A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

The courtyard was crowded. There were blue-tilted Peking carts, there were mules, there were donkeys, there were men of all sorts; but there was only one wretched little room for me. It was very dirty too, and I was very tired. What was to be done?

“Plenty Chinese gentlemen sleep here,” declared Tuan, and I could quite believe it. At the door of every lattice-windowed room that looked out on to that busy courtyard, stood one, or perhaps two Chinese of the better class—long petticoats, shaven head, queue and all—each held in his hand a long, silver-mounted pipe from which he took languid whiffs, and he looked under his eyelids, which is the polite way, at the foreign woman. The foreign woman was very dirty, very tired, and very uncomfortable, and the room looked very hopeless. The “cartee men” declared that this was the best inn in the town, and anyhow I was disinclined to go out and look for other quarters. Then there came tottering forward an old woman with tiny feet, one eye and a yellow flower stuck in the knot at the back of her bald head. China is the country of bald women. The men, I presume, would not mind it very much, as for so long they have shaven off at least half their hair, but the women certainly must, for if they can they dress their dark hair very elaborately. And yet have I seen many women, like this innkeeper's wife, with a head so bald that but a few strands of hair cover its nakedness, yet those few poor hairs are gathered together into an arrangement of black silk shaped something like a horn, and beside it is placed a flower, a rose, a pink oleander blossom, or a bright yellow flower for which I have no name. That flower gives a finish to a sleek and well-dressed head, when the owner has plenty of hair, but when she has only the heavy horn of silk, half a dozen hairs, and the rest of her bald pate covered with a black varnish, it is a poor travesty. When a girl marries, immediately after her husband has lifted her veil and she is left to the women of his family they pluck out the front hairs on her forehead, so as to give a square effect, and the hair is drawn very tightly back and gathered generally into this horn. I suspect this heavy horn is responsible for the baldness, though an American of my acquaintance declares it is the plucking out of the hairs on the forehead. “The rest of the hair,” says he, “kinder gets discouraged.”

This innkeeper's wife was very kindly. She said I should not sleep in that room, I should have her room, and she would go to her mother's. The mother was a surprise to me. I hope when I am as old as she looked I shall have a mother to go to.

Now I do not as a rule embrace my landlady. In England I couldn't even imagine myself feeling particularly kindly towards a dirty little woman clad in a shirt and trousers of exceedingly dirty blue cotton, but the intention was so evidently kind and hospitable, I knew not a word of her tongue, and was by no means sure the valued Tuan would translate my words of thanks properly, so I could but take both her very dirty little hands in mine, clasp them warmly, and try and look my thanks.

Then I inspected her room. It was approached through an entrance where lime was stored, it was rather dark, and it was of good size, though on one side was stacked a supply of stores for the restaurant. Chinese macaroni, that looks as if it were first cousin to sheet gelatine, stale eggs and other nondescript eatables. There was a k'ang, of course, quite a family k'ang, and there was a large mirror on one wall. I had forgotten my camp mirror, so I looked in it eagerly, and the reflection left me chastened. I hadn't expected the journey to improve my looks, but I did hope it had not swelled up one cheek, and bunged up the other eye. I felt I did not want to stay in the room with that mirror, but there were other things worse than the mirror in it. The beautiful lattice-work window had apparently never been opened since the first cover of white tissue paper had been put on it, and the smell of human occupancy there defies my poor powers of description. The dirty little place I had at first disdained, had at least a door opening on to the comparatively fresh air of the courtyard. I told Tuan to explain that while I was delighted to see her room, and admired everything very much in it, nothing would induce me to deprive her of its comforts. She certainly was friendly. As I looked in the chastening mirror, I, like a true woman, I suppose, put up a few stray locks that the jolting cart had shaken out of place, and she promptly wanted to do my hair herself with a selection from an array of elderly combs with which she probably dressed her own scanty locks. That was too much. I had to decline, I trust she thought it was my modesty, and then she offered me some of the macaroni. I tried to say I had nothing to give in return and then Tuan remarked, “As friend, as friend.” So as a friend, from that little maimed one-eyed old woman up in the hills of China, I took a handful of macaroni and had nothing to give in return. I hope she feels as friendly towards me as I shall always do towards her.

It is not always that the difficulty of giving a return present is on the foreign side, sometimes it is the Chinese who feel it. I remember a traveller for a business house telling me how on one occasion he had gone to a village and entertained the elders at dinner, giving them brandy which they loved, and liqueurs which seemed to the unsophisticated village fathers ambrosia fit for the gods. The next day, when he was about to take his departure, a small procession approached him and one of them bore on a tray a little Chinese handleless cup covered with another. They said he could speak Chinese, so there was no need for an interpreter, that he had given them a very good time, they were very grateful, and they wished to make him a present by which he might remember them sometimes. But their village was poor and small. It contained nothing worth his acceptance, and after much consultation, they had come to the conclusion that the best way would be to present him with the money, so that he might buy something for himself when he came to Peking or some other large town. Thereupon the cup was presented, the cover lifted off, and in the bottom lay a ten cent piece, worth about twopence halfpenny. Probably it seemed quite an adequate present to men who count their incomes by cash of which a thousand go to the dollar.

I don't think my landlady minded much my declining the hospitality of her room. Possibly she only wished me to see its glories, and presently she brought to the little room I had at first so despised, and now looked upon, if not as a haven of rest, at least as one of fresh air, a couple of nice hard wood stools, and a beautifully carved k'ang table thick with grease.

“Say must make Missie comfortable,” said Tuan with the usual suggestion he had done it himself.