Of course I said yes, and he showed me the contract, of which I give a verbatim translation:
"On account of the poverty of my family, I consent to sell my daughter, aged fourteen years, to Tu-won-lan-hi, that he may provide for and take care of her. On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth moon, I received as complete payment for her the sum of eighty-five piastres (about six pounds). The twenty-fourth day of the sixth month of the sixteenth year of the reign of Kwang-Su.[4]
"Signed: Thang Ting, father of the young girl;
"Madame Yap-Kang-Ko, go-between;
"Tchen-Tchen-Tchan, scribe charged
with drawing up the contract of sale."
[4] In China, the year of the reign is used instead of that of the century, and a century there is only sixty years. According to Chinese chronology, we are now in the thirty-fifth year of the seventy-sixth century of the Christian era.
POLYGAMY IN CHINA
Having read and copied this document, I returned it to the owner, with the remark, "So you can have as many women as it suits you to buy. In Egypt, where polygamy seems as natural as it does to you, there is some limit put upon the number of favourites in a harem, as the purchaser must prove that he is rich enough to support her before he is allowed to buy a new wife. How is it with you?"
"There is no similar restriction in China," was the reply. "Besides the women we buy, more as a gratification to our pride than because we have taken a fancy to them, there is the wife whom you in Europe would call the legitimate partner. She is privileged above all the other women owned by a man, and her children alone have the right of inheriting the property of their father. We must have heirs to succeed us, and this is why we have no scruple in repudiating a barren wife. The first of our other women to give us a male child takes the place of the divorced wife, and the rest follow suit, until we are sure of having quite a number of sons to honour our memories when we are gone, just as I have honoured that of my own father. You must not forget how very strong tradition is with us, and that which we are now discussing dates further back than your own Biblical age. All innovation is displeasing to us.... A few years ago the friend who gave us a dinner this evening, put me into communication with a Protestant clergyman, who had just arrived from England, and was consumed with a desire to make proselytes. Out of politeness, I listened for several days to what he had to say, and I even accepted the gift of a Bible from him. I set to work to read it with the greatest attention. To begin with, I was very much surprised to find how young the world was made out to be in it, for I had learnt from our bonzes that at the time when Abraham was born, China was already old—very, very old—so I put the Bible aside. Was I not right, seeing that it taught me nothing new?"