Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

MONUMENT TO FAITHFUL WIDOW, KU-SHAN-HOU (see p. [225]).

We are accustomed to "topsy-turvydom" in China, and perhaps the suicide-statistics might be cited as an example of this. "Suicide," says a recent writer on sociology, "is a phenomenon of which the male sex possesses almost the monopoly."[173] If female be substituted for male we have a fair statement of how affairs stand in Weihaiwei. Over ninety per cent. of the persons who make away with themselves belong to the female sex, and the great majority of them are young married women or young widows. Since 1729, when it was proclaimed by imperial decree that official honours were no longer to be conferred upon widows who slew themselves on the occasion of their husbands' death, it has become less common than formerly for young widows to practise the Chinese equivalent of sati, but the custom is far from extinct, and at any rate it seems to have left among women a readiness to fling away their lives for reasons which to us appear singularly inadequate. Imperial edicts did not and could not stamp out a custom which was of great antiquity and deeply rooted in popular esteem. The British Government in India forbade the practice of sati long ago, and it has therefore ceased to exist throughout the Indian Empire; but even now there is strong reason to doubt whether popular opinion is on the side of the Government in this matter, and whether the custom would not immediately spring into vogue again if the British raj were withdrawn.[174]

There is no doubt that the suicide of widows in China is a survival of the ancient custom (which flourished in countries so far apart as India and Peru, Africa and China) whereby wives and slaves were as a matter of ordinary duty expected to follow their husbands and masters to the grave; and though the day has probably long gone past when such suicides were encouraged or actually enforced by the deceased's relatives, it cannot be doubted that to this day public opinion in China is strongly on the side of the widow who chooses to follow her lord to the world of ghosts.[175]

The present-day theory of the matter held by the people of eastern Shantung, including Weihaiwei, appears to be this. A woman undoubtedly performs a meritorious act in following her husband to the spirit-world, but her relations are fully justified in preventing her, and indeed are obliged to prevent her, from throwing away her life if they know of or guess her intention. If her husband has died leaving to her the care of his aged parents who have no other daughters-in-law to look after them, or if she has young children who require her care, she does wrong to commit suicide, though the children are sometimes ignored. The highest praise is reserved for a woman who temporarily refrains from destroying herself in order that she may devote herself to her husband's parents and her own offspring, but who, when they are dead or independent of her care, then fulfils her original desire and sacrifices herself to the spirit of her dead husband. The fact that in any case the woman's relatives are considered bound to prevent, if possible, the act of suicide from taking place, shows the beginning of a realisation that self-destruction is in itself an evil. Time was when they would not only make no attempt to save the woman's life, but, as in India, would incite her and even compel her to die.

Of the stories of widows' suicides which have taken place during the past few centuries in Weihaiwei and its neighbourhood, and which were considered meritorious enough to deserve public honours and special mention in the official Annals, a few examples may be found of interest. The cases quoted are in no way unique or unusual, and there is no reason to doubt their absolute authenticity.

Tsou Chao-tuan being sick of a mortal disease, his wife Ts'ung Shih and his concubine Sun Shih made an agreement with one another that they would follow him to death. As soon as he was dead the two women hanged themselves. Members of the family quickly came to the rescue and cut the ropes by which the women were suspended. Sun Shih the concubine was already dead, but Ts'ung Shih the wife revived. A few days later she again hanged herself, this time successfully. The wife was thirty years of age, the concubine nineteen. The district-magistrate took official notice of the matter, and caused a carved memorial to be set up testifying to the two women's exemplary virtue. "They had performed an act," he said, "which would cause their fragrant names to be remembered for ever."

T'ao Liu Shih, daughter of Liu Fang-ch'ing, was betrothed to one T'ao, but they were not married. T'ao died. When the death was announced to her she hanged herself. [To appreciate the significance of this act it should be remembered that there was no question of love-sickness: the young couple in all probability had never spoken to or even seen each other. As will be understood from explanations already given,[176] the girl would as a matter of course be buried with her betrothed as his wife, and would be given his name on the tombstone and the ancestral tablets. Probably the youth's parents, in this as in most similar cases, adopted a son for the dead couple; if so he would be brought up to regard them as his father and mother, and would inherit their property. Had the girl refrained from suicide and married some one else, the family of the first betrothed might have provided him with a dead wife, in accordance with the practice already described.[177]]