. The doctor promptly sawed the shaft off close to the skin, and then demanded his fee. " But," said the sufferer, " the head of the arrow is still inside." " Quite right," said the doctor. "I am a specialist. I deal only with outside diseases. If you want the head taken out, you will have to go to another specialist who cares for inside ailments." If you employ a cook in China, he is your big servant — ta shih fu. He takes a basket in one hand and a bird-cage in the other and goes out on the street to buy your provisions. It may be that he will dispense with the basket when he carries the bird-cage, and bring the provisions home in his sleeve. He will not allow your — or his — grocer to deliver the provisions, because that might tempt you to inquire about the price of onions, shall we say, or beefsteak — a matter SERVANTS 163 about which you are supposed to know nothing, and only the cook and the grocer understand. He is paid for his work as a cook sixteen shillings a month, he boarding himself, but he gets his pay for buying provisions, from the merchants he happens to patronize in what is known in China as a " squeeze." Of course, what he gets from the merchant comes out of your pocket, but it goes from him to the dealer and then back to him again as a legitimate percentage on every- thing he buys. I am talking now of the mission- ary's cook — a business man, a civilian, an army officer, or a member of any of the Legations, will have to pay his cook a salary proportionate to that of his own. Of course, his cook may be more expert than mine in the preparation of fancy dishes, and besides he will keep an assistant or two, whom he will pretend to pay, which makes it seem more reasonable that he demands a higher salary than mine, but as a matter of fact, he most likely only boards them with food from your table, while he teaches them to cook, and perhaps gives them a small present on feast days. Your cook may also go and assist some of his other pupils when their mistresses are giving dinners, leaving his pupil to prepare your evening meal. It ought to be said to the credit of the China- man that he makes a good cook, or that he is capable of making a good cook, for it depends largely upon whom he serves and by whom he is taught. As a usual thing he goes from place 164 HOME LIFE IN CHINA to place learning all he can from several mis- tresses until he can prepare all kinds of food, in the way in which his employer wants it pre- pared. One day one of our ladies was explain- ing to her cook how she wanted him to make the bread. Now it sometimes happens that persons undertake to explain to others what they have never done well themselves. You may have heard of people without children telling how " I would bring up that child if it were mine." The good Lord mercifully protects little folks from being brought up that way. The cook listened patiently until she had finished her ex- planation, and then asked : " T'ai t'ai tso kuo liao man ton, met yu ? Did madam ever make any bread ? When I was appointed to go to China, the first thing I did was to get the map and find where Peking is, and then I said to myself : " Well, I'll have nice collars and cuffs, at any rate." And lo and behold, when I arrived at my destination I discovered that the Chinese know nothing about laundry. All that those in America know about the art of washing they learned after they came to America. I never saw a wash-board, a wash-tub, and a flat-iron go together in China. They have tubs, and they wash clothes in them, but I doubt if any of my readers ever saw the natives indulging in a collar, a cuff, a shirt, or shirt-waist, or any other garment equally uncomfortable, that re- quired the services of a smoothing-iron. SERVANTS 165 And so we have to train our laundrymen. They train easily. It is a business that is easily learned and requires but little capital, and hence the reason why so many Chinese, when they come to America and Canada, are launderers. When they began it conflicted with no other business and they supplied a demand. All they needed was a tub or two, a wash-board, a few flat-irons, some soap, and a good deal of muscle, which they were willing to furnish, and the worst kind of an old tumble-down shack would do for their place of business, and they were ready to go to work. They were ready to do that one thing — and that alone. Did you ever take your trousers to a Chinese laundryman and ask him to press them for you ? If not, try it some time, and see if he is not a specialist even in America. I wish to say, however, that our laundryman was always willing to press my clothing, though his salary — or wages they would better be called — was fourteen shillings a month. No matter how small your family may be you require a laundryman. This was a surprise to me when I went to China. There are those in America, and perhaps England, who have be- come so accustomed to helping themselves, who will say when they read this, " Why, one could do one's own washing, couldn't they ? " I answer, " You could if you wished to sacrifice your self-respect and your influence . ' ' One of the missionaries in Peking, in order to remove the temptation to " squeeze " from his cook, took a 166 HOME LIFE IN CHINA market basket on his arm and went out to do his own buying. That was during the days when they called us all " foreign devils " — and they called him " the poor foreign devil." You may help your laundryman to wash your curtains, your doylies, your flannels, and such things as he might " ruin," but woe betide you if you at- tempt to be a washerwoman and a " teacher." If you succeed in the one you will fail in the other — and your reputation as a teacher, to say nothing of your time, is worth more than four- teen shillings a month, when he boards himself, and does better work, perhaps, than you could do. Then you must have a " boy," to sweep and dust, set the table, wash the dishes, attend to the fires, and when we were only two in ourfamily before the babies came, our boy was willing to do our washing and ironing. You ask, " How was that ? Well, he was a very stupid country boy — so stupid, and wanted the place so badly, that he would allow me to scold him without talking back. I want to add my confession here that that was more to the credit of the boy than to me. But I want to say for my own justification (and my friends will all bear me out in this) that he was awfully stupid. But I liked him, and I let him know it, and the only rule I ever made that my wife was not allowed to break was, that she must not dismiss that " boy " — and I did not let him know that. I could trust him with anything I had — with everything I had. While I was at home on furlough some of my nil I s ! IBBRHI SERVANTS 167 friends took him, but they could not get along with him — he was too stupid, they did not like him. And that is the reason why so many ser- vants do not remain with their mistresses. For when all the servants of our group decided to strike for higher wages, I went to Cheng erh — that was his name — and said : " Cheng erh, what is all this talk about the servants striking ? " " Pu chih tao (I don't know)." " What, haven't they said anything to you about it ? " " Met shuo shen mo (they have not said any- thing)." " Don't you know anything about it ? " " I have just heard that they are going to strike, but they said that Cheng erh has been so long with Mr. and Mrs. Headland that there is no use of talking to him," and it was worth all that I had ever endured from his stupidity to know that all the other servants knew that he would be faithful. We become very much attached to our " boys." Read Mrs. Conger's Letters from China, and see what they thought of their boy " Wang," and see also what reason they had for it, and how faithful he was to them. But the next Minister would not have Wang about the Legation. I am not going to find fault with the Minister — neither am I going to blame Wang. I would give a good deal to have Cheng erh with my wife and children this very minute. So would she. 168 HOME LIFE IN CHINA But the customs and laws " of my miserable country " forbid us bringing a Chinese to America to lighten our burdens. And I am not going to quarrel with our laws, for we have had one race problem, and we do not want another. But I do want Cheng erh. Then you must have a " woman " — a maid, nurse, sewing-woman, chamber-maid — anything, everything. That is the kind of a woman Hsin Nai Nai was. She was with my wife nineteen years, with the exception of the one year while we were on furlough, when she went into service with a lady who paid her just twice what we paid her. But she left that lady when we re- turned to China, where she was getting six dollars a month, and came back to us, and we raised her wages to three dollars and a half — we had only been paying her three dollars before. Hsin Nai Nai was Cheng erh's sister, and was as clever as he was stupid. And I think it was because my wife was so fond of her that made me like him. She is a young widow, rather good- looking, and refused to marry a Chinese preacher because she preferred to stay with us. She was ready to be anything, do anything for us, and I would as much have thought of scolding my wife as I would have thought of scolding Hsin Nai Nai. To show you how fond our family were of her, my little boy, whose nurse she was, once got into bed with his mother, put his arms around her neck, and hugging her close to him, SERVANTS 169 said : "Oh, mamma, I love you better than any- body — of course, I don't mean Jesus and Hsin Nai Nat." I doubt if there are any more faithful servants in the world than Chinese servants. They are Chinese — that tells the whole story — for that stands for diligence, faithfulness, politeness, loyalty, economy. During the sixteen years we were in China I think we had just one thing stolen — that was a silver butter-knife. I had dismissed the laundryman — I do not remember the reason why — though I suspected him of having friends who relieved me of two bicycles, both of which were returned through the faith- fulness of two other Chinese. For three days after I dismissed him the butter-knife could not be found, and when I paid Cheng erh — it was near the end of the month — I kept back one dollar of his wages. " How is that ? " he exclaimed. " Cheng erh," I said, " you are responsible for everything in this house. When that butter- knife is found you will get this dollar." He did not answer a word. The following day the butter-knife was on the table. " How is this ? " I asked ; " the butter-knife has been found." " Yes," he said, " it had slipped under the linen at the back of the drawer, and at last I found it." My supposition is that the laundryman had 170 HOME LIFE IN CHINA carried it away, intending to pawn it if we made no disturbance ; that the boy went to him, told him that I had cut him one dollar in his wages, and he must produce the knife ; that he pro- mised that he would make up a story which would clear him, and thus it all came about. CHAPTER XIX FOOD A STORY is told of a young man who came to Mr. Rockefeller to apply for a position. L After inquiring what he could do, Mr. Rockefeller offered him his board, clothes, and lodgings for his services. " But," said the young man, " I can't work for my board, clothes, and lodging." " That is all I get," answered the multi-millionaire . Whether the story is true or not, we cannot say, but how true it is, that all beyond board, clothes, and lodging are, for the most part, luxuries, and are liable to become temptations. The first requisite of life — the first necessity — is food, which throughout the same zone, all over the world, is practically the same. Take the map of China and put it down on the map of the United States, with Peking on Philadelphia, and the coasts of the two conti- nents, Asia and America, will almost coincide, except that China goes as far south as the point of Florida before it bends west, and China would cover the whole Gulf of Mexico down to the city of Mexico — both Canton and Hongkong being within the tropics. We may 171 172 HOME LIFE IN CHINA therefore remember that Manchuria occupies the place in Asia that New England does in America, Moukden being in the place of Boston, and the products of China in the region of Peking are the same as those in the region of Philadelphia. We have corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, wheat, barley, millet of various kinds, broom- corn, beans, water-melons, cantaloupes, cucum- bers, onions, garlic, celery, cabbage, and all kinds of vegetables ; apples, peaches, pears, plums, grapes, apricots, persimmons, and all fruits of the fortieth degree north latitude, and but very little rice or cotton. As we go south through China we find the climate and produc- tions changing just as we do in the United States, until when we get to Canton and Hongkong we have tropical fruits and productions of all kinds. When foreigners speak of Chinese food, they bunch it all in together, as though it were the same all over the country. It is decidedly not the same. When we who have been in China come home, folks talk to us as though we had nothing but rice to live on, and as though the Chinese existed on this one kind of food alone, and as though it was very poor living. Many of the Chinese would be well off if they had rice to eat. But in most of the country inns, in the north, it is quite impossible to get rice. There the only food is wheat-flour, corn-meal, millet, eggs, chicken, and onions or cabbage. The Chinese in these country places have pork and mutton, but very seldom can one get beef ; FOOD 173 though in a city like Peking one can always buy beef, mutton — the best mutton I have ever eaten — pork, fish, and chicken, and in the winter-time the Mongol market furnishes all kinds of game. When the cold winter months come — and be it understood that the climate of North China in the region of Peking is much colder in winter, and hotter in summer, than that of the same latitude of the United States or Europe, and this for the reason that the atmosphere is almost without moisture except during the months of July, August, and September, when we have a rainy season, and the sun fires at us in June rays almost like those of the tropics, while in the winter time in the north side shade, it is almost like an Arctic night. And so, I say, when the cold months come, great camel-trains of Mongol men and women bring loads of frozen game — deer, wild boar, pheasants, partridges, Mongol chicken, rabbits, and everything that grows on the moun- tains and the plains. Among the best of all this game is the wild boar, the pheasant, and the bustard — the former fed on only the cleanest food, and the latter equal if not superior to our best American turkey. They have a red haw, about the size of a crab-apple — an inch in dia- meter — which makes a sauce for bustard equal if not superior to our cranberries. These Mongols also bring large quantities of butter, sealed up in the stomachs of sheep, as we put up our bologna sausage, though foreigners, 174 HOME LIFE IN CHINA so far as I have known, have not been very good customers, perhaps because of the greasy and unbathed appearance of the merchants. The Chinese themselves use but little, if indeed they use any, butter, and they say of us that we carry about with us a butter odour. However this may be, apart from the matter of cleanliness, the Chinese do not smell like the people of Europe. This is probably due to the kinds of oils that go to make up a large portion of their foods. There are three kinds of food common to us that the Chinese, when they first come in con- tact with the foreigner, do not like. These are butter, coffee, and cheese. I have had guests who would force themselves to eat these things when I knew that the very odour of them was offensive. I remember one evening I invited Professor Lu — a very large, corpulent professor — of the Peking University to dine with us. It was the first time he had dined in a foreign home. My table boy had been with us for years, and I had never known him to be guilty of a smile while waiting at the table. During the dinner, when he passed the butter to Professor Lu, he was about to take half that was on the dish. The boy gulped, and suggested in a half-under- tone that we never used so much. Professor Lu, perhaps to justify his mistake, or perhaps to approve himself to his hostess, explained, also in a half-undertone : "lam very fond of butter." It was too much for the boy's gravity, though he did not lose his equanimity. But I have FOOD 175 never seen a boy try so hard to preserve his dignity, and be polite to his guest and a credit to his mistress. He did it, but it was a task. I have had Chinese friends say to me, " I can drink your coffee, and eat your butter, but I draw the line at your cheese." The oils used by the Chinese in their cooking, especially in the north, are largely sesame and peanut oils. At first, while passing along the street, one does not enjoy the smell of these oils, but after a time they whet up one's appetite — perhaps I should say my appetite — more than the odour of frying ham would do. Many foreigners go to China and never learn to like their food. All I have to say is that, from the deepest depths of my heart, I pity them. They do not know what they are missing in life. Many people also, when they go to Chinese inns, do not know what kind of food to ask for. I remember once, when my wife and I were about to take a country trip, I went to some of my Chinese friends and said to them : " I want to know just what are the best kinds of common, e very-day food one can get on the the inns on this particular route." " Get yang jou tsuan wan tzu," said one. I ordered them, and found them to be small balls of finely hashed mutton, about an inch in dia- meter, that had a good deal of a sausage flavour, cooked with cabbage, and swimming in the cab- bage broth. I cannot write about them now, sixteen years after, without a longing. 17G HOME LIFE IN CHINA " Get yang jou ssu," said another. I was familiar with this dish. It is mutton cut up in strings and fried with vegetables. Before putting in the meat and vegetables, they heat the frying-pan, and pour into it a bit of hsiang yu, sesame oil, which imparts a flavour that sends mutton chops back to the kitchen, and cold beef to the pantry. Indeed, where it comes to cold meats of any kind as they appear on our tables, I would as soon chew dried leather, when com- pared with the juicy, well-flavoured Chinese dishes, with their bowl of well-cooked rice. Let me confess here that you have to learn to eat Chinese food. I did not like it the first time — nor the first few times — I tried it. But it is an undertaking that richly rewards the one who learns to do it well. They have a way of baking — or cooking — large pieces of fat pork, covered with rice flour, which makes it one of the most delicious mouthfuls I have ever tasted. I am told also that it is so digestible that one can eat almost any quantity without suffering from in- digestion. I do not know how much of it one could eat without serious consequences ; I usually got it at a feast, where I was compelled to limit my own indulgence in order that I might par- take of the other good things. And let me say right here that when I attended a Chinese noon- day feast, I never was known to eat an evening meal at home. That would have been a species of sacrilege of which I would not have been guilty. I always rested at least for one night FOOD 177 in the memory of the good things of which I had partaken. It would be impossible in a short chapter like this to try to indulge in any eulogy of sharks' fins, birds'-nest soup, chicken soup, egg soup, or the delicious lotus-seed broth that one gets at certain seasons of the year. Those who do not know what birds'-nest soup is will be interested to learn that there is a bird in the south that expectorates a kind of a gelatinous substance of which it builds its nest on the sides of inaccessible cliffs, where they are very difficult to secure. It is this that makes it so expensive. Some of my friends to whom I have given this explanation, have expressed their sentiments by a peculiar curl of the lip and a twitching of the nose, and said they would not eat it if it were saliva. And then I called their attention to the fact that the bee— but you may look up the composition of honey yourself— this chapter is about Chinese foods. I wish I could give a description of any one of a number of Chinese feasts that I have attended. This would convey to the reader some idea of the food that is eaten in that particular locality. But the flavours — the flavours — how is it pos- sible to carry to your olfactory nerves flavours that will set the salivary glands to working, and put you in a gastronomic mood that would be truly mesmeric ? Why, if your arms were but wings, the flavours coming from the kitchen while you are partaking of pumpkin and water- 12 178 HOME LIFE IN CHINA melon seeds, apples, pears, and other fruit, or cubes of fruit jelly, would be like gentle breezes beneath your armpits that would carry you into the regions of celestial bliss. And then you have to be so careful not to overdo these first courses of fruit, and seeds, and nuts, or the second course of the most-deliciously sweet lotus- seed broth, on which you want to make a full meal, lest you interfere with the courses that follow. For here comes fish, done to a turn, in a way and with a taste, that no European chef 'has ever thought of, and so tender that you can pick it off in bits with your chop-sticks without inter- fering in any way with the skeleton or the bones. And then you do not have any personal or pri- vate plate, on which a certain quantity is placed, and you have to eat it whether you like it or not, but all the dishes stand in the middle of the table, and after the polite formalities of being helped by your host are over, each one " goes as he pleases," and takes the things that best suit his taste. You have a little dish before you on which you may place bits of skin, or bones, peeling or seeds, or other inedible or indigestible portions, but no plate on which you are served. Then may come the fowl — it may be duck or chicken, or some other fowl — whole or in tiny bits. If whole, it, like the fish, is done so tender that you may pick it off in portions suited to your taste. Oh, for the time when we shall have learned that it is the business of servants to carve, and not the work of a host ; when we FOOD 179 shall not bring fowls to the table lying upon their backs like corpses, with feet and head amputated and stumps of legs sticking up into the atmos- phere, for an inexperienced host, unfamiliar with their anatomy, to have to hunt for their joints with a dull carving-knife, and shovel dressing from their interior in an inartistic way, a large portion of which he scatters on the table-cloth. But I desist. It is impossible to go through with a twenty-seven course dinner in a short chapter without omitting their steamed bread, which is finally brought on in small loaves the size of biscuits, beautifully decorated with harm- less spots of red colouring matter of some vege- table dies ; or the salt vegetables, or the sour pickles, or the pungent flavourings, or the sweet cakes, or the acrid condiments — for the Chinese give particular attention to the five flavourings at every feast, always ascertaining that they are i properly prepared or blended. With the bread i — or in place of it — may come the rice for filling, ; on the same principle as the animal takes its hay. It will be observed the Chinese do everything ithe opposite of what we do. They live on the under side of the world — their feet are in this .direction and their heads in the opposite from liour own, and so they seem to do everything con- trary to what we do. Or as they did it so long before we did, perhaps it is we who do it back- i wards. At any rate, they take their fruit and nuts at the beginning of their meal and their soup at the end. I wonder if we have made a 180 HOME LIFE IN CHINA scientific study of the order in which our food should be taken, or do we take it more or less hit or miss because our ancestors did it that way. One or two of a thousand kinds of food that I have not yet mentioned is their bean-curd, a food for the common people in North China, made from pulverizing the beans into a flour and then boiling this milk-like concoction, letting the curd rise to the top as our grandams made cot- tage cheese. At first one does not like it — but I desist on account of my salivary glands. Then they make bean butter of various kinds — black, green, or red, according to the colour of the beans — and all kinds of preserved fruits. They sugar nuts — English walnuts, hazel-nuts, almonds, apricot seeds, pine seeds, and all kinds of fruits. Then they sugar fruit, such as the substitute for cranberries, mentioned in the earlier part of the chapter, grapes, and apples, stick a thin bamboo slip through them, and, urn, but they are good. And finally they hash up meat and vegetables in a large quantity, make up a batch of dough, press it out in the thinnest little wafers, and roll up in each of them a bit of the hash, making a kind of a dumpling called chu po po, or cooked or steamed dumpling. If you are inclined tol think that such a coarse dinner wrapped up inl dough is not good, you ask my children, or any other children that have been brought up in China. But I think my wife's favourite fooc was pao ping, thin cakes, in which she woulc FOOD 181 wrap up a collection of strips of onion, meat, or other hashed meat and vegetables, roll them into a kind of a tube, double up one end so they would not leak, and then begin at the top and eat down to where all the best juices were collected for the last bite. My favourite Chinese food ? Oh, I just take any kind and am grateful and happy. CHAPTER XX SHOPS AND MARKETS AFTER an American friend had been with Z-\ me in Peking, shopping in the stores of -* *> Liu Li Ch'ang, the great book and curio street of the capital, he left the north and went to Central China, whence he wrote me : "I'm sorry I did not stay in the north ; you can get what you want there much more easily and satisfactorily than in any other part of the country." This I think is true of curios, jade, and the best old porcelain, but not of things in general. Each section of China has its own peculiar productions of field, orchard, forest, land, and brain. The best linen embroidery is made as far south as Canton, while the embroidery of silks and satins, as well as their manufacture, is done in the region of the Yangtze Valley. The best ivory carving is done in the south, as is also the best carving of bamboo and teak wood. Seven-tenths of the artists have been developed in the lake region of Central China, while a large proportion of the other three- tenths have come from Ssu-ch'uan, the great province of the West. But as I have had the 182 SHOPS AND MARKETS 183 pleasure of conducting a large number of prominent people about the shops and markets of Peking, I shall venture to take the reader with me on some of these tours. While Mr. William Jennings Bryan was in Peking, I had the honour of having him dine with me, and the pleasure of conducting him about certain parts of the city. He wanted to get some of the best Chinese curios, and so we went to Liu Li Ch'ang. Now I should remark that the Chinese do everything the opposite of what we do. Go down one of your own great business streets, and as you look into the windows, you will observe that the best things in the store are arranged there for display. A Chinese merchant never does this. He takes it for granted that you know what you desire before you come, and he hangs out no bait to tempt you to buy things that you do not want. As we were passing down the street I stopped in front of one of the shops and said : " We'll go in here." " Oh, that is a junk shop, isn't it ? " said Mr. Bryan. " No," I answered, " this is a curio shop." It did look like a junk shop. There was nothing attractive in the front room. A few old cash, or ink-slabs, a few pieces of common porcelain, some old swords and other things, but nothing worth while. And this is done designedly. He makes his 184 HOME LIFE IN CHINA first impressions upon you with these old things. He then took us into the next room, where he had some fairly good things. After we had looked at these, he ushered us into a room still further back, where he had some very good samples, and, after we had feasted our eyes upon these for a time, he opened up the last little cubby-hole in the back part of his shop, where he had all his most beautiful things locked up, and he never shows them to anyone except those whom he thinks will appreciate them. On another occasion Mr. Burt, a former Presi- dent of the Union Pacific Railroad, was stop- ping with Major Conger, the American Minister, and wanted to get some choice pieces of China's best porcelain. I was asked if I could go with Mr. Burt, which I was glad to do. Among the large shops on the Curio Street, we found a large and very fine specimen of a Yung Cheng vase. " Ask him how much he wants for it," said Mr. Burt. I did so, and he answered : " Three hundred fifty dollars." " I think I shall get it," said Mr. Burt, " but I won't do it to-day." During the mornings I was always busy with my work and could not go shopping with any- one, and so the next forenoon, while Mr. Burt, and a friend who could talk some Chinese, were wandering along this street, they dropped into this shop again, and inquired the price of the vase. " Four hundred dollars," said the dealer. *a *r :M- S&*. CHILDREN'S GAMES: THE CAT CATCHING THE MOUSE SHOPS AND MARKETS 185 " But," said Mr. Burt, " he told Mr. Headland yesterday that it was three hundred fifty dollars." " Four hundred dollars," repeated the mer- chant. When I called on Mr. Burt that afternoon, he said to me : " How much did that man want for that large Yung Cheng vase ? " " Three hundred fifty dollars," I answered. " Well, we were down there this morning and he asked us four hundred for it." " We'll inquire again this afternoon," I said. When we got to the shop I said to the dealer : " How much is this vase ? " " Three hundred fifty dollars," he answered. I turned to Mr. Burt and said : " He says the price is three hundred fifty dollars." " Well, he told us four hundred this morning." I said to the dealer, " Why did you do that ? " " To give you face," he answered. The dealer thought that they suspected that I was getting a commission on the vase, and that they might be able to buy it cheaper if they were alone, and he proposed to show them that I was an honest man, and rather than sell it to them at the same price he offered it when I was with them, he would run the risk of losing the sale. Such is the attitude of a Chinese merchant to his friend. The Agricultural Department of the United 186 HOME LIFE IN CHINA States sent a gentleman to North China to obtain, if possible, grafts of all the fruit and nut trees, and, indeed, all the productions of China that might be transferred or transplanted to the United States. He came to me to inquire as to the best method of getting them. I said to him : ' Let us go to the fruit market and see the fruits, and then we can inquire as to where each kind is grown, then you can go where they are grown and get grafts from the trees." The reader should understand that the Chinese have most of the shops of a kind on a single street. I do not mean to say that this is an absolute rule. But if you want to buy a pipe you would natu- rally go to Pipe Street, if you wanted a lantern you would go to Lantern Street, and so, if you wanted fruit, you would go to this fruit market, where you may buy samples or quantities of every kind of fruit grown in North China. My friend asked me to tell them what he wanted, and, in a few moments, he had samples of the various kinds of fruit with the directions as to where he could obtain the grafts, and he told me after re- turning from his trip through the country that he had sent tens of thousands of grafts to the United States. " And," said he, " I hope soon to have persimmons on the fruit-stands in America as abundant and as cheap as bananas." One day while assisting Mrs. Bronson, one of the most beautiful women I have ever known, the mother of the wife of one of our prominent SHOPS AND MARKETS 187 American diplomats, to secure some of China's choicest productions, she said to me : " I should like to get some good Chinese tea." " Very well," I answered, " we will stop at a tea-shop." As we passed along the street in our jinrikishas I saw the men in one of the shops sorting the tea on the counter, for my readers, of course, under- stand that the front of the shop is all removed during the day, and it is opened upon the street, where everything is exposed to view, usually in jars or boxes. We dismounted where the men were taking out all the whole leaves that had curled up into a beautiful roll, putting them aside, and separating them from the broken or half- powdered leaves, and I said to them : " This lady wants a catty (about a pound and a third) of your best tea." They looked at Mrs. Bronson with admiration and respect — what an asset beauty and physical perfection is to a person ! — and then went and brought it in a tray where she could see it, and it being satisfactory,they put up in a box, where it could not be crushed, a catty, for which she paid nine ounces of silver — at that time almost nine dollars gold. But I have been talking of curios when you want to know about the ordinary every-day things of life. Out on the great street, not two hundred yards from where I have lived for six- teen years, was a shop in which one could pur- chase anything in the way of dry goods — cotton, 188 HOME LIFE IN CHINA silk, or wool — that one might wish in the home. The foreign customer was not expected to stand at the counter waiting, but would be taken into a small room, where he would be served alone. On this same street, about daylight, there would gather from all the country round about, vendors of all kinds of vegetables that are found on the fortieth parallel. These they bring on wheel-barrows, or in baskets slung on poles which they carry — one basket between two men, or two baskets on the ends of a pole carried on the shoulder of one man. And just here I might add that the Chinese have a proverb which says : / ke jen t'iao Hang t'ung shua ; Hang ke jen t'ai i t'ung shua ; san kejen, mei shua. " One servant will carry two pails of water, two servants will carry one pail of water ; three servants and you have no water." Isn't that folksy ? The more servants you have the less work you get done. Well, your cook, and other servants, go out to this market and buy a t'iao tze of cabbage, the two baskets that one man carries, at wholesale rates. He brings it home, and they use it, selling all the time to you from this wholesale stock, at retail rates, which is a perfectly honest deal, and they divide the profits. Then your boy takes your empty fruit-cans that you throw away, keeps them in a box in some dry place, until the rag-picker comes around with his shop on his shoulder, in the form of two baskets on a pole, when the boy exchanges all those empty fruit-cans or tins for matches, which he sells to SHOPS AND MARKETS 189 you. Which again is an absolutely honest deal, as it keeps your backyard from being littered up with empty fruit-tins. In various quarters of all Chinese cities the vegetable markets convene out under the open sky at or about sunrise, and the farmers or truck gardeners are soon on their way home with a string of cash or two in each basket in exchange for their cabbage, onions, turnips, cucumbers, melons, garlic, or other edibles ; though in the open ports such as Shanghai, there are covered market-places, not unlike those of our Western cities. Vegetable stalls or vendors buy quan- tities of this truck from the farmers at wholesale, which they in turn retail to their customers. One thing under the old regime which was very different from anything we see in the West was the butchers' shops on the side walk, or shall we say between the side walk and the street. Some time during the day, a sheep or two, or even more, would be held, its throat cut, the blood caught in a small tub, and used. The sheep would then be skinned on the side walk, hung up and dis- embowelled, and the whole process performed there on the street with scarcely a drop of blood falling on the ground. At the same time, two or three street dog-scavengers would be standing by waiting to lick up the blood if it did drop, though they never offered to touch the hanging meat. One would naturally think that mutton butchered in that way would have a mutton flavour. It did not. Indeed, I have never 190 HOME LIFE IN CHINA eaten better mutton chops anywhere in the world than mutton or lamb butchered thus on the streets of Peking. I have reserved for the last of this chapter the most interesting of all shops to many of the foreign tourists to China — the fur and em- broidery shops. Often have I gone with com- panies of tourists to visit these shops and listened to them raving over the gowns that the Chinese had cast off for new ones from other shops with which I was also familiar. The colours of these old clothes were toned down by years of wear, so that they were more attractive in certain ways. But the richness of the new goods was to me so much more attractive that I stood quietly by and listened to them raving. Usually when friends wished to get these things, I sent for the shopkeeper, and asked him to bring what they wanted to our home — it was a case of the moun- tain coming to Mohammed. I remember once Mr. Henry Phipps telephoned me from Tientsin, asking if I would get him three sable and three ermine mandarin robes. I assured him it would be easy to do so. I spoke to the fur dealer ; he brought what I wanted to my own door, with the understanding that if ever he allowed me to send to my friends anything that would cause me to lose face when I saw them, he would never be forgiven. And I have never had occasion to be ashamed of the bargains that my Chinese merchant friends sent to those who asked me to serve them. Indeed, Mr. Bryan SHOPS AND MARKETS 191 wrote me from London, " The mandarin sable robe we got for Mrs. Bryan, says my furrier, is worth twice what we paid for it," and I feel like confirming what the European business men of China say, that " The Chinaman's word is as good as his bond." CHAPTER XXI EXPENSE OF LIVING ONE day, when a Chinese official was calling | on me, I said to him : " Can you tell me about what your expense of living is per moon ? " for they esti- mate everything there by the moon, and not by the week or by the day as we do. " I give my cook sixty- five taels (sixty-five ounces of silver, about the same in American gold at that time), to board my family per moon," he answered. " And how many mouths have you in your home ? " I inquired. " Seventeen," he answered, " not including the servants." " And does he have to get his own wages out of that amount ? " I asked further. " Yes, and his food as well," explained the official. " And suppose he does not furnish you with food which you think that amount of money should supply, what do you do ? " I inquired. " Then I dismiss him," he replied. " You see," he continued, " it is too much trouble for us to attend to buying, ordering, estimating, and 192 EXPENSE OF LIVING 193 attending to such details, when that is his busi- ness. So I simply tell him that we have seven- teen mouths to feed, and if he can do it, and supply us with good food, very well ; if not, we will find someone else." " In case you invite friends to dine with you, is that included ? " I asked. " No. When I invite friends, I allow him a certain amount per mouth, and tell him how many dishes I want for the dinner, and he sup- plies them." The expense of living in China depends a good deal upon the service one demands and the kinds of food he orders, just as it does in Europe and America. You go to an ordinary restaurant in New York and order ham and eggs and you pay twenty-five cents for them, half of that being profit to the keeper of the restaurant. Go to the Astoria and put in the same order, and you pay $1.25 with a tip to the servant who waits on you — in other words, for twelve and a half cents' worth of food you pay ten times that amount for a certain method of delivering it. I do not ex- aggerate in this matter. The common labourer in New York can get a full dinner for fifteen cents, while the business man or society woman pays three dollars for an ordinary dinner at a fashion- able hotel. The same thing is true in China, although prices there are not quite so high as they are here, because both labour and service are cheaper. The price of wheat-flour, rice, corn- 13 194 HOME LIFE IN CHINA meal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and the various kinds of fruit and meats all over the world is nearly the same, depending somewhat upon transportation, but more upon labour and ser- vice, and so living in China would not be very different from what it is elsewhere except for the way they live. In the Peking University, where I have taught for sixteen years, we are able to keep a boy for thirty dollars a year, paying his board, and having almost half of that amount left for fire, light, and tuition. We employ a cook on the basis that he hires his own help, and we pay him one dollar seventy-five cents ($1.75) per month for boarding each boy, he being expected to get his own food and wages, and that of his assis- tants, out of this amount. School keeps nine months of the year, making a total of $15.75 that we pay the cook for boarding each boy, and we have $14.25 of the $30 for fire, light, and tuition. You ask what we give them for this amount ? I answer, they have rice at least once a day, with salt turnips and cabbage or other vegetables. They have corn-meal made into wo wo t'ou — a kind of a cake which is slapped on the side of a pot in which cabbage is cooking. The heat of the fire bakes the cake on the pot side while the steam of the cabbage steams it on the other side — sq that, like Ephraim, it is a cake unturned. Salt turnip and cabbage or other vegetables go with this, while at noon they have for their lunch two small wheat-cakes about three inches in dia- EXPENSE OF LIVING 195 meter, covered with sesame seeds, which are parched in the baking. This diet is varied by having steamed bread, made of wheat-flour, al- ternate with the rice or corn-meal. Sometimes in the morning they have gruel made of millet, eaten without sugar or milk, of course, for it is such things as sugar, milk, butter, meat, spreads, pickles, and coffee, with the great variety of vege- tables, desserts, and fruit, that makes our living — actual living — expensive. You ask, Can students work well, and keep in good health on such diet as this ? My answer is that we have never had a student break down in health as a result of the food, and that their work is done so well that the graduates from that institution are able to enter many of our best American colleges for post-graduate work with- out examination. Take now the expense of living to the coun- tryman — the farmer or truck-gardener. His corn or wheat goes directly from the field to the women of the household, who grind it, knead it, bake it, and serve it. Your wheat is harvested by expensive labourers, with expensive machi- nery, transported long distances to mills run by expensive machinery. The flour goes through the hands of a wholesaler, retailer, baker, and grocer before it gets to you — the wonder is that you can get it as cheap as you do, especially when you estimate the expense of the various forms of advertizing of miller and baker. I wish my readers who complain about the 196 HOME LIFE IN CHINA price of living would examine what they have upon their own tables. Let them cut out butter, milk, cheese, meat, sugar, coffee, fruit and des- serts, together with all expensive condiments, and confine themselves to the substantiate of living, and we would have less cause for com- plaint. However, the same thing that prevails here, prevails there. Men live according to their income. The great mass of mankind increase their living expenses as they increase their salary. And there are a lot of women waiting to find a man whose money they can help to spend. These same people feed until they contract some chronic illness, then go to a sanitorium where they pay thirty to thirty-five dollars per week to be put on a diet of the substantiate of life. Suppose you inquire at your sanitorium — or any sanitorium — as to the cause of most of the ills that come there, and see if you do not get as an answer " Over-eating." The common, coolie labourer, who helped to build my house in Peking, worked for the con- tractor for five cents a day and his board. His board consisted of rice which had fermented in the imperial granaries, and which he preferred to fresh white rice, a few salt vegetables, and onions, with perhaps a small dish of beans and soy. How much his living cost the contractor I cannot say, and I doubt if he could per man — or per mouth — for this is the only way the Chinese have of estimating, You ask if they can live and labour on that kind of fare ? My EXPENSE OF LIVING 197 only answer must be that there are four hundred millions of Chinese, many of them labouring and living on less nutritive and palatable fare than that given to our students. There is a kind of living that I hesitated to put in the chapter on food. As one passes along the streets of a Chinese city he will find in one place a vendor of food in the springtime, with a big pot of boiled green corn which has been pulled when the grains are filled, but before they have ripened, and this man furnishes them for a few cash to the hungry wayfarers as they pass on their way. In another place, one may see a man in the autumn or winter with a large pot of boiling hot sweet potatoes, which he retails to the hungry crowd at so much per ounce. At still another place, a man may be found with a pot of cooked liver, kidney, and especially en- trails, which they cut up into short bits and wash clean, and then cook in this pot by the wayside and allow him of the corn or sweet potato to finish his meal. While on almost any street corner, in the autumn and early winter, one may obtain a persimmon, as large as a very large tomato, for one-fifth of a cent — or shall I say at the rate of two for a farthing. Should he wish something in the form of bread he may buy a shao-ping, or small cake, at the rate of a cash or two apiece. Now in a cent he would have ten large, or twenty small, cash, and for about two cents, or a penny, he would be able to make a fairly decent meal. 198 HOME LIFE IN CHINA And now let us go from this common fare of the coolie or wayfarer on the street to a dinner given by a merchant, a gentleman, or an official to his friends at, shall we say, a restaurant or an inn. As a usual thing he does not pay per mouth, but according to the number of dishes served at this particular dinner — it may be on the scale of four, eight, or sixteen dishes. The ordinary Chinese table is square and accommo- dates four people ; but for a larger number a round top is put upon this square table which will accommodate eight or ten people. The dinner will consist of eight large dishes, eight small dishes, and sixteen other smaller dishes, in all of which care will be taken by the caterer to blend, or to allow his guest to blend, the five flavours — salt, sweet, sour, bitter, and acrid. In the large dishes we may have either sharks' fins, birds' nest, or silver fungus soup ; then perhaps a large fish, a duck or a chicken, a dish of pork with rice-flour covering ; while in the small dishes may be bamboo sprouts, pork ribs, chopped chicken, and other various kinds of meats and vegetables. Sour pickles and salt vegetables will be found in the small dishes, while peppers or peppered cabbage and pre- served fruits will be within reach of every guest. Each one is allowed to take from each dish — after the polite forms of helping have been gone through by the host — with his own chop-sticks such things as suit his taste, and is not compelled, EXPENSE OF LIVING 199 as we are, to sit down before a well-filled plate, or have definite courses placed before you of which he must partake, whether he have indiges- tion, a weak stomach, a strong appetite, or whether he is or is not hungry. For such a dinner, including Chinese wines, served for eight persons, the host may be expected to pay from fifteen to twelve dollars, more or less, according to the character of the food and the place it may be served. But food is only one part of the expense of living. Clothing and shelter play as important a part as food. The Chinese have reduced the expense of clothing to a last analysis of economy for the north temperate zone. We of Europe and America have not learned the first princi- ples of economy in the matter of food and cloth- ing. We clip our wool from our sheep, spin it into threads, and weave it into stiff cloth, in which we lose most of the warmth that Nature intended it should furnish. The Chinese use the skins of the sheep, lamb, fox, dog, and indeed of every kind of animal they can take, and employ them as lining for their clothing, or without a cloth covering, thus getting the use of the skin as well as that of the hair, fur, or wool. They use cotton as our grandams did for their quilts or comforters, placing a layer between two layers of cotton or silk goods, cut into the shape of a garment, and then quilt it to keep the cotton in its place, and one such a garment is not only 200 HOME LIFE IN CHINA more economical and more durable, but it is warmer even than a wool garment of the same weight. It is not, be it said, so convenient, for the best that can be said of it is that it is cumbersome and not easily kept clean. Their shoes are made of cloth, silk, velvet, satin, or some such material, while the soles are made of paper, or scraps of cloth, or, in the case of many kinds of women's shoes, of wood. But every scrap of everything that the mind of man can conceive of is usable for food, clothes, or fuel. Our stoves and furnaces allow about seven- tenths of the heat, more or less, to go up the chimney. The Chinese build half of the floor a foot and a half above the other half in their bed- rooms, as we have said elsewhere, and every calory of heat the fuel contains is transferred to the bricks, which continue to radiate the heat for hours thereafter, if not throughout the night. For fuel they use worn-out floor matting, weeds, grass, corn- or broom-corn stalks, coal balls, coal, or anything that will burn ; even the droppings of animals are all gathered up and used as fuel or fertilizer. The Chinese have always used a good deal of clothing in the winter time and very little fuel. Their houses have always had brick floors, paper windows, paper ceilings, and often paper par- titions, and are very cold and uncomfortable. But by putting on more clothing in the winter time, which they wear both in the house and EXPENSE OF LIVING 201 outside, they avoid colds, get plenty of fresh air, and cut down their expenses, for their clothing is made long, large and roomy, spreads out like a quilt, and the poor people use their clothing as covering at night. CHAPTER XXII TRAVEL: INNS AND RESTAURANTS I SHALL never forget my first trip to Peking. It was in 1890 — and it seems now, as I look back upon it from the progress China has made, to have been back in the middle ages. It was in a house-boat. We employed the boat- men on Saturday, but did not go on the boats till Monday morning. There were three families of us, each having their own boat, but only one cook to prepare our meals, so that we instructed the boatmen that they must keep together, else we would starve. Those who have never visited China until after the advent of the railroad have missed the most interesting, though not the safest or most comfortable methods of going about. The house-boat has two or three compart- ments, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and a small kitchenette at the rear. Our goods were all stored away in the hold, our trunks, such as we needed, under the bed or in the sitting-room, and all we had to do was sit and read, or lie and sleep while the wind wafted us, or the trackers pulled us, along the most crooked and the most monotonous river I have ever seen. The water 202 TRAVEL: INNS AND RESTAURANTS 203 is thick with silt which it bears to the sea, the country is level and sandy, with only stray trees to break the monotony of a straight horizon, and without a forest, a meadow, or a flower in the autumn to interest the traveller. One is sometimes caught in a sand-storm, as my wife and I were on one occasion, when we had to tie up to the bank for three days, shut up all doors and cracks, and just live, breathe, and eat in the dust. At night we would lie down on our clean white pillows, and in the morning our eyes would be glued shut with mud from the dust and tears that had mingled while we slept or tried to sleep, and when we arose, there was a white spot where our heads rested, the remainder of the pillow being covered with a layer of dust as thick as the old straw paper in which grocers formerly wrapped up our packages. But if the weather is fair, and the wind in the right quarter, the sail and the trip, when com- panions are congenial, is restful and interesting. I knew of one gentleman, however, who in de- scribing his trip, said it was the most uninterest- ing, monotonous, and lonely trip he had ever made — nobody to talk to but his wife and his daughter ! I have always found it fascinating, for I had time to read, rest, and think, as well as converse, and while I write there comes up before my imagination or in my memory the re- collection of three or four of those trips on the Peiho which were worth all they cost. But I recall another interesting trip I made 204 HOME LIFE IN CHINA from Peking to Tientsin. This was in a mule- litter. The one in the house-boat up the river took from Monday morning till Saturday even- ing, while the one in the mule-litter required only four days. A mule-litter is a sort of sedan chair, which may be made into a bed, swung upon the backs of two mules. If the mules are docile it is not a bad way to travel, though one lacks the freedom of the house-boat. It was March, and a bit cold and raw, and we covered ourselves up and slept a good part of the time to a " rock-a-by-baby-on-a-mule-back " sway of the litter. At noon we stopped at an inn where we had a big bowl of Yang jou tsuan wan tzu, which the reader will find described in the chapter on food, and when the mules had been fed, watered, and properly rested, we started on our journey. Now a Chinese litter- or cart-driver plans to make the inn, where he proposes to spend the night, before dark. Why this is I cannot say, unless it is that robbers are much more likely to be on the roads in the evening than in the morning, or because he wishes to be at the inn for his supper, or because he delights to sit down and spend the time after supper chatting and smoking with his fellow travellers. At any rate, we always made the inn early in the evening, did not in any way interfere with the plans of our litter-man, got up when called, dressed hurriedly, entered the litter at about three or four in the morning, covered ourselves up as though in bed, 55 55 x U o TRAVEL: INNS AND RESTAURANTS 205 went to sleep, and stopped at some other inn at about nine or ten for our morning meal. If you are going for your own pleasure, and want to have your own way, take your litter-man with you. But if your design is to get somewhere, go with your litter-man, eat native food, and do as the natives do — if you can. Now I think I ought to describe the inn. Along the great roads one will usually find the inns of brick — a row of one-story houses built around an open court ; or shall we say houses on three sides and a shed on the fourth. On the back of the court are the cheng fang or upper rooms, which are the most honourable and the most expensive ; along the one side buildings which will accommodate any number of guests, depending upon how they are packed in ; on the other side a shed for mules and donkeys ; and in front the main building, in which the proprietor, servants, cart-drivers, litter-men, and all ordi- nary travellers stop, bunk, and eat. On one side of this room is a large kang or brick bed on which the drivers pack themselves, literally like sardines in a box. When a foreigner arrives, or a gentle Chinese guest, what shouting for hot water, food, rooms, waiters — everything — there is ! And the louder they shout and the more noise they make the better temper it indicates everyone to be in, and hence the warmer the welcome. A fire may be built under your brick bed, if you wish to sleep upon a hot bed, or in case you do not, they 20G HOME LIFE IN CHINA will bring in a brazier of burning charcoal, or a stove full of red-hot coal balls. If you have your own cook and food with you, your cook will pre- pare your food, getting hot water from the inn- keeper, but if you have not your cook, you are at liberty to order whatever food you wish from the inn. Once when coming from Tsunhua across coun- try in August, I had two ladies and myself in the party. We stopped at night in a mud inn. There was just one decent room, and that was given to the ladies. They had cooked their food in the pot from which the flues went up under this kang, and the ladies had to put their beds on a hot kang for the night. I fared better. They put me out in the mill room in which there was nothing, as I supposed, but one donkey and myself, but when we were driving away about daylight one of the ladies asked : " Where did you sleep ? " " In the mill room, there, with the donkey," I answered. She looked in and exclaimed : " Why there are a million mosquitoes there." Being composed largely of dry humour, I sup- pose the mosquitoes do not like me. My friend Gamewell holds that I have a missionary skin, as neither mosquitoes, fleas, bed — but there — none of these things move me. I remember on another occasion a party of us went for a summer outing to Miao Feng Shan, a great temple on top of a high mountain. We TRAVEL: INNS AND RESTAURANTS 207 were able to secure but two rooms for the entire party, and so we labelled the rooms " for men," and " for women," and we packed ourselves in them as the drivers do at the inns. My only pillow that evening was my donkey saddle-bags in which were my rubbers, but they gave me such comfort, or discomfort, that I remember the night distinctly, though it was some twenty years years ago. Some of the greatest hardships I have ever suffered was when I went off for a picnic. How has it been with you ? But they are worth all they cost. They give one a thrill — sometimes several — which he never forgets. A third method of travel is by the Chinese cart. A Chinese cart is a great big Saratoga trunk on two wheels. It has no springs — why does it have no springs ? Because the non-Christian world has never made a spring vehicle. It has no seat. You sit down tailor fashion on the bottom of the cart with your feet doubled up under you. Now the Chinese do not make roads — occasionally they make a road — but ordinarily the carts make the roads. On those dirt roads there is usually a rut on one side with none on the other ; the wheel drops into the rut, and you bump your head on this side of the cart. Or it may be that the rut is on the other side, and so it is the other side of the head gets the bump ; or if the ruts alternate, both sides get bumped. Occasionally a rut will cross the road and both wheels go into it at once, when you wish your brain was on a rubber cushion. Or, finally, the 208 HOME LIFE IN CHINA mule starts suddenly — a mule always does the thing you are not expecting him to do — that is the reason he is a mule, I suppose — and you bump your head on the back of the cart ; and when you get home about the only thing you can remember of your cart ride is the bumps. But oh, the thrills one can get in a single cart ride of a hun- dred miles. A fourth method of travel is by the donkey. But few foreigners ever travel that way, except when they go on picnics or for short distances, and hence it need not be considered. For locomotion in the cities during recent times, the jinrikisha is one of the most desirable methods for the common people, as it is common and economical. The jinrikisha is a great big baby-carriage pulled by a man. In this coun- try we have a Pullman car. A man has nothing to do with the pulling of it. He just hitches a power of nature to it and — shh--oft he goes. The Chinese call a jinrikisha a " man-pull cart " — a man will pull you anywhere you want to go for five cents, and lots of places you do not want to go if you can't talk Chinese. But in modern times — which means the last dozen years — we have banished the cart from many of the cities where foreigners dwell, and we go about in carriages, coupes, broughams, auto- mobiles, and trolley cars, much like we do in an American or European city ; while railroads connect many of the great cities, and steamship lines enter all the great ports, and ply the great TRAVEL: INNS AND RESTAURANTS 209 rivers, so that it is as easy and as comfortable to go from place to place in China as it is to travel about Europe or America. I went to Peking from Tientsin in 1890 in a house-boat. It took from Monday morning till Saturday night, six days' time, and cost me three to four times as much as when I returned to Tientsin in 1907, when I made the trip in three hours and a half, in a train as comfortable as any of our palace cars. Starting from New York, one can travel around the world without ever leaving a steamer, or a sleeper, except to stop in a good hotel. He will or may go to San Francisco, thence to Japan, which he may cross by train, thence to Shanghai, then up the Yangtze River, thence by train to Peking and the Great Wall, and thence by the Siberian railroad to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and thence to Berlin, Paris, London, and New York. And, the miracle of modern times is not the floating palace nor the railroad train, but the time-table. For a man may leave New York for a trip around the world, and before he starts, leave an order with his coachman or his chauffeur telling them on what train or vessel to meet him when he returns, and practically at what hour and minute of the day. If he wishes to do so he may measure about half his trip by land and the other half by sea. And it might be well for him as a tourist to remember that every com- fortable vessel on which he rides or sails, and every comfortable hotel in which he rests, has 14 210 HOME LIFE IN CHINA been built by the man, who has been developed in the school, that was established by the church (or the state developed by the church), that was carried by the missionary. If my readers who travel would remember this fact, it might assist them in making more correct estimates of some of the great forces that are contributing to the development of the governments, the science, the business, and the material, as well as the moral and religious, progress of the world. CHAPTER XX11I SUMMER RESORTS DOTTING the hills and valleys in the neighbourhood of every great city, and crowning the summits of every noted mountain in the Flowery Kingdom, one finds Buddhist or Taoist temples, which are the re- sorts of thousands of dwellers in the busy marts during the hot summer months, or the goal of tens of thousands of pilgrims in the budding and blossoming days of spring. Groves of oak, chest- nut, cedar, or other hardy trees cast a friendly shade about the temple grounds, and over the rippling streams and quiet ponds that come gur- gling down the mountain side, or are held in the lap of the valley below. Not infrequently one finds a sulphur spring gushing from underneath a great rock in such abundance as to furnish a healthful odour and a refreshing stream that the priests direct in little rills and waterfalls through- out the temple grounds. Sometimes a great pagoda is built in the vicin- ity of the temple, at the entrance of the valley, that distant wayfarers may be guided in the right direction. As they draw near, the tinkle of little bells blown by the wind, suspended from every angle of the pagoda roof, relieves their weariness 211 212 HOME LIFE IN CHINA as they near their journey's end, and calls a wel- come to them while they rest, or sings them a lullaby at nightfall. Sometimes a great pond, filled with fan-tailed gold-fish, furnishes them entertainment, while : " The lantern-grass floats on the pond like a sail, And the silver-fish bites at the gold-fish's tail," for there are no people in the world who enjoy their fish and their birds more than do the Chinese. Sometimes a great sleeping Buddha not only furnishes an attraction to drowsy wor- shippers, but gives a name to the temple as well. Sometimes the temple is built on the summit of some inaccessible mountain, at the head of some long and picturesque valley, a whole day's jour- ney from the nearest settlement, as furnishing a challenge to the faith as well as the heroism of those who would offer their worship. And to the temples, the people who can afford it go from the narrow streets and crowded cities in the balmy days of spring or the hot months of summer. I remember a picnic on which I once went with a company of congenial spirits in the sum- mer of 1891 or '2. The temple was Miao Feng Shan, a distance of thirty miles up a romantic and beautiful valley into the heart of the hills or mountains from the place where we were stay- ing. There was a large party of men and women, young men and maidens, boys and girls, and we spent three or four jolly days on the way. We were all mounted on the backs of sure-footed SUMMER RESORTS 213 donkeys, and it was not at all difficult for each one to gravitate toward some congenial com- panion of his own or the opposite sex to whom he might make a pretension of being an assis- tance in crossing the steep or rough places. As we passed along we came upon patches of begonias in full bloom which we could gather up by the double-handful ; while at other places we noticed great caves hollowed out in the cliffs or the mountain-side, so deep that I doubt if they had ever been fathomed. Here were cool springs gushing out from under a thousand feet of rocks, near where great boulders filled a half-dry river bed, much of which was lost in the sand, while a small inn near by furnished us hot water with which to make our tea. How sweet the memories of the cool shade of the trees, when congenial couples wandered off to gather flowers and wintergreen, and — or — but there, most of us are married since then, and have our own boys and girls to go and do likewise — play the old game that our fathers and great-grandfathers and mothers played before us, and which will continue to be played by our posterity as long as boys and girls continue to romp the fields and woods, and laugh and love and sing. Now you can put a good deal of imagination into a Buddhist temple on a mountain-top — and the more imagination you put into it, the more attractive it becomes, for : " Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue." 214 HOME LIFE IN CHINA When we arrived at the temple, most of the best rooms had been taken, I should judge, from what were left, and we made ourselves as comfort- able as we could on a brick bed or a table, while the cold night air at this elevation, to which we had not been accustomed, played havoc with our digestive apparatus and the machinery of the adjacent regions. In the early morning all of us arose and by ones or twos or more wandered up through the gardens of roses to the very highest peak, watch- ing the rosy-fingered, or grey, morn, while : " Day ! Faster and more fast, O'er night's brim, day boils at last. Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim, Where spurting and suppressed it lay, For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid grey Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; But forth one wavelet, then another, curled. Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast, Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world." Most of us sat breathless while we watched, then dividing into groups, we returned to the temple, each amusing themselves according to their particular disposition, some loud and hilarious, some mild and quiet, some gathering flowers, until when we arrived at breakfast and culled from what we had gathered, we found we had forty-seven varieties of flowers gathered SUMMER RESORTS 215 between the temple and the sunrise peak, and we all agreed that China deserves the name she has given herself — the Flowery Kingdom. Perhaps no summer resort is more famous than the Summer Palace of the Manchu imperial family on the edge of the foot-hills, fifteen miles west of Peking. Many a time have I passed through it, floated upon the bosom of its lake, crossed its camel-backed or its beautiful seven- teen-arched bridge, wandered among the beau- tiful bowers of its islands, sat in the shade of its pavilions, been photographed in the glaring light of a midsummer sun by the side of its great bronze cow — and I always fancied that the cow looked better than the man, but then the man only consented to pose in order to put a bit of life into the picture — ate my picnic lunch on the deck of its great stone boat, or trudged up the double stairway that leads to the temple and the pagoda on the top of the peak, where is a great bronze Buddha, with his mild, gilded eyes look- ing down into the palms of his hands as they rest in the lap made by his crossed legs and the upturned soles of his feet. In this resort we have every sign of royalty — beautiful pai-lohs, in front of great pavilions with plate-glass windows, and thrones of carved teak-wood, behind which great screens of white- and sandal-wood, on which are etched the most gorgeous landscapes, emit their fragrant odour and their refining influence. In front of some of the smaller temples, as well as in connection 216 HOME LIFE IN CHINA with Buddhist shrines in the Forbidden City, one often sees what we agreed to call, as we passed through the palace, " queer Chinese trees." " Queer, aren't they ? " said one of the party as they noticed the tree in the palace. " Who's queer ? " asked the little man with the short legs and large head. " The Chinese." " Why ? " " Look at that tree." The tree was of special interest to the little man, as he was collecting information about all kinds of queer growths of Chinese trees and flowers. " No, not queer, just Chinesy," he replied. The tree is an ordinary evergreen. It had been split up from the roots about six feet when a small sapling, the roots having been carefully divided, and thus planted in front of the temple. The two halves were placed three feet apart, each having the same curve to the place where they joined, from which point it grew in its natural form. It was placed directly in front of the door of the temple, between the door and the gate of the court, ten feet from the gate and thirty feet from the door, as though it was de- signed that the worshipper would pass through the tree before entering the temple. Thus far we have discovered only six of these trees. Four are in the north end of the Forbid- den City, in front of two of the temples. One of the trees is before the temple in the Winter Palace, where Count Von Waldersee's troops were stationed, and the sixth is in a similar SUMMER RESORTS 217 position in the Summer Palace. Whether this particular kind of tree is confined to imperial grounds we cannot say, but thus far we have seen none in other localities. The Chinese are fond of wrapping or braiding two, three, or four sprouts of a tree together, and allowing them to grow in that form. In the campus of the Peking University there was a species of locust, which they call the Haai shu, and which, by the way, is the best shade tree of North China, the two sprouts of which had been wrapped together when small, and when sawed down by the Boxers they were each six inches in diameter. Only a short distance from where the writer is now sitting is an apricot tree on which is an abundance of fruit. It consists of four sprouts which have been neatly formed into a braid and have continued to grow until they are each three inches in diameter. A favourite decoration for lawns or courts is made from this locust. The top of the tree is cut off and the root of another the same size grafted thereon. The roots thus become branches, which grow downward instead of up- ward, and are covered with a dense foliage. This species of shrub is very common and familiar to all landscape gardeners. A very interesting and attractive flowering shrub is called Kan-chieh-mei. It is a species of plum, is used as a pot plant, and grows two or three feet high. Every branch is bent or 218 HOME LIFE IN CHINA broken in as many ways as possible to bring them all close together, so that when it blooms — which it does before it leaves — it is a mass of flowers. Perhaps the most attractive specimen of Chinese plant cultivation is the grafting of the chrysanthemum. They have a large, common weed called hao tze. In the early summer they cut the branches off this weed and in the place of each branch, as well as on the top, they graft a chrysanthemum stalk. The root of this weed is much stronger than the root of the flower, so that when they bloom the flowers are double as large as the ordinary chrysanthemum, and in addition to this extra luxuriance of blossom, all varieties of colour appear on the same stalk. Blooming as they do in mid-winter, they are very attractive. It goes without saying that a people who thus understand the grafting of flowers are not igno- rant of any of the processes of budding, grafting, or crossing fruit ; as a result we are able to ob- tain very fine specimens, especially of the peach. Specimens of all of these, either in summer or winter, may be fourd in the grounds of the Summer Palace, while all except the split trees, in greater or less variety, may be found in all summer resorts. CHAPTER XXIV HOW THE POOR LIVE TO try to tell how the poor live throughout China would be too large a task for a single chapter. But before speaking of that let me call my reader's attention to this fact. You hear of famines in China, famines in India, famines in Africa, and poverty wherever the gospel has not gone, but when did you hear of a famine in Europe or America ? Why is it that in the beginning of the twentieth century there are famines in almost all non-Christian countries and plenty in almost all Christian countries ? You have never heard of a Christian nation going to a non-Christian nation to borrow a million of dollars, but only last year the biggest non-Christian nation the world has ever deve- loped, in borrowing $300,000,000, got it all from the Christian nations of the world, and never once considered going to any non-Christian nation for a single dollar. A few years ago I wrote : " The present winter has been a very severe one in North China. The thermometer has visited zero many times, and remained for a week each visit. Outside the 1 front gate ' (ch'ien men) several hundred persons 219 220 HOME LIFE IN CHINA were frozen. A policeman at Tientsin was frozen at his post. Very many of the beggars and poor people live in mat sheds along the south side of the city wall, without fire, and with but little food and scant clothing. " The sight of this poverty and the wailing of these beggars is very hard on the nerves, and often brings tears to one's eyes. During some of the coldest days the ' Mercy and Help Com- mittee ' of our Epworth League, under the leadership of Miss Davis, undertook to seek out some of the poorest near us for the purpose of helping them. They all became very much ex- cited. The wretchedness which they discovered was appalling. A paper was at once sent around the mission, and letters to other friends, and in a short time Miss Davis had more than sixty dollars. In two cases only she gave money to the poor (thirty cents to each family), in one of which she found a sick man who was unable to go to the soup kitchen, and in this case it was afterwards reported, they took the money, bought wine, and made a feast. " She started a day school so that the children could sit all day in a warm room, and then she gave them a bowl of millet to eat before they went home. Those who were without clothes she clothed, and a teacher taught them the Catechism and the ' Three Character Classic' " Most pitiful stories are told of the poor people forty miles south of Peking. Mr Gamewell has raised more than $200, and gathered from friends fcs A BECK 1AR, < \\ I < IN HOW THE POOR LIVE 221 all the old clothes he could get, and distributed among them. But he could provide for only a few. Many of them, without food and fire, and with but few clothes, went to sleep never to awake. " One of our native preachers saw a poor woman run to the paupers' kitchen, where the Government provides a bowl of millet, but finding herself too late, she sank, fainting from weakness, on the street. She was taken home, where he visited her and gave her a little money to buy food. " One of Miss Davis's little boys has just brought back the clothes she gave him, telling her he cannot come to school any more because he does not like the food she gives them. This may be the true reason, but it is more likely that his parents do not want him to study the Christian books. Nevertheless it makes one wonder whether there were not some among the 5000 who partook of the ' loaves and fishes,' who went away saying that they never did like fish without dressing, anyway." It will not be without interest to some of my readers to know what happens to these people when they enter upon a Christian life. About the same time that I wrote the above about the poverty in North China, I also wrote the follow- ing incidents as to how we took our missionary collections : " Last Sunday we took our missionary col- lection in Asbury Chapel. Dr. Thomas and 222 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Professor Pan recorded the names and amounts, while Ch'en Heng-Te conducted the meeting. He called for offerings. Amounts were given from five cents to $1.60. Most of the school- boys gave from ten cents to $1. This they must save by going without their dinners. " One woman (about sixty-five years old) arose and said : ' I will give one month.' Heng-Te said : ' Put down $1.60/ I asked the boy beside me what it meant. He an- swered : ' That old woman mends our clothes and receives $1.60 per month for it.' From $19.20 per year she gives $1.60 for missions, and never lets the box pass her without con- tributing ; and we have two collections every Sunday. "A man who was converted only a few weeks ago has begun selling books, without any pay from us (depending upon what he can make of profit on the books — paying us for all the books he gets), and gave a good part of his savings in the collection. When we remem- ber that most booksellers must be paid a small salary and given all the books they can sell, this is no small matter. Think of a man in a heathen land making a living and giving missionary money by buying and selling Chris- tian books ! God's work moves onward." And the following : " Dear Chaplain, — Do you want a method by which you can raise five millions for mis- HOW THE POOR LIVE 223 sions ? I can give you the method if you can make it work, and you can if anyone can. Get the two millions of Methodists in the United States to follow the example set by the boys and girls and training class of Peking University yesterday. " We had Christmas service in Asbury Chapel. Mr. Lowry preached. We took a collection for the famine sufferers. The small boys gave all their Christmas money. The large boys gave all their Christmas money and some extra. The girls of the girl's school and the women of the training class went without one meal every day for a week, and gave the proceeds and their Christmas money besides. The amount of the collection was $56. Every Sunday they do without one meal, or save money from coal by doing without a fire some time during the week, in order to get money for the Sunday collection. "These are to be the Christians and preachers of future China. Get every Methodist in the United States to do that, or as much as that — and if they read World-wide Missions, they will — and your treasury will be like our col- lection bags were, full, heaped up, and running over, and had to be emptied before the collec- tion could be finished. Can you make it work ? " Many of these boys and girls are supported by Christian people from the United States, but 224 HOME LIFE IN CHINA after they have graduated they go into Christian work on salaries ranging from one-fifth to one- tenth what they could get in business ; and if they go into business they agree to help some other boy through college as they have been helped. It has been the custom in our own college to pay the cook $1.75 (about seven shillings) a month to board the boys. From this he must get his own food as well as that of his helpers. People have said to me : "It is wrong to allow those poor people to give out of their poverty to help others." My only answer is : " Jesus did not forbid the widow giving her mite — nay, He commended her." And this usually ends the argument. I have given these incidents not for the pur- pose of stimulating my readers to an interest in mission work — though I do not object to their being interested — but to say that the food fur- nished them by this seven shillings per month is very much better than that to which many of them have been accustomed at their homes, and I add, that in sixteen years of service as a teacher in the Peking University, I have never known of a single complaint having come from these lads on account of the quality or the insuffi- ciency of the food, though I have known of the boys of wealthy parents, who paid their cook $3.50 (fourteen shillings) a month, complaining bitterly that the food was not good enough. HOW THE POOR LIVE 225 Nor have I ever known of our boys having in- digestion, or breaking down on account of lack of nourishment. The contractor who built my house hired his coolie labourers for five cents (twopence half- penny) a day and their board, which will indi- cate that, if he had a wife or children, they would have to contribute something to the daily income or live on plainer foods than we furnished our students. One of the amusing things to me was this — that after we had put them through the Peking University on thirty dollars a year, and after graduation they were able to enter our American Universities for post-graduate work without examinations, the Chinese Government had to pay $900 a year for their support in these same American colleges — and yet we went over to teach the Chinese Political Economy ! 15 CHAPTER XXV PEASANT LIFE I WAS one day going along the road in North China in early summer or late spring, and I passed a woman who was going to her field to cultivate her corn. She had a plough which was to be used as a cultivator — for the Chinese do not have that utensil — upon her shoulder, and was leading a donkey which was to be hitched to the plough. On another occasion when going to the hills I saw a cow, a donkey, and a pony hitched to a plough, the handles of which the farmer held, and he was sinking it as deeply into the loam as he could make it go. On still another occasion I saw a woman and a young man pulling a plough, the single handle of which her husband was holding. He was pushing with all his might, and he had no time to look back after he had put his hand to the plough. The Chinese are an agricultural people, and for about four thousand years have been practically self-supporting from the productions of their own soil. But it is pathetic the amount of work they have done in order to kuo jih tzu — " pass the 226 A TYPICAL NATIVE HUT, SHOWING FENCE MADE FROM STALKS OF "KAOLING" (TALL WHEAT), N. CHINA PEASANT LIFE 227 days," for that was about all they expected to do under the old regime. For instance — in planting their wheat, after the ground was pre- pared, a man with a donkey " marked out " the row, another with a gourd under his arm, filled with seed wheat, to which was attached a long bamboo tube, followed, tapping on the tube with another stick, to drill the wheat. Still another man followed with a dust-pan of fertilizer which he scattered over the wheat, and a fourth man followed him drawing an oval stone, which rolled along the furrow to cover the wheat. And this had to be repeated for every row of wheat that was planted. Now about the fertilizer. In the great cities all the night soil is gathered and dried and sold to the farmers. Those who have teams also come into the cities and scoop up the dirt from the drains. All the winter-time the farmers may be seen going along the public highways and by- ways, gathering up the droppings of all camels, donkeys, mules, and ponies, and carrying it to their village or their home, and piling it up where it will decay for the spring planting. Near each village there is a great keng or hole scooped out, into which the village drainage is conducted, and this again is cleaned out for the fertilizer, and finally, they may often be seen skinning the sod off the bank along the roadside, which is carried to the village and piled up to rot and thus make loam to be mixed with the stronger fertilizer. They plant all their grains in rows far enough 228 HOME LIFE IN CHINA apart so that when the hoeing is finished they may plant a row of some other kind — it may be beans or melons — between each row, so that these may be well grown when those are harvested. They hoe their wheat — indeed they hoe every- thing. When the wheat is ripe, they harvest it by pulling rather than by cutting it, carry it to the threshing-floor, where when it is properly dry they thresh it by tramping it out with cattle or donkeys, winnow it by pitching it up and let- ting the wind blow the chaff away, and then grind it in the same way as the Hebrews did in Old Testament times. Indeed we see very many things in China which illuminate the Bible. The wall around Peking is 25 miles long, 40 feet high, 42 feet thick at the top, and 50 feet thick at the bottom, with shoulders every hun- dred yards which make it twice as thick. Such a wall would be difficult to blow down with a ram's horn. It would need a Joshua. At the large gates the main wall is straight, but a horseshoe-shaped entrance, having one, two, or three gates, is built around the gate. It was in such a place that Eli sat waiting for the return of his sons. Over the gate is a tower, 50 or 60 feet above the wall, in which the large guns are kept. It was from such a tower that David watched for the runners, and knew the running of Ahimaaz. The jinrikisha men are able to run for five miles or more and pull a man in their " baby carriage " without perceptible weariness ; from PEASANT LIFE 229 them we can understand how Ahimaaz could run as he did. There is a gate in Tientsin through which all the water is carried into the city. It was in such a street and before such a gate that the people gathered together to listen to Ezra read the Book of the Law. The streets are full of dogs which never had owners. They live on refuse that is thrown into the street. Dogs fight over a bone in America. Here they fight over a cabbage-leaf. " Without were dogs." The swine live in the same manner as the dogs — by the refuse that is thrown upon the street. One can easily understand why the Jews, whose pigs were mere scavenger carts, as the Chinese pigs are, should forbid the eating of the flesh of swine. I think that, if it were a direct biblical command to eat it, most of us would break the commandment. A traveller spreads his bed down at night on a warm kang, covers himself, and goes to sleep. In the morning he rolls his bed up into a bundle about the size of an ordinary quilt and starts upon his way ; he takes up his bed and walks, or, as is very often the case, puts it on his donkey and rides on it. A few days ago, as I came from the " Western Hills," I saw a woman playing the part of a donkey, " grinding at the mill." In biblical pictures two are represented as grinding at the mill, but this woman was alone. 230 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Near the mill at which the woman was grind- ing there was a flat, hard piece of ground, about the size and shape of a tennis-court, which was the threshing-floor — a very good represen- tation, no doubt, of Nachon's or Atad's or Oman's. But still another thing was noticeable here. As I watched her and her threshing-floor, I was riding on a donkey like the thirty sons of Jair the Gileadite who rode on thirty ass's colts — like Christ entering Jerusalem. Still further, I was not going along the large road, but along one of the many by-paths that go diagonally through all the grain-fields. These by-paths through the field help us to understand how " some seed fell by the way-side." From our street to the gate at which we enter and leave the city, I counted 500 camels on their way to or from the mines, loaded or going for coal. They go in strings of six. A man leads or rides the front one, guiding it not by a bridle, but by a rope tied to a stick which is thrust through its nose. The other five are tied, each to the one in front of it, by ropes similarly at- tached. Many of these that I counted were only the tail end of long strings that were going off on side streets. Like the Midianites, " their camels were without number." Many of these camels and mules and donkeys have a rope muzzle fastened over their mouths and noses to prevent their cropping the herbage, if there be any, as they pass along the road ; PEASANT LIFE 231 they are thus muzzled " when treading out the corn." At one place men were drawing water out of a large well, and carrying it or letting it run through drains to irrigate their fields, while large troughs were being continually filled by the men and emptied by the passing camels and donkeys. One can never appreciate the use of Jacob's well till he has seen and drunk from a great well in a dry climate like this. In a melon patch was a platform raised four or five feet above the ground and covered with matting, making a little place in which a man could rest and sleep. They look very much, no doubt, like Isaiah's " cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." As we were about to enter the great gate we saw men with little tables loaded with cash (Chinese money). Country cash is small, city cash large. When one comes from the country to the city, like the people to the feast at Jerusa- lem, he must change his country cash for city cash. If he knows how much his cash is worth in city cash, all is well ; but if not, he is liable to fall into " a den of thieves," for these money- changers are not wholly unlike those whom Christ cast out of the temple. Much of the grain is carried to the threshing- floor on the backs or shoulders of men rather than hauled on waggons or carts or carried by animals. When the grain is winnowed and put away it is the business of the women to gather 232 HOME LIFE IN CHINA up the chaff, and pile up the straw that it may be used as feed, fertilizer, or fuel. This, by the way, is another problem in North China — the problem of securing fuel for the long cold winters. And so they raise large quantities of corn and broom-corn {Kao-liang, tall millet), or Kaffir-corn, the seeds of which may furnish food for men or animals, and the stalks be used for fences about their houses, or fuel for heating their brick beds. Indeed, among the peasant class, their beds, like their houses, are made mostly of clay or sun-dried bricks. When their grains are harvested they must be stored, but very few of the peasant class have storehouses of any kind. During the autumn days one of the most common sights as one passes through the rural districts is to see the roofs of their clay cottages covered with maize that it may be sufficiently dried to keep it from moulding. Of this, only enough is ground at a time to last the family for a day or a few days at most. Great quantities of beans are raised, which are ground up and made into a kind of bean-butter (chiang), either red or black, while others are ground up and made into bean-curd — a kind of food which is not very appetizing to the Euro- pean when he first arrives in China. I remem- ber one young friend who said that when he came to China there was one thing he decided he would never eat. " What was that ? " I asked. PEASANT LIFE 233 " Bean-curd," he answered. " And have you come to it ? " I inquired. " I was once shut up in Mongolia," he ex- plained, " during the troublous times of the Chino- Japanese war, and for three days I could get nothing to eat. I finally came upon a man who was selling bean-curd, and I give you my word of honour, I never, either before or since, tasted anything so good." Among the various kinds of Chinese produc- tions none are perhaps more palatable than their melons. They have a large variety of musk melons ; and water-melons with both red and yellow insides. I confess I preferred those with red pulp, though that was, I am inclined to think, because they were more like our own. Chinese farming utensils, as well as those of all kinds of tradesmen, are very crude — much like those of Europe before the age of invention and machinery. They plough with a forked stick, one part of which is tipped with iron ; their drag or harrow is often nothing more than a bunch of brush ; and their hoes and mattocks are all made by the blacksmith, though I think their hoe is set at a better angle than those in America. Their axes are hand-made, and are often designed for a left- as well as a right-handed workman. Their saw is nothing but an ordinary bucksaw beaten out of a piece of steel, and they are very inge- nious in using all kinds of things, such as bits of wire, old corset steels, or hoop-skirts, which they utilize in making saws. Their chisels and planes 234 HOME LIFE IN CHINA — they are without augers — are of the same crude pattern, but their drill is both ingenious and effective. Their carts are crude, heavy, and cumbersome, but their wheel-barrow has a mini- mum of friction with a maximum of strength, and with three men and a donkey or two they can transport tremendous loads for long dis- tances at a slight cost. CHAPTER XXVI ODDITIES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE IN all the walks of life the Chinese are widely different from, often exactly antithetical to us . The divergence of customs , professional , social, mental, and moral, are only surface indi- cations of essential disparities of type, or shall we say of centuries of experience and education. We in our blunt way often blurt out informa- tion or scraps of intelligence which the average Chinese would never think of revealing. Ages of experience have taught him that things un- said never need to be answered or accounted for, while one may at any time be called to face facts that he never received a cash for telling, and what is the use of paying for hearing yourself talk when one ought to be paid for doing so. To attempt to get a Chinese to assign a reason for anything, even the most common custom, is often futile. One day while riding a donkey through the country, I noticed that many of the farmers' wives and daughters living in the country villages did not bind their feet. I said to the donkey driver who was running along beside me : " The country women do not bind their feet, do they ? " 235 236 HOME LIFE IN CHINA " No." " Why ? " " They do not bind their feet." " Why is it that the Chinese women bind their feet ? " " They bind their feet." " But why do they do it ? " " That is their custom." " But why is it their custom ? " " There is no why — no reason whatever." I once said to one of the boys when he came to school : " Why did your brother not come to school to-day ? " " My brother did not come to school to-day," he answered. " Why do the Chinese build a pagoda thirteen stories high ? " I once inquired of a countryman in the region of a temple where a great pagoda was the centre of attraction. " That is the way to build a pagoda," he an- swered. The Chinese are always very social, but at the same time conservative and non-committal. When two Chinese meet on the street, neither would think of passing the other without stopping and having a little social chat. It is only social, however, for neither tells the other anything about himself or his business. The conversa- tion will probably be something after the fol- lowing : " Are you well ? " " Well. Are you well ? " ODDITIES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 287 " Well. Where are you going ? " " Down street. Where are you going ? " " Up street. Where have you been ? " ' Just up there. Where have you been ? ' " I have been down there. Good-day." " Good-day." In introducing people in China, the surname is always given first, as indeed in all their no- menclature. Although this is contrary to our Western custom, it is nevertheless more reason- able. We say John Smith — they would say Smith John. It is the Smith that is really essential, and so they give it first place in their name, while the given name is of secondary im- portance. When one Chinese meets another on the street they stop at a respectful distance from each other, and each makes a profound bow and re- spectfully shakes his own hands. One of the most awkward things I have ever known a Chinese to undertake is to shake hands with a European before he has learned to do so. He clutches, grabs, or searches for one's hand in a most pathetic way. If you were to try to shake the hand of a Chinese who knew nothing of Western customs he would be pardonable for regarding it as a case of assault and battery, while to lift one's hat to an acquaintance — man or woman — would be an insult. White is the colour used by the Chinese in mourning costume, instead of black. It does not remain white long, however, and the more 288 HOME LIFE IN CHINA soiled and dilapidated a mourner looks the more mournful he appears. For this reason, under the old regime, the afflicted ones left their heads unshaven until they attained a remarkable de- gree of disreputability. No unkempt, unshaven, untrimmed Westerner could appear as forlorn as a Chinese mourner looks. A few decades ago smallpox was almost uni- versal. No precautions were taken against its spread. Once on inquiring of a Chinese how many children he had, he named them all except the youngest. " But why not count him ? " we inquired. " He has not had the smallpox yet," he an- swered. Everyone was expected to have it, and when a child was taken ill it was carefully tended until it had ch'u hua'rh — " blossomed out," as the Chinese term it — when it was allowed to go out on the street and play with the other children. I have seen small girls, having babies covered with scabs upon their backs, going freely about the streets of Oriental cities. On all sides one comes upon blind people. This affliction is mainly the result of smallpox, and is so common as hardly to be considered an affliction. No provision is made for the blind in the way of homes or hospitals, and they may be seen going about the streets, feeling their way with a bamboo stick, blowing a peculiar whistle to let the neighbourhood know that the blind musician, or fortune-teller, or story-teller, is in ODDITIES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 239 their midst, and is ready to entertain the women and children for an hour for a handful of cash. Baldness is fully as common in China as in the West. The Chinese call it kuang t'ou, or " Shiny pate." Women suffer as much from it as men. This is partly the result of the hairdressing used, and partly caused by the fashion of combing the hair so tight back over a framework as to slowly drag it out by the roots. When the scalp be- comes bare, she pastes a large black patch on the head, and continues to comb the hair about the forehead and neck up into a bunch and pin it to the patch. Then when it is almost all gone, she paints her head with Chinese ink to make it look like well-combed hair. Deafness and dumbness are less common than baldness and blindness, perhaps because there is neither disease nor style to produce them. The Chinese teach the children that if they eat any of the wax from the ear they will become speech- less, while it is currently believed, in some parts of China at least, that a blow on the soft spot of an infant's skull will cause it to be dumb. I have often been asked if the Chinese have the toothache. They have everything. Now that the foreigner is in China, the possessor of a decayed molar, if he has a foreign acquaintance, appeals to him to pull his tooth. If he hasn't, " he must grin and bear it," or, as someone puts it, "he don't need to grin." There are no Chinese dentists, and I think it would be difficult to find a race with poorer teeth. 240 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Headache is very prevalent, but for this they have a remedy, or what they allege to be one. They pinch the skin of the temples, the forehead, or the bridge of the nose, until it is discoloured, in the hope that by counter-irritation on the out- side they may dispel the pain within. Still an- other remedy is to place a large black plaster, a leaf, or the skin of a radish or turnip over the spot. For sore throat they pinch the neck the same as for headache. Whether it cures or not, I cannot say; nor do I know whether their treatment for skin diseases or wounds is efficacious. The almost universal remedy is a plaster called hao kao, which keeps all the pus and poison within. But when one has said all one has to say about Chinese medicine, whether good or bad, kill or cure, one must still admit that they have enough people left in spite of it all. A translation of the patent medicine adver- tizements in the shape of yellow posters pasted upon the walls of all the principal streets, and at every market-place, would make an interest- ing bit of literature, but it would hardly be accepted by any respectable publishers, nor be allowed to be sent through the mails. There are many of them, however, that are unique. One large poster that caught the eye on every side was : " Foreign methods of repairing the teeth " (Yang Fa Pu Ya Yen). Another was a poster advertizing " Bicycle Pills." Another advertized a pill that was guaranteed to produce male offspring. Many posters advertize the * X fr A GIRL WITH A !',lkl) ODDITIES OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 241 cures that may be expected by taking pilgrim- ages to certain temples, and drinking water from the spring connected therewith ; but the most common of all the temple posters is, " Ask and ye shall receive." Indeed one often sees scores of assurances hung up about the temple by those who have prayed, that their prayers have been answered as a result of the worship of the god of that temple, which in some cases is a fox. Many trades which with us are stationary are peripatetic in China. The country blacksmith packs his shop on a wheel-barrow and moves about from place to place, and from village to village. Two boxes — which look very much like cheese-boxes — contain the outfit of the shoe- maker, and with these swung on the two ends of a pole, he goes from place to place, and mends shoes upon the side walk. The chiropodist finds a warm corner on the south side of some friendly walls, and removes the corns, or trims the in- growing nails with which everyone is afflicted, for in spite of their silk, satin, or velvet shoes the Chinese suffer severely, and would welcome a genuine " foot-ease." Most of the people are shaven by peripatetic barbers, who wander about the streets advertizing themselves with large twanging tweezers which sound like huge tuning-forks, and they offer to shave their patrons upon the street, or in their own homes. They are great gossips — the barbers. Our travelling restaurants have been antici- 16 242 HOME LIFE IN CHINA pated many centuries by the Chinese purveyor of food, who carries his table on one end of a pole balanced by his stove and cooking utensils on the other. With his dough, his hashed meat and vegetables, and a little oil and salt, he roasts, fries, bakes, broils or toasts a surprising number of dishes, the tastes of which would be still more surprising to an Occidental, though be it said to his credit that the children love his wares. Even the confectioner is often a wanderer. He carries a bowl or jar of mixed taffy, and a number of straws in a box. When the children give their order he winds up a bit of the liquid taffy on the end of a straw, and, after the style of a glass-blower, he blows it into the shape of any fowl or animal the little customer may desire. CHAPTER XXVII CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES SOMEONE has said that if you wish to put a man or an audience to sleep, or destroy all his interest in what you have to say, just rehearse to him a few Chinese names with which he is not at all familiar. A story is told of an English lady in Canton who employed a Chinese cook who, when asked his name, replied : " My name Wang Chi-tung." " Oh, I can't remember that," exclaimed his mistress. " I'll call you John." " What b'long Missy name ? " inquired her factotum. " My name is Mrs. William Fames worth Holcomb," she replied. "Oh, me no memlee that ; me callee you Tommy." To those who think the Chinese names are difficult to remember, we would bid them look first upon that of Wang the cook, and then upon that of his mistress. Whether Chinese names are interesting or not, depends a good deal upon one's understanding of them, and much more upon whom they repre- sent. The name Li Hung-chang is no better 243 244 HOME LIFE IN CHINA sounding than any other Chinese name, and yet it attracted the attention of the world for a quarter of a century, and is full of meaning. Li is the family name ; it means plum, and is said to indicate its owner's descent from the founder of Taoism. This old man, born nearly six hundred years B.C., was said to have had his birth in the shade of a plum tree, which is called Li, and so he was called Mr. Plum. The given name of a Chinese boy is supposed to indicate his disposition, his character, his prospects, or the desires of his parents for his future. And so the given name of the great Chinese diplomat, who with Gladstone and Bismarck made the triumvirate of the latter half of the nineteenth century, was Hung-chang, and may mean " illus- trious bird," or " learned treatise." His brother, Han-chang, who was also a viceroy, was known as " Bottomless bag," perhaps in reference to the depth of his diplomacy. It may not be uninteresting to notice the meaning of the names of some of the men who have played a prominent part in the reforms of the past quarter of a century. Next to Li Hung-chang, the most " illustrious bird " of the lot, is the great viceroy, Chang Chih-tung, the famous author of the book, China's Only Hope. His family name Chang means " to open out," while Chih-tung signifies " him a cave," the whole name apparently meaning " one who opens himself up as a cave " is opened. Another great viceroy who was appointed with CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 245 Chang Chih-tung and Li Hung-chang as Peace Commissioner, is Liu K'un-yi, and his name and surname, taken together, indicate that he will " put the earth in order/' And it may be said that among the great patriots during the coup d'etat, none were more reliable than Liu K'un-yi. The Provisional President of the Chinese Re- public, the man who first made himself famous with Europeans, by giving them his protection during the Boxer rebellion, is Yuan Shih-kai, whose name indicates that he is the " first " of a " generation of victors," and it would be safe to allow the world to decide whether he has made it good or not. Prince Ch'ing's name is Yi Kang,and proclaims him an " assistant generation," whatever that may mean. As a matter of fact, the Prince of Ch'ing's character was as indefinite as his name. He was one of those nondescripts who never make any serious errors, and yet never take a stand which indicates a strong character. The first President of the Peking Imperial University, who was, by the way; one of China's great liberal leaders, was Sun Chia-nai. His family name Sun means " grandson," and his given name a " house- vase " — " grandson of a house vase," a name which in the West might be open to the suspicion of ridicule. The man who so long held the position of Taotai at Shanghai, who was in charge of the railroads and telegraph communications for so many years, was Sheng Hsuan-huai. His name Sheng means " abun- 246 HOME LIFE IN CHINA dant," and his given name, Hsuan-huai, means to " reveal thoughts." If he had revealed all the abundant thoughts that passed over his wires during the Boxer outbreak he would have been in danger of having his own thinking apparatus removed with the sword. Jung Lu, the lifelong friend of the Great Dowager, the man who really defended the Lega- tions during the Boxer rebellion, and then was objected to on the Peace Commission, and given the cold shoulder by the very Ministers whose lives he had saved, had a name which meant ' glorious salary," or " happiness," which is re- garded by many in China as a fair equivalent. The man who was appointed Viceroy at Tientsin when Li Hung-chang was removed, was Wang Wen-shao. His name Wang is the same as our name King, while Wen-shao means " classical music." He was not, however, known as a com- poser, though like some of the great composers he was as deaf as a post. General Nieh Shih- ch'eng, who was in command of the troops that attacked and killed 500 of the Boxers between Tientsin and Peking, who was then rebuked by the Empress Dowager in an edict, and who afterwards lost his life, had a surname which means " hard " and a given name which means " successful student." In this case the name was a fit, as the road to military glory in China is through hard and successful study. General Ma Yu-k'un's family name means " horse " and his given name a " jade mountain." Anyone CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 247 who can make anything out of these combina- tions is welcome to the result. Most of these were among China's great men, and several of them were those with whom I have had more or less intimate acquaintance. The Chinese Minister at Washington, for so many years the most popular diplomat at the American capital — the man who triumphantly rode the billows when almost anyone else would have gone under — was Wu Ting-fang, a name which signifies " fragrant palace." The name of the Minister to England at the same time was Lo Feng-lo, and means a " rich harvest," while the name of the contemporary Minister to France, Yu Keng, signifies " much gold," a very appropriate name for any Chinese who obtained official position under the old regime. Now let us turn to the names of some of the anti-foreign Conservatives who made themselves so obnoxious during the Boxer rebellion. Prince Tuan's name was Ts'ai-yi, and means a " clear year." No name ever given to a man was more incongruous. He was largely instrumental in making his first year in public life one of the darkest in the whole history of his country. The name of Tung Fu-hsiang, the Kansu general who was in charge of the Boxer troops in Peking, and who fled as the bodyguard of the Empress Dowager, means " happy and auspicious omens." But to whom he brought happiness, 248 HOME LIFE IN CHINA or what auspicious omens preceded his coming, have never been pointed out. Nothing but fear preceded his coming, nothing but wailing followed in his track, and the Empress Dowager discovered before she was through with him that neither joy nor good fortune went with him whom she selected as her bodyguard and protector. Again, take the name of the man who was governor of Shantung when the Germans snatched away the port of Chiao Chou. His name was Li Ping-heng. He was the " Plum " who " held the scales," but as a Chinese gentle- man, with whom I was talking a few days ago, remarked : " The scales which he held would never weigh out justice to either his friends or his enemies." The man who was governor of Shantung when the Boxer trouble began, and who was more than any other person re- sponsible for the whole unfortunate disturb- ance, as well as the murder of all the foreigners, both at Pao-ting-fu and Tai-Yuan-fu, is Yti Hsien. His name means to " nurture virtue." He was about as much a patron of virtue as was Nero in his most fiendish freaks. Two men among the anti-foreign group were true to the names they bore. One was Kang Yi, the principal adviser of her Majesty, whose name signifies a " strong determination," an " unbending will " : the other was Hsu T'ung, the tutor of the heir-apparent, who at the time was eighty years old, constitutionally CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 249 anti-foreign, and above bribe-taking. His family name signifies " slow," and his given name a " varnish tree." Slow as a varnish tree he was, and as steadfast and stubborn. An old friend of the writer had several sons in the Peking University. One of them, the youngest, he had not seen since he entered school. One day while he was calling at our home I was talking about this boy, and of how clever and attractive he was. He listened in a dazed sort of way until it finally dawned upon him that I was extolling the virtues of his youngest son, and he exclaimed : " Oh, you mean ' Get a man.' " I had spoken of him as " Wei-fan," a name which he did not know — the boy's school name ; " Get a man " was his milk name, " Wei-fan " was his school name. Another friend called his first boy " Got a mountain," his second " Got a garden," and his third " Got a man." The names of girls are equally attractive. The regular name for a little Chinese girl baby is " My thousand ounces of gold." This can scarcely be called a name. It is the way they speak of their little girls, just as the ordinary term for woman is met jen, " a beautiful person." Little girls are called " Jade," one of the semi-precious stones — the stone most prized by the Chinese — or " Pearl," " Rose," or " Lily," or any of the flowers. Indeed the appellation for a Chinese girl or woman is just about what it is in any other part of the world. 250 HOME LIFE IN CHINA But it would be a misrepresentation of the Chinese to stop here. They more often speak of the little girls, especially among the common people, as ya foil, or hsiao ya t'ou, '* Little slave," just as they speak of a boy as " Little dog," "Little pig," or "Little bald head." This is not necessarily a reflection on the child, or an indication that they do not love them, but only a way they have of speaking to them, as we call them " Bub," " Sis," or " Johnny." Again, they commonly speak of either boys or girls as " Number one, two, three, four, five, or six," and this in all walks of life. The daughters of Prince Ch'ing, and the sisters of Prince Su, were all well-known examples of this custom, while the sons of some of the princes were not known to the servants of their own households except as " Mr. Three," " Mr. Four," as I think I have mentioned elsewhere in the case of the family of Prince K'e. Those who have been following the conduct of affairs in China, and reading the papers without any thought of the geographical names, except their difficulty of pronunciation, would have found pleasure and instruction in knowing the meaning of these almost unpronounceable, but often poetic, characters. For instance, when we read about Shan-hai-kuan, we would be much more appreciative if we understood that shan means " mountain," hai means " sea," and kuan the official residence or city that controls CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 251 — the whole meaning, " The city which guards the narrow gap between the mountains and the sea." Tientsin is the " Heavenly Ford," Peking is the " North Capital," Nanking the "South Capital," Peiho the "North River," Hunho the " Muddy River," Huangho the " Yellow River," Yang Tsun the " village of the Yang family," Wang Chia Chuang the " village of the Wang family." A single family live in a place, each son bringing his wife to the parental enclosure, as we have said else- where, until a family home becomes a village retaining the name of the man who started it. The names of many of the places and works explain what they are or their character. The Grand Canal means nothing, but in Chinese its name is Yun Liang Ho, the " River for Trans- porting Grain," for it was constructed for bringing rice from the south when piracy or storms made it dangerous to go by sea. The name Chefoo is Yen T'ai, and means " Rocky Terrace," while Shanghai is " On the Sea." Again, the names of the streets are de- scriptive and interesting. The missions in Peking are on the following streets : English Church Mission on " Silk Thread Street," London Mission on " Donkey Meat Street," Presbyterian on " Duck Alley " near " Pipe Street," Mission for the Blind on " Dried Fish Street," American Board Mission at " Mouth of Lamp Market," Methodist Mission on " Filial Piety Lane or Alley." 252 HOME LIFE IN CHINA The names which the Chinese give to all kinds of foreign inventions, machinery, and importations, are not without interest. The railroad train is called the " fire-wheel cart," because fire is the motive power. The engine is " fire-cart head," and the railroad " the iron road." So the steamboat is the " fire- wheel boat," while the man-of-war is just the " soldier boat." The bicycle is the " self- moving cart," or the " cart that you can propel yourself." The phonograph is a " talk-box," the telegram is an " electric letter," while " coal gas lamps " and " electric gas lamps " are sufficiently clear to need no explanation. A fountain pen is a " water pen," a desk is a " book table," and a washstand is a "wash- face table." There is no escape from nicknaming in China. The rule which cautions us against talking about feet in the presence of a club- footed man does not apply there. Every peculiarity, particularly if it be physical and obvious, is eagerly and promptly seized upon as a basis for the almost universal habit of nicknaming. The founder of the Taoist sect or religion goes by the name of " Old Boy," or " Old Teacher," because it was said he was eighty years in gestation, and looked old when he was born. The Grand Dowager was commonly known as the " Old Buddha," and one of the great officials was as commonly called " Hump-backed CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 253 Liu." If they would not spare those in high life, it could hardly be expected that the common herd or the " foreign devil " would be left without their proper nicknames. Dr. Walker of our Methodist Mission tells how one evening, while stopping at an inn in a country village, he was called upon by a well- dressed gentleman, and greeted as " Old Mr. Foreign Devil " ; and my wife tells how in her early associations with those in high life they spoke of her to her assistant as the " Devil Doctor." Indeed, the little princesses would run into their palaces and shout out in childish glee, "The Devil Doctor is coming," and it was not until she had frowned upon this custom that it was changed. An individual is usually nicknamed from some physical deformity, some habit, or some mental or moral characteristic. A man whose face is deeply pitted with smallpox is commonly known as " Poxy," a man who has an unthatched roof is " Baldy," while a man with a hare-lip, club-feet, cross eyes, deaf ears, a hump back, or a lame leg, will invariably be known by this characteristic attached to his name. Indeed, it not infrequently happens that the nick is so well known that he does not require the name. There was an old woman in the Presbyterian Mission in Peking who was afflicted with a birthmark which almost covered one side of her face. She was known only as " Black-face Wang." 254 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Even the children have many of their nur- sery rhymes after this style : " Old pock-marked Ma He climbed up a tree, A dog barked at him And a man caught his knee, And scared old Poxy Until he couldn't see." Here we have another on the fat man : " The big-bellied merchant, He opened up a stall, But had to sell his trousers To get the capital." What pertains to physical deformities is true also of mental characteristics. I know a young Chinese who goes by the name of " Impulsive Liu." If his temper is bad that gives him a nickname. If he is a book-worm, as we say, they call him a " Book-cover," a " Book-insect," ora" Book-bag." If he is generous or bene- volent, ambitious or avaricious, just or good, his disposition gives him his name. A lazy or use- less woman is justly and pertinently designated as a " Bread-basket," and a " Clothes-horse." Sometimes the nickname is the result of some particular incident or action. I knew one mis- sionary who preached a series of sermons on Galatians, and was thereafter known in that region as " Galatians Liu." Another preached a series on the Beatitudes, and they called him " Eight Beatitudes Chia." One of my friends was commonly known as CHINESE NAMES AND NICKNAMES 255 " Mouse Mei," because he wore mouse-coloured clothes. Another, deeply loved by all the Chinese, was known as " Blind Pai," because his eyes were deep set and had a sightless appear- ance — a characteristic I had never noticed until after I had heard his nickname. One bald-headed missionary in Peking was known as the " Buddhist Priest," because his baldness gave him the appearance of having had his head shaved. Another of the same mission who had an immense beard was always known as " Mi Big-Whiskers." The Dr. Walker mentioned above was com- monly called by the Chinese Christians " The Old Fellow," while another member of the same mission was as commonly known as " Old Pao." One of the missionaries, while in charge of a school, had the reputation of keeping order even though he had to do it with a ruler, and the pupils nicknamed him " Mr. Board." A teacher who kept a rigid account of everything that was bought for the school was known as Li Chang Kuei-ti, or as we would say, " Contrac- tor " or " Overseer." One of my friends was known as " Big Brother Sea," while I myself was known as " Uncle Ho." Often nicknames are extremely pat, and hit the mark with such effect as to characterize for life. Your only hope of avoiding some humili- ating or sardonic sobriquet from your Chinese friends, is to keep yourself pure, gentle, kind, considerate and just, and then if you are given a 256 HOME LIFE IN CHINA nickname, it will be one which reflects credit upon you. The Chinese child receives a milk name when he is born, a school name when he enters college, a life name when he enters life, and a nickname when he deserves it. CHAPTER XXVIII CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS IN the reconstruction of China which is coming with the new Republic, there will be monstrous difficulties that will meet both the foreigners and the Chinese officials at every step of the way. I question whether the Chinese alone will be able to cope with them. They will be broken down, if they are broken down at all, by the co-operation of the majority, or the most powerful minority, of the intelligent Chinese and the foreigners who are genuinely interested in the reformation. Among these difficulties there will be none that will be harder to overcome than superstition, first, because superstition is so nearly related to our religious nature, as it is to theirs ; and second, because it is so firmly imbedded in the character of the people. This difficulty will be enhanced because the Chinese, like the Jew, are a people of character, beyond that of almost all, if not all, non-Christian people. They give up with reluctance any ideas that they have held through the centuries. I wish to say to my Chinese friends who read this that I have no disposition to ridicule 17 257 258 HOME LIFE IN CHINA them because of their superstitions, or to imply that they are the only people that are super- stitious. I saw a horse-shoe and a mule-shoe nailed on the sill of the door of the store where I made a purchase this morning. I could name a hundred superstitions of my own people which they would readily admit, but this book is on Home Life in China. The Chinese are very superstitious about the foreigner, one of which has resulted in their calling him Kuei-tzu or " devil." A very amusing story is told of a red-haired, red- whiskered, blue-eyed British Consul at Can- ton who was, as are most of the British officials, of an investigative disposition, and was anxious to know why it was that the Chinese call us of the West " foreign devils." Now be it under- stood that the Chinese idea of a demon is that he is a red-haired, red-bearded, blue-eyed being who quails at nothing that comes in his way. One day when a Chinese official was calling on the consul, the latter asked him : " Why is it that the Chinese call us devils ? " The official at first hesitated, but being pressed he finally said : " I do not care to tell you." " But I should take it as a great favour if you would tell me. I am very anxious to know." ' I cannot tell you," said the official. " Why not ? " asked the consul. " Because you would be angry if I told you." " By no means. I would not be so unreason- able as to ask you a question, and then be CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS 259 offended because you answered it. On the other hand, I should be greatly obliged to you." Being thus pressed until he was unable to refuse, the official finally eyed the consul from head to foot, and said slowly and reluctantly : " Well, it is because you look like devils." This natural superstition of the people was taken hold of by the Boxers in 1900, and circu- lated still more widely by all kinds of placards, both in prose and verse. I have before me one in verse, a part of which reads as follows : " The devils are not human beings like you ; If you doubt what I say, You may see any day, That the eyes of the devils in colour are blue." In the original this reads : " Kuei-tzu-pu-shih-jen-so-ch'uan- Ju-pu-hsin, Tzu-hsi-k'an, Kuei-tzu-yen-chu-tou-f a-lan. " These superstitions are not only connected with the religion of the people, but with their natural science as well. The Taoist priests, who were the original alchemists of China, have or- ganized all that they know and do not know about the powers of nature into a scientific system of superstition called feng skua (liter- ally "wind and water"), and this enters into the daily life of the people. Everything they do must be done in such a way as not to inter- fere with the feng skua of the place, or that of 260 HOME LIFE IN CHINA the neighbourhood, else some calamity is likely to befall them. The principles of this system are believed by high and low alike, if we are to judge from the pile of earth that is built about the north side of every burial-ground. This superstition may be illustrated by the following incident : Opposite the Methodist compound in Peking is the residence of a Huang Tai Tzu or " yellow girdle man," who is of direct descent from the royal family. Now the Chinese house is usually built without a chimney, his fireplace being under the brick bed, and he keeps all the heat, as well as the smoke and gas, within the room, but by opening the door and windows the gas and smoke may escape, and the heated bricks radiate heat all the night. The foreigners, how- ever, for the sake of cleanliness and comfort, built a chimney to a Chinese house which they were forced to use until their own was erected, and this chimney happened to be just opposite the middle of the " yellow girdle man's " front gate. As he had a family of five girls without any boys, he wanted to know the reason. Perhaps his house was improperly situated. He called in the geomancer, who, with a wise look on his face, went all about the premises, but could find nothing that violated the laws of feng shna. As he came out to the front he looked across the the street, and spied our chimney, and exclaimed: " It is that foreign devil's chimney that has CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS 261 destroyed your feng skua, and you will have nothing but girl children as long as that chimney stands." The old man dressed himself in his silk gar- ments, and hat — a Chinese never wore a hat under the old regime unless he was on impor- tant business — and came over to call upon the " foreign teachers." He spent a half-hour in talking about everything that did not concern either of them — a Chinese has no idea of the flight of time — time does not fugit with them, it just goes calmly on as it has been going for the past four thousand years — but finally he came to the chimney, and how it had spoiled the feng shua of his palace, and he had only girl children, and would not the honourable teachers be good enough to tear down the chimney to a level with the roof of the house. We wanted to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours, and so we set about it at once, and tore down the chimney until it could not be seen from his premises — and his next two babies were boys. The missionaries not infrequently encounter the opposition of the people as a result of their feng shua superstition. Within the walls of the city of Foochow there is a hill which the inhabitants of that place look upon as very important, as governing the health and con- trolling the general prosperity as well as the happiness of the people. In the earlier days some English missionaries bought property and 262 HOME LIFE IN CHINA built upon the hill, when the people, fearing that the feng shua of the city would be injured, destroyed the entire property of the mission, consisting of a church, school-house, and dwell- ing. Again, the death of an official in Hang- chow was believed by the people to have resulted from a mission building on a hill not far from his official residence. The people here were more considerate than those of Foochow, and requested the missionaries to accept a site in a different part of the city, to which, of course, they readily con- sented. For many years the Methodist Mission in Tientsin had great difficulty with both officials and people because of a street chapel located just inside the east gate of the city. The reason given was that the chapel destroyed the feng shua of the place. Efforts were made again and again to settle the matter, but always without success. Finally, both the officials and the missionaries grew tired of the constant trouble, and the former offered either to buy the chapel, or to furnish them a new site. They were asked to select a site, and if they were able to find one that was satis- factory and would give a sufficient amount of money to erect a suitable chapel, the mission- aries would accept it and move. A site was found, a chapel was erected, and everything was moved away from the old chapel, which still stood for years in the same place and did CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS 263 not seem to affect the feng shua after the foreigners had gone. All these feng shua difficulties do not occur, however, between the Chinese and the mission- aries. When the railroad was being surveyed between Tientsin and Peking innumerable diffi- culties were encountered, and the first thing that had to be done in leaving Tientsin was to cut a half-circle of some miles in order to avoid the thousands of graves. When the railroad was being surveyed from Canton to Wuchang the same complications occurred. Whenever it was proposed to make a cut through a mountain, the first question that arose was, "Will it spoil the feng shua of the place ? " for a range of hills to the north of a plain or a city acts as a pro- tection against the bad winds of the north in the same way as a mound thrown up around a graveyard acts as a protection to the graves, or as a range of hills around the Ming tombs protects the remains of the Ming emperors from the chilling blasts of Mongolia. Feng shua is more likely to be disturbed by altera- tions and interferences from the north than from any other direction. For this reason graves are sheltered by edifices which protect them from the northern blasts. Allied to this curious superstition is that which governs all boring or delving into the earth. Dragons, it appears, inhabit the under regions, and to disturb them is highly in- advisable, not to say perilous. Opening mines 264 HOME LIFE IN CHINA or boring for oil must be governed by strict attention to this important detail. There are certain localities where, if the Taoist priests or geomancers should forbid the opening of a mine or the erecting of a derrick, a whole village or a score of villages would arise en masse and drive the intruding dragon-dis- turbers out of the country. The people of these villages are without either heat or light, except that furnished by the burning of weeds, grass, or corn-stalks, or a tallow dip, a dish of grease or oil, but that does not matter — their superstitions outweigh their comforts. It may not be generally known that the beautiful pagoda at Tungchou was built, as perhaps most pagodas are, to preserve the feng shua of the place by hampering the move- ments of the earth-dragon. Deep down in the earth near Tungchou there is an immense dragon, every winking of whose eye produces an earthquake. In order to prevent this calamity the geomancers were consulted, and it was decided to erect a large pagoda exactly on the dragon's aye to prevent his winking, since which time there has been no further trouble from earthquakes. Just how they located the eye it would be interesting to know, but the geomancers have never told. That is one of their secrets. Foreigners are not always careful to avoid antagonizing the Chinese unnecessarily in this CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS 265 matter of superstition. For instance, no Chinese woman was ever allowed to go on top of the wall of Peking, but foreign ladies go there to walk whenever they please. Women were also forbidden to enter many of the temples, as the Chinese hold that the mere presence of a woman there is defiling, but foreign ladies go in at will. And it not in- frequently occurs that foreigners conduct themselves while in temples in a way which we would never allow on the part of a Chinese in one of our churches. On one occasion an American dignitary of high standing was being shown through the great Lama Temple north of Peking. See- ing a little mud idol on one of the altars which he very much desired, he said to his guide : " See if you cannot induce the old priest to let me have this idol." "No, no," said his missionary guide, " I go through this temple often, and I do not care to propose anything which might be offensive to the priest." Then, turning to that functionary, who had been listening to the conversation which, of ' course, he did not understand, the missionary explained : " The old teacher would like to have that little idol, but I told him I would not ask you for it." The old priest, a quiet-mannered, devout- 266 HOME LIFE IN CHINA looking old man, glanced about the temple as if to see if any other priests were present, and then said in an undertone : " Tell him to take it, but not to let anyone see him." Thereupon the dignitary backed up near where the idol was, slipped it into his overcoat pocket, and then put a half dollar into the old priest's hand, who accepted it very much as if he had stolen it. It was one of the most amusing things I have ever seen in China — a high American dignitary trying to bribe a Buddhist priest to sell a worthless little mud idol, which the priest refused to do, but allowed him to steal the idol and then accepted the bribe-money. In the court of this same temple there is a large monument which was built over the clothes of the Dalai Lama of Tibet, who was invited to Peking to visit the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, and while there died of smallpox. His body was sent back to Tibet, and his clothes were buried in this temple court and this monument erected to his memory. On the body of the monument are carved pictures of the ten transmigrations through which Buddha is supposed to have passed, in which are delicate carvings of deer and other animals, the legs of which have been broken off and carried away by relic -hunting bandits from the West. If Chinese came to our churches or public monuments and destroyed or defaced CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS 267 them in that way we would have them arrested and imprisoned. Many of these superstitions about foreigners are real, while many others have been originated as bugbears to scare children, and then have become real causes of fear to whole communities. Among the former we may instance the super- stition about taking out the eyes of the Chinese for use as medicine or in photography. Millions of people believe this. The great viceroy, in his wonderful book, China's Only Hope, par- ticularly mentions it as a superstition that is without foundation. While the railroad was being constructed between Tientsin and Peking, a report was circulated which became a street rumour in the capital, that the foreigners were putting a Chinese child under each of the railroad ties. There is no doubt, I think, that this originated from some nurse trying to scare a child by telling it that if it was not good the " foreign devil " would take it and put it under the ties of the iron road. Another story of the same nature as this is the cutting off of the queue. Someone tells of a man who was lying on his brick bed, or walking along the road, or street, and put his hand up to take hold of his queue only to find that it was gone, and to see a " foreign devil " near by laughing at him. This kind of an idle story formerly spread in China like wildfire. Ask anyone who tells it if he ever saw anyone 268 HOME LIFE IN CHINA who had had his queue cut off, and he will tell you " No," but at the same time there is as much of a sensation caused by such a story in Peking as was caused in Park Row by the Spanish or Boer War or the Boxer trouble. M CHAPTER XXIX CHINESE HUMOUR OST people think that the Chinese social life is as solemn as a funeral," wrote a leading literary editor to the writer not long ago. It is not a difficult matter to understand why this opinion has become so general throughout Europe and America. In all his associations with foreigners, as well as with all others except his most intimate friends, the Chinaman seldom loses his dignity, and his demeanour has been misconstrued as solemnity. As a matter of fact, Chinese children in their earliest years are taught to " Be dignified in walking and be orderly in gait, Never lean against a doorpost, but in standing, stand up straight." Both their clothes and their conduct make the boys appear as " little men," and the girls as " little women." Girls of the better families are taught never to laugh in the presence of com- pany, and the provocation must be strong in- deed which cause them to forget this rule. This, however, represents the public life of the Chinese, and is no more like their private life than the public life of a statesman or clergyman is like 209 270 HOME LIFE IN CHINA his life among his wife and children. This is graphically illustrated both by their printed and unprinted literature, as well as by their conver- sation. As the foreigner passes along the street, he not infrequently hears a boy say to his companion, " There goes your uncle," and if he takes the little arab to task a bystander will explain that this is merely a piece of fun between the boys — at your expense, of course. In the nursery, the street songs, the street calls, the common, every- day stories, of which China has a goodly store, one constantly hears or finds the most amusing things. As, for instance, a vendor of small wares, such as bran cakes, sings out in sten- torian tones that those who eat his wares in sufficient quantity will find that they will cure blindness, baldness, lameness, deafness, pre- serve the teeth, instruct the ignorant, secure positions for the ambitious, while to the hen- pecked husbands he says : " The man who eats fears not his wife, And the woman works better all her life." The henpecked husband is one of the stand- ing jokes of the people. The expression for this is Kuei che ting teng, that is " kneel and hold a candle on his head." The idea is that the man who fears his wife is compelled to kneel on the floor and hold a candlestick on his head to enable his wife to do her work. That this is an actual condition in many families is plainly seen from CHINESE HUMOUR 271 the position held by the Grand Dowager for forty-seven years, from the authority of every mother-in-law, and from the fact that it was the late Dowager Lung Hou who gave up the throne and the dynasty of the Manchus, and then afterwards gave up the Forbidden City, and is one of the strongest arguments against the woman-is-a-labour-burdened-slave-in-China argument. An eminent American scholar, in reviewing the writer's book of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, speaks of some of the illustrations which " pre- sent the Chinese children playing their sober little games." Why he should call such games as " Blind-man's-buff," " Eni-me-ni-mi-ni-mo," "This little pig went to market," or " Pat-a- cake," " sober little games," unless it is because of preconceived notions of the Chinese people, it is difficult to say. There is this general opinion that the Chinese people are a sober people, and therefore whatever they do must be done in a sober way. When they have a dinner-party it must be a sober party ; when they play games they must be sober games ; when they crack jokes they must be sober jokes ; when they sing nursery songs to their children they must be sober songs ; when they write poetry it must be sober poetry ; and when they go to the theatre it must be a sober theatre. The Chinese say that " Where there is much smoke there must be some fire," and so this general opinion of the sober Chinese must have 272 HOME LIFE IN CHINA some foundation. The cause of the widespread idea of Chinese gravity is, as we believe, the disposition of the people to be dignified. It is impressed upon the boys that : " Whenever grown people are present, a child Should speak with a voice that is gentle and mild." At the same time the girls are told that they should : " Never turn your head in walking, nor display your teeth in mirth. Never move your knees when sitting, nor when stand- ing shake your dress. Laugh not loud when pleased ; when angry never talk with over-stress. Let the sexes ne'er commingle, whether they be rich or poor. Never go beyond the gateway, nor stand gazing from the door." Such are some of the instructions to children in their books of etiquette. It is, however, when people are off their guard that we get glimpses of their real character. Go into the nursery and listen to the mothers and nurses repeat rhymes and jingles to their smiling offspring, and you forget that they are not to " display their teeth in mirth," for little rows of pearls appear whenever the nurse tells that : " There's a cow on the mountain, the old saying goes, On her legs are four feet, on her feet are eight toes ; Her tail is behind on the end of her back, And her head is in front on the end of her neck." CHINESE HUMOUR 273 Almost all phases of life are caricatured in the same way. The nervous man is described as having in his agitation jumped out of bed in the morning, snatched up his wife's green trousers, which he put on by mistake, and started to market riding a donkey, with " his face turned toward its tail." At another time, he is made to say everything " wrong side to," as, for in- stance, when he hears a disturbance outside his door, he describes it to have been caused by a man biting a dog. He, in his haste, " took up the door and he opened his hand." Running outside, he says : " I snatched up the dog I should say double-quick, And threw him with all of my force at a brick." Then after having been bitten by the brick, he was so disconcerted as to have been carried in a horse, ridden astride of a sedan chair, and to have : " Blew on a drum and beat on a horn." In still another of these nursery rhymes the Chinese doctor is laughed at as follows : " My wife's little daughter once fell very ill, And we called for a doctor to give her a pill. He wrote a prescription which now we will give her, In which he has ordered a mosquito's liver, And then in addition the heart of a flea, And half pound of fly wings to make her some tea." In still others of their rhymes, after the style of Dr. Goldsmith, we are told that : 18 274 HOME LIFE IN CHINA " In the first month when it is night, If you are wise your lamp you'll light, And when the second month you meet, If you are hungry you should eat, And in the third month most of all, To build a house you must lay a wall." Chinese children are fond of cracking jokes on bald heads. In one of their rhymes we are told that a certain hairless gentleman on a notable occasion went to burn incense, not as people usually do, " to get him an heir," but rather " to get him some hair." " When he found in three days all his hair had returned, He the god gave a coat and more incense he burned, When he found in three days all his hair had dropped out, He upset the god and he kicked him about ; Then the god became angry and took up a sword And made into dippers that bald-headed gourd." But the woman becomes bald in China even more than the man ; why, we are not quite able to say, unless it is because of the hair-dressing she uses, or because of the fact that she combs her hair back so tight as to drag it out by the roots. However that may be, the children are regaled with the story of an old woman, sitting by the roadside, with only three hairs on her head, and vainly endeavouring to wear a jade pin in her hair. " She put it in once, but once it fell out, She put it in twice, but twice it fell out, But the old woman said, ' I know what I'm about, I'll not put it in and it cannot fall out.' " <£US. *\ CHILDREN S GAMES: THE MUSICIANS CHINESE HUMOUR 275 Indeed, almost all phases of life are laughed at in the nursery and on the playground. But the cheerful side of Chinese life is not con- fined to the nursery, or to childhood, but is found in all ages and all departments, as well as all ranks of life. The Chinese labourer cracks the same stale jokes as the son of Erin. On one occasion, while we were erecting one of our college buildings at the Peking University, one of the masons was trying to climb out over the basement wall instead of going around to the steps, and another standing a rod or two away called to him : " Come over here and I'll help you out." On another occasion when I was riding along at the base of the city wall, a small boy, running across the street, stumbled and fell directly in front of my donkey. " Ah," said a passing stranger, " you bend low in paying your respects to the gentleman." The following story is told of two Chinese labourers who were digging a well. Mr. Chang sent Mr. Lee down into the well to dig, while he sat on top and directed the work. He first ordered Mr. Lee to " dig a bit on this side," then " dig a little more on that side," until the latter, tired of both the work and the orders, retorted : " You sit up there and chew your tongue, while I have to do all the work." " One man here giving directions," said Mr. Chang, " can do as much as ten men down there." Thereupon Mr. Lee threw down his pick and climbed up beside Mr. Chang. 276 HOME LIFE IN CHINA " What are you doing here ? " inquired the latter. " Two men up here," answered Mr. Lee, " can do as much as twenty men down there." One of the most amusing things that followed the Boxer outbreak of 1900, was the develop- ment of an Anglo-Chinese slang. The English and the American soldiers — but mostly the American soldiers who had been in the Philip- pines — though they knew no Chinese, went about trying to buy almost everything that took their fancy. They learned to ask " How much," and by gesturing and with their ringers the merchants would tell them the price, and then by other gestures they would make an offer, which was always very much less than the Chinese asked, to which he would always answer " Pu kou pen," " That isn't as much as I paid for it." The soldiers learned this expression Pu kou pen and used it for everything they wished to say, such as, " It isn't worth it," " It isn't good stuff," " I do not want it," " It isn't up to the scratch," &c. &c. It was not long until the Chinese took it up, and if one offered a rikisha man less than he asked for his services, he answered Pu kou pen. One day I saw a foreigner trying to ride a bicycle, which he was unable to do. Like the old woman with her jade pin, he got on but fell off, and this he continued to do again and again. A Chinese stood watching him for some time, and then with a wag of his head he walked off saying Pu kou pen, " he's not up to the scratch." CHINESE HUMOUR 277 An amusing story is told about one of China's great philosophers, Chuang Tzu, a contemporary, and by many regarded as an equal, of Aristotle. One day while the old man was out walking, he saw a woman clad in widow's garb, fanning a newly-made grave. He determined at once to inquire into the reason for this peculiar conduct. Sauntering over near where she was, he attracted her attention by a slight cough and asked her why she was fanning this new grave, at which she explained that her husband, whose grave this was, had made her promise that she would not take a second husband until the earth on his grave was dry. The old philosopher, himself possessed of magical power, half in pity and half in disdain, flicked the fan a few times for her, and the grave was dry, whereupon she modestly thanked him and with unfeigned satisfaction returned to her home. " Such," said Chuang Tzu to himself, " is the fickleness of woman. I wonder if my wife would treat me in this way if I were to die," and he de- termined at once to test her. On returning home he told his wife the story, playfully saying that she would'do the same or worse if he should die. His wife made many uncomplimentary remarks about the faithless widow, and protested that in case of his demise she would remain faithful until death. Chuang Tzu, as we have said, had magi- cal power, and soon began rolling his eyes, fell into a fit, and feigned death. Of course, there was nothing to do but to get a coffin for him, put 278 HOME LIFE IN CHINA him in it, and nail down the lid. She then dressed herself in widow's garments, and began burning incense to her defunct husband, while he at the same time transformed himself into an attrac- tive young fellow, came and knelt beside her, and joined in her worship, " the while he made eyes at her." At first she paid no attention to him, but his beauty soon bewitched her, her heart began to go pit-a-pat, and, in a word, she sub- mitted to his amours, changed her white mourn- ing garments for red wedding attire, and married the young man before the remains of her old husband had been removed from her home. They had scarcely finished their wedding dinner, and " drunk their wine from the same gourd," when her young husband began to mani- fest signs similar to those which had taken off her first husband, fell down in a fit, and declared that nothing would cure him except a dose of brains from the head of a living man, or, if these could not be secured, from the head of a man who had not been dead more than three days. Where- upon the happy thought struck her that the brains of old Chuang would be exactly suited to the disease of young Chuang, and she began battering open the coffin to secure the medicine. When the casket was opened the young man had disappeared, and old Chuang, sitting bolt upright, exclaimed : " Hello ! how is this ? I'm in a coffin, and you have wedding garments on instead of widow's weeds ; you have been drink- ing, too. Is that your idea of propriety ? " CHINESE HUMOUR 279 " The fact of the matter is," replied the quick- witted wife, " I was under the impression that you might not be dead, and so I determined to open your coffin, and, that I might appear in fit garments to receive you, I donned my wedding apparel, but lest I might possibly be mistaken in my fond hopes, I took a glass of wine as a disinfectant against any stray microbes that might perchance be liberated." And the author of this gruesome but amusing tale adds : " Ladies, do not be over hasty in your judgment of others, nor in your accusation, nor in your promises as to what you would do under like circumstances. One can never tell what one will do until he is tested." CHAPTER XXX THE UNSCIENTIFIC CHINESE EACH nation has its own facial, racial, national, and educational, as well as domestic characteristics. It is not a difficult matter to identify a German, a French- man, an Italian, a Hindoo, a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Esquimo by their features. These may be the result of physical or mental causes. The thickness of the lips may be as much the result of determination as of race. Keep the mouth tight shut and the lips grow right side out : stand throughout life gawking in ignorance at every law of nature as well as every passer- by, and the lips grow wrong side out. Educa- tion and determination therefore may determine the thickness of lip of a nation or a race. Talk with the eyebrows, the hands, and the nose in sneering grimaces and gestures, and keep your lips tightly closed as a part of your politeness, and you may make your face into that of the Frenchman. Talk German and your facial ex- pression will be different from that of the man who talks French. Nations and races have developed certain definite lines of thinking. The Jew was a religio- 280 THE UNSCIENTIFIC CHINESE 281 moral thinker and as a result has given a religio- moral text -book to all Christendom. The European was a woodsman with a love of nature, and after he obtained the inspiration of a moral and spiritual uplift, he developed a scientific tendency. The Hindoo crystallized as a reli- gionist, and the Chinese as a moralist, and the educational systems they developed were a result of this tendency. The Chinese, therefore, are not scientific. Thus far they have been one of the most prac- tical people in the world, making for themselves all the practical appliances of life. But they have never developed the creative or inventive faculty. They have a certain sort of practical common sense ; indeed, they have a large amount of common sense, and this enables them to accomplish almost all that we are able to do — barring the results of steam, electricity, and gasolene — but all in a very primitive fashion. No science has ever originated and been car- ried to any degree of perfection as a science in Asia ; just as no religion that originated outside of Asia has ever amounted to anything as a re- ligion. No great invention was ever made and developed by an Asiatic in Asia. No Asiatic people have ever been noted for being a scien- tific people. Astronomy, which originated in Asia, began to be scientifically classified by the Greeks. There is no reason why these state- ments about the unscientific character of the Asiatics should cause the noses of Europeans 282 HOME LIFE IN CHINA and Americans to twitch in derision or pride, for the moral and religious knowledge of the Asiatic may change the entire current of world- thought during the next few centuries. I do not propose in this chapter to discuss the entire unscientific character of the Chinese people, and I trust my readers will not give me credit for being ignorant of the fact that they have originated some of the most practical appliances of life, and have stumbled upon some of the greatest inventions. For instance, they made a compass — or a so^A-pointing cart — nearly noo B.C. ; gunpowder (nay, not gun- powder, for they never made a gun, but fire-cracker powder) some 200 B.C. ; a musical instrument, the sheng, 2500 B.C., which furnished the suggestion of a pipe-organ to a Russian organ-builder named Kratzenstein years ago ; a repeating bow, a.d. 300, which may well be considered the ancestor of our repeating fire-arms ; and they stumbled upon printing 500 years before Gutenberg. But the impractical character of the people has been shown in their failure to realize the importance of their dis- coveries or inventions, or to make anything com- mercially useful therefrom : while their iron, copper, lead, silver, gold, coal, and salt sources of wealth have been practically unworked be- cause of a lack of inventive genius or an ability to improve on what they originated, or upon their first ideas. When the Von Kettler monument — a simple THE UNSCIENTIFIC CHINESE 283 stone pailoh or arch — was erected across the street in Peking, the builders used 17,000 poles and 60,000 lbs. of rope to bind them together, as a staging, by which to raise the stones in place. When they built a bridge across a river in the south, they floated the stones in place on a raft, waited for the tide to come in and raise the raft, blocked the stone up at the height to which it had been raised, letting the raft sink away from it, and then by reblocking raised it as many more feet by the next tide until it was in place. I want to confine myself in this chapter to the unscientific character of the Chinese in the toys which the children use in their play and in their homes, for in them only the most simple scien- tific principles are employed. The Chinese have never gone beyond the stage where they look upon toys as merely playthings for children. Toys, however, are more than this. There is a philosophy underlying the production of toys as old as the world and as broad as life ; a philo- sophy which, until recent years, has been little studied and cultivated, but which, like its near relations, the sciences of cooking and healing, has been driven by the stern teacher, necessity, to a self-development for the good of the race. Playthings are as necessary a constituent of childhood and of childish needs as food or medi- cine, and contribute in a like manner to the health and development of the child. They are the tools with which he plies his toy trades ; 284 HOME LIFE IN CHINA they are the instruments with which he carries on his play professions ; they are the goods he buys and sells in his play business ; the para- phernalia with which he conducts his play society. Nay, they are more than this ; they are the animals which serve him, the associates who entertain him, the comforts which minister to him, and the offspring from which comes no posterity. The Chinese do not know this. They do not know that toys are nature's first schools ; that the child with his toy shovels, spades, and hoes learns his first lessons in agriculture ; that with his hammer and nails he gets his first lessons in the various trades ; that her mud pies and other confectionery give the little girl her first lessons in preparing food ; her toy dinners and play- house teas her first lessons in entertaining guests ; and her dolls her first lessons in the domestic relations and affections. As a consequence, we need not hope to find the business of toy-making or the science of child-education in a very advanced state in China. Child's play and toy- making have been scientifically studied in Europe, and organized into a great business, as is seen in the modern Kindergarten and great toy- factories and children's book-publishing estab- lishments. But toys such as are made in great factories in Europe, are still made by poor men and women in Oriental hovels and homes. These toys are often interesting, but usually not very intricate, nothing like the machine or THE UNSCIENTIFIC CHINESE 285 self -moving toys of the West. One of the best Chinese toys is the bamboo top. It is made the same, spins the same, and whistles the same as our tin top, but will stand much more batter- ing and last a longer time. Another, similar, but double, the two being on the two ends of a carefully turned axle, is called a K'ung chung, and is spun by two sticks and a string, and is the Chinese whistling diabolo. The first one I ever saw in America I brought with me from China in a collection of toys, but they were soon made in great quantities and sold in all our toy- shops. The old man from whom I purchased my diabolo s — a dozen or more — was able to spin them in a great variety of ways. He would toss them over or under his foot, or up into the air, catching them on the string as they came down, and would then put the sticks with which he spun them under his leg, behind his back, and in every conceivable position, making the top not only sing but howl. That old man had been making those toys for thirty years with a knife, a saw, a bit of sand-paper or file, but it had never occurred to him that he might invent a machine to do the work, and open a large toy factory. He made toys in the forenoon in his little hut, and went out to sell them in the afternoon or on market days. The first toys to attract the attention of the child are rattles. The Chinese have a great variety of kinds made of wood or tin, gorgeously painted with water-colours of vegetable dyes, 286 HOME LIFE IN CHINA which are soon transferred from the face of the toy to the face of the child. The second style of toy to interest the little ones is the doll or the animal. The Chinese have a great variety of this kind of toys, all very crude. The nose of the doll is sewed on, its ears pasted on, its queue stuck into its head, while the eye and other features are done! in colours. They know nothing about opening and shutting their eyes, simple as that principle may be, and they have made the same mistake in their talking dolls and animals that is made by the manufacturers of our own rubber goods, viz. the same whistle that makes the doll cry also makes the dog bark, the cow low, the horse neigh, the bird whistle, the hen cackle, and the cock crow. They have toy carts — music carts — made by taut wires over a sounding-board struck by wire pegs in the axle ; but it has never occurred to them to make a self-propelling cart by a con- cealed spring, because, forsooth, they cannot make the spring. They utilize — whether they understand it or not — the principle of the expansion of air by heat, and construct toy lanterns with a paper wheel in the top, fastened to cross-bars, on which are hung men and women riding upon animals of all kinds, which, turned by the heat of the burning candle, make a very interesting merry- go-round. The one toy which comes nearest to an indi- cation of inventive power on the part of the THE UNSCIENTIFIC CHINESE 287 Chinese originator is a set of what they call the " fifteen magic blocks." This is nothing more than a piece of pewter about three inches square cut into fifteen pieces, all of which are in pairs except one which is a rhomboid. With these fifteen blocks they have made more than one hundred and sixty different pictures, each repre- senting some incident in history, some mytho- logical story or fairy tale, or some snatch of poetry or song. All of the fifteen pieces must be used in each picture to make it complete. It is unnecessary to say that it is often difficult to make the pic- ture even when you have the blocks with the outline of the picture as a pattern. What, then, must it be to invent and make the pictures in the beginning ? It is a toy for children, a puzzle for grown folks, but is used by all classes, from the dowager princesses to the little boys and girls in the homes of the common people. CHAPTER XXXI DRESS AND HOSPITALITY AN interesting interview is said to have ZA taken place between a lady reporter and -*• *■ Mrs. Wu, the wife of the Minister who was so long popular as China's representative at Washington, and who directed the revolutionary foreign propaganda from Shanghai, was ap- pointed Minister of Justice in the Provisional Republican Cabinet, and acted as chief Revolu- tionary Delegate at the Shanghai Peace Con- ference. It was while he was in Washington that this lady reporter called on " Madame " Wu for the first interview that that lady ever accorded to an American reporter. This reporter tells us that " Mme. Wu smiles often, which is not a Chinese habit," though personally I am inclined to think that girls giggle about as much in China as in Europe or America, if not more. " I learned to smile in America," said Mme. Wu, " and to laugh." (I give it in the re- porter's own words and Mme. Wu's broken English.) " Chinese very serious people. They not laugh much ; not sing ; not dance," a thing which I personally very much doubt, except the dancing. 288 DRESS AND HOSPITALITY 289 " Have they no singing voices ? " " How I know ? They not try. Singing not the fashion. Nobody sings : nobody dance : here they do, and it makes them light of heart. Americans happy-looking people, particularly the ladies. American ladies all agreeable. It is their great virtue, like modesty with the Chinese. They are kind and laughing, and open, and I would say more — what is it ? " " Hospitable," suggested the Minister. " Ah," said Mme. Wu, her shining eyes beam- ing with gratitude, " that is it." " In China," she continued, " there is also much hospitality, but not like here. Ladies make calls, but only on ladies. Not see gentle- men. They give very many presents to close acquaintances, but they not so easily meet strangers. Ladies stay close at home, except when they visit relatives and friends. " Sometimes I get home-sick. Then I like to see China. America very fine, but China all beauty ; pretty flowers and birds and gardens. Houses all made pretty ; not so much bigness, but much more balconies and gardens. This pretty house, but different." " Yet you seem to have moved a good deal of China here." Madame Wu laughed. " All we can get," she replied, looking con- tentedly at the Chinese effects in weird carvings and Oriental upholsteries. The pictures of the Legation are particularly J 9 290 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Chinese in effect and colouring, and of Mme. Wu's own choosing, for she has artistic tenden- cies. But it is in Madame's boudoir that the real touch of the Orient is given. Nothing modern or American mars its quaint Eastern loveliness. The bed is exquisitely carved and covered with richly embroidered silk, with which the couches and walls are also draped. Every ornament is from the Orient, with hand-carved ivory toilet accessories and water-colours of Chinese landscapes (shan shua, mountain-and- water), with lotus blossoms and Chinese lilies painted on the white frames. Even Madame's maid, as neat and polished as a wax doll, is an importation from her native land. Over every- thing in the exquisite boudoir is the faintest possible scent of sandal-wood. A revelation in Chinese decorative art are Madame's apart- ments at the Legation. And a revelation in the tailor's art are her clothes. " You do not like ? " asked Madame, glancing at her clothes. No, to be candid, I didn't like. " Me too," was the laughing response, as the quick eyes looked me over critically ; " your clothes immodest and ungraceful." " So are yours, Madame Wu." " No," emphatically, " these modest." Mme. Wu touched the soft silk trousers as she spoke. You couldn't get a self-respecting American woman to appear in trousers." DRESS AND HOSPITALITY 291 " You not get one of China to appear without them." Which must be a matter of habit, we conceded, and which therefore has nothing to do with motives or morals. So we passed on. " Your coat," I suggested, " is beautiful in texture and workmanship, but it doesn't fit." " It should not," said Mme. Wu decidedly; "it not modest to fit. Your dress too close. That is not nice." " It's neat." " Ah ! " Mme. Wu laughed outright ; " you not care for neatness." " But I do." " Then what for you let your dress drag ? " " Well, it is more modest than having it short like yours, and it is graceful." " No, no," Mme.'s eyes blinked triumphantly : " first modesty, then cleanliness ; grace after that. No grace without those first. Can you be graceful without being clean ? Anyway, there's your corset. How you be graceful when you uncomfortable ? " "I'm not uncomfortable. But there are those poor little feet ; how can you be graceful when you can't walk." " I walk," said Mme., who had proved it by entering the room alone, with the aid of chairs and tables, then added quickly : " Anyway, I prefer eat to walk," which scored a point for China. Mme. Wu's feet are not four inches long. 292 HOME LIFE IN CHINA They look as if they ought never to touch the floor, but be assigned to a favourite spot on the mantelpiece. They look like samples of feet in miniature, and remind one of the tiny models of battle-ships. " There," I said, putting a calf-clad No. 4 be- side the speck covered with red silk, " is a real foot, meant for service." " I guess so," said Mme. Wu, and shuddered. No wonder the Chinese women stay at home. No wonder they are not nurses on battle-fields, or inspired to deeds of valour. No wonder that progress is not for them. They are made prisoners for life with the dwarfing of their feet as surely as a dove is trapped when its wings are clipped (says the lady reporter, with which the Chinese woman would not wholly agree) . " In China not much use to walk," Mme. Wu explained ; " only around the gardens at home. Chinese ladies not walk abroad like Americans. In streets they go in sedan chairs, always with chaperone. Folks in China very careful ; young girls guarded very carefully. They never meet men except brothers." " But how can it always be helped ? Are there never accidents ? Your brothers, for in- stance, have friends visit them ? " " Yes, maybe ; but women's apartments opposite side of house. If man should see her she must not talk to him nor raise her eyes." " Then there are no flirtations in China ? " DRESS AND HOSPITALITY 293 "Oh no ; all sedate and strict. China never frivols." " And your parents do the courting, and you marry the man ? " " They choose him." " Then one never falls in love and marries ? " " No ; one marries and falls in love." " But it's a matter of chance ? " " A matter of fact. Obedience is as great a virtue as modesty among Chinese women." " But suppose the man picked out for you doesn't tally with your ideal ? " " My what ? " " Your ideal man ; all women have ideals, you know." " I don't know that ; I guess not Chinese women." " Didn't you ever wonder what he would be like ? " " No ; Chinese girls no time think about love. Before time comes think about love Chinese girl has husband." " Suppose you didn't like the husband picked out for you ? " " But I did ; I loved when I saw him." " Which wasn't till the wedding-day ? " "No." " Suppose it hadn't been Mr. Wu, but some- body else — would you have loved him ? " Madame's brows contracted while she thought, and the Minister smiled and waited with interest for her reply. But Madame was not to be 294 HOME LIFE IN CHINA caught. She has not lived with a diplomat for thirteen years for nothing. Presently she, too, smiled : " I would love the husband my parents choose ; that is my duty. But they not choose anyone else for me. In China we believe in fate. Every couple that ought to marry is tied together with an invisible red string. So when parents make arrangements, fate leads. Matches are made in the moon. So it always is right. Fate makes one certain man for each woman." " How about the widows who find several affinities ? " "Ah," said Mme. Wu, drawing back in shocked surprise, " widows not marry in China ; that is disgrace ; China is virtuous country. Ameri- cans think Chinese women kept down. That not so. Women kept home because men hold them so high ; other men must not even look upon them nor speak to them. " Chinese women progressive, too, only in dif- ferent way. Chinese women try to be great, also — great mothers, great wives. Chinese women earnest, they not spend time making their hair crooked on irons, making their waists small, making their dresses full of frills, and changing all time. Chinese not strive for how to look but how to be. " Chinese men not say to women, your eyes lovely. They say, your character noble, your temper sweet, your home good, well-bred place ; your son fine boy. That is compliment in China. DRESS AND HOSPITALITY 295 " It is not our goodness to have fine eyes or shining hair, but good ways, that has charm in China. The looks not count. " You not understand our ways," said Mme. thoughtfully. " You not like some — about the marriage. But it is better. You think it hard. It is wisdom. I know from result. Americans love and marry and get divorce. We marry and love and get home and happiness and children. Which way you like ? " Mme. Wu glanced from me to the Minister, and in the language that has no words she told him she was glad they had followed the Chinese custom. The conveniences of the Chinese costume are well illustrated in the following incident : A Chinese Government representative who was new to American ways, came to the home of an eminent New York banker for a week's visit. It was winter, but he came without luggage, and yet every day he appeared at dinner with a change of garments. At first his hostess wondered how he managed it, but soon she discovered that his body was his trunk, and that instead of putting his clothes into his trunk, he put his trunk into his clothes. His garments were like the layers of an onion, except that any layer might be worn on the outside, and as some of his gowns — for such they might be called — were silk lined with fur, or fur lined with silk, he could wear them either side out, at will. CHAPTER XXXII DOING THINGS BACKWARD THE Chinese are a peculiar people — I am almost tempted to say, beautifully peculiar. They are odiously practical. Despotically governed for thirty centuries or more, they have always been abominably free. Why, they are so free that the man who keeps a lumber yard, if he lacks accommodation for his lumber inside his fence, may dump it on the side walk for months until it is sawed up and packed away or otherwise disposed of. No one complains, because it is easier to walk around it than to complain — and besides one may want to do something of that kind one's self some day. Ugly in features to our eyes, they are yet sub- stantial in colour and appearance, and make the European who is thoughtless enough to be photo- graphed with them look very milk-and- watery. Proverbially polite, they are impertinently in- quisitive. Lovers of proverbial truth, they will at once admit that they are a nation of liars. My personal teacher once told me that " ten out of ten Chinese will lie, myself not excepted," and this is so universally recognized that they will not be offended if you tell them they lie. Some of their falsehoods are of the most ridicu- 296 DOING THINGS BACKWARD 297 lous kind. The Congregationalists at Tung Chou were compelled to dismiss one of their pupils for stealing from Miss Evans. When told what they were about to do, and asked what he had to say for himself, he gave this explanation : "I was accustomed to steal from my father and mother at home, and Miss Evans seemed so much like my mother that I stole from her." Reliable, substantial, industrious and conser- vative, they are yet non-committal, lazy, and to use Mr. De Quincey's word, " unrelyuponable." They will work for nothing and board them- selves, supporting their family by what they can make by squeezing their employer and his friends — or living, as we would say, on " tips." But one of the most peculiar of all Chinese traits is the habit they have of doing things backward, or diametrically opposite to what we do them in Europe and America. But as the Chinese did them twenty or thirty centuries before we did, perhaps it is we who do them backward. I am not inclined to believe that wisdom will die with us, or that all that they do opposite to the way we do it is wrong. But I am telling how the Chinese do things. It was almost amusing to me when I first met a Chinese acquaintance to remember that instead of raising my hat and shaking his hand, I must, in order to be quite proper, keep my hat on and shake my own hand. It was no less amusing when I read in the etiquette of the New Republic that all these things had been changed. 298 HOME LIFE IN CHINA In China, when a friend or a relative dies, they wear white for mourning instead of black, and allow themselves to become dirty instead of keeping themselves clean and neat. The more unshaven and forlorn they look, the more mourn- ful they appear. They turn to the left when passing each other on the street instead of to the right. This, of course, is not confined to China. When they write their name they use their family name first— as it should be, being the more important — and the given name last. Enter a school and you hear a tremendous noise as of a hundred persons talking at the same time ; it is the pupils studying. They all study aloud. When the carpenter uses his line, instead of using dry white or blue chalk, he uses wet black ink. When a Chinese women sits down to sew, she pins the work to her bosom and sews from her instead of pinning it to her knee and sewing toward her as our women do. She wears her thimble between the first and second joint of her second finger instead of on the end of her finger as our women do. She thus gets a stronger pressure, and can wear her thimble as a ring when it is not in use. They open their book at the right side instead of the left, and begin reading at the right side of the page. They read from top to bottom, put the /ooZ-notes at the top of the page, and the DOING THINGS BACKWARD 299 running title and chapter heading and page number on the edge of the page, print on one side of the paper only, fold it at the outer edge, and cut it at the back where the leaves are sewed together. Instead of blacking their shoes, they whiten only the edges of the soles. They wear their vest or sleeveless garment on the outside, and often have each outer garment a little shorter than the one beneath, as though our undercoat were longer than our overcoat, or a lady's petticoat were longer than her skirt. I have known gentlemen, earls, take off one garment after the other while dining, on the pretence that it was too warm, when in reality it was, or seemed to be, only to show what rich garments they had on. In company, they keep their hats on while we take ours off. We stick the candle into the candlestick and waste about an inch ; they stick the candlestick, or a pointed nail in the top of it, into a straw in the bottom of the candle, and burn it all. Our ladies wear their hair banged on their foreheads, while the Chinese ladies usually wear theirs banged in the back of their necks. We build the most attractive side of our house toward the street, and often throw the dirt in the back yard, while the Chinese build the least at- tractive — windowless — side outward and throw all their dirt into the street. When we speak of the points of the compass 300 HOME LIFE IN CHINA we say north, south, east, west — the Chinese always say east, west, south, north. Even their compass is contrary, as it points according to the Chinese toward the south instead of the north, and so they call it a chih-nan-che, a south- pointing cart, or chih-nan-chen, a south-pointing needle. We would not have much respect for a Euro- pean or an American who wore a switch, yet under the old regime every man in China who could afford it wore one braided in his queue, unless he had an exceptional wealth of hair. Both men and women wear trousers, the only difference being that the women's are decorated more than the men's, and the men wear skirts that reach nearly to their feet, while those of the women only reach their knees. The shape of the limb, however, is never exposed. The streets in Western cities are about six or eight inches lower than the side walks, while those in China were built up two feet above. In European stores we put our most beautiful goods in the front window, In China, they lock them up in the last little cubby-hole in the back- end of the shop. With us the right side is the place of honour, in China the place of honour is at the left. CHAPTER XXXIII RECENT CHANGES IN HOME LIFE IT may reasonably be expected that the re- cent reforms in the Chinese government, the change from a monarchy to a republic, will bring about corresponding changes in social and domestic life. We may expect to see changes in the architecture and the furnishings of their homes, in their manner of living, the style of their clothing, as well as in their games, their recreation, and their work. Not long after the Boxer troubles of 1900, the Mayor of the city of Peking, who was known as the most anti-foreign Chinese in the capital, came to call on me after I had rebuilt my home, which the Boxers had burned, and during the conversation he said : " I have heard that the windows in this new house of yours are so constructed that phut and they go up, and phut and they come down. I should like to understand the mechanism of those windows." I went to the window, unhooked the catch, and phut it went up, and phut it came down. " Ah," said he, " that is interesting. How is it constructed ? " 301 802 HOME LIFE IN CHINA I explained the simple mechanism — the rope, the weight, and the pulley. " Kuai, remarkable ! " he exclaimed, " that we have never thought of that kind of thing. Now I propose to build me a house, and I want to put this kind of windows in it ; can you tell me where I can find mechanics who can do this kind of work ? " Now it so happened that just after the Boxer movement had subsided, three of our young Christian Chinese had opened a carpenter-shop with a capital of 450 taels, or ounces of silver — about $350— which they called the " Heavenly Righteous Carpenter Shop." Almost immedi- ately they began getting orders from the Govern- ment to build several sky-scrapers in Peking — three or four stories high — which were designed as college buildings in connection with the Im- perial University or other colleges, and as they were familiar with this style of buildings I took him to see them and they were employed to do the work. I might add that these young men soon were deeper in business than they could manage with their small capital. They bought bricks, lime, and lumber on credit at a large profit for the dealers, promising to pay when the Government had paid them. This plan worked well so long as the Government paid according to their pro- mises. But Governments are not always prompt, and there came a time when they failed to pay up. The carpenter-shop could not pay the BEi G \k CHILDR] I ' NTON RECENT CHANGES IN HOME LIFE 303 dealers, the dealers could not pay the kiln men, and it looked as though things were coming to a standstill. In this dilemma one of the members of the firm, a young preacher, a friend of mine, came to me saying : " We must have 13,000 taels " (ounces of silver). " That is a lot of money ! " I exclaimed. " What security have you to give ? " " We will give the carpenter-shop," he replied. " That would not amount to anything." " Well, I have some deeds of property outside the chi'en men; we will give them, and we will all go on the note." " That would not amount to half 13,000 taels," I objected. " Well, we have to have it or bust." That is the last argument to a friend. I called my wife in and explained the matter to her, for I never enter into any important busi- ness matter without her advice, and it went through her mind 1300 taels, and she advised me to help him get it. I did, and in four years' time they had cleared that amount with interest on the same. So I said to the Mayor : " Get the T'ien I Mu Ch'ang, Heavenly Righteousness Carpenter Shop, to build your house for you." Prince Su, the prince who gave his palace for the accommodation of the Chinese Christians during the siege of Peking, built himself a house 304 HOME LIFE IN CHINA in foreign style and furnished the reception-room with European furniture, and indeed many others have done the same. All the new Government buildings that have been and are being erected are built after the style of our own. Instead of the old paper windows, brick bed, brick floors, tile roofs, and three-room buildings as of yore, we are now seeing them erecting buildings with glass windows, board floors, and corrugated iron roofs, not very unlike those in the foreign missions, legations, and customs compounds. Among the first changes to come in the dress of the people will be the combing of their hair, the style of their hats and their shoes. From this they will gradually go to trousers, coat, vest, and overcoat. For centuries the Chinese shoe has been made of cotton cloth, silk, or velvet, with thick quilted soles made of old scraps of cloth or paper which were easily soaked and became soft in spite of tfi3 quilting. In wet weather, they wore oiled cloth boots or shoes, with leather soles, but they have now begun to discard the cloth, silk, and velvet, and are making their boots and shoes of leather similar to our own, except that they follow, with some modification, the Chinese style. The first change in hats was seen in the straw summer hat which was easily made in China, as during the year 191 1 China exported no less than £1,383,155 worth of straw braid, most of which RECENT CHANGES IN HOME LIFE 305 came from Western Shantung and Southern Chihli. But the straw hat was soon followed by the small cap with a tip, then by the soft felt hat, and finally by the derby and the silk hat, and in some localities at the present time both men and women wear the small cap, especially during the cold months. Next came the woven underclothing, and it not infrequently happened, in China as in Japan, that men went about, especially in summer time, with their legs encased in nothing but a pair of drawers. Wherever foreigners live, vests are disposed of as an almost useless part of a suit of clothing, and so the Chinese servants would capture these vests, wearing them outside their coats, a la Chinese custom. Next came the establishment of schools and colleges, in which the boys were togged out in a mongrel military style, half Chinese, half foreign, with gold braid on coat and cap and their trousers tucked in leather boots. Contempora- neously with the schools came the new garb of the soldiers, when the whole army came out in a uniform not very different from that already described as worn by the students. Even the girls in some of the girls' schools have adopted a style of uniform not very dif- ferent from that of the boys, and but for their hair and their decorations it would be difficult to distinguish them from their brothers. This style of uniform is more easily adopted by girls in China than it would be in Europe, a thing which 20 806 HOME LIFE IN CHINA we can easily understand when we remember that the women of China have always worn trousers the same as the men. Again, China has adopted the Western calen- dar. A resolution to this effect was passed by the Foreign Office on November 20, 191 1, and it is noteworthy that Dr. Sun Yat-sen took the oath as President of the Nanking Provisional Government on January 1, " the first day of the first year of the Republic of China." All official documents are now marked with European dates, though old custom in regard to the method of reckoning has not been entirely abandoned in the provinces. As we have indicated elsewhere, their cere- monial regulations have undergone a complete change. We are told in the China Year Book that : " Under the Republic the elaborate etiquette and salutations of the old regime are to give place to a simpler form of ceremonial, and so on the 17th of August the following Bill was pro- mulgated : "1. Salutations among men shall consist of raising the hat and bowing. " 2. At special celebrations, sacrifices, wed- dings, funerals, and on the occasion of national celebrations, the hat is to be raised from the head and three bows are to be made. "3. At official feasts, republican ceremonies, and on ordinary occasions, the salutations shall RECENT CHANGES IN HOME LIFE 307 consist of raising the hat from the head and making one bow. "4. At casual meetings the hat shall merely be raised from the head. "5. Military, naval, and police officials for whom there are special regulations shall not be bound by this law. "6. Articles 2 and 3 shall apply to women, with the exception that they shall not raise their hats. At casual meetings they shall make one bow." With these six small Articles they have dis- carded the elaborate system of ceremonies of the old Confucian regime, and in the homes as in the government the K'o-t'ou or knocking the head will be for ever done away. One of the most sweeping changes that will be brought about in Home Life will be the result of the suppression of the opium both in growth and trade. We are told in an edict that : " The welfare of the people is a matter of great concern to the Government, and this suppression of the opium is a matter which must positively be put through. All officials must issue strict instructions to their subordinates to put the pro- hibition into actual effect, to make it a matter of familiar knowledge in men's houses, to get completely rid of the evil. ... It is further commanded that the relative merits of officials in this respect must be recognized. ... If an official merely keeps up appearances and, while 308 HOME LIFE IN CHINA outwardly obeying, secretly disregards these commands, he is to be denounced by name for punishment." Much of the land which was formerly used for the cultivation of opium is now used for raising tobacco, which was introduced into China from the Philippines in 1620. Still another sweeping change in the Home Life of the people will be the result of the new employments that will come from the building of railroads, the opening of mines, and the intro- duction of Western machinery in their manufac- tures. While the wage of a labouring man a few years ago was five cents a day and his board, it has gradually risen until at present it is more than double that amount, and it will not be many years until it will be trebled and quadrupled. The wealth obtained from their mines will enable them to buy British cloth and American flour, Standard oil and Singer sewing-machines, bi- cycles and carriages and automobiles, and thus relieve the tension that has been placed upon the soil. The wealth of coal, oil, gas, iron, copper, gold, silver, and other minerals and precious stones, will be mined, and thus add to the pro- ductions of the world, the wealth of China, and the comforts of her Home Life. CHAPTER XXXI V GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN DO the Chinese children have any games similar to those played by our chil- dren?" This question was put to me one day by a lady who was deeply interested in the play-life of little folks. " Yes, indeed. Why not ? " I replied. " Well, the Chinese always seemed to me to be such solemn-looking people that I have often wondered whether they ever learn to play," she answered. It was not long after this when I received a letter from Dr. Luther Gulick of New York, requesting me to study into the play-life of Chinese children and allow him to use the results in his Psychology of Play. I was a teacher in the Peking University, where we had five hundred children and young men, and I called some of the boys and asked them to play for me. They first began with " I spy." One " hid his eyes," while the others secreted themselves behind the house, the steps, trees, piles of brick, or anywhere they could find a good place from 309 310 HOME LIFE IN CHINA which they could watch the catcher without being seen, and stand a good chance of " getting in free." It was practically the same game as that played by American boys, and played in the same way. After they had continued this for a while one of the boys shouted : " Oh, let us play the cat catching the mouse." No sooner said than done. They formed a ring, took hold of each other's hands, and then one called out : " Who will be the mouse ? " " Wo " (I), said the smallest boy of the group in a rather squeaky voice that reminded me of a mouse, and he was put inside the ring. " Who will be the cat ? " " Wo yao tso mao" (I want to be the cat), said a medium-sized boy, and he was turned outside the ring. The mouse stayed as far away from the cat as possible, keeping the whole width of the ring between them. Then the cat called out : " Is my brother mouse at home ? " The mouse was not quite ready, and so he answered in very good cat talk : " Not ready yet." In a very short time he had taken off his coat, tied his girdle tight around his waist, so as to be as agile as possible, and as hard to get hold of, and then he called out : " Ready," and the game began. He slipped out between the two boys nearest GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN 311 him just as the cat entered the ring on the opposite side. Then he popped into the ring between two other boys, and he kept going in and out as fast as he could, so as to bewilder the cat, for it is a rule of the game that the cat has to follow the mouse, always going in and out between the same boys he does, and he dare not catch the mouse, no matter how near he is to him, so long as there is a " hole " he has not gone through. Finally, however, the little mouse got tired, and the big cat caught him and " ate him," and one of the most amusing parts of the game is the " eating " process. The boys will not allow anyone to be cat unless he is a good eater. He shakes the mouse, and then sits and growls, and looks this way and that, and the other boys crowd around, as though they were going to rescue the mouse, while he " spats " and con- tinues to growl. He finally swallows the mouse, stretches his neck, as though to get him down, looks all around, as if to see if there is any mouse left, and the game is done. " Let me be a candy-blower," said one of the boys, pulling a rattle out of his inside pocket. No sooner had he done so than one of the larger boys snatched up the smallest of the group and started after him pick-a-back. The Chinese have all kinds of street hawkers, and each has his own particular kind of rattle, and instead of calling out their wares, they twirl their rattle and the people call out after them. 312 HOME LIFE IN CHINA The candy-blower is one of the most interest- ing of these. He has a bowl of liquid candy about the consistency of molten glass, and usually of a yellowish colour. Then he has a package of straws, very much like lemonade straws. He takes a straw, sticks the end of it into his bowl, twists up a lump of candy on it, and blows it into any form the child wants. One boy called out : ' Blow me a hen," another, " Blow me a gold- fish," another a mouse, and so on, each getting the kind he wants, for which he pays one cash, about the tenth of a cent. It was in the springtime, not long after the the New Year's festival, and the boys still had many of their toys, and so after playing at candy-blower for a short time they organized themselves into a band. One had a drum, another cymbals, still another a large brass gong, while a fourth donned a cap with a large feather in it, put on the face of a tiger, and started off as the leader of the band. It was noisy music, I assure you, but no " real band " ever had a better time. While they were playing band, four of the other boys got their false faces and beard, their swords and spears, and started in pursuit of them. They came upon them in an open space just beyond the rockery, and a sham battle ensued. The leader of the band growled as he sup- posed a tiger would, and showed no signs of fear of the long spear and sharp sword of his w?^m» V\-\ A GAME OF DOMINOES GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN 313 antagonists, and he was backed up so valiantly by the noise of drum and cymbal and gong that they conquered their savage enemy, like many another foe has done, by sheer force of their noise. There was no blood spilt, there were no lives— nor even tempers — lost, and the boys came out of it without a scratch, though, as they said, the enemy had made a brave stand. —It was a Waterloo. " Let's have something quieter," said one of the boys. "I am getting tired with all this fighting, running, tumbling, and scrambling. Let us play something that will rest us." Taking a box of dominoes from his pocket, he called out : " Come inside," and they all scampered for the schoolroom. One pulled out a square table, another turned out the dominoes, and then there was such a shuffling and clatter and talking as you have never heard — except among a lot of schoolboys. And I left them at their play, and went and found my artist friend Mr. Yang Chu-hsi, whose honorary name is Ch'iin-nien, and asked him to paint me pictures of the boys playing these games. I gave him some pieces of fine silk, specially prepared for this purpose, and he painted the pictures, on each of which he wrote his name and stamped his seal. INDEX » Agriculture, 226-234 Ancestors, worship of, 134-160 Apples, 172, 178 Apricots, 172 Asbury Chapel, 221, 223 Astronomical Board, 145 Baldness, 239 Bamboo sprouts, 198 Barbers, 241 Barley, 172 Bean-curd, 180 Beans, 172, 232 Beds, brick, 4, 7, 8, 205 Beef, 172 Behaviour for Children, Rules of, 49 Bible scenes, 226-231 Birds'-nest soup, 177 Blacksmith, the country, 241 Blindness, 238 Boar, wild, 173 Book of Poetry, 145 Book of Rites, 96 Bow, a repeating, 282 Boxer Rebellion, 246, 247, 248, 276 Boys, 15 Boys' names, 249, 250 "Boys," 166 Bread, 179, 195 Bronson, Mrs., 186 Broom-corn, 172, 232 Bryan, William Jennings, 183 Buddha, statues of, 212, 215 Buddhism, 125, 126, 129, 132, 134. x 54, 26 ° Burial of babies, 14 Burt, Mr., 184, 185 Butchers, 189 Butter, 173 Cabbage, 172, 175, 188, 194 Camel trains, 173 315 Canon of Poetry, The, 89 Cantaloupes, 172 Canton, 182 Carpenters, 298, 302 Carts, 207, 234 Carving, ivory, 182 "Cash/* 231 Celery, 172 Ceremonies, family, 131-140 — funeral, 147-153 — marriage, 141-146 Chang, Mrs., 99 — Chih-tung, 244 Chefoo, 251 Cheng erh, 167 Chen Huan-chang, Ph.D., 89, 112, 147, 155, 159 Ch'en Heng-Te, 222 Chiang Ko (525 B.C.), 30 — Shih (first century a.d.), 34 Chiao Chou, 248 Chicken, 172, 173 Ch'ien Lung, Emperor, 266 Children, 9-41 China Year Book, quoted, 306 Chin Chi-lan, Miss, 99 Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, 271 Ch'ing, Prince, 245, 250 — dynasty, Law Code of the, 156 Chiropodist, 241 Cholera, 126-127 Chop-sticks, 198 Chrysanthemums, 218 Chu Chin, Miss, 99 — Fu-tzu, 26 — Hsi, 46 — Shou - ch'ang (1031-1102 a.d.), 34 Chun, Prince, 93 Chuang Tzu, 277-279 Chung Yu, 29, 152 Circus, Chinese, 40 316 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Classics, Chinese, 9, 23, 24, 27, 29, 37. 49, 69, 89, 96, 109, 1 10, Mi, M5- 148, 158, 220 Classic for Girls, The, 37, 69 Climate, 173 Clothes, 18, 199, 305 Clothing, Western, 39 Coffins, 147-153 Compass, invention of, 282 Concubinage, no, 1 13-122 Confectioner, 242 Confucianism, 38, 119, 125, 149, 154, 155 Confucius, 26, 45, 91, 155, 157, 158 Conger, Major, 184 — Mrs., 97, 100 — Mrs., Letters from China, 167 Conversation, 236 Cooks, 162, 166, 192, 194 Coolies, 196, 198, 225 Co-operation, 62 Corn, 172, 232 Crackers, 131, 133, 135 Cucumbers, 172 Curios, 182 Dalai Lama of Tibet, 266 "Dare to Dies," 99 Davis, Miss, 220 Dead, dressing of the, 147 Deafness, 239 Debts, payment of, 132 Deer, 173 De Quincey, quoted, 297 Der Ling, Princess, 103, 133 Devils, foreign, 253, 258, 267 Dinner, a Chinese, 178 Disciples, 45 Divorce, seven reasons for, 119 Doctors, 162 Doctrine of name, 154 Dogs, 189, 229 Dolls, 13 Dominoes, 313 Donkeys, 207, 213 Dragons, 263-264 Dress, 102, 288-295 Dumbness, 239 Education for boys, 24 — for girls, 37, 64 — for the poor, 42 — gestatory, 109 Educational system, 38, 46 Eggs, 172 Embroidery, 182, 190 Empress Dowager, 93, 100, 103, 106, 107, 246, 252 Engagements, 66 Epworth League, 220 Evans, Miss, 295 Expense of living, 192-201 Famines, 219-225 Farmers, 189, 195 Feast of Lanterns, 134 Ferguson, Dr. John C, 38 Fertilizers, 227 Festival of Chih Nii, 136 — of Niu Lang, 136 — of Spring, 135 — of the Dragon Boat, 135 — of the Moon, 137 — of the New Year, 131-135 Filial duties, 36 Filial Piety Classics for Girls, The, 37 Fires, 5 Fireworks, 131, 133, 135 Fish, 173, 178 — gold, 212 Five Classics, 96 Flora, 213-218 Flour, 195 Food, 171-181 Foot-binding, 63, 64, 291 Four Books for Girls, 9, 37 Fruit, 172 Fuel, 5 Funeral ceremonies, 147-153 Fur, 1 90-1 9 1 Games, children's, 271, 309- 313 Gamewell, Mr., 220 Gardeners, 195 Garlic, 172 Girls, 9-22, 61-68 Girls' names, 249-250 God of the Kitchen, 107, 130, 131 — of Wealth, 130, 134 Goddess of Mercy, 129 Golden Rule, 29 Government, 95 Grapes, 172 Great Learning, The, 109 Gruel, 195 Gulick, Dr. Luther, 309 Gunpowder, invention of, 282 INDEX 317 Hand-shaking, 97, 237, 297 Han Yii, 43 Hart, Sir Robert, 117 Hats, 304, 303 Hayes, Dr. W. M., 38 Headland, Mrs., 114, 113, 120, 121 " Heavenly Righteous Carpenter Shop," 302 Holcomb, Mrs. William Fames- worth, 243 Home life, 2, 3, 4 Houseboats, 202, 209 Housewives, 102-108 Howe, Miss Gertrude, 38 Hsun Tzu, quoted, 89 Hsu-T'ung, 248 Huangho, the, 251 Huang Hsiang, 30, 49 — Ting-chien(io6o-iliOA.D.), 35 Humour, 269-279 Hundred Surnames, The, 24 Hunho, the, 251 Idols, 126 Inns, 204-210 Inventions, 282 JlNRIKISHAS, 208, 228 Jokes, 84 Jung Lu, 246 Kalachin, Princess, 101 ; Kang Yi, 248 K'e, Prince, 250 Kettler, Von, monument, 282 Kuang Hsu, Emperor, 93, 151 Kuo Chii, 31 Lama temple, 265 Language, 19 Lanterns, 134, 133 Lao Lai Tzu, 29 Laundrymen, 164-165 Law Code of the Ch'ing Dynasty, 156 Li Han-chang, 97, 139, 244 — Hung-chang, 139, 243, 246 Liu Chung-yuan, quoted, 89 — K'un-yi, 245 — LiCh'ang, 182, 183 Locust tree, 217 Lo Feng-lo, 247 Lowry, Mr,, 223 Lu, Professor, 174 — Hsu (first century a.d.), 32 Markets, 188-191 Marriage, n, 66, 67, 81-88, 109 — ceremonies, 141-146 Martin, Dr. W. A. P., 38 Ma Yii-K'un, General, 246 Medicine, 240 Melons, 172, 178, 233 Mencius, 47, 152 Meng Tsung (third century a.d.), S3 Methodist Mission, 251, 260, 262 Miao Feng Shan, 206, 212 Middlemen for marriages, 66 Milky Way, the, 136 Millet, 172, 195, 232 Mineral wealth, 308 Ming tombs, 263 — ■ Ti, Emperor, 125 Min Sun, 28 Missions, 251 Mohammedanism, 154 Moism, 125 Moon, legend of the, 137 Motherhood, 109-112 Mothers-in-law, 86 Mottoes, 132 Mourning, 237, 298 Mule-litter, 204 Mules, 207 Mutton, 173, 175, 176 Names, 139, 243-256 — milk, 139 — school, 139 Nanking, 251 New Year's customs, 106, 130, 131-36 Nicknames, 243-256 Nieh Shih-ch'eng, General, 246 Nil Erh Ching, 69 Nursery rhymes, 20, 271, 272 Nurses, 13 Nuts, 180 Oils used in cooking, 175, 176 Okudo, Mr., 100 Onions, 172, 196 Operations, Chinese fear of, 116 Opium, 307 Pagodas, 211, 264 Pan Ku, quoted, 89 818 HOME LIFE IN CHINA Pan, Professor, 222 Partitions in houses, 3 Partridges, 173 Pattern 0/ the Family, 112 Peaches, 172 Pears, 172, 178 Peasants, 226-234 Peiho, the, 203, 251 Peking, 228, 251 Persimmons, 172 Pheasants, 173 Phipps, Henry, 190 Pigs, 229 Ploughing, 226, 233 Plums, 172 Porcelain, old, 182 Pork, 172, 176 Potatoes, 172 — sweet, 172, 197 Poverty, 219-225 Prayers for good harvest, 105 Primer for Girls, 23 Printing, invention of, 282 Proverbs, 6, 188, 271 Queue, 267 Quilts, 199 Railroads, 209, 263 Record of Rites (Elder Tai), no, 141, 158 Red Lantern Society, 99 Religion, 123-130 Restaurants, 241-242 Rice, 176, 196 Richards, Dr. Timothy, 38 Rites, Canon of, 148 — Record of, no, 141, 158 — for marriage, 143-145 — or ceremonies, Board of, 96 Roads, 207 Robbers, 204 Rockefeller, Mr., 171 Salutations, 306 Sand storms, 203 Sanitation, 7 Scholars, honour of, 43 Schools, 298 School life, 23, 194, 195 Servants, 161-170 Sewing, 65 Sexes, separation of, 89 Shaking hands, Chinese, 97, 237, 297 Shang Ti, 128 Shan-hai-kuan, 102, 250 Shantung, 248 Sharks' fins, 177 Shaving of head, 17 Sheng Hsuan-huai, 245 Shoemaker, 241 Shoes, 200 Shops, 182-191, 300 Shun (2317-2208 B.C.), 27 Silkworms, 103-104 Slang, Anglo-Chinese, 276 Smallpox, 238 Soothsayers, 139 Soup, 177 Soy, 196 Spinning Damsel, the, 30, 136 Spring customs, 105 Ssu-ch'uan, 182 Ssu-ma, Hsiang-ju, poet, 142, M3 — Kuang, 25 Stoves, 200 Summer, 173 Summer Palace, 215, 217-218 Su, Prince, 250, 303 Su, Madame, 100 Sun, Mrs., 97, 98 Sun Chia-nai, 245 Sun Yat-sen, Dr., 306 Superstitions, 257-268 Su Tung-p'o, 43 Tai, Elder, no — Shan, temple at, 129 Tang Shan, 126 T'ao ch'i child, a, 16 Taoism, 125, 154, 259 — founder of, 252 Tea, 187 Teeth, 239, 240 Te Jui, Rev., 102 Temples, 127, 129, 211, 213 Tenney, Dr. C. D., 38 Thomas, Dr., 221 Thousand Character Classic, The, 24 Three Character Classic, 220 — Precious Ones, the, 129 Tientsin, 229, 251, 262 Ting han (first century a.d.), Tobacco, 308 Toys, 283-287 Trees, queer, 216, 217 INDEX 819 Trimetrical Primer, The, 24 Trousers, 300 Ts'ai Shun, 32 Tsao, Lady, 99 — Miss, quoted, 64, 67 Tseng Ts'an (505-437 B.C.), 28 Ts'ui Shin, 33 Tsunhua, 206 Tuan, Prince, 247 Tung Chou, 264, 297 — Fu-hsiang, General, 247 — Yung, 30 Turnip, 194 Twenty-four Patterns of Filial Piety, The, 27-35 Tzu Lu, 29 University, Imperial, at Pek- ing, 40, 42, 194, 217, 224, 225, 245, 275 Vases, 184 Vegetables, 172, 189, 196 Vehicles, modern, 208 Villages, 6 Wages of labourers, 308 Waldersee, Count Von, 216 Walker, Dr., 253, 255 Wall, Great, 27 Wang Hsiang (185-269 a.d.), 31 — P'ou (third century a.d.), 32 — Wen-shao, 246 Washington, Chinese Minister at, 247 Weddings, 81-88 Wedding presents, 81 — processions, 83 Wen Ti (180 B.C.), 28 Wheat, 172 Wheat-growing, 228 Williams, Dr. E. T., 38 Windows, paper, 200 Winter, 173 — Palace, 216 Women, position of, 62, 89-101 Women's Mutual Improvement Club, 101 Worship, Imperial, 128 — of ancestors, 154-160 ■ — official, 129 — various kinds of, 127-130 Wu, Madame, 288-295 — Misses, 100 — Chuan, the paintings of, 91 — Meng (fourth and fifth cen- turies a.d.), 31 — Tai Shan, temple at, 129 — Ting-fang, 247 Yang Chu-hsi, 313 — Hsiang (first century a.d.), 31 Yangtze Valley, 182 Yen Tzu, 29 Yuan Shih-kai, 93, 245 Yu Ch'ien-lou (fifth and sixth centuries a.d.), 33 — Hsien, 248 Yu Keng, 247 Yun Liang Ho, the, 251 Printed by Baixantynk, Hanson 6* Co. at Paul's Work, Edinburgh RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (415)642-6233 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW >Mffi REC- FEB171989 SEP 29 1988 AUTQD1SCAU629 t)8 >■ - '6969 U.C. 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