"Don't you think it is cruel for parents to sell their daughters in this way?" I asked.
"Perhaps," she answered. "But with the money they received for her, they can buy land enough to furnish them a good support all their life. She will always have rich food, fine clothing and an easy time, with nothing to do but enjoy herself, while if she had remained at home she must have married some poor man who might or might not have treated her well, and for whom she would have to work like a slave. Now she is nominally a slave with nothing to do and with every comfort, in addition to what she has done for her family."
While we were having tea she asked to see Mr. Headland, as many of the older of my friends did. I invited him in, and as he entered the dining-room the young woman stepped out into the hall.
My friend greeted my husband, and with a mysterious nod of her head in the direction of the young woman she said: "Chiu shih na ke,—that's it."
XVI
The Social Life of the Chinese Woman
The manners and customs of the Chinese, and their social characteristics, have employed many pens and many tongues, and will continue to furnish all inexhaustible field for students of sociology, of religion, of philosophy, of civilization, for centuries to come. Such studies, however, scarcely touch the province of the practical, at least as yet, for one principal reason—that the subject is so vast, the data are so infinite, as to overwhelm the student rather than assist him in sound generalizations.—A. R. Colquhoun in "China in Transformation."