[77] See No. VII., [note 54].
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[78] It is a principle of Chinese jurisprudence that no sentence can be passed until the prisoner has confessed his guilt—a principle, however, not unfrequently set aside in practice.
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[79] Wooden frames covered with a semi-transparent paper are used all over the northern provinces of China; in the south, oyster-shells, cut square and planed down thin, are inserted tile-fashion in the long narrow spaces of a wooden frame made to receive them, and used for the same purpose. But glass is gradually finding its way into the houses of the well-to-do, large quantities being made at Canton and exported to various parts of the empire.
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[80] Every Taoist priest has a magic sword, corresponding to our “magician’s wand.”
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[81] In China, a man has the right to slay his adulterous wife, but he must slay her paramour also; both or neither. Otherwise, he lays himself open to a prosecution for murder. The act completed, he is further bound to proceed at once to the magistrate of the district and report what he has done.
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[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:—