[82] The importance of male offspring in Chinese social life is hardly to be expressed in words. To the son is confided the task of worshipping at the ancestral tombs, the care of the ancestral tablets, and the due performance of all rites and ceremonies connected with the departed dead. No Chinaman will die, if he can help it, without leaving a son behind him. If his wife is childless he will buy a concubine; and we are told on page 41, vol. xiii., of the Liao Chai, that a good wife, “who at thirty years of age has not borne a child should forthwith pawn her jewellery and purchase a concubine for her husband; for to be without a son is hard indeed!” Another and a common resource is to adopt a nephew; and sometimes a boy is bought from starving parents, or from a professional kidnapper. Should a little boy die, no matter how young, his parents do not permit even him to be without the good offices of a son. They adopt some other child on his behalf; and when the latter grows up it becomes his duty to perform the proper ceremonies at his baby father’s tomb. Girls do not enjoy the luxury of this sham posterity. They are quietly buried in a hole near the family vault, and their disembodied spirits are left to wander about in the realms below uncared for and unappeased. Every mother, however, shares in the ancestral worship, and her name is recorded on the tombstone, side by side with that of her husband. Hence it is that Chinese tombstones are always to the memory either of a father or of a mother, or of both, with occasionally the addition of the grandfather and grandmother, and sometimes even that of the generation preceding.
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[83] The belief that a knowledge of alchemy is obtainable by leading the life of a pure and perfect Taoist, is one of the numerous additions in later ages to this ancient form of religion. See No. IV., [note 46].
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[84] The direct issue of the Emperors of the present dynasty and their descendants in the male line for ever are entitled to wear a yellow girdle in token of their relationship to the Imperial family, each generation becoming a degree lower in rank, but always retaining this distinctive badge. Members of the collateral branches wear a red girdle, and are commonly known as gioros. With the lapse of two hundred and fifty years, the wearers of these badges have become numerous, and in many cases disreputable; and they are now to be found even among the lowest dregs of Chinese social life.
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[85] Quail fighting is not so common now in China as it appears to have been formerly. Cricket-fighting is, however, a very favourite form of gambling, large quantities of these insects being caught every year for this purpose, and considerable sums frequently staked on the result of a contest between two champions.
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[86] Impeded, of course, by her small feet. This practice is said to have originated about A.D. 970, with Yao Niang, the concubine of the pretender Li Yü, who wished to make her feet like the “new moon.” The Manchu or Tartar ladies have not adopted this custom, and therefore the empresses of modern times have feet of the natural size; neither is it in force among the Hakkas or hill-tribes of China and Formosa. The practice was forbidden in 1664 by the Manchu Emperor, K‘ang Hsi; but popular feeling was so strong on the subject that four years afterwards the prohibition was withdrawn. Protestant missionaries are now making a dead set at this shameful custom, but so far with very indifferent success; as parents who do not cramp the feet of their daughters would experience no small difficulty in finding husbands for them when they grow up. Besides, the gait of a young lady hobbling along, as we should say, seems to be much admired by the other sex. The following seven reasons why this custom still keeps its hold upon the Chinese mind emanate from a native convert:—
“1st.—If a girl’s feet are not bound, people say she is not like a woman but like a man; they laugh at her, calling her names, and her parents are ashamed of her.
“2nd.—Girls are like flowers, like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound short so that they can walk beautifully, with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, thus showing they are persons of respectability. People praise them. If not bound short, they say the mother has not trained her daughter carefully. She goes from house to house with noisy steps, and is called names. Therefore careful persons bind short.
“3rd.—One of a good family does not wish to marry a woman with long feet. She is commiserated because her feet are not perfect. If betrothed, and the size of her feet is not discovered till after marriage, her husband and mother-in-law are displeased, her sisters-in-law laugh at her, and she herself is sad.
“4th.—The large footed has to do rough work, does not sit in a sedan when she goes out, walks in the streets barefooted, has no red clothes, does not eat the best food. She is wetted by the rain, tanned by the sun, blown upon by the wind. If unwilling to do all the rough work of the house she is called ‘gormandizing and lazy.’ Perhaps she decides to go out as a servant. She has no fame and honour. To escape all this her parents bind her feet.
“5th.—There are those with unbound feet who do no heavy work, wear gay clothing, ride in a sedan, call others to wait upon them. Although so fine they are low and mean. If a girl’s feet are unbound, she cannot be distinguished from one of these.