Another method of extracting information from the spirits of the unseen world is nothing more or less than hypnotism, which has long been known to the Chinese, and is mentioned in literature so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century. With all the paraphernalia of altar, candles, incense, etc., a medium is thrown into a hypnotic condition, during which his body is supposed to be possessed by a spirit, and every word he may utter to be divinely inspired. An amusing instance is recorded of a medium who, while under hypnotic influence, not only blurted out the pecuniary defalcations of certain men who had been collecting in aid of temple restoration, but went so far as to admit that he had had some of the money himself.
This same influence is also used in cases of serious illness, but always secretly, for such practices, as well as dark _seances_ for communicating with spirits, are strictly forbidden by the Chinese authorities, who regard the employment of occult means as more likely to be subversive of morality than to do any good whatever to a sick person, or to any one else. All secret societies of any sort or kind are equally under the ban of the law, the a.s.sumption--a very justifiable one--being that the aim of these societies is to upset the existing order of political and social life. The Heaven-and-Earth Society is among the most famous, and the most dreaded, partly perhaps because it has never been entirely suppressed. The lodges of this fraternity, the oath of fidelity, and the ceremonial of admission, remind one forcibly of Masonry in the West; but the points of conduct are merely coincidences, and there does not appear to be any real connexion.
Among the most curious of all these inst.i.tutions is the Golden Orchid Society, the girl-members of which swear never to marry, and not only threaten, but positively commit suicide upon any attempt at coercion. At one time this society became such a serious menace that the authorities were compelled to adopt severe measures of repression.
Another old-established society is that of the Vegetarians, who eat no meat and neither smoke nor drink. From their seemingly harmless ranks it is said that the Boxers of 1900 were largely recruited.
For nearly twenty-five centuries the Chinese have looked to Confucius for their morals. Various religions have appealed to the spiritual side of the Chinese mind, and Buddhism has obtained an ascendancy which will not be easily displaced; but through all this long lapse of time the morality of China has been under the guidance of their great teacher, Confucius (551-479 B.C.), affectionately known to them as the "uncrowned king," and recently raised to the rank of a G.o.d.
His doctrines, in the form sometimes of maxims, sometimes of answers to eager inquirers, were brought together after his death--we do not know exactly how soon--and have influenced first and last an enormous proportion of the human race. Confucius taught man"s duty to his neighbour; he taught virtue for virtue"s sake, and not for the hope of reward or fear of punishment; he taught loyalty to the sovereign as the foundation stone of national prosperity, and filial piety as the basis of all happiness in the life of the people. As a simple human moralist he saw clearly the limitations of humanity, and refused to teach his disciples to return good for evil, as suggested by the Old Philosopher, declaring without hesitation that evil should be met by justice. The first systematic writer of Chinese history, who died about 80 B.C., expressed himself on the position and influence of Confucius in terms which have been accepted as accurate for twenty centuries past: "Countless are the princes and prophets that the world has seen in its time--glorious in life, forgotten in death. But Confucius, though only a humble member of the cotton-clothed ma.s.ses, remains with us after numerous generations. He is the model for such as would be wise. By all, from the Son of Heaven down to the meanest student, the supremacy of his principles is freely and fully admitted. He may indeed be p.r.o.nounced the divinest of men."
The Son of Heaven is of course the Emperor, who is supposed to be G.o.d"s chosen representative on earth, and responsible for the right conduct and well-being of all committed to his care. Once every year he proceeds in state to the Temple of Heaven at Peking; and after the due performance of sacrificial worship he enters alone the central raised building with circular blue-tiled roof, and there places himself in communication with the Supreme Being, submitting for approval or otherwise his stewardship during the preceding twelve months. Chinese records go so far as to mention letters received from G.o.d. There is a legend of the sixth century A.D., which claims that G.o.d revealed Himself to a hermit in a retired valley, and bestowed on him a tablet of jade with a mysterious inscription. But there is a much more circ.u.mstantial account of a written communication which in A.D. 1008 descended from heaven upon mount T"ai, the famous mountain in Shantung, where a temple has been built to mark the very spot. The emperor and his courtiers regarded this letter with profound reverence and awe, which roused the ire of a learned statesman of the day. The latter pointed out that Confucius, when asked to speak, so that his disciples might have something to record, had bluntly replied: "Does G.o.d speak? The four seasons pursue their courses and all things are produced; but does G.o.d say anything?" Therefore, he argued, if G.o.d does not speak to us, still less will He write a letter.
The fact that the receipt of such a letter is mentioned in the dynastic history of the period must not be allowed to discredit in any way the general truth and accuracy of Chinese annals, which, as research progresses, are daily found to be far more trustworthy than was ever expected to be the case. We ourselves do not wholly reject the old contemporary chronicles of Hoveden and Roger of Wendover because they mention a letter from Christ on the neglect of the Sabbath.
In Chinese life, social and political alike, filial piety may be regarded as the keystone of the arch. Take that away, and the superstructure of centuries crumbles to the ground. When Confucius was asked by one of his disciples to explain what const.i.tuted filial piety, he replied that it was a difficult obligation to define; while to another disciple he was able to say without hesitation that the mere support of parents would be insufficient, inasmuch as food is what is supplied even to horses and dogs. According to the story-books for children, the obligation has been interpreted by the people at large in many different ways. The twenty-four standard examples of filial children include a son who allowed mosquitoes to feed upon him, and did not drive them away lest they should go and annoy his parents; another son who wept so pa.s.sionately because he could procure no bamboo shoots for his mother that the G.o.ds were touched, and up out of the ground came some shoots which he gathered and carried home; another who when carrying buckets of water would slip and fall on purpose, in order to make his parents laugh; and so on. No wonder that Confucius found filial piety beyond his powers of definition.
Now for a genuine example. There is a very wonderful novel in which a very affecting love-story is worked out to a terribly tragic conclusion.
The heroine, a beautiful and fascinating girl, finally dies of consumption, and the hero, a wayward but none the less fascinating youth, enters the Buddhist priesthood. A lady, the mother of a clever young official, was so distressed by the pathos of the tale that she became quite ill, and doctors prescribed medicines in vain. At length, when things were becoming serious, the son set to work and composed a sequel to this novel, in which he resuscitated the heroine and made the lovers happy by marriage; and in a short time he had the intense satisfaction of seeing his mother restored to health.
Other forms of filial piety, which bear no relation whatever to the fanciful fables given above, are commonly practised by all cla.s.ses. In consequence of the serious or prolonged illness of parents, it is very usual for sons and daughters to repair to the munic.i.p.al temple and pray that a certain number of years may be cut off their own span of life and added to that of the sick parents in question.
Let us now pause to take stock of some of the results which have accrued from the operation and influence of Confucianism during such a long period, and over such swarming myriads of the human race. It is a commonplace in the present day to a.s.sert that the Chinese are hardworking, thrifty, and sober--the last-mentioned, by the way, in a land where drunkenness is not regarded as a crime. Shallow observers of the globe-trotter type, who have had their pockets picked by professional thieves in Hong-Kong, and even resident observers who have not much cultivated their powers of observation and comparison, will a.s.sert that honesty is a virtue denied to the Chinese; but those who have lived long in China and have more seriously devoted themselves to discover the truth, may one and all be said to be arrayed upon the other side. The amount of solid honesty to be met with in every cla.s.s, except the professionally criminal cla.s.s, is simply astonishing. That the word of the Chinese merchant is as good as his bond has long since become a household word, and so it is in other walks of life. With servants from respectable families, the householder need have no fear for his goods.
"Be loyal," says the native maxim, "to the master whose rice you eat;"
and this maxim is usually fulfilled to the letter. Hence, it is that many foreigners who have been successful in their business careers, take care to see, on their final departure from the East, that the old and faithful servant, often of twenty to thirty years" standing, shall have some provision for himself and his family. In large establishments, especially banks, in which great interests are at stake, it is customary for the Chinese staff to be guaranteed by some wealthy man (or firm), who deposits securities for a considerable amount, thus placing the employer in a very favourable position. The properly chosen Chinese servant who enters the household of a foreigner, is a being to whom, as suggested above, his master often becomes deeply attached, and whom he parts with, often after many years of service, to his everlasting regret. Such a servant has many virtues. He is noiseless over his work, which he performs efficiently. He can stay up late, and yet rise early.
He lives on the establishment, but in an out-building. He provides his own food. He rarely wants to absent himself, and even then will always provide a reliable _loc.u.m tenens_. He studies his master"s ways, and learns to antic.i.p.ate his slightest wishes. In return for these and other services he expects to get his wages punctually paid, and to be allowed to charge, without any notice being taken of the same, a commission on all purchases. This is the Chinese system, and even a servant absolutely honest in any other way cannot emanc.i.p.ate himself from its grip. But if treated fairly, he will not abuse his chance. One curious feature of the system is that if one master is in a relatively higher position than another, the former will be charged by his servants slightly more than the latter by his servants for precisely the same article. Many attempts have been made by foreigners to break through this "old custom,"
especially by offering higher wages; but signal failure has always been the result, and those masters have invariably succeeded best who have fallen in with the existing inst.i.tution, and have tried to make the best of it.
There is one more, and in many ways the most important, side of a Chinese servant"s character. He will recognize frankly, and without a pang, the superior position and the rights of his master; but at the same time, if worth keeping, he will exact from his master the proper respect due from man to man. It is wholly beside the mark to say that he will not put up for a moment with the cuffs and kicks so freely administered to his Indian colleague. A respectable Chinese servant will often refuse to remain with a master who uses abusive or violent language, or shows signs of uncontrollable temper. A lucrative place is as nothing compared with the "loss of face" which he would suffer in the eyes of his friends; in other words, with his loss of dignity as a man.
If a servant will put up with a blow, the best course is to dismiss him at once, as worthless and unreliable, if not actually dangerous.
Confucius said: "If you mistrust a man, do not employ him; if you employ a man, do not mistrust him;" and this will still be found to be an excellent working rule in dealings with Chinese servants.
CHAPTER IV--A.D. 220-1200
The long-lived and glorious House of Han was brought to a close by the usual causes. There were palace intrigues and a temporary usurpation of the throne, eunuchs of course being in the thick of the mischief; added to which a very serious rebellion broke out, almost as a natural consequence. First and last there arose three aspirants to the Imperial yellow, which takes the place of purple in ancient Rome; the result being that, after some years of hard fighting, China was divided into three parts, each ruled by one of the three rivals. The period is known in history as that of the Three Kingdoms, and lasted from A.D. 220 to A.D. 265. This short s.p.a.ce of time was filled, especially the early years, with stirring deeds of heroism and marvellous strategical operations, fortune favouring first one of the three commanders and then another. The whole story of these civil wars is most graphically told in a famous historical romance composed about a thousand years afterwards.
As in the case of the Waverley novels, a considerable amount of fiction has been interwoven with truth to make the narrative more palatable to the general reader; but its basis is history, and the work is universally regarded among the Chinese themselves as one of the most valuable productions in the lighter branches of their literature.
The three to four centuries which follow on the above period were a time of political and social disorganisation, unfavourable, according to Chinese writers, to the development of both literature and art. The House of Chin, which at first held sway over a once more united empire, was severely hara.s.sed by the Tartars on the north, who were in turn overwhelmed by the House of Toba. The latter ruled for some two hundred years over northern China, while the southern portions were governed by several short-lived native dynasties. A few points in connexion with these times deserve perhaps brief mention.
The old rule of twenty-seven months of mourning for parents was re-established, and has continued in force down to the present day. The j.a.panese sent occasional missions, with tribute; and the Chinese, who had already in A.D. 240 dispatched an envoy to j.a.pan, repeated the compliment in 608. An attempt was made to conquer Korea, and envoys were sent to countries as far off as Siam. Buddhism, which had been introduced many centuries previously--no one can exactly say when--began to spread far and wide, and appeared to be firmly established. In A.D.
399 a Buddhist priest, named Fa Hsien, started from Central China and travelled to India across the great desert and over the Hindu Kush, subsequently visiting Patna, Benares, Buddha-Gaya, and other well-known spots, which he accurately described in the record of his journey published on his return and still in existence. His object was to obtain copies of the sacred books, relics and images, ill.u.s.trative of the faith; and these he safely conveyed to China by sea from India, via Ceylon (where he spent three years), and Sumatra, arriving after an absence of fifteen years.
In the year A.D. 618 the House of T"ang entered upon its glorious course of three centuries in duration. Under a strong but dissolute ruler immediately preceding, China had once more become a united empire, undivided against itself; and although wars and rebellions were not wanting to disturb the even tenor of its way, the general picture presented to us under the new dynasty of the T"angs is one of national peace, prosperity, and progress. The name of this House has endured, like that of Han, to the present day in the popular language of the people; for just as the northerners still delight to style themselves "good sons of Han," so are the southerners still proud to speak of themselves as "men of T"ang."
One of the chief political events of this period was the usurpation of power by the Empress Wu--at first, as nominal regent on behalf of a step-child, the son and heir of her late husband by his first wife, and afterwards, when she had set aside the step-child, on her own account.
There had been one previous instance of a woman wielding the Imperial sceptre, namely, the Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, to whom the Chinese have accorded the t.i.tle of legitimate ruler, which has not been allowed to the Empress Wu. The latter, however, was possessed of much actual ability, mixed with a kind of midsummer madness; and so long as her great intellectual faculties remained unimpaired, she ruled, like her successor of some twelve centuries afterwards, with a rod of iron. In her old age she was deposed and dismissed to private life, the rightful heir being replaced upon his father"s throne.
Among the more extravagant acts of her reign are some which are still familiar to the people of to-day. Always, even while her husband was alive, she was present, behind a curtain, at councils and audiences; after his death she was accustomed to take her place openly among the ministers of state, wearing a false beard. In 694 she gave herself the t.i.tle of Divine Empress, and in 696 she even went so far as to style herself G.o.d Almighty. In her later years she became hopelessly arrogant and overbearing. No one was allowed to say that the Empress was fair as a lily or lovely as a rose, but that the lily was fair or the rose lovely as Her Majesty. She tried to spread the belief that she was really the Supreme Being by forcing flowers artificially and then in the presence of her courtiers ordering them to bloom. On one occasion she commanded some peonies to bloom; and because they did not instantly obey, she caused every peony in the capital to be pulled up and burnt, and prohibited the cultivation of peonies ever afterwards. She further decided to place her s.e.x once and for all on an equality with man. For that purpose women were admitted to the public examinations, official posts being conferred upon those who were successful; and among other things they were excused from kneeling while giving evidence in courts of justice. This innovation, however, did not fulfil its promise; and with the disappearance of its vigorous foundress, the system also disappeared. It was not actually the first time in Chinese history that the experiment had been tried. An emperor of the third century A.D. had already opened public life to women, and it is said that many of them rose to high office; but here too the system was of short duration, and the old order was soon restored.
Another striking picture of the T"ang dynasty is presented by the career of an emperor who is usually spoken of as Ming Huang, and who, after distinguishing himself at several critical junctures, mounted the throne in 712, in succession to his father, who had abdicated in his favour. He began with economy, closing the silk factories and forbidding the palace ladies to wear jewels or embroideries, considerable quant.i.ties of which were actually burnt. He was a warm patron of literature, and schools were established in every village. Fond of music, he founded a college for training youth of both s.e.xes in this art. His love of war and his growing extravagance led to increased taxation, with the usual consequences in China--discontent and rebellion. He surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming men of genius in literature and art; at first for their talents alone, but finally for their readiness to partic.i.p.ate in scenes of revelry and dissipation provided for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a favourite concubine, the ever-famous Yang Kuei-fei (p.r.o.nounced _Kway-fay_). Eunuchs were appointed to official posts, and the grossest forms of religious superst.i.tion were encouraged. Women ceased to veil themselves, as of old. At length, in 755, a serious rebellion broke out, and a year later the emperor, now an old man of seventy-one, fled before the storm. He had not proceeded far before his soldiery revolted and demanded vengeance upon the whole family of the favourite, several unworthy members of which had been raised to high positions and loaded with honours. The wretched emperor was forced to order the head eunuch to strangle his idolized concubine, while the rest of her family perished at the hands of the troops. He subsequently abdicated in favour of his son, and spent the last six years of his life in seclusion.
This tragic story has been exquisitely told in verse by one of China"s foremost poets, who was born only a few years later. He divides his poem into eight parts, dealing with the _ennui_ of the monarch until he discovers _beauty_, the _revelry_ of the pair together, followed by the horrors of _flight_, to end in the misery of _exile_ without her, the _return_ when the emperor pa.s.ses again by the fatal spot, _home_ where everything reminds him of her, and finally _spirit-land_. This last is a figment of the poet"s imagination. He pictures the disconsolate emperor sending a magician to discover Yang Kuei-fei"s whereabouts in the next world, and to bear to her a message of uninterrupted love. The magician, after a long search, finds her in one of the Isles of the Blest, and fulfils his commission accordingly.
Her features are fixed and calm, though myriad tears fall, Wetting a spray of pear-bloom, as it were with the raindrops of spring.
Subduing her emotions, restraining her grief, she tenders thanks to His Majesty.
Saying how since their parting she had missed his form and voice; And how, although their love on earth had so soon come to an end, The days and months among the Blest were still of long duration.
And now she turns and gazes towards the above of mortals, But cannot discern the Imperial city, lost in the dust and haze.
Then she takes out the old keepsake, tokens of undying love, A gold hairpin, an enamel brooch, and bids the magician carry these back.
One half of the hairpin she keeps, and one half of the enamel brooch, Breaking with her hands the yellow gold, and dividing the enamel in two.
"Tell him," she said, "to be firm of heart, as this gold and enamel, And then in heaven or on earth below we two may meet once more."
The magnificent House of T"ang was succeeded by five insignificant dynasties, the duration of all of which was crowded into about half a century. Then, in A.D. 960, began the rule of the Sungs (p.r.o.nounced _Soongs_), to last for three hundred years and rival in national peace and prosperity any other period in the history of China. The nation had already in a great measure settled down to that state of material civilization and mental culture in which it has remained to the present time. To the appliances of ordinary Chinese life it is probable that but few additions have been made since a very early date. The dress of the people has indeed undergone several variations, but the ploughs and hoes, the water-wheels and well-sweeps, the tools of the artisans, mud huts, carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks, etc., which we still see in China, are probably very much those of two thousand years ago.
Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that written characters had the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth, all over the empire; and to this day an unaltering uniformity is one of the chief characteristics of the Chinese people in every department of life.
In spite, however, of the peaceful aspirations of the House of Sung, the Kitan Tartars were for ever encroaching upon Chinese territory, and finally overran and occupied a large part of northern China, with their capital where Peking now stands. This resulted in an amicable arrangement to divide the empire, the Kitans retaining their conquests in the north, from which, after about two hundred years, they were in turn expelled by the Golden Tartars, who had previously been subject to them.
Many volumes, rather than pages, would be required to do justice to the statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, poets, historians, art critics, and other famous men of this dynasty. It has already been stated that the interpretation of the Confucian Canon, accepted at the present day, dates from this period; and it may now be of interest to give a brief account of another remarkable movement connected with the dynasty, though in quite a different line.
w.a.n.g An-shih (as _shi_ in _shirk_), popularly known as the Reformer, was born in 1021. In his youth a keen student, his pen seemed to fly over the paper. He rose to high office; and by the time he was forty-eight he found himself installed as confidential adviser to the emperor. He then entered upon a series of startling political reforms, said to be based upon new and more correct interpretations of portions of the Confucian Canon, which still remained, so far as explanation was concerned, just as it had been left by the scholars of the Han dynasty. This appeal to authority was, of course, a mere blind, cleverly introduced to satisfy the bulk of the population, who were always unwilling to move in any direction where no precedent is forthcoming. One of his schemes, the express object of which was to decrease taxation and at the same time to increase the revenue, was to secure a sure and certain market for all products, as follows. From the produce of a given district, enough was to be set aside (1) for the payment of taxes, and (2) to supply the wants of the district; (3) the balance was then to be taken over by the state at a low rate, and held for a rise or forwarded to some centre where there happened to be a demand. There would be thus a certainty of market for the farmer, and an equal certainty for the state to make profits as a middleman. Another part of this scheme consisted in obligatory advances by the state to cultivators of land, whether these farmers required the money or not, the security for the loans being in each case the growing crops.
There was also a system of t.i.thing for military purposes, under which every family having more than two males was bound to supply one to serve as a soldier; and in order to keep up a breed of cavalry horses, every family was compelled to take charge of one, which was provided, together with its food, by the government. There was a system under which money payments were subst.i.tuted for the old-fashioned and vexatious method of carrying on public works by drafts of forced labourers; and again another under which warehouses for bartering and hypothecating goods were established all over the empire.
Of all his innovations the most interesting was that all land was to be remeasured and an attempt made to secure a more equitable incidence of taxation. The plan was to divide up the land into equal squares, and to levy taxes in proportion to the fertility of each. This scheme proved for various reasons to be unworkable; and the bitter opposition with which, like all his other measures of reform, it was received by his opponents, did not conduce to success. Finally, he abolished all restrictions upon the export of copper, the result being that even the current copper "cash" were melted down and made into articles for sale and exportation. A panic ensued, which w.a.n.g met by the simple expedient of doubling the value of each cash. He attempted to reform the examination system, requiring from the candidate not so much graces of style as a wide acquaintance with practical subjects. "Accordingly,"
says one Chinese author, "even the pupils at the village schools threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to study primers of history, geography, and political economy"--a striking antic.i.p.ation of the movement in vogue to-day. "I have myself been," he tells us, "an omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient medical and botanical works. I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable in aiding me to seize the great scheme of the Canon itself." But like many other great men, he was in advance of his age. He fell into disfavour at court, and was dismissed to a provincial post; and although he was soon recalled, he retired into private life, shortly afterwards to die, but not before he had seen the whole of his policy reversed.
His career stands out in marked contrast with that of the great statesman and philosopher, Chu Hsi (p.r.o.nounced _Choo Shee_), who flourished A.D. 1130-1200. His literary output was enormous and his official career successful; but his chief t.i.tle to fame rests upon his merits as a commentator on the Confucian Canon. As has been already stated, he introduced interpretations either wholly or partly at variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the Han dynasty, and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a certain extent the prevailing standard of political and social morality.
His guiding principle was merely one of consistency. He refused to interpret words in a given pa.s.sage in one sense, and the same words occurring elsewhere in another sense. The effect of this apparently obvious method was magical; and from that date the teachings of Confucius have been universally understood in the way in which Chu Hsi said they ought to be understood.
To his influence also must be traced the spirit of materialism which is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The G.o.d in whom Confucius believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said to have "taught," was a pa.s.sive rather than an active G.o.d, and may be compared with the G.o.d of the Psalms. He was a personal G.o.d, as we know from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man. This view was entirely set aside by Chu Hsi, who declared in the plainest terms that the Chinese word for G.o.d meant nothing more than "abstract right;" in other words, G.o.d was a principle. It is impossible to admit such a proposition, which was based on sentiment and not on sound reasoning. Chu Hsi was emphatically not a man of religious temperament, and belief in the supernatural was distasteful to him; he was for a short time under the spell of Buddhism, but threw that religion over for the orthodoxy of Confucianism. He was, therefore, anxious to exclude the supernatural altogether from the revised scheme of moral conduct which he was deducing from the Confucian Canon, and his interpretation of the word "G.o.d" has been blindly accepted ever since.
When Chu Hsi died, his coffin is said to have taken up a position, suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant exponent in life--and the coffin descended gently to the ground.
CHAPTER V--WOMEN AND CHILDREN
The Chinese are very fond of animals, and especially of birds; and on the whole they may be said to be kind to their animals, though cases of ill-treatment occur. At the same time it must be carefully remembered that such quantum of humanity as they may exhibit is entirely of their own making; there is no law to act persuasively on brutal natures, and there is no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to see that any such law is enforced. A very large number of beautiful birds, mostly songless, are found in various parts of China, and a great variety of fishes in the rivers and on the coast. Wild animals are represented by the tiger (in both north and south), the panther and the bear, and even the elephant and the rhinoceros may be found in the extreme south-west.
The wolf and the fox, the latter dreaded as an uncanny beast, are very widely distributed.
Still less would there be any ground for establishing a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the very name of which would make an ordinary, unsophisticated Chinaman stare. Chinese parents are, if anything, over-indulgent to their children. The father is, indeed, popularly known as the "Severe One," and it is a Confucian tradition that he should not spare the rod and so spoil the child, but he draws the line at a poker; and although as a father he possesses the power of life and death over his offspring, such punishments as are inflicted are usually of the mildest description. The mother, the "Gentle One," is, speaking broadly, a soft-hearted, sweet-natured specimen of humanity; one of those women to whom hundreds of Europeans owe deep debts of grat.i.tude for the care and affection lavished upon their alien children.
In the absence of the Severe One, it falls to her to chastise when necessary; and we even read of a son who wept, not because his mother hurt him, but because, owing to her advanced age, she was no longer able to hit him hard enough!
Among other atrocious libels which have fastened upon the fair fame of the Chinese people, first and foremost stands the charge of female infanticide, now happily, though still slowly, fading from the calculations of those who seek the truth. Fifty years ago it was generally believed that the Chinese hated their female children, and got rid of them in early infancy by wholesale murder. It may be admitted at once that boys are preferred to girls, inasmuch as they carry on the family line, and see that the worship of ancestors is regularly performed in due season. Also, because girls require dowries, which they take away with them for the benefit of other families than their own; hence the saying, "There is no thief like a family of five daughters,"
and the term "lose-money goods," as jestingly applied to girls, against which may be set another term, "a thousand ounces of gold," which is commonly used of a daughter. Of course it is the boy who is specially wanted in a family; and little boys are often dressed as little girls, in order to deceive the angels of disease and death, who, it is hoped, may thus pa.s.s them over as of less account.
To return to the belief formerly held that female infanticide was rampant all over China. The next step was for the honest observer to admit that it was not known in his own particular district, but to declare that it was largely practised elsewhere. This view, however, lost its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so on. Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following argument,--a rare example of proving a negative--from which it will be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is quite beyond the bounds of the possible. Those who have even a bowing acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at about the age of eighteen, is provided by his parents with a wife. They must also concede the notorious fact that many well-to-do Chinese take one or more concubines. The Emperor, indeed, is allowed seventy; but this number exists only on paper as a regulation maximum. Now, if every Chinaman has one wife, and many have two, over and above the host of girls said to be annually sacrificed as worthless babies, it must follow that the proportion of girls born in China enormously outnumbers the proportion of boys, whereas in the rest of the world boys are well known to be always in the majority. After this, it is perhaps superfluous to state that, apart from the natural love of the parent, a girl is really, even at a very early age, a marketable commodity. Girls are sometimes sold into other families to be brought up as wives for the sons; more often, to be used as servants, under what is of course a form of slavery, qualified by the important condition, which can be enforced by law, that when of a marriageable age, the girl"s master shall find her a husband. Illegitimate children, the source of so much baby-farming and infanticide elsewhere, are practically unknown in China; and the same may be said of divorce. A woman cannot legally divorce her husband. In rare cases she will leave him, and return to her family, in spite of the fact that he can legally insist upon her return; for she knows well that if her case is good, the husband will not dare to risk the scandal of an exposure, not to mention the almost certain vengeance of her affronted kinsmen. It is also the fear of such vengeance that prevents mothers-in-law from ill-treating the girls who pa.s.s into their new homes rather as servants than daughters to the husband"s mother. Every woman, as indeed every man, has one final appeal by which to punish an oppressor. She may commit suicide, there being no canon, legal or moral, against self-slaughter; and in China, where, contrary to widespread notions on the subject, human life is held in the highest degree sacred, this course is sure to entail trouble and expense, and possibly severe punishment, if the aggrieved parties are not promptly conciliated by a heavy money payment.