HAKKA BOAT AT CHAO CHOW.
Unlike the women of other races of the East, the Chinese woman has always shown a marked strength of character, and evidently, as Mrs. Poyser so truly remarked, “God made ’em to match the men.” That the men did not approve of this is equally plain, for, looking back some thousands of years, we find the great Confucius teaching the best way of counteracting this inborn self-will and strength of character.
“It is a law of nature,” he says, “that woman should be kept under the control of man and not allowed any will of her own. In the other world the condition of affairs is exactly the same, for the same laws govern there as here.”
“Women are as different from men as earth is from heaven.... Women are indeed human beings, but they are of a lower state than men, and can never attain to a full equality with them. The aim of female education therefore is perfect submission, not cultivation and development of the mind.”
Not only Confucius spoke thus strongly about the education of women, but all through the centuries Chinese writers of note refer to the subject of woman’s duty and education, and her attitude towards man. This is graphically set out in the important work, The Ritual of Chau—What a revelation of Chinese home life it is!
“In conversation a woman should not be forward and garrulous, but observe strictly what is correct, whether in suggesting advice to her husband, in remonstrating with him, in teaching her children, in maintaining etiquette, in humbly imparting her experience and in averting misfortune. The deportment of females should be strictly grave and sober, and yet adapted to the occasion; whether in waiting on her parents, receiving or reverencing her husband, rising up or sitting down, in times of mourning or fleeing in war, she should be perfectly decorous. Rearing the silkworm and working cloth are the most important of the employments of a female; preparing and serving up the food for her husband and setting in order the sacrifices follow next, each of which must be attended to. After them study and learning can fill up the time.” This last detail shows clearly that it was no unusual thing for the women to have a knowledge of literature, and there is no mean list of women writers in the field of belles-lettres, while one even wrote on the sacrosanct subject of dynastic history in the fifth century. The first treatise on the education of women was written by a Chinese woman some eighteen centuries ago, and it is rather interesting to see what her ideal for womanhood was, and to compare it with the present-day ideal. “The virtue of a female does not consist altogether in extraordinary abilities or intelligence, but in being modestly grave and inviolably chaste, observing the requirements of virtuous widowhood, and in being tidy in her person and everything about her; in whatever she does to be unassuming, and whenever she moves or sits to be decorous. This is female virtue.” In the Rules for Women, written by Lady Tsao, the heading of no less than five out of the seven chapters refers to the attitude of woman towards her menfolk, which shows that she was wise in her generation: and this work naturally became a classic and has been studied by all succeeding generations down to the present day!
A Chinese Leader of Thought.