On the last of our August the women of China celebrate the festival of the goddess of needlework. The interesting legend told to the daughters of the house is as follows: This goddess, because of her wonderful skill, was given by the great god Tien to a worthy farmer. After this life she incurred the wrath of the god and was removed from her husband’s star. Once a year, when her star comes round again, magpies conduct her back to her husband’s star home, across the carpet of the Milky Way, where she is welcome for a while, because she is as good a needleworker as he is a farmer and provider. The festival includes the exhibition on a table of the needlework of the women and the toy work of the girls. Wonderful toys of gummed sesame seeds, wax and paper are made, and toys worked by clockwork or heat, which exhibit all kinds of rural life,—some of it humorous. From behind screens the women listen to what the men callers have to say to the head of the family in praise of their handiwork. It is, however, principally a women’s festival and encourages the production of the gorgeous embroidery of the Chinese. A Chinese wit was asked the difference in the position of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon women, and she replied: “An Oriental man beats his wife in public to show that he is indeed the ruler, but he pets her in private, whereas a Western man pets his wife in public and beats her in private.” I do not know what the remote Tibet men do with their powerful women in private, but I do know that the women of Tibet who come down into Szechuen and Yunnan provinces with the trading trains are on an equal with man. They join him in work, play, in meeting strangers and in holding the “cash,” and therefore are the most independent of the Chinese women. They do not bind their feet, as they have too much work to do. They come next to the Tonquinoise as perhaps the best-looking of the Chinese. The best dressed women in China live in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces. The dress of Korean women is not so gorgeous as the Chinese dress, the former wearing green or white, and hiding their heads in immense basket hats, “to keep them from flirting” the wits say! The Korean woman at home, instead of modestly screening her face with a fan, does so by lifting up her wide sleeve. Muffs and gloves are not worn in the cold north. Instead, the wide long sleeve is gathered round the hand.

The campaign of the Tien Tsu Hui (As-Heaven-Made-It Foot Society) against foot-binding is meeting with much success. Chinese women are rejoicing that they are not withheld from physical freedom and an education, by being longer crippled. The idea that a bound foot is the surest sign of a lady, and the best recommendation for marriage, is dying out. As prices increase with the material development of China, men will not be able to hire servants to carry and wait on these crippled women. Therefore economy will advance the reform also. The famous viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, who died in 1909, was the first prominent Chinese official to become converted to the reform. The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi joined the movement. It is a pity that more Chinese girls from the Yangtze and southern provinces do not come to American and European schools, as their work, on returning to China, would do most for this reform. The snobbish idea, of course, was that a girl who never needed to work, and had never worked, made a very select wife, just as in America and Britain the “snobs” think that a girl who has never worked, and can not work, makes a finer wife than a woman who has been or is in business. The French have thought otherwise for a long time. One of the pioneer foreign women, outside of the missionaries, who worked and lectured in China for the unbinding of feet, was Mrs. Archibald Little, author of The Land of the Blue Gown, and wife of the intrepid Yangtze explorer and author.

The following love tale is the one oftenest painted on your teacup and saucer, and other Chinese pottery, and on fans, etc. Kung She is the sweet and lovely daughter of a rich man. She falls in love with her father’s bright and brave young secretary, who has more in rosy prospect and dreams than in lined pocket. The father proposes that the daughter shall, against her will, marry a rich old suitor. The lovers in desperation elope over a bamboo bridge to an island pavilion of willow wood, with beautiful up-curving eaves. The wrathful suitor follows and burns the pavilion and the bridge. The souls of the lovers take refuge in the bodies of two doves which are seen cooing from the branches of a banyan that grows above the pavilion. Thus we sit down to eat, and we fan ourselves each day over a beautiful love tale of romantic old China.

The queue is now going out as man’s head-dress in republican China. The general custom with Chinese women is to dress the hair out behind, sticking in large-headed gold pins; and the Manchu’s dress it over the ear, with the help of wide pins, and broad ribbons and flowers. The aboriginal tribes of Lolos in Szechuen province, and Miao Tszes in Kweichau province, dress the hair on top of the head over rats, in true Western cone-style. The Chinese women oil their hair and brush it out smooth on forms. The only departure from this is a straight bang allowed to girls. They wonder if we have brushes or combs in the West, and point to our curls (called “rough dog”) as a proof of our tonsorial carelessness.

Some of the proverbs of the women are:

“You can not tell a good husband that his wife has a defect.”

“Ugly and beautiful daughters all have one face to a true mother.”

“A man weds a wife for her goodness, but a concubine for her face.”

“Mother’s love is even in beasts, for the hungriest tiger will not eat its whelps.”

“Deeds are better than admiration.”

“A virtuous wife is like a loyal statesman; she knows only one king, her husband.”

“Mother and father first and wealth after.”

“She is dead indeed who walks around with a dead heart.”

“If you listen to every one’s advice, the picture will never be straight on the wall.”

“Let thy purse and not thine eyes tell thee what to buy.”

“You can’t expect the looking glass to reveal more than you put into it.”

Because of the worship of men ancestors, Confucianism has been called a man’s religion. Yet it recognizes woman’s work. A bronze brazier stands before the open white marble altar at Peking, in which once a year at the ancient Chou sacrifices to the God of Heaven, the emperor-pope burns silk. The Manchu emperor, in abdicating the throne, retained his sacerdotal offices, though strictly speaking, they should have fallen to the Ducal Kung Fut Tszes, of Shangtung province, who are the seventy-seventh in direct line from Confucius. A number of the Kungs, however, are Christians, and they exerted little insistence on their Confucian privileges. The care of the worms and the weaving of silk is distinctly woman’s work in China. This sacrifice is repeated by the governor at every capital, and heads of families sometimes, in their own office of patriarch priest, make the silk sacrifice. This is quite distinct from hiring a Taoist bonze to burn silvered and gilded imitations of money to appease a devil or “ying” spirit. A patriarch would have no influence there, the operation requiring a specialist more familiar with witches and demons! The Chinese women always sit on chairs and lounges (kangs); the Koreans and Japanese sit on the floor. This does not mean that the Koreans, whom the Japanese have conquered, are in sympathy with the latter, for they thoroughly hate each other. The Chinese never wear a feather, except to denote literary rank in men. Therefore the bucolic natives who see the fashion of western women, remark: “Only your women are educated, and very talented at that, some having a dozen literary degrees.” Millinery is for men, not for women in China, as only men wear a feathered cap. The gorgeous tail feathers of the Machi species of pheasant are particularly popular. Preserves of these birds are kept in the Wei valley, north of the Peling range of mountains in far western Kansu province, to provide the men milliners with supplies!

A well-known custom at Chinese weddings is the effort of the bride to sit upon part of the groom’s gown when they are drinking the betrothal tea together. The cups are tied with a red string, and the groom must not break the string in his effort to release his gown. If the bride succeeds it means that she will be his ruler. A partially similar custom prevails among the Miaotse aboriginal tribes of Yunnan province. The friends of the groom endeavor to prevent the bride’s brothers from throwing her veil on the roof of the house. If the latter are successful in the rush, the omen is that the bride will rule the groom, saying in any argument: “Remember that on June 15th my veil went on your roof!” The midwife is a well-filled calling, but she does not go by that name. She is called the “life-catcher” throughout the land. The “mother-in-law” joke does not obtain in China. Its place is taken by the son-in-law joke. It is the aim of the son-in-law and his wife to “go and live on mother” as long as possible. Mother resents it with the usual complaint: “Here comes my son-in-law, with his wife and six children, to live on us again for a month; dearie me,” etc.! When a family marries off a daughter, generally to save the expense of supporting her, they hope to see the last of her as far as that expense goes. Family courtesy, the Confucian “li” code, prescribes yearly entertainment, however, of the son-in-law’s family, which is not reciprocated, and hence the standing of the son-in-law joke as a mirth-provoker among those who perceive the code’s requirements obeyed, with exactness but not with cheerfulness!

Although the race has for centuries shaved the heads of the men almost to baldness, they have a great abhorrence of baldness in women, and this is frequently pleaded as a cause for divorce or breaking of an engagement (marriage contract). The women in general have luxuriant hair, though it is coarse, and its color and luster remain till late in life, owing to the use of oils, the absence of hats, and the out-of-door habits. If the lion-like chow dog (yellow or black) is the pet of the men, the Pekingese toy spaniel is the pet of the Manchu woman. She calls it her “sleeve dog.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi enumerated its points as follows: “It shall learn to bite a stranger; its toy body shall be maned and fixed with the fierce eyes of the great lion seeking its prey. Its ears shall be set like the sails of a war junk; its nose shall be stubby like the monkey god of the Hindus; its forelegs shall be bowed so that it can walk over the foot of its mistress, but shall not be able to stray far from the yamen; its feet shall be tufted so that its step shall be as on turf; and its color shall suit every change of gown. It shall be fed on the breasts of quails, livers of curlews and sharks’ fins. Its drink shall be Hankau, first-budded tea and antelope’s milk. If ill, it shall be anointed with the fat of leopards, and drink a thrush-egg full of the juice of the custard apple and dissolved rhinoceros’ horn. If very ill, piebald leeches shall be applied to it.” Despite all this poetry which aptly goes with this fashionable dog, it thrives very well on Spratt’s dog biscuit in the salons of West End, London, and Fifth Avenue, New York. A number of ladies are mixing up Chinese and Japanese names for the pets at the bench shows (Peking Yen, for instance), but the dog answers very well to the names Jip, Tip, etc., which we used to call those old favorite toy dogs, the black-and-tans. The dog looks like a cross between a Pomeranian and a King Charles spaniel. The face is decidedly lion-like; the bushy tail sweeps well over the back as does that of his big brother, the Chinese chow dog. The legs are short and bowed, and the manner is very alert.

Possibly overmuch has been written that the Chinese despise female children and worship male children. In the economic and religious structure of old China boys have been more valuable, but the human heart of the race has responded to love for its girls. Poverty, more than hardness of heart, has induced the race in instances to sell its girls; for China has been very poor because of flood and famine, resulting from inefficiency of government and the non-development of mines and manufacturing. The two greatest teachers of old China have for twenty-five centuries taught love of children in the following among other maxims. Confucius said: “Treat the young tenderly,” and Mencius wrote: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” Where the parents can afford it, the Chinese dress their boys and girls expensively and gorgeously, and fondle them as lovingly as do the Hebrews, who are supposed to set the standard in love for children, as compared with us colder northern races. One of the first things that the new government will attempt to suppress will be the sale of girl slaves and concubinage. The population of China will fall or remain stationary, which will be a good thing for China. There is, therefore, no “Yellow Peril” for the West, as the Emperor William enunciated in 1898. The poorer a man, the more children he desires in China, so that sons may take care of him in old age, but he forgets that he is raising uneducated sons and neglected girls, who are often sold into slavery. Better a family of four well-cared-for children in the new hygienic Cathay than a family of ten in the old China. China’s population will fall under the new rÉgime, but her efficiency, education and comfort will advance, and those who will benefit the most, as compared with their former condition, will be her women.

At the time of the revolution, October, 1911, to February, 1912, there were 400,000 starving girls and women in the Yangtze and Hwei River valleys alone who offered to sell themselves for food; China’s courts will no more defend the legality of such contracts under duress, as we in the West must revise our “freedom of contract” and “confession” laws where an uninformed or a restrained individual signs away rights. Every Chinese boy has till now married early in life, Shanghai being an exception in having a large demi-monde colony. The Kuo Kuang Pao, a native paper of Peking, complained in a late issue of courtesans (with modesty they call it rather the “custom of Shanghai”) coming to Peking, and soliciting students brazenly in the streets. Shanghai has a “slave refuge” for the protection of abandoned and abused girls. Intense poverty on account of famine is at the base of this curse. It is not as common in Hongkong and Canton as in the valleys of the Hoang, Han, Yangtze and Hwei Rivers.

The position of the Chinese woman, taken by the white man, who is mean enough to do it, as a common law wife, and of their Eurasian children, who are often not acknowledged, or are deserted, is a pathetic one in Hongkong, Shanghai and many treaty ports. It was more common in the old days than it is now, and men of high position often fell, when the Oriental ports were designated over an ill-informed world as the “white man’s grave,” to which no white woman would come. There are Eurasian schools and orphanages in Hongkong, Shanghai, Macao, etc., and the colonies of deserted Eurasians have a population of thousands. They are far from unintelligent. The best billiard player in Hongkong was of this mixed race. They have dark eyes and hair and dress in both foreign and Chinese style. They are taller and have larger heads than the pure Chinese. In the second and third generations the hair turns fairer. Naturally they partake of the characteristics of each race. A Eurasian is more sprightly than the Chinese, and he is inclined to the sporting and spendthrift proclivities of the foreigner. They are the clerks and second men of the ports. Few rise high, though many now attend colleges. They are the best penmen and linguists of the Far Fast, though not earnest enough to become scholars, or persistent enough to become the successful merchants which the men of their mother’s race are. Feeling sometimes acutely the opprobrium which is visited upon them by both races, they often claim a dark foreign nationality, generally Portuguese of Macao colony.

I want to relate the remarkable history of one Eurasian and his mother. I shall say no more of his father than that in blood and ability he was one of the noblest names that came for a long sojourn in the Far East. His position was such that the father could not own the son, especially as in time the former married a white woman. The boy, who from the beginning bore a Chinese name, was the picture of his father, and his dressing in Chinese clothes and wearing a queue shocked all of us who knew the history, for the boy was taller than the Chinese and had the face of a foreigner. Some laughed, for the youth seemed to be a foreigner on perpetual masquerade. He came into our hong as clerk, was easily the best penman and figurer in the office. His manners were those of fashionable West End, London, or genteel Upper Fifth Avenue; you felt when you heard him speak that you were talking to your superior. He often had business dealings with his father, yet he did not seem conscious of the relationship. The son, being even the abler man, the painful dramatic situation was pitiful. The tall Eurasian youth married a Chinese woman in time, and reverted to his mother’s race, and his deserted Chinese mother returned to her blood, married a Chinese, had many pure blood children, and publicly disowned her Eurasian boy. Privately, however, the boy and mother sometimes met, and the scene matched in dramatic pathos the meetings with the father. The youth seemed to be cheerful despite all these trials. I never saw him reveal pride or resentment; only in this way, when in later years for a time, he came into a position of power in a Chinese company which entered into international trade, he was merciless when the white competitor withstood him. I have often felt his mighty blows and been outwitted by his commercial strategy. He smiled in a complacent way as though to say: “Why might I not circumvent you; you know something, perhaps, about one race, but nothing about the other. I, being a Eurasian, know much about the two races.” He deserved all his conquests. He had something to avenge, and he did right in casting his life with China and not Europe. The remarkably dramatic setting of this boy’s, his mother’s and father’s life would have given Shakespeare material for a tragedy, and the foreigner concerned would have paid the price of his heartless audacity, despite the romantic poetry which Pierre Loti wove around such relationships in his book Madame ChrysanthÈme.

Perhaps the most significant sign of China’s reform is the new status of women. Never before have Chinese women traveled with their merchant husbands. In a few isolated instances Chinese ministers have taken their wives abroad, but there have never been mixed parties of men and women until the revolution. On November, 1911, a touring party of prominent members of Chinese trading guilds of several of the provinces met at Shanghai for a business tour of Japan. They were accompanied by their wives. The New China has its Mrs. Pankhurst in Miss Yik Yung Ying, of Canton, who is foreign trained and has admission to the Nanking Assembly as representing the women of her province of Kwangtung. She has obtained from the Nanking Assembly a promise of equal suffrage on equal property and educational conditions. Some of her suffragettes attacked the assembly police and broke windows in true Pankhurst style, the patient Chinese wits only remarking: “This froth will blow off the glass and leave the clear liquid!”

Many girls of the mission schools of Canton, Fuchau and the Yangtze cities of the rebellion could not be restrained from serving at the front in the republican revolution. Some of them tried to form bomb-throwing corps. Where they insisted on service the missionaries of Wuchang, Hankau, Shanghai and Nanking organized them in several uniformed Red Cross Corps, which performed effective and brave work. The large clans, or family villages, are sending to the missions for graduate teachers to take charge of their girls. The head man (hsiang lao) sets apart a bedroom, a schoolroom and a courtyard for the school, and the whole family clan contributes. The mothers of course continue their instruction in the Chinese classics, folk lore, religion and their inimitable needlework. Elsewhere I have spoken of the St. Hilda’s school at Wuchang, under American Episcopal auspices, which aims to become the Women’s College of Central China. A daughter of the original reformer, Kang Yu Wei, has studied in America. Miss Li Yu, the granddaughter of Li Hung Chang, took the course at Wells Female College, at Aurora, New York, where she was a prize scholar.

Cornell in particular, Hartford High, Leland Stanford, Columbia, University of Washington State, Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, University of Michigan, and all the women’s and co-ed colleges in America have enrolled more Chinese women than all the other women’s colleges of the world, but not so many as they might and will, now that the new rÉgime has opened with rainbow promise. Forty young Chinese women are studying medicine in America through the work of China’s first woman doctor, Miss Ya Mi Kin, who is in charge of the Tientsin Woman’s Hospital and nurses’ school.

A remarkable Chinese woman doctor, going by the name of Doctor Mary Stone (educated at University of Michigan), manages the American hospital at Kiukiang, and Doctor Tsang Cho Kin, a Cantonese lady, is prominent in modern medical work at Canton, Fuchau and Shanghai. The American Presbyterian women (to instance only one denomination here) have seventeen girls’ schools open at Canton alone, and in addition the following exemplary development: a school for blind girls, in charge of Doctor Mary Niles; a boarding school for children of lepers; a hospital school for girls in charge of Mrs. Kerr; a training school for women teachers; the Hackett Medical College for women; and the Turner Nurses’ School, under the charge of the noted Doctor Mary Fulton. At Ningpo there is a girls’ school and a women’s industrial school. At Shanghai there is the well-known girls’ school at the south gate; and at Hangchow and Nanking there are girls’ boarding schools. At Nanking the wives of Chinese taotais (officials such as mayors) are encouraged to preside over mothers’ meetings. At Peking there is the Bridgman College for Women, a women’s medical college and nurses’ school, a girls’ day and industrial school. At Paoting, in Pechili, there is the Union School for Girls; at Tengchow, in Shangtung, a girls’ high school and industrial school; and at Tsinan a girls’ school. At many of these girls’ schools, presided over by foreign women, the Chinese pay much of the expense; and they are copying the schools to the best of their ability all over the land for their girls and women, and calling upon the mission women’s schools for graduates whom they may use as teachers. There is no greater proof that the New China has begun its march toward the sun than that its womanhood has at last been thus recognized in modern education and opportunity.

Womanhood over the world responds to the same chord of sympathy. One of the contributions to the Woman’s Titanic Memorial came from a Chinese girl, Ying Low, with this message: “I send this for Captain Smith’s soul.” The word for woman in Chinese is “nu,” and the probability now is that she will be new indeed, and the foundation stone of the New China for her sons.

The first modern style Chinese marriage among those not Christian was solemnized in April, 1912, in the well-known Chang Su Ho Gardens, Shanghai. The families concerned were wealthy and the marriage was a civil one. A ring, music, flowers, witnesses, a public ceremony and certificate contract all came into use. There was nothing picturesquely old-style or secret, as the middleman, the closed chair, the ceremony at the groom’s house, the joined teacups, the contests between teams of both families, the worshiping of sticks and house coffins, the discordant orchestra, the chairs of food, the goose present and heckling of the bride by practical jokers.