A FLOATING HOTEL AT SHANGHAI.
Mr. Graham did not know the reason of this either; but he and Leonard were later informed that the men of Amoy adopted the turban to hide the tail when they were made to wear it by their conquerors, and that they never gave it up. Leonard was also told that they were good soldiers, which, he said, he thought they looked. One thing remarkable about the people of Amoy was that the different families seemed to consist almost entirely of boys. A great many of the inhabitants were very poor, living crowded together in dirty houses very barely furnished. Mrs. Graham had not to be long in China to discover that cleanliness is not a Chinese virtue. Sybil bought some very pretty artificial flowers of some of the inhabitants of Amoy, which they had themselves made. They manufactured them principally, she heard, to be placed on graves.
THE PORT OF SHANGHAI.
Like other Chinese, these people were very superstitious. Here and there large blocks of granite were to be met with, which were regarded by them with reverence, and looked upon as good divinities. On one the Grahams saw inscriptions, which related some history of the place.
Granite seemed to abound here, for the temples and monasteries were, for the most part, erected on the heights between rocks of this description.
Two days after reaching Amoy, Sybil was dreadfully distressed, and shocked, to see a little girl named Chu, of eleven years old, put up for sale by her own parents. At ten dollars (£1) only was she valued; and for this paltry sum the parents were ready to sell her to any one who would bid it for her. They were very poor, and could not afford to keep her any longer. She had four sisters and only two brothers; the youngest of all, the baby, was to be drowned by her father, later on in the day, in a tub of water. They had never done anything like this before: this man and woman had never killed a child, although they had had five girls, and many of their neighbours had thought nothing of destroying most of their daughters so soon as they were born; but now, as the man was ill, and able to earn so little, they had resolved to rid themselves of two of them that day. If the baby lived, the mother comforted herself by saying, she must be sold later, or grow up in poverty and misery.
Parents think it very necessary that their children should marry, and sometimes sell, or give them away, to their friends, when they are quite little, to be the future wives of the sons of their new owners.
If sold, they will then fetch about two dollars for every year that they have lived; so a child of five years old would fetch ten dollars; and this little girl, put up for sale, was now eleven years old; therefore she was being offered, poor little thing, below half price. And some little girls of Amoy have been even offered for sale for a few pence!