If these women who think that it would be such a wonderful experience to live in the glorious East, of which they have read most glittering tales, would realize that when the man returns to his homeland his parents have the right of choosing a wife for him, who is his real wife, and the poor foreign woman is reduced to the position of a concubine, I think many of them would not take a step so fatal to happiness. Dr. Barchet, of the Baptist Mission near Ningpo, saw an American woman living in a small village who was one of four wives, all occupying the same peasant’s cottage. When asked why she did not return to her homeland, she said that she was ashamed to have her people learn of her great mistake, as she married against their wishes. The bad air and coarse food were having their effect upon this delicately raised girl, and she was a victim to the great white plague that claims so many lives in China.
Suicide is very common among the women of China. When the mother-in-law becomes too oppressive, or life becomes intolerable from other causes, the wife often takes the law into her own hands and takes opium or jumps into the well. She then not only receives surcease from her sorrows, but, according to Chinese superstition, her spirit will linger around the home, haunting and tormenting the person who was the cause of her taking the fatal step.
There is very little intercourse between foreign and Chinese women. The latter do not seem to care about making the acquaintance of the women from over the seas. It is only of late years that the wives of foreign officials in Shanghai have had any intercourse with the families of the local officials. Such intercourse consists simply in an interchange of calls, and a luncheon given once a year by the wife of the senior Consul, and returned by the wife of the Chinese taotai or mayor. There can never be any degree of friendship between the Chinese woman and the European. Their lives are radically different; the Chinese woman’s ideals are not the same as those of her foreign sister. Their only common subject of conversation is in regard to their children; and even there a bar is soon put across the conversation, as the Chinese mother has different hopes and ambitions for the future of her children than those of the woman from England or America. She knows nothing of the outside world, and her only subjects of conversation relate to household gossip, clothes, and the actions of her friends. In Shanghai a society is formed that is trying to bring the women of all nationalities into touch with one another, but it is not a very great success so far as the Chinese lady is concerned. She feels awkward and ill at ease in the presence of these women, who talk so easily on matters of which she knows nothing, and she much prefers the quiet of her courtyards, amidst the life she understands.
When a Chinese lady is persuaded to go into the world she is always most dignified, even under embarrassing circumstances. I once gave a luncheon for the wife of a Governor of a province, to which the wives of the consuls and a few other ladies were invited, about twenty in all. When the guest of honour arrived all the other guests rose to meet her. As she entered the doorway her tiny bound feet stepped upon a rug, which slipped from beneath her, and instead of swaying gently across the room she sat down and slid to the feet of her astonished hostess. She was helped to rise by the frightened guests, and turned and shook hands with them gravely, without a flicker of the eyelids to indicate that sliding was not the usual mode of entering a drawing-room.
The Chinese lady is trained not to show emotion of any kind. Her face, to be beautiful, must be absolutely placid, care-free, “like unto the full moon in its glory.” They consider the foreign woman extremely ugly, with their long, care-lined faces. They say that if it were not for the clothing they could not distinguish men from women. Their faces, with their prominent noses and deep-set eyes, appear to them coarse and unrefined. I have seen children when suddenly confronted with a foreign woman scream in terror.
The Chinese do not impress the casual visitor as a nervous people. It is said that they can bear without murmuring the most severe punishments, and a torture that would reduce a foreign man to frenzy will elicit only a groan from a member of this phlegmatic race. The women seem to share with their menfolk in this lack of “nerves.” I once made a visit to the wife of the city magistrate, whose home was in the official “yamen.” She showed me over her house, and on entering her bedroom I went to the only window in the room to see what kind of a view was to be obtained. What was my horror to find that the window looked directly upon the punishment courtyard, where a man was then being held down upon his face and a bamboo vigorously applied by the lictor. The moans of the victim could be faintly heard, and what it would be in the summer-time, when the windows were open, could very well be imagined. I turned to my hostess and said, “How frightful! How can you stand it?” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Oh, one becomes used to it.”
The Chinese woman is very devout, and observes all the feast days and days of fasting. It is really the woman who keeps up the religion of Confucius and Buddha. An official who had just returned from sacrificing to the dragon who was supposed to have swallowed the sun at the time of an eclipse, was asked if he believed in this dragon. He laughed and said, “Of course not.” “Then,” the curious questioner continued, “why do you do it?” He said, “Why do men in America go to church? Mainly because their wives wish them to go. It is the same here. It is the women who are the spiritual force of China. It is they who are devout, and it is they who keep open the temples and preserve the belief in the gods.”
WHEELBARROW AND COOLIE—USED IN PLACE OF WAGONS IN TOWNS AND COUNTRY VILLAGES NEAR SHANGHAI.
To face p. [236].
The Chinese woman’s religion is difficult of definition, but whatever she is, a follower of the teachings of Confucius or of the Great Buddha, she turns to her gods both in time of trouble and in time of thanksgiving. It is a real factor in her life. Buddhism has a great festival in the spring, about the time of our Easter. Then the roads are covered with processions of women going or coming from the temples. All ranks are seen—the lady borne swiftly along in her sedan chair with the spirit money hanging from the poles; the middle-class woman riding on the passenger wheelbarrows with four or five of her friends, with her incense and candles in her lap; and the poor woman trudging along the stone-covered road, carrying her offerings in a basket of rice-straw which she has woven at home. When they arrive at the temple they are all of one great sisterhood. The spirit money of rich and poor alike is placed in the great incense-burner in the outer courtyard, where it goes up in flames to the gods. Then the temple is entered, the candles are lighted, and the incense is placed before the particular deity whose kind offices they implore; the head is touched to the floor, prayers are uttered, and the woman returns to the courtyards, where she may pass the time with her friends, feeding the carp in the ponds or admiring the great trees which are found within the courts of many of the big temples. If a special boon is to be asked, or if there is doubt and trouble, she takes a hollow bamboo vase, about the size of a quart measure, in which are a couple of dozen sticks of slit bamboo. She kneels three times, touching her head to the floor each time, then shakes the bamboo with a rotary motion until one of the sticks detaches itself from the others and falls to the floor. This she takes to a priest, who reads the number upon it and gives her a slip of yellow paper covered with Chinese characters, and from it she will find the answer to her prayers. It takes considerable imagination to obtain solace from one of these pieces of paper, as they are made to fit all cases, and carry about as much meaning as does the “fortune” on the card handed one by the figure in the slot-machine for which we pay a penny.