The campaign of the Tien Tsu Hui (As-Heaven-Made-It Foot Society) against foot-binding is meeting with much success. Chinese women are rejoicing that they are not withheld from physical freedom and an education, by being longer crippled. The idea that a bound foot is the surest sign of a lady, and the best recommendation for marriage, is dying out. As prices increase with the material development of China, men will not be able to hire servants to carry and wait on these crippled women. Therefore economy will advance the reform also. The famous viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, who died in 1909, was the first prominent Chinese official to become converted to the reform. The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi joined the movement. It is a pity that more Chinese girls from the Yangtze and southern provinces do not come to American and European schools, as their work, on returning to China, would do most for this reform. The snobbish idea, of course, was that a girl who never needed to work, and had never worked, made a very select wife, just as in America and Britain the “snobs” think that a girl who has never worked, and can not work, makes a finer wife than a woman who has been or is in business. The French have thought otherwise for a long time. One of the pioneer foreign women, outside of the missionaries, who worked and lectured in China for the unbinding of feet, was Mrs. Archibald Little, author of The Land of the Blue Gown, and wife of the intrepid Yangtze explorer and author.
The following love tale is the one oftenest painted on your teacup and saucer, and other Chinese pottery, and on fans, etc. Kung She is the sweet and lovely daughter of a rich man. She falls in love with her father’s bright and brave young secretary, who has more in rosy prospect and dreams than in lined pocket. The father proposes that the daughter shall, against her will, marry a rich old suitor. The lovers in desperation elope over a bamboo bridge to an island pavilion of willow wood, with beautiful up-curving eaves. The wrathful suitor follows and burns the pavilion and the bridge. The souls of the lovers take refuge in the bodies of two doves which are seen cooing from the branches of a banyan that grows above the pavilion. Thus we sit down to eat, and we fan ourselves each day over a beautiful love tale of romantic old China.
The queue is now going out as man’s head-dress in republican China. The general custom with Chinese women is to dress the hair out behind, sticking in large-headed gold pins; and the Manchu’s dress it over the ear, with the help of wide pins, and broad ribbons and flowers. The aboriginal tribes of Lolos in Szechuen province, and Miao Tszes in Kweichau province, dress the hair on top of the head over rats, in true Western cone-style. The Chinese women oil their hair and brush it out smooth on forms. The only departure from this is a straight bang allowed to girls. They wonder if we have brushes or combs in the West, and point to our curls (called “rough dog”) as a proof of our tonsorial carelessness.
Some of the proverbs of the women are:
“You can not tell a good husband that his wife has a defect.”
“Ugly and beautiful daughters all have one face to a true mother.”
“A man weds a wife for her goodness, but a concubine for her face.”
“Mother’s love is even in beasts, for the hungriest tiger will not eat its whelps.”
“Deeds are better than admiration.”
“A virtuous wife is like a loyal statesman; she knows only one king, her husband.”