She is clothed with a wrapper,
She plays with a tile,
She has only to think of preparing wine and food
Without giving any cause of grief to her parents.”[1]
In winter time little King Baby is rolled in clothes until he looks like a ball, though his feet and part of his legs are usually bare. When asleep he is laid in a bamboo cradle, on rough rockers which loudly thump the floor. A red cord is tied to his wrist, lest he should be naughty when grown up, and people should say, “They forgot to bind your wrist when you were little.” Ancient coins are hung round his neck by a string to drive away evil spirits and to make him grow up an obedient child. When he is a month old, friends and relatives bring him presents, a feast is made and Master Tiny has his head shaved in front of the ancestral tablets, which stand on a narrow table at the back of the chief room of the house. The barber who takes off the black fluff from the little round head, receives a present of money; baby, for his part, becoming the proud possessor of a cap, with a row of gilded images in front, which is presented to him by his grandmother, together with a pair of shoes[2] having a pussy’s face worked upon each toe in the hope that “he may walk as safely through life as a cat does on a wall.” Baby-boy also receives what is called his ‘milk-name,’ which serves him until he goes to school. Some of the names given to babies sound strange: Dust-pan, Pock-marked Boy, Winter Dog, One Hundred and Ten. Ugly names are sometimes given, in the hope that the spirits may think that babies so called are not worth troubling about and thus may leave them to grow up unharmed. In the same way an ear-ring is put in a little boy’s ear, and he is called Little Sister to make the demons imagine that he is only a girl, and so not worthy of their notice, or his head is clean-shaved all over, and he is dressed like a monk for the same purpose.
Girl babies, like their little brothers, are shaved at the end of the first month, but with less ceremony. They are called Water Fairy, Slave Girl, Likes to Cry, Golden Needle, or some such name. Though some of the little ones suffer from neglect and hardship, many of them are happy in their babyhood. The people say, “Children are one’s very flesh, life, heart,” and when the traveller sees a father or a mother proudly carrying one of them about, or patiently bearing with its naughtiness, he can well believe that they mean what they say. Sometimes a mother pretends to bite her baby, saying, “Good to eat, good to eat”; sometimes she presses her nose against its tender cheek, as if smelling it, and kisses it again and again. The little things have shining black eyes, with long dark lashes which look so nice against the faint olive tint of the delicate skin.
When Master Tiny is a year old, another feast is made, and brightly-coloured shoes and hats are given to him. After the feast is over the little fellow is put on a table in the room where the ancestors of the family are worshipped. Round him are placed various things, such as a pen, a string of cash, a mandarin’s button, etc. Then everyone waits to see which he will stretch out a fat hand to seize, for it is supposed that the thing which he chooses will show what he is going to be or to do in the world, by and by. If baby grabs the pen, he will be a scholar; if the money takes his fancy, he will go into business; but if his eager fingers grasp the shining mandarin button, his father and mother hopefully believe that he will be a great man some day.
CHINESE BABIES
The Chinese are wonderfully patient and kind in treating their babies. Much of the gladness of their lives and of their homes is bound up with the boys and girls who play about their houses. They love their children, in spite of things which sometimes seem to prove that they do not When the little ones learn, at church or Christian school, to know the Saviour, they bring a new gladness into the home. Not a few Chinese children have been able to interest their fathers and mothers and other friends in the Gospel, as you shall hear later on, and so the words “A little child shall lead them,” have found a new meaning in far-away China.