A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

“No, no, no. Never have anything to do with a woman in China until she is well over forty. You don't know the trouble you will let yourself in for. Chinese women!” And he held up his hands. So it appears that the secluded life does not make them all that they ought to be.

However, while I was considering the matter, some woman in Peking, kinder and less cautious than I, stepped in and the little girl has found an asylum, and is, I am assured by a friend, all right, and better off than hundreds of her people. True she easily might be that, and yet not have attained to much.

I always seem to be talking of the condition of the Chinese women, like King Charles's head, it comes into everything. After all, the condition and status of half the nation must be always cropping up when one considers the people at all. “Chinese women,” said a man, “are past-mistresses in false modesty.” And again I thought what a commentary on a nation. To Western eyes how it marks the subjection and the ignorance of the women.

When the first baby is coming, the bride is supposed, though it would be a tragedy beyond all words if she had no children, to be too shy to tell her husband, or even her mother-in-law, so she puts on bracelets, and then the family know that this woman, at least, is about to fulfil her destiny. I hope the little Chinese girl I found up in the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha will yet marry, marry someone she chooses herself, will not need to pluck out the front hairs on her forehead, and will be on such terms with her husband, that though she may with pride put on the bracelets, she may rejoice openly that their love is crowned. I do not think there will be any false modesty about her. But I did not take a courtyard in the Sleeping Buddha Temple. It was rented by the Y.M.C.A. and I think that, combined with the donkey ride, put me off. I felt I would rather go farther afield, farther away from the traces of the foreigner, and I could have my pick of temples in September. I took the San Shan An, in another valley, one of the lovely valleys of the world.

The San Shan An is only a small temple with a central courtyard and two or three smaller ones, and I agreed to take it for the sum of twenty-eight dollars a month. I engaged a cook and a boy, the boy's English was scanty and the cook had none, but I only paid the two twenty-four dollars a month, six dollars less than the valued Tuan had all to himself, and one day in September I saw my household gods on to two carts, went myself by train, and got out at the first station at the Western Hills.

I had taken the precaution, as I had no Chinese, and I did not expect to meet anybody who understood English, to have the name of the temple written out in Chinese characters, and descending from the train, after a little trouble I found one among the wondering crowd who could read, and all that crowd, a dirty little crowd, took an interest in my further movements. They immediately supplied me with donkeys and boys to choose from, and I had the greatest difficulty in explaining that I did not want a donkey, all I wanted was a guide. The only one who seemed to grasp it was a very ragged individual who, with basket under his arm, and scoop in hand, was gathering manure. He promptly seized my dispatch-box, all the luggage I carried, and we started, pursued by disappointed boys with donkeys, who could not believe that the foreign woman was actually going to walk in the wake of a man who gathered manure. I must confess it was a most humble procession, even in my eyes, who am not accustomed to standing on my dignity. My only sister had given me that dispatch-case as a parting present, and it looked wonderfully rich and cultured in the very grimy hand that grasped it so triumphantly. I should never have had the heart to turn that old man away, he looked so pleased at having got a job. Off he went, and we walked for over an hour across a flat and rough country, where the kaoliang had been gathered on to the threshing floors, and all the people this gorgeous hot autumn day were at work there.

A threshing floor in the East makes one think of Ruth and Boaz, and possibly these people were not unlike those who worked on that threshing floor in Judah so long ago, only they were dirty and poor, and not comely as we picture the Moabitish beauty. It was hot as we walked, and I grew a little doubtful as we approached the hills—were we going in the right direction.

“San Shan Erh,” said my guide, and he repeated it, and I grew more doubtful, for I did not know then that these hill people say, “San Shan Erh” where a more cultivated man would say “San Shan An,” it is very Pekingese to have many “r's” to roll. He combined business with pleasure, or rather he combined his business, and whenever he came across a patch of manure, he gathered it in, and I waited patiently. At last we came to the entrance of a well-wooded valley, and a well-wooded valley is a precious thing in China, and we went up a roughly flagged pathway, flagged, I dare say, a couple of hundred years ago or more, a steep pathway by a graveyard, and between the trees that were just taking on a tinge of autumn gold, we arrived at a plateau built up with stones, and along beneath some trees we entered a gate and came into a square brick paved courtyard surrounded by low, one-storied buildings, and with four pine-trees raising their dark green branches against the deep blue sky. I had seen so many temple courtyards, and now here was one, that for a space, was to be my very own. In China, it seems, the gods always make preparation for taking in guests—at a price.