To face p. 46.
The birth of a son is hailed with delight in every home in China, from the highest to the lowest. In the palace of the Emperor, when the heir to the throne is born, there are rejoicings that extend from the capital to the furthest extent of the Empire, and every mother’s heart goes out in sympathy and gladness for the queen who has given a ruler to sit on the Dragon Throne. The birth of this Royal Son has brought such happiness to the Imperial Home that it is felt that it ought to be commemorated by a special act of grace that would bring freedom and deliverance to large numbers of the most unhappy of the Emperor’s subjects.
This is called the “Great Forgiveness,” because no sooner is it known that the Empress has borne a son, than an edict is issued, stamped with the vermilion seal, and dispatched to the viceroys and great mandarins in every province and department of the Empire, ordering them to at once release certain classes of prisoners who are confined in prison, and who without this royal clemency might lie confined within their dingy cells for years to come without any hope of release. This is a noble act, and all connected with the coming of a little son, who has only just opened his eyes to the light of heaven, and who yet has had the happiness of flinging wide the prison doors and of setting free countless numbers of men and women, who otherwise would have pined and fretted within their dungeons till hope had died out of their hearts, and, filled with despair, they had closed their eyes upon life.
Let us now try and picture another scene. The little one, long expected and long speculated about, that has filled the fancy of the mother, and that has helped to weave a story of romance in the mind of the father, turns out after all to be not a boy, but a girl—only a girl. The visions die away, and the poetry loses its romance, and becomes the commonest prose, when it is found that the stranger is a girl. It is quite safe to make the assertion that in all the countless homes that exist in the huge population of China not one of them is prepared to welcome a girl or to feel that she could ever take the place of a boy.
We become convinced of this when we look upon the scene that I am endeavouring to picture, for it is a typical one, and the ages have stereotyped it, as one of the correct photographs of social life in this land.
No sooner is it announced that the child is a girl than a kind of dismay falls upon the household. The father’s face becomes darkened with a scowl that shows the passion that is raging in his heart. His very love for his wife is for the moment turned into bitterness, for he considers that she has wronged him and brought disgrace upon the home.
The mother, instead of being loyal to her sex and gathering the little one to her bosom, as she would have done had it been a boy, thrusts it indignantly from her and refuses even to look at it. She now begins to weep and sob out her sorrow in tears and bitter expressions at the bad fate that is clouding her life. The baby has been wrapped up hastily and thrown with contempt upon a bench in the room, where, uncared for and despised, as something that has brought bad luck into the home, she sends forth her wailing cry without its once touching the mother near by.
It is at this particular period in the little girl’s history that the greatest peril to her life arises, for it is just at this point that so many take their last look at the world and vanish into darkness. With a mad passion of disappointment in the hearts of both parents, it is so easy to snap the thread of the little life, and sweep away the sorrow and the shame from their home.
On one occasion we had a nurse in our family. She was a woman of a great deal of character, modest in her demeanour and a willing and untiring worker. Her name was the one thing about her that was peculiar, and that in Chinese meant “Picked up.” It was a most unusual one, and I felt that there was a history connected with it that would reveal some incident in her early life. Anxious to learn what that was, I said to her one day, “What an extraordinary name you have. How did it come about that your mother gave it you?”
A smile lighted up her plain features, whilst she exclaimed, “I can easily explain that. The name was given me very soon after my birth, in remembrance of a rather tragic affair in which, as my mother believed, Heaven interfered to preserve my life. The evening I was born, both my father and mother were so distressed at my being a girl, that in a fit of anger the former seized hold upon me and threw me out into the open courtyard in front of our house. Fortunately it was the height of summer, and the night air was hot and scorching, and so as I lay there all night long, I received no injury from the wind that blew over me.