The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea

by Trumbull White

In matters of dress, with one or two exceptions, the Chinese must be acknowledged to have used a wise discretion. They wear nothing that is tight fitting, and make a greater difference between their summer and winter clothing than is customary among ourselves. The usual dress of a coolie in summer is a loose fitting pair of cotton trousers and an equally loose jacket; but the same man in winter will be seen wearing quilted cotton clothes, or if he should be an inhabitant of the northern provinces a sheepskin robe, superadded to an abundance of warm clothing intermediate between it and his shirt. By the wealthier classes silk, satin, and gauze are much worn in the summer, and woolen or handsome fur clothes in the winter. Among such people it is customary except in the seclusion of their homes, to wear both in summer and winter long tunics coming down to the ankles.

In summer non-official Chinamen leave their heads uncovered, but do not seem to suffer any inconvenience from the great heat. On the approach of summer an edict is issued fixing the day upon which the summer costume is to be adopted throughout the empire, and again as winter draws near, the time for putting on winter dress is announced in the same formal manner. Fine straw or bamboo forms the material of the summer hat, the outside of which is covered with fine silk. At this season also the thick silk robes and the heavy padded jackets worn in winter are exchanged for light silk or satin tunics. The winter cap has a turned-up brim and is covered with satin with a black cloth lining, and as in the case of the summer cap a tassel of red silk covers the entire crown.

The wives of mandarins wear the same embroidered insignia on their dresses as their husbands, and their style of dress as well as that of Chinese women generally bears a resemblance to that of the men. They wear a loose fitting tunic which reaches below the knee, and trousers which are drawn in at the ankle after the bloomer fashion. On state occasions they wear a richly embroidered petticoat coming down to the feet, which hangs square both before and behind and is pleated at the sides like a Highlander’s kilt. The mode of doing the hair varies in almost every province. At Canton the women plaster their back hair into the shape of a teapot handle, and adorn the sides with pins and ornaments, while the young girls proclaim their unmarried state by sutting[sutting] their hair in fringe across their foreheads after a fashion not unknown among ourselves. In most parts of the country, flowers, natural when obtainable and artificial when not so, are largely used to deck out the head dresses, and considerable taste is shown in the choice of colors and the manner in which they are arranged.

A TYPHOON.

Thus far there is nothing to find fault with in female fashions in China, but the same cannot be said of the way in which they treat their faces and feet. In many countries the secret art of removing traces of the ravages of time with the appliances of the toilet table has been and is practised; but by an extravagant and hideous use of pigments and cosmetics, the Chinese girl not only conceals the fresh complexion of youth, but produces those very disfigurements which furnish the only possible excuse for artificial complexions. Their poets also have declared that a woman’s eyebrows should be arched like a rainbow or shaped like a willow leaf, and the consequence is that wishing to act up to the idea thus pictured, China women with the aid of tweezers remove all the hairs of their eyebrows which straggle the least out of the required line, and when the task becomes impossible even with the help of these instruments, the paint brush or a stick of charcoal is brought into requisition. A comparison of one such painted lily with the natural healthy complexion, bright eyes, laughing lips, and dimpled cheeks of a Canton boat girl, for example, is enough to vindicate nature’s claim to superiority over art a thousand fold.

BANDAGING THE FEET.

But the chief offense of Chinese women is in their treatment of their feet. Various explanations are current as to the origin of the custom of deforming the women’s feet. Some say that it is an attempt to imitate the peculiarly shaped foot of a certain beautiful empress; others that it is a device intended to restrain the gadding-about tendencies of women; but however that may be, the practice is universal except among the Manchoos and the Hakka population at Canton, who have natural feet. The feet are first bound when the child is about five years old and the muscles of locomotion have consequently had time to develop. A cotton bandage two or three inches wide is wound tightly about the foot in different directions. The four smaller toes are bent under the foot, and the instep is forced upward and backward. The foot therefore assumes the shape of an acute triangle, the big toe forming the acute angle and the other toes, being bent under the foot, becoming almost lost or absorbed. At the same time, the shoes worn having high heels, the foot becomes nothing but a club and loses all elasticity. The consequence is that the women walk as on pegs, and the calf of the leg having no exercise shrivels up. Though the effect of this custom is to produce real deformity and a miserable tottering gait, even foreigners naturally come to associate it with gentility and good breeding, and to estimate the character and position of women much as the Chinese do, by the size of their feet. The degree of severity with which the feet are bound differs widely in the various ranks of society. Country women and the poorer classes have feet about half the natural size, while those of the genteel or fashionable class are only about three inches long.

Women in the humbler walks of life are therefore often able to move about with ease. Most ladies on the other hand are practically debarred from walking at all and are dependent on their sedan chairs for all locomotion beyond they own doors. But even in this case habit becomes a second nature and fashion triumphs over sense. No mother, however keen may be her recollection of her sufferings as a child, or however conscious she may be of the inconveniences and ills arising from her deformed feet, would ever dream of saving her own child from like immediate torture and permanent evil. Further there is probably less excuse for such a practice in China than in any other country, for the hands and feet of both men and women are naturally both small and finely shaped. The Chinese insist upon it that the custom of compressing women’s feet is neither in as bad taste nor so injurious to the health as that of foreign women in compressing the waist.