Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

by Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew; Katharine C. Bushnell

Of the many girls we interviewed at Hong Kong the story of the following seems typical of her class, so we extract it from our journal:

"At the first place we called there were six inmates—four of whom were present at the interview. The keeper went out of the room as we entered, and did not return. The girls were very friendly, and one of them talked a little English. This one told us that she came from Canton, and, in broken English, said that she had 'no father, no mother, no brother; a poor man took her when a very little child and raised her to sell. By and by a woman came and offered to buy poor man's little girl, and as he had but little food, he asks, 'How much?' then she buys the little girl and brings her to Hong Kong. Then woman take her to Englishman and say, 'She first-class girl,' and he say, 'I make her my wife,' but he not good; he no husband; he go away to his house—England.' Thus she described in a few simple words the tragedy of her life with tears in her eyes; her training for vice; her sale; her hopes of marriage; her desertion; the outcome, her consignment to a Government-licensed brothel. She was but one of the tens of thousands at Hong Kong. We asked, 'How would a girl have to do in order to live in this house?' They said, 'She must be registered at the Lock. Hospital, and would have to go to the Court and Mr. Lockhart (the Registrar-General) would ask her questions; whether she had a father and mother; how old she was; where the money went to that was paid for her; and whether she wanted to be a prostitute or not.' We asked, 'If a girl should say that she did not want to be a prostitute what would be done?' They answered, 'No girl would dare to say this when she had been bought.' We asked the girl who talked English over again about this, and she said the same.

"All the places of infamy reserved for the use of Europeans which we visited in Hong Kong, were within three minutes' walk of Victoria Hotel, in the very busiest part of the city. Close by our hotel were such world-famed shops as 'Watson and Co.,' 'Kelly and Walsh,' etc.; a short distance down the street were the Postoffice and the Supreme Court buildings. The respectable English residents of Hong Kong cannot go about the streets of the city without seeing these places; there are draper-shops and other places visited daily and hourly by respectable foreigners and natives, occupying the ground floor of these brothels. The fine new building of the Girls' High School, under the management of the Government, is within five minutes' walk; yet all these brothels are glaringly numbered, as registered by the city, in huge figures eight or ten inches high, of red on a white background, painted on the doors of the stairways leading to the second story of the buildings occupied by these shops. The school children cannot pass by without noting these officially numbered houses, and seeing the girls sitting at all hours of the day and into the night conspicuously in the balconies over the shops of drapers, grocers, tailors, silk-merchants, shoe-dealers, &c., &c., and often hearing them calling to each other from house to house, and to the men in the public streets below. Mrs. Andrew, when in the street, March 2nd, saw a group of these slave-women calling down to three policemen, who were looking up and laughing at them. These are daily sights."

The unblushing parade of forms of vice, which have been manufactured in the Orient especially to meet the demands of renegade members of Christian civilization, can be seen in a peculiarly painful and brazen form in the city of Hong Kong.

While we were at Hong Kong, there occured a great celebration in honor of the repair and rededication of an important Buddhist temple. There was a grand procession, and many thousands of Chinese from the mainland came over to witness the celebration. The parade formed in the early morning and went at once to the residence of the Governor to do him honor, after which it marched through the principal streets of the city. It was a curious, interesting, and withal a painful sight, in some regards not unlike industrial parades in our own country. At night we saw something totally unique and difficult to describe to those who have not witnessed the same in China. Men bore aloft great dragons and fishes innumerable, of all sizes and shapes, (but very true to life), given a natural color and lighted up within, like Chinese lanterns. These were held aloft on the ends of long poles, and as the men who carried them were invisible, because of the darkness, and trod noiselessly because of bare, or merely sandaled feet, the impression was of an immense train of these creatures floating or swimming silently through the air.

The procession was made up of men of all sorts and kinds. Great fat men with enormous fans panted along, and little boys ran by their side with stools upon which they gravely seated themselves whenever the line of march was halted for a moment. Little boys progressed painfully along with the rest, walking on their hands, with their feet thrown up into the air, or spinning along on all fours like wheels, or going through various other antics. And, contrary to anything that could have happened away from the open ports of China, there were many women in the parade, and girls too. They were on horseback, in sedan chairs, borne on wheeled platforms, like our "Goddess of Liberty" representations on the Fourth of July; walking, and sometimes riding on bullocks. We counted 150 women in all. These were dressed and painted up in such a style that a single glance showed they belonged to the disreputable class, and their old "pocket-mothers," were to be seen walking along close to them and keeping a sharp lookout over their gaudily dressed slaves. Yet more painful was the sight of the little girls, bound to heavy wires and placed in all manner of contortions. Here was a girl about sixteen, standing cross-legged on a moving platform, holding a spear in each hand, the spears crossed in front of her breast, and a little girl dangling from each spear-point. So it appeared, but in fact all were well wired into the distressing shape they occupied, and it was said that none of them could have endured the position for a moment but for plentiful doses of opium. Next passed a girl standing on the moving platform, holding a spear at arm's length, and a three-year-old girl standing on its point. Then a little boy holding a long rod from which was suspended a tiny child. A girl passed sitting on a stool and holding a sword by its point with a child of four suspended from its handle, and next a girl holding a sword by its handle, and the child suspended from its point. One girl sat playing a flute held up high in the air, and a girl of six appeared to be suspended from it. One poor little thing was borne high up in the air, astride a turning-pole, with legs well crossed beneath the pole. And then there came along a little girl swaying about on the end of a long pole carried by men in the procession. We were on the second floor of a great verandah of the hotel, and the child swung so close to us, that we started forward toward her with a cry of pity. Great tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she seemed to look straight into our eyes, and attempted a sickly smile at our expressions of pity.

Later, after the procession of fishes, we sat in company with two Chinese ministers of the Gospel who came to call upon us, and discussed in sadness the scenes of the day. They said, if we had understood the native language and joined in the procession, as they did at times, we would have heard the old "pocket-mothers" and other owners of these girls driving bargains for their sale, temporarily or permanently, with the men of the crowds. These native Christians marvelled that Englishmen and American men who called themselves "Christians" could have joined in these festivities in honor of a heathen temple, and that the Governor should have made a speech of congratulation, with no rebuke of these scenes of inhuman torture of women and child slaves, when the procession paused at his door. These parades continued two or three days, always accompanied by the great paper dragons, whether in the daytime or at night, by the noise of deafening tom-toms, and the sickening sight of tortured slave-girls.

CHAPTER 15.

"PROTECTION" AT SINGAPORE.

"Ladies, I wish to introduce to you Mr. —— He is eager to meet you, and I am sure you will be glad to meet him. You are working along much the same lines. Mr. —— I assure you, is, in fact, interested in every good thing that is done in this City, and in every good thing that comes this way. We all count on his sympathies. I am glad to have the privilege of bringing you together." With this our friend of many years, the good Doctor, withdrew to speak to another group, and we entered into a short conversation with the white-headed old man to whom we had been introduced. He was profuse in his expressions of sympathy for our purity work, but somehow, we could hardly have defined why, we were not interested in him, and soon turned away. The occasion that gave the opportunity for his introduction, was a missionary conference at Singapore. The man in question had explained to us that he was not of the same denomination as the church that had called together the reception of that evening, but that he seldom failed to attend all such gatherings, no matter of what denomination, because of his interest in every part of the "Father's Kingdom".