China Revolutionized - John Stuart Thomson

On the last of our August the women of China celebrate the festival of the goddess of needlework. The interesting legend told to the daughters of the house is as follows: This goddess, because of her wonderful skill, was given by the great god Tien to a worthy farmer. After this life she incurred the wrath of the god and was removed from her husband’s star. Once a year, when her star comes round again, magpies conduct her back to her husband’s star home, across the carpet of the Milky Way, where she is welcome for a while, because she is as good a needleworker as he is a farmer and provider. The festival includes the exhibition on a table of the needlework of the women and the toy work of the girls. Wonderful toys of gummed sesame seeds, wax and paper are made, and toys worked by clockwork or heat, which exhibit all kinds of rural life,—some of it humorous. From behind screens the women listen to what the men callers have to say to the head of the family in praise of their handiwork. It is, however, principally a women’s festival and encourages the production of the gorgeous embroidery of the Chinese. A Chinese wit was asked the difference in the position of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon women, and she replied: “An Oriental man beats his wife in public to show that he is indeed the ruler, but he pets her in private, whereas a Western man pets his wife in public and beats her in private.” I do not know what the remote Tibet men do with their powerful women in private, but I do know that the women of Tibet who come down into Szechuen and Yunnan provinces with the trading trains are on an equal with man. They join him in work, play, in meeting strangers and in holding the “cash,” and therefore are the most independent of the Chinese women. They do not bind their feet, as they have too much work to do. They come next to the Tonquinoise as perhaps the best-looking of the Chinese. The best dressed women in China live in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces. The dress of Korean women is not so gorgeous as the Chinese dress, the former wearing green or white, and hiding their heads in immense basket hats, “to keep them from flirting” the wits say! The Korean woman at home, instead of modestly screening her face with a fan, does so by lifting up her wide sleeve. Muffs and gloves are not worn in the cold north. Instead, the wide long sleeve is gathered round the hand.

Lighting China’s sea-ways by the National Customs Department. This is the Guia Light. Note the winding rock path, cut to the summit; Kwangtung province.

Modern buildings of brick. Nearly all have large verandas. Canton water-front, Pearl River.

The Chinese type of girlhood, as contrasted with the Japanese type shown in another photograph. In the New China the compressing of feet is taboo.