Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

The remarriage of a widow is, as we have seen, regarded in the best circles with disapproval. The model wife—the wife to whom a commemorative arch is erected on the roadside near her home and whose name is handed down to posterity in the official chronicle of her district as a pattern of virtue—is as scrupulously faithful to her husband after his death as during his life. But very poor families—such as are the majority of the families of Weihaiwei—cannot afford to support widows for the mere joy of contemplating their fidelity and chastity: hence we find that in practice a young widow is often not only induced by her late husband's family to enter into a second marriage and so rid them of the necessity of supporting her, but is practically compelled to get married before the expiration of the period of deep mourning, which lasts twenty-seven months. For a widow to re-marry while in mourning for her husband is by Chinese law a penal offence: though when the offence is committed on account of the straitened circumstances of the widow and her first husband's family it is generally allowed to pass without official notice or censure.

If a young widow has presented her late husband with children it is less likely that his family will insist upon a second marriage than if she is childless: indeed, if the family is well-to-do, it will sometimes take active preventive measures if she herself contemplates such a step. When a widow with children remarries, the children remain with the first husband's family, or at any rate revert to that family after the years of early childhood. It is when a childless young widow, in spite of the solicitations of her husband's family, obstinately refuses to take a second husband that domestic troubles arise which are likely to end in the law-courts. If the widow's father-in-law finds it impossible to remove her aversion to a second marriage he will probably come to the court with a trumped-up charge against her of "unfilial" behaviour. One Chang YÜn-shÊng brought an action in my court against his deceased son's wife, who was a daughter of the Lin family, for cruelty and want of respect. "She is disobedient," he said; "she refuses to feed me, and she constantly assaults and vilifies my wife and myself. In our old age we find such conduct on the part of our daughter-in-law intolerable, and I implore the court to devise some means of recalling her to a sense of duty and obedience."

The case soon wore a different aspect when the woman's father, Lin Pa, put in an appearance and explained that Chang's sole object in making a series of false and unjust accusations against a blameless young woman was that he might be sure of magisterial sympathy and help in the matter of compelling her to accept a second marriage. This on investigation was found to be the key to the situation. Chang regarded the woman as a family asset which he desired to realise in cash. Her remarriage would have been negotiated purely as a mercantile transaction, the profits of which would have gone into the money-bags of Chang. As the covetous old man was well able to support his son's wife—indeed she was living without expense to him on the property which had come to her husband before his death as a result of fÊn-chia[170]—the court required him to find substantial security that in no circumstances would he attempt to dispose of the person of his daughter-in-law against her will. The interference of the woman's father in this case affords another proof that a woman's own family does not necessarily abandon her for ever to the caprice of the family into which she has married.

Chinese local histories contain many accounts of the various devices resorted to by devoted widows for the purpose of avoiding the dishonour of a second marriage. De Groot[171] quotes the case of a child-widow—she was only fifteen years of age—who, as a reply to the demands made upon her to enter into a second marriage, took a solemn oath of chastity and confirmed it by cutting off her ears and placing them on a dish. Thereupon, as the historian says, her relatives "gave up their project," perhaps from pity or admiration of the poor child's heroic conduct, perhaps from the belief that no self-respecting man would care for an earless bride. If the annals of Weihaiwei show no cases quite identical with this, they contain accounts of many a young widow who has died to avoid remarriage.

But first let us consider a few typical cases of a less tragic nature. Of Wang Shih, the wife of a graduate named Ch'i, we are told that when her husband died leaving her with an infant boy, she, though still a very young woman, refrained from a second marriage, lived an exemplary life, educated her boy with exceptional care, and survived to the age of ninety-five: living just long enough to witness the marriage of her great-grandson. To live to a green old age is regarded as one of the rewards of a virtuous life. In China, those whom the gods love die old. Ch'Ê Liu Shih, say the Annals of Ning-hai, was for similar reasons rewarded by no less than one hundred and two years of life. This was in the present dynasty. Judging by length of life, still higher virtue must have been shown in the YÜan dynasty (1280-1367), for we read of Liu Shih, a lady who lived to the age of one hundred and three, and was celebrated as the happy mother of three noble sons. T'ang Chu Shih, a Ning-hai widow of the Ming dynasty, became so famous for her virtuous refusals of marriage that she was honoured by the local magistrate with the official presentation of a laudatory scroll bearing the words "Pure and chaste as frozen snow." Wang Sun Shih became a grass-widow about ten days after her marriage, for her husband was obliged to go abroad. After a short absence news was brought her that her lord was dead. She was wretchedly poor, but she maintained an honourable widowhood to her death. YÜeh Ch'i Shih was left a widow soon after marriage. The family was very poor. She served her father-in-law and brought up her son with the utmost zeal and care. She was most industrious (all this is carefully recorded in the Annals) in looking after the household and in preparing the morning and evening meals. She worked all her ten fingers to the utmost without sparing herself. She died when still young. Sun Liu Shih became a widow at the age of nineteen. She strongly desired to die with her husband, but her parents-in-law pointed out that they were old and required her services. She obeyed and remained with them, refusing remarriage. She arranged to have a son adopted for her husband, and educated him with the utmost care and self-sacrifice. Wang HsÜeh Shih was left a widow at the age of twenty-five. She had a little son aged three. She brought him up to manhood and arranged a marriage for him. Both her son and his bride died within a year. She then urged her father-in-law to take a concubine in order to carry on the family, for her late husband had been an only son. Some years later the Literary Chancellor of the Province presented an honorary tablet in commemoration of her virtue.

Cases of this kind—where young widows refuse remarriage and devote their lives to the service of their parents-in-law and their own children—are so common that in many parts of China they are the rule rather than the exception, though it is not every such case, of course, that comes before the notice of the authorities and receives official recognition. The matter of widows' suicides is one that perhaps deserves more careful attention.

Sociological writers have pointed to the steady increase in suicide as one of the most alarming characteristics of modern civilised life, inasmuch as it seems to indicate a biological deterioration of the race. Probably this is so in Europe, where religious and ethical teachings set so high a value on life that the man who deprives himself of it of his own accord is commonly regarded as either a criminal or a lunatic; but we must beware of supposing that if suicide indicates biological decay in England or Saxony it has the same indication among the populations of the Far East. The common view that Orientals despise life and will throw it away on the slenderest provocation is not, indeed, strictly accurate. Self-slaughter in Weihaiwei and throughout China is probably far commoner than anywhere in Europe, in spite of the numerous European suicides traceable to the appalling mental and moral degradation brought about by alcoholism; and there is no doubt that the Oriental will hang or poison himself for reasons which would be altogether insufficient to make the average European do so. But the Oriental will never take this extreme step except from a motive which from his point of view is all-compelling: so that after all the only difference between the Oriental and the European in this respect seems to lie in the nature of the motive, not in its intensity.

That the instinct of self-preservation is stronger among Europeans than among Chinese is an unproved and perhaps unprovable thesis: though it is true that Chinese women seem to have a contempt for death which possibly arises from a quiescent imagination. One reason why suicides are less common among Europeans is that the would-be suicide in a country like England must not only face the natural fear of death and (if he happens to believe in the teachings of his Church) the probability or certainty of terrible sufferings in another state of existence, but he is also obliged to contemplate the dishonour that will besmirch his name and the consequent misery and discomfort that will be brought upon his family.

These deterrent considerations can seldom affect the would-be suicide in China. Both Confucianism and Buddhism, indeed, forbid self-destruction: but Confucianism is vague on the subject of life beyond the grave, and Buddhism as taught in China lays no stress on any terrors that may await the suicide. The northern Chinese, including those of Weihaiwei, are inclined to the belief that a suicide's only punishment consists in being obliged as a lonely earth-bound spirit to wander about in the neighbourhood of his old home until he can persuade some living person to follow his example. When his victim yields to his sinister suggestions and commits suicide the first ghost is set free: though what use he makes of his freedom seems to be a doubtful point. It then becomes the second ghost's turn to look for a victim. Thus all apparently motiveless suicides are supposed to be caused by the ghostly promptings of those who have taken their own lives in the past. When a suicide of this kind takes place in a Weihaiwei village it is believed that another suicide will inevitably follow within an extreme limit of two years. Neither public opinion nor the law of the land stigmatises suicide as a crime: persons who attempt and fail to kill themselves are never prosecuted.

The attitude of the more philosophically-minded of the Chinese towards the subject of suicide in general is perhaps somewhat similar to that of the Stoic Epictetus, who on the one hand forbids it and on the other hand calls attention to the fact that the door out of life is always open to those who feel that they have good reason to use it. As for self-destruction involving dishonour in the eyes of society, this is so far from being the case in China that in certain circumstances the exact opposite is the result. Posthumous honours have been showered upon suicides by imperial edict, monuments have been erected to their memory, they have been canonised and their tablets honoured with official worship in the public temples, and they have bequeathed to their relatives and descendants a glory that shines undimmed for many successive generations.

These distinguished suicides, it should be hardly necessary to say, have generally been women, and the glory of their deed has consisted in the fidelity and heroism that have impelled them to follow their dead husbands to the grave: but many of them are noble-minded statesmen and patriots who have voluntarily sealed with their own blood some protest against the follies or mistakes of emperors or have taken their own lives as a means of drawing public attention to some grave danger that menaced the State.[172]

VILLAGE OF KU-SHAN-HOU, SHOWING HONORARY POLES IN FRONT OF THE ANCESTRAL TEMPLE (see p. 324).

We are accustomed to "topsy-turvydom" in China, and perhaps the suicide-statistics might be cited as an example of this. "Suicide," says a recent writer on sociology, "is a phenomenon of which the male sex possesses almost the monopoly."[173] If female be substituted for male we have a fair statement of how affairs stand in Weihaiwei. Over ninety per cent. of the persons who make away with themselves belong to the female sex, and the great majority of them are young married women or young widows. Since 1729, when it was proclaimed by imperial decree that official honours were no longer to be conferred upon widows who slew themselves on the occasion of their husbands' death, it has become less common than formerly for young widows to practise the Chinese equivalent of sati, but the custom is far from extinct, and at any rate it seems to have left among women a readiness to fling away their lives for reasons which to us appear singularly inadequate. Imperial edicts did not and could not stamp out a custom which was of great antiquity and deeply rooted in popular esteem. The British Government in India forbade the practice of sati long ago, and it has therefore ceased to exist throughout the Indian Empire; but even now there is strong reason to doubt whether popular opinion is on the side of the Government in this matter, and whether the custom would not immediately spring into vogue again if the British raj were withdrawn.[174]

There is no doubt that the suicide of widows in China is a survival of the ancient custom (which flourished in countries so far apart as India and Peru, Africa and China) whereby wives and slaves were as a matter of ordinary duty expected to follow their husbands and masters to the grave; and though the day has probably long gone past when such suicides were encouraged or actually enforced by the deceased's relatives, it cannot be doubted that to this day public opinion in China is strongly on the side of the widow who chooses to follow her lord to the world of ghosts.[175]

The present-day theory of the matter held by the people of eastern Shantung, including Weihaiwei, appears to be this. A woman undoubtedly performs a meritorious act in following her husband to the spirit-world, but her relations are fully justified in preventing her, and indeed are obliged to prevent her, from throwing away her life if they know of or guess her intention. If her husband has died leaving to her the care of his aged parents who have no other daughters-in-law to look after them, or if she has young children who require her care, she does wrong to commit suicide, though the children are sometimes ignored. The highest praise is reserved for a woman who temporarily refrains from destroying herself in order that she may devote herself to her husband's parents and her own offspring, but who, when they are dead or independent of her care, then fulfils her original desire and sacrifices herself to the spirit of her dead husband. The fact that in any case the woman's relatives are considered bound to prevent, if possible, the act of suicide from taking place, shows the beginning of a realisation that self-destruction is in itself an evil. Time was when they would not only make no attempt to save the woman's life, but, as in India, would incite her and even compel her to die.

Of the stories of widows' suicides which have taken place during the past few centuries in Weihaiwei and its neighbourhood, and which were considered meritorious enough to deserve public honours and special mention in the official Annals, a few examples may be found of interest. The cases quoted are in no way unique or unusual, and there is no reason to doubt their absolute authenticity.

Tsou Chao-tuan being sick of a mortal disease, his wife Ts'ung Shih and his concubine Sun Shih made an agreement with one another that they would follow him to death. As soon as he was dead the two women hanged themselves. Members of the family quickly came to the rescue and cut the ropes by which the women were suspended. Sun Shih the concubine was already dead, but Ts'ung Shih the wife revived. A few days later she again hanged herself, this time successfully. The wife was thirty years of age, the concubine nineteen. The district-magistrate took official notice of the matter, and caused a carved memorial to be set up testifying to the two women's exemplary virtue. "They had performed an act," he said, "which would cause their fragrant names to be remembered for ever."

T'ao Liu Shih, daughter of Liu Fang-ch'ing, was betrothed to one T'ao, but they were not married. T'ao died. When the death was announced to her she hanged herself. [To appreciate the significance of this act it should be remembered that there was no question of love-sickness: the young couple in all probability had never spoken to or even seen each other. As will be understood from explanations already given,[176] the girl would as a matter of course be buried with her betrothed as his wife, and would be given his name on the tombstone and the ancestral tablets. Probably the youth's parents, in this as in most similar cases, adopted a son for the dead couple; if so he would be brought up to regard them as his father and mother, and would inherit their property. Had the girl refrained from suicide and married some one else, the family of the first betrothed might have provided him with a dead wife, in accordance with the practice already described.[177]]

Chang Sun Shih, aged twenty-six, was the wife of Chang Ch'ing-kuang. On the death of her husband she took an oath to follow him. The family forcibly prevented her from killing herself. She pretended to submit to life and to the rearing of her young child, so gradually the family forbore to watch her. She then suddenly hanged herself.

Li Chu Shih, aged twenty-one, was the wife of Li T'ing-lun. Her husband died, leaving her without children. She killed herself by jumping into a well. A stone memorial to her is extant.

Ch'Ên Yang Shih was the wife of Ch'Ên YÜan-fu. On the death of her husband she starved herself to death.

Pi YÜ Shih, wife of Pi Ch'ang-jÊn, hanged herself by the side of her husband's coffin. [Voluntary death beside the coffin is exceedingly common and seems to represent an ancient custom.]

Chang T'ang Shih was the wife of Chang Ching-wÊn. On her husband's death she devoted herself to bringing up a young daughter. She preserved a chaste widowhood till the death of her daughter, and then hanged herself.

Pi Chang Shih was the wife of Pi Hung-fan. Her husband when dying gave instructions that as she was still young a second marriage was to be arranged for her. To please him she said she would obey him. They were childless. When he died her first action was to see that her late husband was duly provided with an heir and successor, and she did this by bringing about the formal adoption of one of his nephews. She then proceeded to arrange a marriage for the nephew so that the eventual continuation of the family might be properly provided for. "Now," she said, "my duty is done. What is a lonely widow to go on living for?" She then committed suicide.

Li Wang Shih was the wife of Li Yuan-po. When her husband was ill she waited until he had only two more days to live, and then hanged herself. [The question naturally arises, who tended the sick husband during the last two days? The woman's own view might have been that by dying first she would be ready to meet and help her husband's spirit when it had crossed the dark flood, and would thus render him greater service than by merely tending his last hours on earth. But a better explanation of her action is given by the details furnished by the chronicler in connection with the next case.]

Sun Shih, a Weihaiwei woman, had a dying husband. Fearing that his last moments might be embittered by the thought that she would marry some one else after his death she decided to hang herself before he passed away, so that he would know she had remained true till death. She therefore hanged herself, and a day later her husband died. This happened in the Ming period, and in 1585 a monument was erected to her memory.

Liang Wang Shih, aged twenty-one, was the wife of Liang K'o-jun. At the time of her husband's death she was pregnant, so she did not destroy herself immediately. In due time she gave birth to her child—a daughter—who, however, soon died. She thereupon committed suicide.

Liu Ch'Ên Shih, aged twenty-eight, was the wife of Liu ShÊng. On her husband's death the family feared she would hang herself, so they watched her with special care. She smilingly assured them that she had no such intention, so they relaxed their watchfulness. She then hanged herself.

Hou Wang Shih tried to hang herself on the death of her husband. Some female neighbours came in and saved her life: but she awaited another opportunity and died by her own hand.

Chiang Lin Shih was a young bride. Two months after her marriage her husband had to go away on business, and on the road he fell in with a band of robbers and was killed by them. On hearing the news she hanged herself.

Sung Wang Shih attempted to hang herself on the death of her husband, but owing to the intervention of friends she was restored to life. A second time she tried to hang herself, but the rope broke and her purpose remained unfulfilled. Then she took poison, but the dose was insufficient and she revived. Then the family tried to compel her to marry again; but she tore her face with her nails till it streamed with blood and resolutely refused to entertain the suggestion of a second marriage. Finally she retired to her private apartment and succeeded in strangling herself.

Wang Chao Shih was the wife of an hereditary chih-hui[178] of Ning-hai, in the Ming dynasty. Her husband died a month after the wedding. She remained faithful to him, and finally hanged herself. Two maid-servants followed her example.

Wang Sun Shih was the concubine of a chih-hui. Her husband was killed in battle. On hearing the news she hanged herself.

YÜ Lu Shih swore on the death of her husband that she would not live alone. Her family wept bitterly and begged her to give up her intention to die, but she replied, "I look upon death as a going home. The wise will understand me." Then in the night-time she strangled herself.

Liu Shih, the daughter of Liu Fang-ch'ing of Ch'Êng-shan (the Shantung Promontory) was betrothed to a Weihaiwei man named T'ao Tu-shÊng. A "lucky day" was chosen for the marriage, and the bride was being escorted to her new home on that day when the news was brought her of the bridegroom's sudden death. She wished to follow him to the grave,[179] but her father and mother prevented her from carrying out her wish. When they began to relax their watchfulness she hanged herself. The district-magistrate presented an honorary scroll to the family to commemorate the girl's fidelity and chastity.

Chou Ch'i Shih was the wife of a literary student. Her husband died, and she hanged herself on the following New Year's Eve.

Tung Tu Shih was the second wife of a graduate. On her husband's death she starved herself to death. An edict was issued authorising the erection of an honorific portal.

Chang Shih was betrothed in childhood to a man named YÜan. He died before the marriage took place, when the girl was only sixteen. She begged to be allowed to carry out the full mourning rites prescribed for a widow, but her family would not hear of it.[180] She then hanged herself. In the Shun Chih period (1644-61) a decree was received authorising the erection of a commemorative portal. She and her betrothed were buried together as man and wife. The portal was erected at the side of the tomb. Elegies, funeral odes, essays, scrolls containing laudatory couplets, were composed by many of the local poets and scholars in honour of this virtuous woman.

Liu YÜ Shih was the wife of a man who died when he was away from home. She wailed for him bitterly, and said, "My husband is dead and it is my duty to go down to the grave with him: but he has left no son to carry on the ancestral sacrifices. Therefore my heart is ill at ease." She then sold her jewellery in order to provide money enough to enable her husband's younger brother to get married at once. A bride was selected and the marriage took place. In a year a boy was born, and Liu YÜ Shih said, "Now my husband is no longer childless and I can close my eyes in death." That night she hanged herself. [It should be noted that in such a case as this it would be the duty of the younger brother to surrender one of his own sons in order that he might become the son and heir of the deceased. If the younger brother had only one son and there was no other relative of the appropriate generation available to become adopted son to the elder, the son would be allowed to inherit the property of his uncle and father and to carry on the ancestral rites for both. This is known as shuang t'iao.]

Yang Wang Shih was the wife of Yang Shih-ch'in. Twenty-seven days after the death of her husband she gave birth to a boy, who died within a year. She then devoted herself to the care of her (husband's) parents. A year or two later her father-in-law died, and the year after that her mother-in-law died too. The young widow mourned unceasingly, saying, "My husband and son are dead, my parents too have gone to their long home, how dare I continue to exist between earth and sky?" Then she begged the elders of the family to arrange the matter of adopting a son for her late husband, and then she hanged herself.

Ch'ang Li Shih was married to a man who died in the reign of K'ang Hsi (1662-1722). She wished to die with him, but she was with child and therefore forbore to carry out her wish. Shortly afterwards a child was born. It was a boy, who only lived seven days. Looking up to heaven she sighed bitterly, saying, "When my husband died I refrained from dying with him, for I hoped to become the mother of his child. Now the child, too, is gone. It is as though my husband had twice died. Can I bear to survive him all alone?" She then impressively urged her sisters-in-law (wives of her late husband's brothers) to serve their mother-in-law dutifully, and then took an oath to follow her lord to the lower world. Her first resolution was to hang herself. Her sisters-in-law kept watch on her so that she could not do this. Then she tried to take poison, but the family, full of pity and affection, kept her from this too. Full of vexation she cried out, "Am I to be the only one under all heaven who longs for death yet cannot die?" Then she resolutely set herself to starve to death. For many days she refused nourishment of any kind, and on the sixteenth day of her fast she died. Many were the funeral odes composed by noted poets in her honour, and in the reign of Ch'ien Lung (1736-95) an honorary archway was erected to her memory and her tablet was given a place in the local Shrine of Chastity and Filial Piety.

The last story of this kind to be quoted has not been extracted from the local Annals nor does it refer to events which actually took place in Weihaiwei; it was told me, however, by a Weihaiwei resident concerning a girl with whose family his own was distantly connected, and as it throws some light on certain Chinese customs and possesses a pathetic interest of its own though it is not essentially different from many other such stories, a little space may be found for it here.

A girl of eighteen years of age, named Chang Shih, had been betrothed since early childhood to a youth who lived in a neighbouring village, and the bridal day was drawing near. It was going to be a great occasion for every one concerned, for both families were well-to-do and popular and the girl was known by all her friends to be as tender and lovable as she was graceful and beautiful. But over the family hung a cloud that burst as suddenly as a thunderstorm: for one day, when the family were eagerly looking forward to the great event of the marriage, the black news came of the illness and death of the bridegroom.

The parents of Chang Shih consulted together as to how they should break the news to their daughter, who though she had never seen or spoken to her betrothed had been brought up in full knowledge of the fact that some day she would be his wife. She heard their whispers, and with quick intuition felt certain that their conversation had some reference to herself. Going to her mother, she questioned her. "What bad news have you, mother?" she said. "Whatever it may be you must tell your daughter." For a moment or two the elder woman was afraid to speak plainly and showed embarrassment, but at last, breaking into sobs and tears, she told the dismal story. "My daughter's wedding-day was fixed and a happy marriage had been foretold. But now all our hopes are ruined, for my daughter's betrothed has closed his eyes." The girl's face showed no sign of emotion. Her mother wondered at this, for she knew that her daughter was highly strung and was not one who could readily dissemble her feelings. Without a word Chang Shih turned away and retired to her own room. At this time she was gaily and carefully dressed like most young Chinese ladies of good family: her pretty face was powdered and rouged, and sweet-scented flowers and two little gold ornaments adorned her shining hair. When an hour later she appeared before her mother again she was almost unrecognisable. All trace of powder and rouge was washed from her face, so that she had become—as a European observer would have said—more beautiful than ever; her long black hair, devoid of a single flower or ornament, was uncoiled and hung loosely over her shoulders; her handsome embroidered dress had been thrown off, and her lithe form was disfigured by a gown of coarse sackcloth.

"My poor child," exclaimed her mother in amazement, "how is it that you, who are still a maiden, have attired yourself like a widow? Are you not still a member of your father's house? Are we of such poor report that our daughter will be shunned by every family that has a son still unbetrothed? Take off those ill-omened clothes that speak to us only of death, and become again our gay little daughter who has yet before her many years of happy life. It will not be long before the go-betweens come knocking at our door with eager proposals of marriage for the fairest little lady in the whole prefecture."

The girl listened, but never a smile appeared on her face. "It is my mother's voice that speaks but the thoughts are not my mother's. Can I, your daughter, ever give myself to another man while my husband has gone all lonely down to the Yellow Springs?[181] I beseech you, my mother, grant your daughter's last request. In seven days' time my betrothed was to come to escort me to his home and I was to sit in the red marriage-chair and to be carried away to be his bride. I pray you, my mother, that my wedding-day may not be cancelled. When the spirit of my husband comes for me on that day I shall be ready." The girl's mother did her utmost to shake her daughter's resolution, for she loved her dearly, and feared the girl was concealing some dreadful intention in this strange request. But her words were quite without avail, and she soon left her daughter to talk matters over with her husband. It was not without some justifiable pride that they finally decided to humour her; for in China the girl who on the death of her betrothed renounces all thought of marriage with a living man and, by remaining faithful to the dead, embraces at the same instant wifehood and widowhood, brings glory and honour to her father's family and also to the family of the dead bridegroom. The emperor's representative—the head of the local civil government—will himself do homage to her steadfast virtue, and will doubtless convey to her parents some mark of imperial approval; while her native village will derive widespread fame from the fact that it had once been her home.

The bridegroom's parents, in the case before us, received with appreciative gladness the announcement of the girl's fixed determination to remain faithful to their son, and they readily agreed to fall in with her wish for the formality of a marriage between the living and the dead. Preparations for the strange wedding went on apace, and though there was no merriment and very little feasting, strangers who suddenly arrived on the scene would never have guessed that the bridegroom was lying stiff and cold with never a thought for the beautiful bride that was to be his.

Though marriages of this kind—so strange and perhaps shocking to Western notions—were by no means unknown, several years had elapsed since such a ceremony had taken place in the district, and the local interest shown in it was very great. On the day of the wedding two large palanquins—one red, the other green—were carried on stalwart shoulders from the bridegroom's house to that of the bride. At ordinary marriages in Shantung the bridegroom usually goes in the red chair to meet his bride while the green chair follows behind, generally empty.[182] On arrival at the bride's house the bridegroom is received with much ceremony and introduced to every one except his bride, whom he is not allowed to see. Most of the introductions take place in a guest-room, where he is regaled with light refreshments. Meanwhile the red chair in which he arrived is taken into the inner courtyard to await the bride. As soon as it is announced that she is ready to start, the bridegroom takes ceremonious leave of the family and prepares for departure. The bride in her red chair goes in front, he—in the green chair this time—follows behind. Thus bride and bridegroom, who have not yet exchanged a word, set out for the bridegroom's home. There they are received by his relatives, and the other nuptial ceremonies follow in due course.

To outward appearance there was little to suggest any unusual circumstances in the marriage of Chang Shih. The red chair and green chair came to her house in the usual way; the only difference was that in the red chair there was no living bridegroom, only his p'ai-wei—a white strip of paper bearing his name and age and the important words ling wei—"the seat of the soul."[183]

On arrival at the home of Chang Shih, the p'ai-wei was taken with the deepest marks of respect out of the red chair and carried into the house. It was reverently placed on a small shrine in the guest-chamber, and in front of it were set a few small dishes of fruit and sweetmeats and several sticks of burning incense. Then every member of the family separately greeted it with a silent obeisance. When the time came for departure, the p'ai-wei was carefully carried out of doors again and placed in the green chair, the red one being now occupied by Chang Shih; and thus the strange bridal procession started home again, the soul of the dead bridegroom escorting the body of the living bride. On arrival at the house the p'ai-wei was again taken out of its chair and set up in the large hall where the dead man's family and their guests were waiting to receive Chang Shih. For the time being her widow's sackcloth had been cast aside, and she was clad in the resplendent attire of a rich young bride. If her face bore signs of inward emotion they were totally concealed beneath powder and rouge, and not even her own parents could have told what thoughts or feelings were uppermost at that time in their beautiful daughter's mind. She went through the usual ceremonies that accompany a Chinese wedding, so far as they could be carried out without the living presence of the bridegroom.

Having paid the necessary reverence to Heaven and Earth, to the souls of the ancestors of her new family, and finally to the living members of that family in the order of their seniority, she retired to the room that would in happier circumstances have been the bridal chamber, and there she quickly divested herself of her gay wedding robes and reassumed the dress of a widow in deepest mourning. Her betrothed—her husband now—had already been laid in his coffin, but in accordance with the usual Chinese custom many days had to elapse between the coffining and the burial. Those days were devoted to the elaborate rites always observed at a well-conducted Chinese funeral, and the young girl having taken her place as chief mourner performed her painful duties in a manner that gained her renewed respect and admiration. At last came the day of the burial. From the home of the living to the home of the dead marched a long procession of wailing mourners robed in sackcloth; several bands of flute-players and other musicians went in front and behind; there were scatterers of paper money, coloured-flag bearers and trumpeters, whose duty it was to conciliate and keep at a distance evil spirits and ill-omened influences; there were lantern-bearers to pilot the dead man's soul; there was a great paper image of the Road-clearing Spirit, borne in a draped and tasselled pavilion; there was a dark tabernacle containing the tablet to which the spirit of the deceased himself would in due course be summoned; there was the long streamer, the ling ching or Banner of the Soul; and there was the coffin itself, almost entirely concealed beneath its canopy, covered with richly embroidered scarlet draperies.

It is not usual, nowadays, in eastern Shantung, for the female mourners to accompany funeral processions throughout the whole sad journey, but on this occasion the widowed maiden acted in accordance with the ceremonies sanctioned by the sages of old,[184] for she followed the coffin all the way to the grave. Then at last the attendant mourners—members of her father's family and of the family of the dead—were for the first time admitted to the secret of her intentions. No sooner had the coffin been lowered than Chang Shih threw herself into the grave and lay across the coffin-lid face downwards, as if to embrace, for the first and last time, the husband whose form she had never seen in life nor in death. For a few moments her fellow-mourners waited in decorous silence until the violence of her passionate outburst should have spent itself, but seeing that she did not stir one of them at last begged her to leave the dead to the dead. "My place is by my husband," was the girl's reply. "If he is with the dead, then my place too is with the dead. Fill up the grave." To obey her behest was out of the question, and for some time no one stirred. Knowing the nature of the girl, her relatives felt sure that if they forcibly removed her from her present position and compelled her to return home with them she would seize the first opportunity of destroying herself.

Some one at last suggested that if they humoured her to the extent of sprinkling her with a light covering of earth which she could easily throw off as soon as the desire of life once more asserted itself, she might be permanently restored to a normal condition and all might be well. This suggestion was acted upon. Some handfuls of earth were thrown loosely over the living and the dead, each mourner, in accordance with custom, contributing a portion.[185] Having by this time concluded the sacrificial rites and ceremonies, the mourners now withdrew from the graveside. When some of the nearest relatives of Chang Shih returned an hour later they found that the light covering of earth had not been disturbed. The desire of life had never asserted itself after all. The girl was dead.

Carefully and tenderly she was taken up and brought back to the sad bridal chamber that had witnessed no bridal. Long before her beautiful body had been prepared for burial and placed in its splendid coffin her fame had already spread far through town and countryside. Vast was the crowd of mourners who, when her body was once more laid beside that of her husband, never to be disturbed again, flocked from distances of over a thousand li to show their admiration of the bravest of women and most faithful of wives.

With the exception of the last, all these little stories have been translated almost word for word from the official records of Weihaiwei and the three neighbouring districts. Similar cases could be collected by the thousand. Honorific portals and handsome marble monuments stand by the roadside in every part of the Empire, silent witnesses to noble Chinese womanhood. There is not a district in China that does not possess its roll of women who have sacrificed their lives in obedience to what they believed to be the call of a sacred obligation. Probably none but the most bigoted or the most ignorant will read of these poor women—many of them hardly more than children—with feelings of either contempt or abhorrence. They died no doubt from a mistaken sense of duty: but to die for an idea that is based on error surely requires as much courage and resolution as to die for an idea that is radiant with truth, and—what is perhaps of greater practical significance—the women who go willingly to the grave for a cause that to us seems a poor one may be counted on to suffer as cheerfully and die as bravely for a cause that is truly great.

Brave women do not give birth to ignoble sons; and when we contemplate the present and speculate as to the future condition of China we may do well to remember that women like those of whom we have just read are among the mothers of the great race that constitutes perhaps more than a quarter of the world's population. The woman who offers herself as a willing sacrifice to-day on the altar of what may be called a domestic ideal is the mother of a man who may, to-morrow, offer himself with readiness and gladness on the altar of a political or a national ideal. In the marvellous evolution that has taken place during the past half-century in the island Empire of Japan one has hardly known which to admire most: the splendid daring and patriotism shown by the Japanese soldier and civilian or the patience and trustfulness shown in times of trial and hardship by the Japanese woman. China has surprises in store for us as startling as those that were given us by Japan; and not the least of these surprises, to many Western minds, will perhaps be the unflinching steadiness of the Chinese soldier on the field of battle when his regenerated country calls upon him to defend her from the spoiler, and the heroism and fidelity of the Chinese woman at home. Europeans will doubtless wonder at what they take to be the sudden evolution of hitherto undreamed-of features in the Chinese character; yet those supposed new features will only be the ancestral qualities of loyalty and devotion directed into new channels broader and deeper than the old.

In spite of these considerations, most Western readers, whatever may be their views on the ethics of suicide, will probably confess themselves utterly unable to understand how a young betrothed girl can work herself into the state of intense emotional excitement which the act of self-destruction implies, merely as the result of the untimely death of the man to whom she happened to be engaged. The suicide of real widows, distracted with grief for the loss of a beloved husband, they can understand: but it cannot be love, and it can hardly be grief in the ordinary sense, that induces a Chinese girl to throw away her life when she hears of the decease of a young man with whom she has never exchanged a word and whose face perhaps she has never seen. It may be pointed out, in partial explanation of a phenomenon so strange to Western notions, that not only is a betrothal in China practically as binding as a marriage, but that marriage, and therefore the betrothal that precedes it, are according to Chinese belief founded on mysterious ante-natal causes. When the sceptical Englishman says jestingly that "marriages are made in heaven" he is giving expression to a theory that in China is held to be essentially true, though it is not expressed by the Chinese in exactly the same terms. The theory is independent of and perhaps older than Buddhism, though no doubt popular Buddhism has done a great deal to strengthen it; and it has certainly helped to keep the Chinese people satisfied with their traditional marriage customs, which, as every one knows, are quite independent of love-making. It is partly this theory that makes a Chinese woman contented and even happy in the contemplation of her approaching marriage to an unknown bridegroom, and often fixes in a girl's mind the idea that to give herself to any man other than her first betrothed, even if the latter died during the betrothal, would be as shameful a proceeding as to commit an act of unfaithfulness in wedlock.

Probably it is only the fear of social disorder and many other practical inconveniences that have prevented the second betrothals and second marriages of women from being more severely discouraged by public opinion than is actually the case. The first are in ordinary practice passed over without comment, though the fact of the original betrothal is "hushed up," or is at least not talked of; the second are in many parts of China still regarded with austere disfavour, though circumstances such as extreme poverty may render them necessary. In any case, the girl who refuses a second betrothal is still honoured and respected just as if she were a widow who had virtuously refused a second marriage.

It should be noted that the discredit of a second marriage or the lesser discredit of contracting a second betrothal does not attach to the woman only. But a man is in practice more at liberty than a woman to consult his own inclinations. The young widower who refrains from a second marriage after his wife's death is regarded as deserving of the greatest praise and respect, but if he is childless he is in the dilemma of having to be either unfaithful to the memory of his wife or undutiful towards his parents and ancestors; and as the parents "count" more than the wife in China he must choose to be unfaithful rather than undutiful. It is an important part of Chinese teaching that the most unfilial of sons is he who has no children: the reason being, of course, that childlessness means the extinction of the family and the cessation of the ancestral sacrifices. Thus a childless widower not only may, but must, seek a second marriage, especially if he has no married brothers. A common way out of the difficulty is for the widower to take a concubine: for the concubine's position in China is a perfectly legal one, and her children, as we have seen, are legitimate.

After all, it is perhaps impossible for any European mind to understand the real nature of the impulse that occasionally drives a Chinese girl to kill herself on the death of an unknown betrothed; not indeed because the occidental mind is essentially different from the oriental, but because of the unbridged chasm that lies between the social, religious and ethical systems and traditions of East and West. Considerations of this kind should perhaps teach us something of the limitations of our minds and characters, by showing how comparative a thing is our boasted independence of thought, and with what humiliating uniformity our ideals and impulses are conditioned by the social and traditional surroundings in which we live and move. However this may be, it will perhaps be comforting to know that the Chinese, unsentimental as they are in their methods of courtship, are no strangers to what in Europe we recognise as the romance of love.

As we saw in the last chapter, Chinese marriages, in spite of their supposed pre-natal origin, are not always productive of lifelong happiness; but as an offset to the melancholy picture there drawn of many domestic infelicities, it is only fair to emphasise the unruffled peace and contentment of very many Chinese households. In numerous cases this happy condition of affairs is the result of a real if somewhat undemonstrative love between husband and wife—a love that is perhaps all the more likely to be firm and lasting because it only sprang into existence after marriage. It is obviously difficult to cite instances of this. It is the unhappy marriages, not the happy ones, that in China—as everywhere else—engage the attention of an administrator or a judge. But sometimes a suicide occurs in circumstances which indicate that the moving impulse can only have been deep grief for the death of a beloved wife or husband. I have had cause to investigate officially no less than three such cases within two months.

A man named Chang Chao-wan died after a short illness. A few hours later, at midnight, his wife, who had previously shown every sign of intense grief, hanged herself. It was ascertained that the couple had lived a happy married life for nearly forty years. He was fifty-eight years of age, she was fifty-seven. They had three sons, all grown-up. In a case like this the action of the woman cannot be attributed to a desire for notoriety or a hope of posthumous honours, for it is only young widows who have any reason to expect such rewards.

The second instance is perhaps of greater interest. The story may be stated in the words of the man who first reported it. "My second son, Ts'ung Chia-lan, went to Kuantung (Manchuria) a few months after his marriage. This was eight years ago. He went abroad because the family was poor and he wanted to make some money. His wife was very miserable when he went and begged him not to go, but he promised to come back to her. He disappeared, and for years we heard nothing of him. His wife made no complaint, but she was unhappy. A few months ago a returned emigrant told us that he had seen my son in Manchuria. When I saw that this news made his wife glad I sent my elder son, Chia-lin, to look for him and bring him home. My elder son was away for more than two months and never found him. Then he returned by himself and told us there was no hope of our ever seeing Chia-lan again. His wife heard him say this. We tried to console her. She said nothing at all, but two hours after my elder son had come home she took a dose of arsenic and died. She was a good woman, and no one ever had a complaint to make against her. She had no child."

The last case to be mentioned shows that it is not women only who can throw away their lives on the death of their loved ones. A native of the village of Hai-hsi-t'ou came to report the suicide of a nephew, Tung Ch'i-tzu. "He was twenty years old," said my informant. "He was deeply attached to his wife and she to him. She died about six weeks ago. They had been married less than two years and they had no children. He was very unhappy after her death, and would not let any one console him. He was left alone, and yesterday when his father had gone to market he hanged himself from a beam with his own girdle. There was no other motive for the suicide. He died because he loved his wife too much, and could not live without her."

Deaths and suicides have made a dismal chapter, and perhaps no better way could be devised of lightening the gloom than by turning to a source of brightness that does more to make homes happy—Chinese homes and Western homes—than anything else in the world. To say that the Chinese love their children would be unnecessary: they would be a unique race if they did not. But it may not be accepted equally readily that Chinese girls and boys are charming and lovable even when compared with the modern children of western Europe and America, who have all the resources of science and civilisation lavished on their upbringing, and for whose benefit has been founded something like a special branch of psychology. Perhaps there has been no section of the Chinese people more hopelessly misunderstood by Western folk than the children. It is not unnatural that such should be the case. It is but rarely that feelings of real sympathy and mutual appreciation can exist between Chinese children and adult Europeans. It would be futile to deny the fact that by the Chinese child we are almost sure to be regarded as fearfully and wonderfully ugly—and all good children have an instinctive dislike of the ugly. Our clothing is ridiculous; our eyes and noses are deformed; our hair (unless it is black) looks diseased; our language—even if we profess to speak Chinese—is strangely uncouth; and the particular blandishments we attempt are not of the kind to which they are accustomed, or to which they know how to respond. There is no use in saying "goo-goo" to an infant that expects to be addressed with a conciliating "fo-fo"; nor should we be surprised if we fail to win the approval of a shy Chinese youngster by talking to him on the topics that would rouse the interest of the twentieth-century English schoolboy. As likely as not he will remain stolidly indifferent, and will stare at his well-meaning interlocutor with a disconcerting lack—or apparent lack—of intelligence. No wonder is it that the mortified foreigner often goes away complaining that Chinese children are ugly, stupid, horrid and ungracious little urchins and that he will never try to make friends with them again.

Even distance does not seem to lend much enchantment to the Chinese child from the European point of view. He is commonly caricatured somewhat after this fashion: he never smiles; he has hardly any nose and possesses oblique eyes that are almost invisible; he wears too many clothes in winter, so that he looks like an animated plum-pudding; he wears too little in summer—his birthday dress, to be explicit—and looks like a jointed wooden doll; he has a horror of "romping"; he is unwashed, deceitful and cruel; he cultivates a solemnity of demeanour with the view of leading people to think he is precociously wise and preternaturally good; and he is always mouthing philosophic saws from Confucius which he has learned by rote and of which he neither knows nor wants to know the meaning. Of course there is much in this description that is totally false and misleading, but it is not difficult to see the superficial characteristics that may give such a caricature a certain amount of plausibility.

To form a true idea of what Chinese children really are we must take them unawares among their own people, if we are fortunate enough to have opportunities of doing so. We must go into the country fields and villages and see them at work and play; we must watch them at their daily round of duties and pleasures, at school (one of the old-fashioned schools if possible), in times of sickness and pain, on occasions of festivals, family gatherings, weddings and funerals. The more we see of them in their own houses and surrounded by their own relatives the better we shall understand them and the more we shall like them. They are highly intelligent, quick to see the merry side of things, brimful of healthy animal spirits, and exceedingly companionable. This applies not only to the boys but also in a smaller degree to the girls, who, however, are much less talkative than they come to be in later years and are apt to be more timid and shy than their little brothers. They are terribly handicapped by the cruel custom of foot-binding, which it is earnestly to be hoped will before long be utterly abolished throughout China. It has undoubtedly caused a far greater aggregate amount of pain and misery in China than has been produced by opium-smoking. In spite of the cruelty involved in foot-binding, the rather common impression that the Chinese have no affection for their daughters or regard the birth of a girl as a domestic calamity is very far from correct. That a son is welcomed with greater joy than a daughter is true, but that a daughter is not welcomed at all is a view which is daily contradicted by experience. Mothers, especially, are often as devoted to their girls as they are to their boys. In the autumn of 1909 a headman reported to me that a woman of his village had killed herself because she was distracted with grief on account of the death of her child. The child in question was a girl, fourteen years of age. "Her mother," said the headman, "begged Heaven (Lao T'ien-yeh) to bring her daughter back to life, and she declared that she would willingly give her life in exchange for that of her daughter." It is erroneous to suppose that the old loving relations between mother and daughter are necessarily severed on the daughter's marriage. It is often the case that a young married woman's greatest happiness consists in periodical visits to her old home.

On the whole it may be said that Chinese children are neither better nor worse, neither more nor less delightful, than the children of the West, and that child-nature is much the same all the world over. Among their most conspicuous qualities are their good-humour and patience. Chinese children bear illness and pain like little heroes. This need not be ascribed entirely to the oft-asserted cause that "Chinese have no nerves," though indeed there is good reason to believe that the people of the West (perhaps owing to the relaxing effects of a pampering civilisation) are considerably more sensitive to physical suffering than the people of the Orient. Another interesting characteristic of Chinese children consists in the fact that good manners very often appear, at first sight, to be innate rather than acquired. Even illiterate children, and the children of illiterate parents, seem to behave with a politeness and grace of manner towards their elders and superiors (more particularly, of course, those of their own race) which they certainly have not learned by direct teaching. A well-bred European child sometimes gives one the impression that he has learned his exemplary "manners" as a lesson, just as he learns the tributaries of the Ouse or the dates of the kings. The most remarkable point about the Chinese child's "manners" is the grace and ease with which he displays them and the entire absence of mauvaise honte. No doubt the truth of the matter is that courtesy is no more a natural quality in the Chinese than in other races. The average peasant's child in north China, who is always treated with what seems to us excessive indulgence—being allowed to run wild and hardly ever punished for his childish acts of "naughtiness" and disobedience—grows up a devoted and obedient son and most courteous and conciliatory, as a rule, in his dealings with the outside world; but these graces were not born in him except possibly in the merely potential form of hereditary predisposition. He has acquired them unconsciously through the medium of that "endless imitation" which, as Wordsworth said, seems at times to be the "whole vocation" of a healthy child. Doubtless he learns the forms of politeness to some extent from his schoolmaster—and indeed if ethical teaching can make a good boy, then the educated Chinese boy should be perfect; but that school teaching is not everything is proved by the fact that in a poor country-district like Weihaiwei, where only a small proportion of the children go to school, there is no essential difference in "manners" between the lettered and the ignorant, though the educated are of course quicker in intelligence and more adaptable.

Perhaps the explanation of the matter is that in China the adult's life and the child's life are not kept too far apart from each other, so that the child has endless opportunities of indulging his imitative faculties to the utmost. Children live in the bosom of the family, and it is very rarely indeed that their natural high spirits are frowned down with the chilling remark that "little boys should be seen and not heard." Strange to say, the sparing of the rod does not seem to have the effect of spoiling the Chinese child, who is not more troublesome or unruly than the average European child. The Chinese, indeed, have a proverb which shows that they, too, understand the value of occasional corporal punishment: "From the end of the rod pops forth a filial son." But the rod is allowed to become very dusty in most Chinese homes, and the filial son seems to come all the same.

Female infanticide is not practised in Weihaiwei. The only infants ever made away with are the offspring of illicit connections, and in such cases no difference is made between male and female. A young woman who has been seduced is—or was till recent years—practically compelled to destroy her illegitimate child; her own life would become insupportable otherwise, and she would probably be driven to suicide. The voice of the people would be unanimous against the Government if it caused the mother in such a case to be prosecuted on a charge of homicide, although her own female relations and neighbours often treat her so unmercifully as a result of her fall that she sometimes chooses to die by her own hand rather than submit to their ceaseless revilings.

Chinese law strongly supports the sanctity of the home and is very severe on unfaithful wives, but it regards the killing of an illegitimate child as a very light offence,—indeed case-made law regards it as no offence at all provided the killing be done at the time of the child's birth or before it. Fortunately cases of this kind in Weihaiwei are very rare. But the poorest classes have one most objectionable custom which seems to be strangely inconsistent with the undoubted fondness of parents for their children. This is the practice of throwing away or exposing the bodies of children who have died in infancy or in very early childhood. This seems to indicate an extraordinary degree of callousness in the natures of the people. How a mother can fondle her child lovingly and watch over it with the utmost care and unselfishness when it is sick, and yet can bear to see its little body thrown into an open ditch or left on a hillside to become the prey of wolves or the village dogs, is perhaps one of those mysterious anomalies in which the Chinese character is said to abound. Even New Guinea babies are treated after death with more respect than is sometimes the case in China.[186] Needless to say the British Government has not remained inactive in the matter, and the man who now refrains from giving his infant child decent burial knows that he runs a risk of punishment.

The only excuses that can be made for the people in this respect are not based on their poverty (for poverty does not prevent them from burying their adult relatives with all proper decorum) but on their theory that an infant "does not count" in the scheme of family and ancestral relationships. No mourning of any kind is worn for children who die under the age of about eight, and only a minor degree of mourning for older children who die unmarried and unmarriageable. Even when a young child's body is given a place in the family burial-ground care is always taken to choose a grave-site that is not likely to be selected for the burial of any senior,[187] for it is considered foolish and unnecessary to waste good fÊng-shui on a mere child, who has left no descendants whose fortunes it can influence.

Young children are not indeed regarded as soulless,[188] for there are touching ceremonies whereby a mother seeks to recall the soul of her child when it seems likely to fly away for ever; but child-spirits are not supposed to exercise any control over the welfare of the family. They never "grow up" in the spirit-world, but merely remain infant ghosts, powerful in nothing. The ancestral temples preserve no records of dead children nor are their names inscribed on spirit tablets. This is very different from the state of things existing among a race that is ethnically far inferior to the Chinese, namely the Vaeddas of Ceylon, who pay special attention to "the shades of departed children, the 'infant spirits,'"[189] and often call upon them for aid in times of unhappiness or calamity.

AN AFTERNOON SIESTA (see p. 252).