[158] Just the same was the theory of the old Sumerian law.
[160] Ibid.
[161] A bird that pecks at its parent's eyes as soon as it is fledged and so is an example of unfilial conduct.
[162] I ma pu pei shuang an; Chung ch'ên pu shih erh chu.
[163] In some other parts of the Empire things are apparently very different. The Rev. J. Macgowan writes very strongly on the subject in his Sidelights on Chinese Life, pp. 32 seq. But I cannot believe that "sixty per cent. of the husbands throughout the Empire" practise wife-beating "habitually" (p. 35).
[164] Mere disparity of age, however, is not regarded as an insuperable objection to a "dead marriage."
[165] The custom of employing go-betweens is by no means exclusively Chinese. It may be met with among races so far away as certain of the tribes of British Columbia. (See Hill Tout's British North America, p. 186.) For an ancient reference to the Chinese custom, see Shih Ching, p. 157 (Legge).
[166] It is worth noting that it was not the husband who took the next step but the husband's brother, by whom the woman had been brought from Peking and who was held responsible by his brother and the clan generally for her "success" as a family investment.
[167] By a peculiar fiction the children of a concubine are regarded as the wife's children.