A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

The tailor looked at him more in sorrow than in scorn. How could he be so foolish.

“I no belong revelation,” he explained carefully, as one who was instructing where no instruction should have been necessary. The thing was self-evident, “I belong tailor man.”

When the revolution first dawned upon the country people all they realised—when they realised anything at all—was that there was no longer an Emperor, therefore they supposed they would no longer have to pay taxes. When they found that Emperor or no Emperor taxes were still required of them, they just put the President in the Emperor's place. I strongly suspect that if the greater part of the inhabitants of my walled city were to be questioned as to the revolution they would reply like the tailor: “No belong revolution, belong Tsung Hua Chou!”

But in truth the civilisation of China is still so much like that of Babylon and Nineveh, that it is best for the poor man, if he can, to efface himself. He does not pray for rights as yet. He only prays that he may slip through life unnoticed, that he may not come in contact with the powers that rule him, for no matter who is right or who is wrong bitter experience has taught him that he will suffer.

We do not realise that sufficiently in the West when we talk of China. We judge her by our own standards. The time may come when this may be a right way of judging, but it has not come yet. Rather should we judge as they judged in the days of the old Testament, in the days of Nineveh and Babylon, when the proletariat, the slaves, were as naught in the sight of God or man.

A man told me how in the summer of 1912, travelling in the interior, he came to a small city in one of the central provinces, a city not unlike Tsung Hua Chou, like indeed a thousand other little cities in this realm of Cathay. The soldiers quartered there had not been paid, and they had turned to and looted the town. The unwise city men, instead of submitting lest a worse thing happen unto them, had telegraphed their woes to Peking, and orders had come down to the General in command that the ringleaders must be executed. But no wise General is going to be hard on his own soldiers. This General certainly was not. Still justice had to be satisfied, and he was not at a loss. He sent a body of soldiers to the looted shops, where certain luckless men were sadly turning over the damaged property. These they promptly arrested. The English onlooker, who spoke Chinese, declared to me solemnly these arrested men were the merchants themselves, their helpers and coolies. That was nothing to the savage soldiery. There had to be victims. Had not the order come from the central government. Some of the men, there were twenty in all, they beat and left dead on the spot, the rest they dragged to the yamen. The traveller, furious and helpless, followed. Of course the guilt of the merchants was a foregone conclusion. They never execute anyone who does not confess his guilt and the justice of his sentence in China, but they have means of making sure of the confession. Presently out the unfortunate men came again, stripped to the waist, with their arms tied up high behind them, prepared, in fact, for death. The soldiers dragged them along, they protesting their innocence to unheeding ears. Their women and children came out, running alongside the mournful procession, clinging to the soldiers and to their husbands and fathers, and praying for mercy. They tripped and fell, and the soldiers, the soldiers in khaki, pushed them aside, and stepped over them, and dragged on their victims. The traveller followed. No one took any notice of him, and what could he do, though his heart was sore, one against so many. Through the narrow, filthy streets they went, past their own looted shops. They looked about them wildly, but there was none to help, and before them marched the executioner, with a great sharp sword in his hands, and always the soldiers in modern uniform emphasised the barbarity of the crime. Presently they had distanced the wailing women and were outside the walls, but the foreign onlooker was still with them.

“And one was a boy not twenty,” he said with a sharp, indrawn breath, wiping his face as he told the ghastly tale.

They knelt in a row, just where the walls of their own town frowned down on them, and one by one the executioner cut off their heads. The death of the first in the line was swift enough, but, as he approached the end of the row the man's arm grew tired and he did not get the last two heads right off.

“I saw one jump four times,” said the shocked onlooker, “before he died.”

And then they telegraphed to Peking that order had been restored, and the ringleaders executed.