Children of China

by C. Campbell Brown

Sometimes slave children are well and kindly treated, but in China, as in other lands, slavery too surely leads to cruelty and suffering. The notices of slave girls lost, stolen or strayed, posted up on the gates of Chinese cities, shows that many of these little girls are unhappy in their masters’ houses, and easily persuaded to run away. Sad cases are brought to the hospitals, too, of slave children so wasted by neglect and starvation that the poor things are little more than skeletons. An old woman named Ch’uan Kua used to tell how her little girl, whom she had sold into a Viceroy’s family, was unkindly treated. One day the poor child did something to offend her mistress, and the angry lady stabbed her to death, with one of her long hair-pins.

Another cause of unhappiness to the little ones is the practice of opium smoking. When the father, or mother, or other wage-earner of the home, smokes opium, there is little for the children to eat. In time, some of the wretched slaves to opium sell house and land, furniture and clothes, wife and children, in order to get money for the terrible self-indulgence.

The following story gives some idea of what a little girl, named Phœnix, had to suffer from a father who was an opium-eater. The story is doubly interesting because it is told by herself.

“It would be very difficult to relate fully what I have passed through from my childhood until the present. I will only tell some of the principal events.

“When I was three years old my mother died. My grandfather cared for me until I was six, and then he also left this world. I had no one to care for me, and my father brought me to Amoy and sold me to Mrs No-te, who lived near the Bamboo-tree-foot church. From that time I had opportunities of hearing the Gospel, but could not go to school, as I was kept busy with house-work. When I was fifteen the Lord received me into His church, and I was baptised.”

PHŒNIX

Phœnix does not mention that the woman who bought her broke the agreement made with the child’s father, that she should in time become the wife of her son. The father, a wretched opium sot, made this an excuse for claiming the return of the girl, in order to sell her over again for more money.

“When I was sixteen years old my father demanded me back, and at that time my heart was very sorrowful. I was afraid he would not let me go to church. I took this trouble to the Lord, and Our Lord truly heard the prayer of His child. He also gave me the desire of my heart and let me go to the Girls’ Boarding-school, to study and know more about the Bible. If it had not been for this, I would have been like a person blind. It was arranged through the earnestness and love of my pastor, who told my father that I belonged to the church, and that he must certainly put me to school. This he did and let me be in school for about one year, and then he came for me and I had to go with him, and I was very sad.

“My father soon took me to Tung An, and all the time I was there I could only manage to go to church once....