[244] Another favourite method of revenging oneself upon an enemy, who is in many cases held responsible for the death thus occasioned. Mr. Alabaster told me an amusing story of a Chinese woman who deliberately walked into a pond until the water reached her knees, and remained there alternately putting her lips below the surface and threatening in a loud voice to drown herself on the spot, as life had been made unbearable by the presence of foreign barbarians. This was during the Taiping rebellion.
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[245] Valuables of some kind or other are often placed in the coffins of wealthy Chinese; and women are almost always provided with a certain quantity of jewels with which to adorn themselves in the realms below.
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[246] One of the most heinous offences in the Chinese Penal Code.
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[247] Deference to elder brothers is held by the Chinese to be second only in importance to filial piety.
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[248] In a volume of Chinese Sketches, published by me in 1876, occur (p. 129) the following words:—“Occasionally a young wife is driven to commit suicide by the harshness of her mother-in-law, but this is of rare occurrence, as the consequences are terrible to the family of the guilty woman. The blood-relatives of the deceased repair to the chamber of death, and in the injured victim’s hand they place a broom. They then support the corpse round the room, making its dead arm move the broom from side to side, and thus sweep away wealth, happiness, and longevity, from the accursed place for ever.”
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[249] A wife being an infinitely less important personage than a mother in the Chinese social scale.
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[250] Literally, of hand and foot, to the mutual dependence of which that of brothers is frequently likened by the Chinese.
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[251] Any permanent change of residence must be notified to the District Magistrate, who keeps a running census of all persons within his jurisdiction.
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[252] To be thus beforehand with one’s adversary is regarded as primâ facie evidence of being in the right.
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[253] By means of the status which a graduate of the second degree would necessarily have.
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