"The Prince has a good many children, has he not?"
"Twenty-three," he answered.
"How many concubines has he?" I inquired.
"Three," he replied, "but he expects to take on two more after the holidays."
"Doesn't it cause trouble in a family for a man to have so many women about? I should think they would be jealous of each other."
"Ah," said he, with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head, "that is a topic that is difficult to discuss. Naturally if this woman sees him taking to that woman, this one is going to eat vinegar."
They do "eat vinegar," but perhaps as little of it as any people who live in the way in which they live, for the Chinese have organized their home life as nearly on a governmental basis as any people in the world.
In addition to the wife and concubines, each son when he marries brings his wife home to a parental court, and all these sisters-in-law, or daughters-in-law add so much to the complications of living, for each must have her own retinue of servants.
Young people in China are all engaged by their parents without their knowledge or consent. This was very unsatisfactory to the young people of the old regime, and it is being modified in the new. One day one of my students in discussing this matter said to me:
"Our method of getting a wife is very much better than either the old Chinese method or your foreign method."