Again, the rule of the husband's mother is very often extremely harsh; the child-wife is little better than her drudge. On the other hand, when a woman grows older, her position is one of considerable strength. I was assured that they take a keen interest in the management of their husbands' properties, and often show themselves excellent business women. The position which the late Empress of China acquired shows that women's position is the very reverse of inferior when dignified by age.
And now before all this woman's world glitters Western civilisation; the greater dignity which is accorded therein to women is envied and the laws which restrain her are misunderstood. The Chinese women hear stories of Western life. At first such strange perversions are believed as that in the West women rule. One missionary explained that this absurd figment came from the rule of the late Queen; another attributed it to the custom men have when travelling in China of walking while their wives remained in the carrying chair. To the Chinaman such a course admits of but one explanation: the woman must be greater than the man because she is carried while he walks.
Again, in Western China they learnt through their local press that girls and boys received a similar education in England, and they concluded that the dress must be also similar, and the missionaries were more amused than scandalised at seeing a Government girls' school turned out in boys' clothes. It was explained to us that this was far from being an uncommon custom in China; slave-girls who have been brought up with natural feet are habitually dressed as boys, and it is common now for fathers of small daughters with unbound feet to avoid the unpleasant taunts of the ignorant by allowing their daughters while they are children to wear boys' clothes.
Still on the whole the desire for imitation of the West has been very beneficial to the women of China, especially in this matter of foot-binding. This disgusting custom is going out of fashion among the enlightened and educated classes; two or three Chinese gentlemen assured us that this was so; and in a place like Shanghai, where the Western movement is very strong, the number of women with unbound feet is quite remarkable; the greater number of them naturally have had their feet bound, and as feet bound from infancy never become quite normal, they still have something of the tottering walk which used to be the admiration of every Chinaman; in fact, this tottering walk is preserved as a piece of affectation. A lady told us that even her Christian girls' school was not above such a feminine weakness. As they walked to Church they would step out with the swinging stride that regular gymnastic exercises and a most comfortable dress have encouraged; suddenly the lady would see the whole of her school struck with a sort of paralysis which made them exchange their easy gait for the "tottering-lily" walk of the Chinese small-footed women. The cause is that the boys' school has just come into sight. I fear it must be admitted that foot-binding continues to be practised in the interior amongst the poorer women, who cling to the custom for fear of ridicule.
The most beneficial effect of the admiration of the West is the earnest desire that it has given to Chinese women for education. So keen is this desire that even married women will become children again and take their position in the class. Husbands who have received Western education are most anxious that their wives should share somewhat in their interests.
Lady Florence could see over girls' schools where a man's visit would not have been acceptable, so she visited many of all varieties, including two at Peking of a rather unusual description. One of them was carried on by a Manchu lady of high position, connected with a great Manchu prince. Her attitude generally towards the forward women's movement offends her family, as she lectures publicly on topics of the time. Her school is small, and, alas, not very efficient, she having fallen into the usual fallacy amongst the Chinese of believing that a Japanese instructress must of necessity be efficient. Still her desire to give education to the children of the poor is worthy of nothing but commendation. She looked most impressive, being a fine big handsome woman, attired in the Manchu long robe with the ornate Manchu head-dress. The second school my wife saw was managed by another Manchu lady, and it seemed more orderly and more successful than the other. These two schools testified to a desire to improve the status of women. My wife visited many other schools, some belonging to missions of various denominations, which attracted the daughters and even the wives of upper-class men, who mixed quite happily with girls of lower degree, being all united in a fervent desire for education, the ruling desire now in China among women of all classes.
This desire for education is a great opportunity for the missionaries, and they appeal most eloquently in the message from which we have already quoted for help from their sisters in England. "We need more schools for girls and more consecrated and highly trained women competent to conduct such schools and gradually to give higher and higher instruction in them. We need more training schools, also, for Chinese women, to fit them to work among their sisters, and we need educated Christian ladies from our homelands for Zenana work in the houses of the well-to-do. Such work would have been impossible a few years ago; now the visits of such workers would in many cases be cordially welcomed by Chinese ladies, and frequently they would be returned, for the seclusion of women in China is not at all as strict as it is in India. This, so far, has been a comparatively unworked sphere of usefulness in China, but it is one full of promise and of gracious opportunity in the present."
The difficulty of education is in one way increased and in another way decreased by the ignorance which many women have of reading the Chinese characters. A new system has been invented by which Chinese can be written in our letters as pronounced. This is called by the rather uncouth name of "Romanised." At the Shanghai Conference we were told wonderful stories of the incredibly short space of time in which women learnt to read by this system. A woman of sixty-seven learnt in two months; while one lady asserted that she had taught a boy to read between Friday and Wednesday, I may add inclusive. This extraordinary achievement is not quite so impossible as it would be with our more complicated languages. The Chinese have extremely few sounds, and their language is monosyllabic in formation. However, we do not ask our readers to accept this as the normal rate of education; still the thing is worth mentioning, because it is possibly the beginning of a great movement which may alter the whole of education in the Far East. The extreme ease with which Chinese can be written in our letters may induce some daring spirit to advocate it as a system fitted for the education of the poor, though this is at present quite improbable.
A far darker side to the introduction of Western ways is the gradual naturalisation of the social evils of the West. Lady Florence had the privilege of seeing some of the rescue work undertaken by devoted missionary ladies in Shanghai. Being an open port, this town, in common, I believe, with the other semi-Westernised ports in China, bears a very bad character as regards purity of morals. The advent of the foreigner has done nothing but harm in this respect. Wonderful and horrible though it may seem, the vice-mart exists in the ports mainly in connection with the foreigners, who appear to have shown the way to the Chinese. There is a street in Shanghai, the Foochow Road, where terrible scandals occur almost openly; signs whose intention is veiled to the outsider by his ignorance of Chinese characters, boldly advertise the merits of various houses and their inmates. Formerly these wretched girls were even paraded in open chairs, but this has been stopped, though they are still carried about in closed chairs. The scenes in this street as night falls are a sad witness to the ill effect of Western ideas without Christianity. It must never be forgotten that the victims of this condition of things are literally victims. They have no choice in the matter. They are sold by their parents, even by their husbands, into their terrible position; and though some may live a life of luxury, most of them are cruelly treated, beaten, tortured to prevent flight, and, as is proved by their subsequent conduct, they regard the life with absolute loathing.
Inspired by profound pity for these poor creatures, these excellent ladies started a Refuge for them with a receiving-house in the very midst of this locality of ill-fame. To this haven the poor things often flee even in the middle of the night, facing the unknown, undeterred by rumours of the evil intentions of the foreigners put about by their owners, rather than endure longer the life of degradation and misery to which they have been condemned. The missionaries receive them and pass them on to the "Door of Hope," the appropriately named Refuge, which restores them to hope and peace and happiness. There were to be seen some eighty young women living a hard-working simple life, contented and merry, and apparently never regretting for one moment the fine clothes and lazy luxury which many of them had renounced. The ladies teach them useful arts, instruct them in Christianity, and fit them for wives to Chinese Christians who will be good to them, and, understanding well that their former life was involuntary, are glad to have wives with a modicum of education. The ladies will allow non-Christians to mate with non-Christians, if of good character; but they will not permit any of their rescued flock to become secondary wives. Two things are remarkable in this work of almost divine compassion—a relapse is practically unknown; and it is the Chinese who are most helpful in encouraging it—more so than foreigners; the Chinese often themselves suggest the "Door of Hope" to these girls, and help in police cases to save them from their brutal owners.