It is the worship of the ancestors that holds the Chinese, the man who gives up that, gives up all family ties and becomes practically an outcast. There may be a few genuine Christians, but in proportion to the money spent upon their conversion, their number must be very small. I saw the colporteur come into the compound one day, and they told me he was an earnest Christian. He might be, but again that doubt arose in my mind. If the receiving of Christianity ensures a livelihood, could you expect one of a nation, who will be made a eunuch for the same reason, to reject it.
The missionaries had a hard time when first they came here. The place is inhabited by Manchus, full of the pride of race, and they do not want the outsider. They use them, as they have effected a settlement, but they do not approve of their being there.
As I and my saintly missionary walked down the street, she carefully avoiding a glance either to the right or the left, a little half-naked child at his mother's side looked at her and cried aloud:
“Ta, ta,” and he said it vehemently again and again.
She stopped, spoke to the mother, and evidently remonstrated, and the woman laughed and passed along on her high Manchu shoes without correcting the child.
She looked troubled. “What did he say?” I asked.
“Strike, strike! or some people might say 'kill, kill!' I said to the woman: 'What bad manners is this?'”
And the woman had only laughed! After all her kindness and tenderness, all her consideration and care; I should have thought the very children would have worshipped the ground she walked upon.
They are holding their own, they say. In the compound are a couple of Chinese women, the wives of their teachers or servants, and they have had to unbind their feet, a process almost as painful as the binding. One old woman could not unbind hers, they told me, because so long had they been bound the feet split when she attempted to walk upon them unbound, but so true a Christian is she, she puts her tiny feet inside big shoes. But to balance her, their amah, a Manchu, is still a heathen. After the years, the years they had been striving there, they could not find one who has embraced their faith to wait upon them.