The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It was spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through which we drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt the bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed down on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading family, and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active member of the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been bachelor so long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that there are about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred young men, therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could get was a pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty Mexican dollars, roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who do not care much what any man's religion is so long as he live a decent life, understand the desire of that man for a Christian wife, for that means here in the interior that she will have received a little education, will be able to read and write and do arithmetic, and will know something of cleanliness and hygiene.
The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow. The entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we arrived a little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey and I, were ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior one, which was crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array, some servants in the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars in rags who were anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, and were having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut out by all manner of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese characters upon them, and once inside, we made our way towards the house through a pressing crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for a front door was a table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the table were two long square candles of red wax with Chinese characters in gold upon them. They were warranted to burn a day and a night, and between them was a pretty dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing innumerable white flowers. That table was artistic and pretty, but to its left was a great pile of coal, and, beside the coal, a stove and a long table at which a man, blue-clad, shaven and with a queue, was busy preparing the feast within sight of all. I could have wished the signs of hospitality had not been so much in evidence, for I could quite believe that cook had not been washed since he was three days old, and under the table was a large earthenware bowl full of extremely dirty water in which were being washed the bowls we would presently use.
Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak of. It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with bands of black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats and loose trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It was quite a relief to sit down on the k'ang opposite to a stout and cheerful old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do farmer's wife. She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained to the proud position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican dollars a month, and consequently had a position and station of her own. In my experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own importance in the world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know the missionaries, bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but whatever the reason at the back of it all, to them is the honour of that happy, comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few happy-looking women in China!
We sat on the k'ang and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My feet—I never can tuck them under me—clad in good substantial leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they were unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and the-flesh could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my feet and I laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
“The larger the feet the happier the woman.”
I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
“It hurt like anything,” translated the missionary girl beside me, “but it is all right now.”
The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out to greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and that well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore a most respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk petticoat; round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of orange-red silk, set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum of no mean proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him, was—a rare headgear in China—a hard black felt hat. From the brim of that, on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which were strung ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole effect was striking.
Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that these two women would be antagonistic—which I think I could have foretold without the aid of any fortune-teller—therefore the rite was deputed to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at the sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with husband and children living on the other, down through the crowd came the little bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much embroidered, which entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were fat or slim it was impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown entirely covering it, and over her face was a veil of thick bright red silk. She could neither see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I have ever seen, they looked about suitable for a baby of twelve months old. The tiny red shoes were decorated with little green tassels at the pointed toe and had little baby high heels, and though they say these feet were probably false, the real ones must have been wonderfully small if they were hidden in the manifold red bandages that purported to make the slender red ankles neat.