Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

But what did the men say? What they thought of the meeting we did not know; for as the husband of one of the ladies said next day rather crossly, "Oh, of course the women liked it! They don't want to bind their feet!" It seemed a step, however, to have got a Chinaman even to admit that.

At an anti-footbinding meeting another day, when those opposed to binding were asked to stand up, all the men present but six rose to their feet, and a merchant among the audience began a speech against binding. Some days afterwards a mandarin, calling, took up Pastor Kranz's pamphlet lying on the table, and said: "Ah, I have the larger copy of this book with pictures. No, I was not at the meeting the other day, but my people were. As to unbinding, the elder women can't; you see, their toes have dropped off. But my little girl of six is not having her feet bound any more. She screamed out so directly she laid her head upon her pillow, I could not bear to hear it. Besides, she got no sleep." He was a man of means, and made no reference as to any possible difficulty about marrying her.

It was a little later on that we got our first great push forward. One of the examiners at Peking lost his father, and being in mourning could not, in accordance with Chinese usage, continue to hold office, so returned to his home in the far west, and there found his little daughter of seven crying over her footbinding. Whilst on the way he had come across one of our tracts. First he had his child's feet unbound; then he thought, Could not he write something better on the subject—an appeal to his nation that would carry power? After many days of thought, he wrote what we commonly call the Suifu Appeal; for having signed it with his name and seal, and got five of his friends, leading men of the neighbourhood, to add their testimony and names, they proceeded to placard it over the walls of Suifu, against the examinations that were just coming off there, that all the young men might carry back the news of it to the different homes from which they came. No sooner did we get a copy of this pamphlet—which, curiously enough, was brought to me by Mr. Upcraft, then on his way down-river to be married to the very lady who had first told me of the missionaries' efforts against footbinding, and thus impelled me to try to do what a simple lay woman could—than we at once began to reprint and distribute this appeal to all the ten thousand students who were coming up for examination to Chungking. We were more lavish of our funds than they of Suifu, and tried to give each a copy to take home. Then came a letter from the Shanghai manager of the great China Merchants' Company, the one great commercial body of China, also semi-official, saying he heard that there was a wonderful tract in the west, and he would like a copy, that he might reprint it at his own expense, and send it to be circulated through his native province of Kwangtung.

About a year afterwards we heard that the Pu Tsan Tsu Hui (No Bind Feet Society) had been formed at Canton by Kang, the Modern Sage, the adviser of the youthful Emperor, who has lately had to fly for his life, and only done so in safety under an English man-of-war's protection; that ten thousand fathers of families had thereby pledged themselves not to bind their little girls' feet, nor to marry their sons to bound-foot girls; that they had opened offices in Shanghai, and were memorialising Viceroys and high officials on the subject. We had ourselves memorialised the Emperor in characters of gold on white satin enclosed in a beautiful silver casket; but although the American Minister, the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps, had done his best for us, we had never been officially informed of our beautiful memorial, signed by our President on behalf of nearly every European lady residing in the East, even getting into the young Emperor's hands, the Tsung-li Yamen preferring to keep it on their own shelves. This had discouraged us from going on to memorialise Viceroys, as we had originally intended. But now, to our delight, we heard of the Viceroys responding to the Chinese society. Chang-chih-tung, the one incorruptible Viceroy of Hupeh and Hunan, in that beautiful literary Chinese, in which he is unrivalled condemned footbinding, and we immediately proceeded to placard the cities of his two provinces with his condemnation; whilst the Governor of Hunan, since degraded by the Empress-Dowager, dared to go a step farther, and forbade binding. The Viceroy of Nanking struck his breast; then lifted up his hands to heaven, and said it was a good work, and he too would give a writing. But he died shortly afterwards. The Viceroy of Chihli admonished all his subordinate officials to discourage binding, each in their separate districts.

Meanwhile, another most unexpected adherent had come forward. Duke Kung Hui-chung, one of the lineal descendants of Confucius, wrote: "I have always had my unquiet thoughts about footbinding, and felt pity for the many sufferers. Yet I could not venture to say so publicly. Now there are happily certain benevolent gentlemen and virtuous daughters of ability, wise daughters from foreign lands, who have initiated a truly noble enterprise. They have addressed our women in animated exhortations, and founded a society for the prohibition of footbinding. They aim at extinguishing a pernicious custom." And he applied for copies of all our tracts that he might compile a book out of the best ones and circulate it.

FAMILY OF LITERATI, LEADERS IN THE ANTI-FOOTBINDING MOVEMENT IN THE WEST OF CHINA.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

We were naturally immensely pleased by his phrase "wise daughters from foreign lands," and began to forget that any one had ever laughed at us, as Chinese ladies now came forward to start a school for girls of the upper classes, the first rule of which is that all who enter it must mutually exhort one another to unbind their feet. Shanghai ladies held drawing-room meetings, where they heard from Chinese ladies themselves how they were never free from pain, admired their elegant raiment, and shuddered over the size of their feet; whilst a meeting was held at one of the principal silk factories, when about a thousand Chinese women were addressed by European and Chinese ladies on the subject.

As showing the Chinese view of the matter, it may interest some to read a rough sketch of the famous Suifu Appeal, that has had such an awakening influence over China. It is not at all what English people would write; but there is no doubt that it does appeal to the hearts of Chinese.