Prince Su's third sister is married to a commoner, but as is usual with these ladies who marry beneath their own rank, she retains her maiden title of Third Princess, by which she is always addressed.
"How did you obtain your education?" I once asked her.
"During my childhood," she answered, "my mother was opposed to having her daughters learn to read, but like most wealthy families, she had old men come into the palace to read stories or recite poetry for our entertainment. I not infrequently followed the old men out, bought the books from which they read, and then bribed some of the eunuchs to teach me to read them. In this way I obtained a fair knowledge of the Chinese character."
She is as deeply interested in the new educational movement among girls as is her sister. When this desire for Western education began, she organized a school, in which she has eighty girls or more, taken from various grades of society, whom she and some of her friends, in addition to employing teachers and providing the school-rooms, gave a good part of their time to teaching the Chinese classics, while a Japanese lady taught them calisthenics and the rudiments of Western mathematics.
She is aggressively pro-foreign, and is ready to do anything that will contribute to the success of the new educational movement, and the freedom of the Chinese woman. On one occasion when the Chinese in Peking undertook to raise a fund for famine relief, they called a large public meeting to which men and women were alike invited, the first meeting of the kind ever held in Peking. Such a gathering could not have occurred before the Boxer rebellion. The Third Princess, having promised to help provide the programme, took a number of her girls, and on a large rostrum, had them go through their calisthenic exercises for the entertainment of the audience. On another occasion she took all her girls to a private box at a Chinese circus, where men and women acrobats and horseback riders performed in a ring not unlike that of our own circus riders. In this circus small-footed women rode horseback as well as the women in our own circus, and one woman with bound feet lay down on her back, balanced a cart-wheel, weighing at least a hundred pounds, on her feet, whirling it rapidly all the time, and then after it stopped she continued to hold it while two women and a child climbed on top. The Princess was determined to allow her girls to have all the advantages the city afforded.
At the school of this Third Princess I once attended a unique memorial service. A lady of Hang Chou, finding it impossible to secure sufficient money by ordinary methods for the support of a school that she had established, cut a deep gash in her arm and then sat in the temple court during the day of the fair, with a board beside her on which was inscribed the explanation of her unusual conduct. This brought her in some three hundred ounces of silver with which she provided for her school the first year. When it was exhausted and she could get no more, she wrote letters to the officials of her province, in which she asked for subscriptions and urged the importance of female education, to which she said she was willing to give her life. To her appeal the officials paid no heed, and she finally wrote other letters renewing her request for help to establish the school, after which she committed suicide. The letters were sent, and later published in the local and general newspapers. Memorial services were held in various parts of the empire at all of which funds were gathered not only for her school but for establishing other schools throughout the provinces.
The school of the Third Princess at which this service was held was profusely decorated. Chinese flags floated over the gates and door-ways. Beautifully written scrolls, telling the reason for the service and lauding the virtues of the lady, covered the walls of the schoolroom. At the second entrance there was a table at which sat a scribe who took our name and address and gave us a copy of the "order of exercises." Here we were met by the Third Princess, who conducted us into the main hall. Opposite the doorway was hung a portrait of the lady, wreathed in artificial flowers, and painted by a Chinese artist. A table stood before it on which was a plate of fragrant quinces, candles, and burning incense, giving it the appearance of a shrine. Pots of flowers were arranged about the room, which was unusually clean and beautiful. The Chinese guests bowed three times before the picture on entering the room, which I thought a very pretty ceremony.
The girls of this school, to the number of about sixty, appeared in blue uniform, courtesying to the guests. Sixteen other girls' schools of Peking were represented either by teachers or pupils or both. One of the boys' schools came en masse, dressed in military uniform, led by a band, and a drillmaster with a sword dangling at his side. Addresses were made by both ladies and gentlemen, chief among whom were the Third Princess and the editress of the Woman's Daily Newspaper, the only woman's daily at that time in the world, who urged the importance of the establishment and endowment of schools for the education of girls throughout the empire.