A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

“It really doesn't matter,” said another doctor I knew well, “a Chinese woman is just as well with a pair of wooden legs as with the stumps the binding has left her!”

As a rule I did not see the beginnings, for though the women go about a little, the small girls are kept at home. But once on this journey, at a poor little inn in the mountains, among the crowd gathered to see the foreign woman were two little girls about eight or nine, evidently the innkeeper's daughters. They were well-dressed among a ragged crew. Their smocks were of bright blue cotton, their neat little red cotton trousers were drawn in at their ankles, and their feet, in tiny embroidered shoes, were about big enough for a child of three. There was paint on their cheeks to hide their piteous whiteness, and their faces were drawn with that haunting look which long-continued pain gives. As they stood they rested their hands on their companions' shoulders, and, when they moved, it was with extreme difficulty. No one took any notice of them. They were simply little girls suffering the usual agonies that custom has ordained a woman shall suffer before she is considered a meet plaything and slave for a man. A woman who would be of any standing at all must so suffer. Poor little uncomplaining mites, they laughed and talked, but their faces, white and strained under the paint, haunted me the livelong night, and I felt that I who stood by and suffered this thing was guilty of a wicked wrong to my fellows.

And foot binding may result in death. There was a child whose father, a widower, not knowing what to do with his little girl, an asset of small value, sold her to a woman of ill repute. The little slave was five years old, but as yet, her feet had not been bound. Her mistress of course took her in hand and bound her feet, so that she might be married some day. But her feet being bound did not exempt small Wong Lan from her household duties. Every morning, baby as she was, she had to get up, kindle the fire, and take hot water to her mistress, who, in her turn, did not give the attention they required to the poor little feet. With feet sore, ulcerated and dirty, she went about such household duties as a little child could do, till they grew so bad she could only lie about and moan, and was a nuisance to the woman who had taken her. At last a man living in the same courtyard had pity on her. He was a mason and had worked at the great hospital the foreigners had set up just outside the walls of the city where they lived, and he took her in his arms, a baby not yet seven, and brought her to the doctor. She had cried and cried, he said, and he thought she would die if she were left. The doctor when he took her thought she was going to die whether she were left or not. There and then he took a pair of scissors, snapped two threads and one foot was off, still in its filthy little slipper. The whole leg was gangrenous and they nursed the baby up for a week till she was strong enough to have the leg amputated at the hip. She grew better, though the doctor shook his head over her. The missionaries decided they had better keep her, and as she recovered, they set about getting her crutches. A Chinese woman evidently begins to be self-conscious very soon, for the mite cried bitterly when they wanted to measure her. The Chinese have a great horror of any deformity, and she thought she would be an object of scorn if she went about on crutches, and everyone could see she had only one leg. Her idea was that she should sit all day long on the k'ang, and then it would be hidden. However, her guardians prevailed, and presently she was hopping about the missionary compound, and being a pretty, taking little girl soon found friends who forgot, or what was more important, taught Her to forget, that she was crippled. Someone gave her a doll, and with this treasure tucked under her arm, she paid visits from one house to the other, happy as the day was long, petted by Chinese and foreigners alike. But the doctor who had shaken his head over her at first was right. The poison was in her system, and in a little over six months from the day she was brought in to the hospital she died. Poor little mite! For six months she had been perfectly happy. The man who had brought her in made her a coffin, the aliens who had succoured and cared for her laid her there with the doll she had been so proud of in her arms, and told all the Chinese who had known her they might come and say a last farewell. They came, and then—oh curious human nature!—someone stole the poor little makeshift doll from the dead baby's arms!

Of course cruelty to children is a sin that is met with in countries nearer home, is, in fact, more common in Christian England than in heathen China. This was a death that was attributable to the low value that is set on the girl child and to the cruel custom of binding the feet.

And not hundreds and thousands but millions of women so suffer. The practice, they say, is dying out among the more enlightened in the towns, but in the country, within fifteen miles of Peking, it is in full swing. Not only are these “golden lilies” considered beautiful, but the woman with bound feet is popularly supposed to care more for the caresses of her lord, than she with natural feet. Of course, a man may not choose his wife, his mother does that for him, he may not even see her, but he can, and very naturally often does, ask questions about her. The question he generally asks is not: “Has she a pretty face?” but: “Has she small feet?” But if he did not think about it, the women of his family would consider it for him.

A woman told me, how, in the north of Chihli, the custom was for the women of the bridegroom's family to gather round the newly arrived bride who sat there, silent and submissive, while they made comments upon her appearance.

“Hoo! she's ugly!” Or worst taunt of all, “Hoo! What big feet she's got!”

Many will tell you it is not the men who insist upon bound feet, but the women. And, if that is so, to me it only deepens the tragedy. Imagine how apart the women must be from the men, when they think, without a shadow of truth, that to be pleasing to a man, a woman must be crippled. The women are hardly to be blamed. If they are so ignorant as to believe that no woman with large feet can hope to become a wife and mother, what else can they do but bind the little girls' feet? Would any woman dare deprive her daughter of all chance of wifehood and motherhood by leaving her feet unbound? Oh the lot of a woman in China is a cruel one, civilised into a man's toy and slave. I had a thousand times rather be a negress, one of those business-like trading women of Tarquah, or one of the capable, independent housewives of Keta. But to be a Chinese woman! God forbid!

It seems very difficult to make a Chinaman understand that a woman has any rights, even a foreign woman, apart from a man. I remember being particularly struck with this once at Pao Ting Fu, the capital of Chihli, a walled town about three hours by rail from Peking. I lost a third of my luggage by the way, because the powers that be, having charged me a dollar and a half for its carriage, divided it into three parts, and by the time I had discovered in what corner the last lot was stowed, the train was moving on, and I could only be comfortably sure it was being taken away from me at the rate of twenty miles an hour. However, the stationmaster assured Dr Lewis, the missionary doctor with whom I was living, that it should be brought back by the next day.

Accordingly, next day, accompanied by a coolie who spoke no English, I wended my way to the railway station and inquired for that luggage. The coolie had been instructed what to say, and I thought they would simply bring me into contact with my lost property. I would pay any money that was due, and the thing would be finished. But I had not reckoned on my standing, or want of standing, as a woman.