FIG. 52.—MONOLITHS AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE TOMBS OF THE MING EMPERORS.
ORIGIN OF THE PIG-TAIL
The various provinces of the vast Celestial Empire did not of course submit peacefully to this usurpation, but Ama-van, the uncle of the young monarch, who was appointed regent during his minority, was a man of great ability, who quelled every revolt as it arose. China still bears the traces of the drastic measures employed to restore peace to the distracted land, many a ruined wall marking the site of a once populous town, whilst other cities still standing are evidently but half their original size. The guardian died when his charge was only fourteen; still the young prince had already learnt how to govern, and with a wisdom beyond his years he managed to keep the peace between his Tartar and Chinese subjects, dividing honours and appointments equally amongst members of the two races. It was during the reign of this astute young sovereign that the peculiar style of coiffure which is always looked upon as distinctively Chinese, was first introduced, and that as a sign of subjection to the Tartars. Before the accession of Shun-Che the Celestials had prided themselves on the luxuriance of their dark masses of hair, and the issue of an edict ordering all without distinction of age or rank to have their heads shaved, but for one long tress at the back to be plaited into a pig-tail, nearly caused a fresh revolution. The penalty of noncompliance was decapitation, and there were many who chose that rather than the disgrace of submitting to the hands of the barber. Still time, the all-healer, has now reconciled the descendants of the innovators to submit to what was originally so detested a custom, and no Chinaman would now feel happy without his pig-tail.
FIG. 53.—CHINESE BRONZES. (Univers Pittoresque.)
Writing of the Chinese before the hated edict was promulgated, Father Alvarez Semedo says: "Men and women alike let their hair, generally black, grow to a great length, which is why the name of the 'kingdom of the people with black hair' is sometimes given to China. The natives," adds this observer, "have little black eyes and small noses; they think our big prominent noses very ugly; the Chinese look upon them in fact as a regular deformity. They grow very small beards, and do not care for them to be thick, all they are anxious about is that they should be black, which is the most common colour; still they do not object to red hair as the people of Thebes used to do; they wear their hair long, and let it grow just as nature makes it, never cutting it. They give more attention to the arrangement of their coiffure than any other nation of the world; they would rather not have a single hair on their chins than lose one from their polls."
Now the care expended on their luxuriant locks by the ancestors of the modern Chinese is generally concentrated on the once-hated pig-tail; but in the case of old men with grand-children, on long moustaches, and what is known as the pointed Imperial beard. It is very evident that when the Portuguese father quoted above was in China, the Celestials had never seen the English, whom they call the red devils, on account of the auburn hair of so many of them. Had they done so the author would never have said, "They do not object to red hair!"