After this reference to the past, we come to a consideration of the present-day Chinese woman, and it has been my good fortune to meet some of the finest of the new school. They are taking a high place and winning the respect and consideration not only of their own countrymen, but of British, French and Americans by their ability, their singleness of purpose and undaunted determination. In the law school in Paris lately a Chinese girl took her degree; doctors who have studied in America and England have attained great distinction in their homeland after their return, and have overcome all the opposition aroused, in early days last century, by their foreign training and innovations.
Chinese women have evinced a keen patriotic spirit, sometimes shown in strange ways. When we were at Changteh they had demonstrated against the Japanese aggression by cutting their hair short! This did not meet the approval of the civil authorities, and they sent round the town crier, beating his drum, to prohibit women from doing this, under pain of receiving six hundred stripes! If the girls’ action was ill judged, it meant at all events a great sacrifice, so the penalty seems severe.
Perhaps the best way of showing the new trend of thought is to give a sketch of one of the most remarkable of the new generation, and who may be known to some of my readers, as she spent five years in England and took a London degree in science, with honours in botany, in 1917. Miss Pao Swen Tseng belongs to one of the great families whose genealogies have been carefully kept for the last twenty-five hundred years or so, and whose notable men have left their mark on the page of history. In the sixth century B.C. a philosopher of the family was one of the exponents of Confucian teaching, another was a great general at the time of the Taiping Rebellion and was largely instrumental in putting an end to it. For these services he received a beautiful estate with buildings, temple, lake and gardens in it from the Emperor, and also gifts from the guilds of Changsha, in Hunan, where the estate is situated. Here his descendant the Marquis Tseng lived, who became a well-known figure at the court of St. James, being Chinese minister here and afterwards at the Russian court. Even before he left Hunan—the most foreign-hating province of China—he was an ardent student of the English language, although he had no teacher and was obliged to study it only from most inadequate books. The family library was housed in a larger building than the family, which indicates the family tradition; but as may be supposed, it was no easy task that the Marquis had undertaken. When he lived in Peking he defied all precedent, and allied himself with the foreign British community; although his English was naturally most difficult to understand he persevered, and continually entertained Englishmen at his house and received their hospitality in return. This was done contrary to the strong feeling of opposition then existing at the court of Peking, where no Chinaman, even in a subordinate position, would be seen in company with a European or entering his house. I mention these facts because they reappear so vividly in the history of his granddaughter, Pao Tseng.
Miss Tseng’s education began at an early age: she had a tutor when she was three years old and two tutors by the time she was five. No wonder that she rebelled, and history relates that one day she took refuge in a tree, from which she was finally cajoled by one of her Chinese teachers to come down by promises which he forthwith ignored. It may be a source of surprise that she was able to climb a tree, but happily for Pao Tseng she had an enlightened grandmother, who, at a time when such a thing was unheard of, had the strength of mind to save the girls of her family from the torture and disablement of bound feet, knowing in her own person the cost of such disablement.
At ten years old Pao Tseng was a keen student of Chinese history, and the seed was sown, which later sprang up into an ardent patriotism and desire for the ancient glory of her race to be restored. She injured her eyesight by too close study, and two years later had become a Chinese classical scholar, a feat of which it would be impossible for anyone to realize the magnitude unless they knew something of the classics. She then begged leave to go and study Western knowledge, and was sent to one of the new Government schools at Hangchow, some thousand miles distant, to reach which there was no railway in those days. The tone of the school was so displeasing to her, that she soon left it and went to the (C.M.S.) Mary Vaughan High School for girls, where she found a sympathetic friend as well as teacher in the head mistress, Miss Barnes. In the turmoil and distress of mind caused by the condition of her country she found comfort in the study of the Christian faith and wrote to her father that she wished to become a Christian. He was evidently a man of rare wisdom, and stipulated that before taking so important a step she should study the writings of its European opponents. It is strange to think of such a child being set down to a course of Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison, and other leading non-Christian writers: her views were not changed by it. She again wrote to her father to this effect, and he gave his consent to her open profession of Christianity, coupled with the wise advice that she should become the best possible type of Christian. She decided to join no particular sect, looking forward to the time when China would have a church suitable to her needs and character.
In 1912 Pao Tseng obtained the family’s consent that she should go to England for further training. She had accepted as her vocation the call of her country to a life of educational work in China. Her family would not allow her to go abroad without a guardian, and Miss Barnes undertook the post, relinquishing the head mistress-ship of the High School in order to do this. Pao Tseng entered the Blackheath High School, and from there passed to Westfield College. It was at this time that I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, having already heard of the impression she had made at the college. No one could be with her without being aware of the deep seriousness of her nature, and she was greatly liked by her fellow-students. Chinese girls always seem to get on well in England, and to fit in easily with our idiosyncrasies. There is nothing like the gulf between them and us which seems to separate us in our ways of thinking and of looking on life from our Indian fellow-subjects.
After taking her degree and studying educational methods and training at St. Mary’s College, Paddington, she returned to China at the age of twenty to begin her life work at her old home in Changsha, the capital of Hunan.
When the monarchy was overthrown in 1911, the new republic confiscated the property of many of the gentry, amongst others that of the Tseng family, using the buildings as barracks for the troops: they caused great havoc in them. It was only after much difficulty and many delays that the family succeeded in getting the property restored to them, though a part of it is still requisitioned for the soldiers, and a flimsy partition put up to screen it from the rest. This might prove a danger to the school, but so far, Miss Tseng told me, they had behaved extremely well, their only misdeed being to cut down two trees. It was necessary to rebuild the house for a school. The garden is really charming, in true Chinese style, with carved bridges over the winding stretch of water, shady paths and quaint rockery; dazzling golden orioles and kingfishers make their home in the classic willow trees that overhang the lake, and the stillness which broods over all makes it an ideal spot for study.
But study is not the only thing in education, and Miss Tseng has adopted English ideals with regard to the value of sport in a girl’s education as well as in a boy’s. Since my visit the stillness of the tiny lake is joyously broken by girls learning the art of boating, under the coaching of Mr. and Miss Tseng, and they have two boats. They also study American games, and were recently challenged by a boys’ school to a match at lacrosse. They had only been learning a very short time and knew themselves too weak for their opponents, but a sporting instinct prevented their declining the challenge. As may be supposed, they sustained a severe beating, but bore it so gallantly that the onlookers said that they were like the British: they had learnt to take defeat smiling!
It is difficult to believe that some of these girls did not know their alphabet two years ago; that discipline, as we understand it, was unknown to them. They all learn English and some had got on amazingly well with it. They have a “Round Table,” at which meetings all must take a share in whatever is the subject under discussion: this is to teach them how to take part in public meetings and how to express themselves.