China Revolutionized

by John Stuart Thomson

“Mother and father first and wealth after.”

“She is dead indeed who walks around with a dead heart.”

“If you listen to every one’s advice, the picture will never be straight on the wall.”

“Let thy purse and not thine eyes tell thee what to buy.”

“You can’t expect the looking glass to reveal more than you put into it.”

Because of the worship of men ancestors, Confucianism has been called a man’s religion. Yet it recognizes woman’s work. A bronze brazier stands before the open white marble altar at Peking, in which once a year at the ancient Chou sacrifices to the God of Heaven, the emperor-pope burns silk. The Manchu emperor, in abdicating the throne, retained his sacerdotal offices, though strictly speaking, they should have fallen to the Ducal Kung Fut Tszes, of Shangtung province, who are the seventy-seventh in direct line from Confucius. A number of the Kungs, however, are Christians, and they exerted little insistence on their Confucian privileges. The care of the worms and the weaving of silk is distinctly woman’s work in China. This sacrifice is repeated by the governor at every capital, and heads of families sometimes, in their own office of patriarch priest, make the silk sacrifice. This is quite distinct from hiring a Taoist bonze to burn silvered and gilded imitations of money to appease a devil or “ying” spirit. A patriarch would have no influence there, the operation requiring a specialist more familiar with witches and demons! The Chinese women always sit on chairs and lounges (kangs); the Koreans and Japanese sit on the floor. This does not mean that the Koreans, whom the Japanese have conquered, are in sympathy with the latter, for they thoroughly hate each other. The Chinese never wear a feather, except to denote literary rank in men. Therefore the bucolic natives who see the fashion of western women, remark: “Only your women are educated, and very talented at that, some having a dozen literary degrees.” Millinery is for men, not for women in China, as only men wear a feathered cap. The gorgeous tail feathers of the Machi species of pheasant are particularly popular. Preserves of these birds are kept in the Wei valley, north of the Peling range of mountains in far western Kansu province, to provide the men milliners with supplies!

A well-known custom at Chinese weddings is the effort of the bride to sit upon part of the groom’s gown when they are drinking the betrothal tea together. The cups are tied with a red string, and the groom must not break the string in his effort to release his gown. If the bride succeeds it means that she will be his ruler. A partially similar custom prevails among the Miaotse aboriginal tribes of Yunnan province. The friends of the groom endeavor to prevent the bride’s brothers from throwing her veil on the roof of the house. If the latter are successful in the rush, the omen is that the bride will rule the groom, saying in any argument: “Remember that on June 15th my veil went on your roof!” The midwife is a well-filled calling, but she does not go by that name. She is called the “life-catcher” throughout the land. The “mother-in-law” joke does not obtain in China. Its place is taken by the son-in-law joke. It is the aim of the son-in-law and his wife to “go and live on mother” as long as possible. Mother resents it with the usual complaint: “Here comes my son-in-law, with his wife and six children, to live on us again for a month; dearie me,” etc.! When a family marries off a daughter, generally to save the expense of supporting her, they hope to see the last of her as far as that expense goes. Family courtesy, the Confucian “li” code, prescribes yearly entertainment, however, of the son-in-law’s family, which is not reciprocated, and hence the standing of the son-in-law joke as a mirth-provoker among those who perceive the code’s requirements obeyed, with exactness but not with cheerfulness!

Although the race has for centuries shaved the heads of the men almost to baldness, they have a great abhorrence of baldness in women, and this is frequently pleaded as a cause for divorce or breaking of an engagement (marriage contract). The women in general have luxuriant hair, though it is coarse, and its color and luster remain till late in life, owing to the use of oils, the absence of hats, and the out-of-door habits. If the lion-like chow dog (yellow or black) is the pet of the men, the Pekingese toy spaniel is the pet of the Manchu woman. She calls it her “sleeve dog.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi enumerated its points as follows: “It shall learn to bite a stranger; its toy body shall be maned and fixed with the fierce eyes of the great lion seeking its prey. Its ears shall be set like the sails of a war junk; its nose shall be stubby like the monkey god of the Hindus; its forelegs shall be bowed so that it can walk over the foot of its mistress, but shall not be able to stray far from the yamen; its feet shall be tufted so that its step shall be as on turf; and its color shall suit every change of gown. It shall be fed on the breasts of quails, livers of curlews and sharks’ fins. Its drink shall be Hankau, first-budded tea and antelope’s milk. If ill, it shall be anointed with the fat of leopards, and drink a thrush-egg full of the juice of the custard apple and dissolved rhinoceros’ horn. If very ill, piebald leeches shall be applied to it.” Despite all this poetry which aptly goes with this fashionable dog, it thrives very well on Spratt’s dog biscuit in the salons of West End, London, and Fifth Avenue, New York. A number of ladies are mixing up Chinese and Japanese names for the pets at the bench shows (Peking Yen, for instance), but the dog answers very well to the names Jip, Tip, etc., which we used to call those old favorite toy dogs, the black-and-tans. The dog looks like a cross between a Pomeranian and a King Charles spaniel. The face is decidedly lion-like; the bushy tail sweeps well over the back as does that of his big brother, the Chinese chow dog. The legs are short and bowed, and the manner is very alert.

Possibly overmuch has been written that the Chinese despise female children and worship male children. In the economic and religious structure of old China boys have been more valuable, but the human heart of the race has responded to love for its girls. Poverty, more than hardness of heart, has induced the race in instances to sell its girls; for China has been very poor because of flood and famine, resulting from inefficiency of government and the non-development of mines and manufacturing. The two greatest teachers of old China have for twenty-five centuries taught love of children in the following among other maxims. Confucius said: “Treat the young tenderly,” and Mencius wrote: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” Where the parents can afford it, the Chinese dress their boys and girls expensively and gorgeously, and fondle them as lovingly as do the Hebrews, who are supposed to set the standard in love for children, as compared with us colder northern races. One of the first things that the new government will attempt to suppress will be the sale of girl slaves and concubinage. The population of China will fall or remain stationary, which will be a good thing for China. There is, therefore, no “Yellow Peril” for the West, as the Emperor William enunciated in 1898. The poorer a man, the more children he desires in China, so that sons may take care of him in old age, but he forgets that he is raising uneducated sons and neglected girls, who are often sold into slavery. Better a family of four well-cared-for children in the new hygienic Cathay than a family of ten in the old China. China’s population will fall under the new régime, but her efficiency, education and comfort will advance, and those who will benefit the most, as compared with their former condition, will be her women.

At the time of the revolution, October, 1911, to February, 1912, there were 400,000 starving girls and women in the Yangtze and Hwei River valleys alone who offered to sell themselves for food; China’s courts will no more defend the legality of such contracts under duress, as we in the West must revise our “freedom of contract” and “confession” laws where an uninformed or a restrained individual signs away rights. Every Chinese boy has till now married early in life, Shanghai being an exception in having a large demi-monde colony. The Kuo Kuang Pao, a native paper of Peking, complained in a late issue of courtesans (with modesty they call it rather the “custom of Shanghai”) coming to Peking, and soliciting students brazenly in the streets. Shanghai has a “slave refuge” for the protection of abandoned and abused girls. Intense poverty on account of famine is at the base of this curse. It is not as common in Hongkong and Canton as in the valleys of the Hoang, Han, Yangtze and Hwei Rivers.