Passion amongst the Chinese for sons—Rejoicings at the birth of a son—Sorrow at the birth of a girl—Birth of an heir to the throne—The Great Forgiveness—Polite phrase for a girl—Amusements of childhood—Home training to lie and swear—Going to school of the boys—Books they read—Binding of girls’ feet—Origin of this custom—Evils connected with it—Chinese love for home.
Passion amongst the Chinese for sons—Rejoicings at the birth of a son—Sorrow at the birth of a girl—Birth of an heir to the throne—The Great Forgiveness—Polite phrase for a girl—Amusements of childhood—Home training to lie and swear—Going to school of the boys—Books they read—Binding of girls’ feet—Origin of this custom—Evils connected with it—Chinese love for home.
There is no nation that is fonder of children than the Chinese. They have a perfect passion for them, and it is, very rarely that a family can be found without one or more of them in it. If there are none born into it, arrangements are made to supply that deficiency by buying some, for the Chinese seem to have a perfect dread of a childless home. If a man has the means, he will buy several sons, who are treated as though they were his own, and, when they grow up, they will inherit his property, and have all the privileges that are given to those that were born in the family.
It is this passion for children that makes a man marry more than one wife. He desires to surround himself with those who will perpetuate his name, and who when he is dead will come to the tomb and make offerings to his spirit, that shall in some mysterious way reach him in the dark world, and which shall be a source of comfort to him in the gloom and shadow that surround him there.
A childless wife in China is a person to be profoundly pitied. She is looked down upon by her mother-in-law, who is anxious to have the dignity and the reputation of the home maintained by the birth of a grandson, who some day in the future, dressed in sackcloth, will act aschief mourner, when his father shall be carried to his long home and laid to rest amongst the hills. The neighbours, too, have an undisguised contempt for her, which they show in only too brutal a manner, when some row takes place and they have a chance of telling each other what their private opinion is with regard to one another.
The worst is, her own husband begins to treat her with coldness and neglect, when the time goes by and the home still remains without a son. If he is very sympathetic he will buy one and make her a present of him, though she will never occupy the place in his affections that she would if the child were her own. If his nature is of a coarser grain, he will bring in a second wife, who will usurp her position in the home, and make her life one long-continued misery.
When a son is born into the family there are great rejoicings amongst every member of it. The one most concerned in the matter, the mother, has had her fears and anxieties for many a day, and her heart has throbbed with doubt and fear as she has asked whether the little one is a boy or a girl, and when she has been told it is a son, the terror has gone out of her heart, and a sense of supreme joy has filled her with immense content. Her position in the home and in the street or village in which she lives is now an established one. Her husband’s affections are bound to her, the hectoring, domineering tone of the mother-in-law is softened down, and she has a recognized place in the home that will never be questioned, whilst she can now look into the faces of the wives and mothers of the neighbourhood with a consciousness that no thrill of contempt will ever taint their thought of her.
As for the father, he walks about as proud as a turkey-cock, although according to Chinese etiquette he assumes an air of indifference as though nothing special had happened, whilst all the time under those stolid featuresthat are as undemonstrative as a tombstone, a world of passion and joyous feeling and romantic thoughts are playing their sweet music around his heart.
And now, congratulations pour in from every quarter upon this most happy event of the arrival of a son. It would indeed for the moment appear as though such a thing had not happened for years, and that the coming of a baby boy was something so rare as to transport the family and all the numerous relatives, and even the nearest neighbours, with such feelings of gladness, that these could only be expressed by the most exaggerated expressions of joy at the wonderful event.
The little mite is but a speck in the great ocean of babyhood that fills this land with its swarms of children, and yet, happily for it, it is welcomed as though it were the only one in the Empire, and faces are wreathed in smiles, and the choicest phrases are culled out of the language of poetry, and minds are set to work to invent new phrases by which to express the gladness of soul that men feel at the coming of the little one into the world.
Let us peep for a moment into the home; it is a middle-class one, and presents the usual untidy, slovenly and unswept appearance that is characteristic of every such one in the country. But to-day an air of peculiar happiness seems to pervade the house that makes one forget the dust, and the litter, and the atmosphere of discomfort that makes a foreigner feel as though he dare not sit down, whenever he enters any ordinary dwelling-house. The faces are all lighted up with smiles, and every one is prepared to say something pleasant. By and by an elderly woman comes in with a strapping black-haired girl, her daughter, by her side. They have come to see the baby, and they have brought with them a fowl, a special gift for the young mother, who for the next month will need some nourishing food. Shortly after two or three more drop in withpresents of pigs’ feet, and vermicelli, and hemp oil in which the dainties are to be fried. All these articles are supposed to be exceedingly nutritious and exactly suited to one in the condition of the mother.
It is a pleasant picture to look upon. The great Eastern sun outside is doing his best to flood the world with his beams, and he sends his rays flashing into the home, and he lights the faces of the women as with animated conversation they discuss how babies should be treated and how the mother should be nursed to keep off the evil spirits that at this particular crisis are roaming out seeking to find a chance of bringing disaster upon the family, and of carrying off the infant son that has brought happiness to the parents.
The scene presented to us on a similar occasion in the homes of the very poor is of a very different character from the one just described. Whilst the father and the mother have a joy as deep and as profound as that experienced by those who are better off, they have no visits from friends that troop in with presents and with loving greetings, and no anxiety is shown as to whether the baby shall ever grow up to be a great man, or whether the mother shall be so cared for that no mishap may befall her. The poor have no time for such luxuries, and so the arrival of a son and heir to the toils and sorrows of his parents usually makes little difference in the daily routine of the home. A tiny stranger has arrived with his pathetic appeal for the loving care and support of his mother, but the poor mother has to carry on her daily duties just the same as before, and no surprise is excited when she appears in the fields on the very same day and performs some of the heavy duties connected with the cultivation of their little farm.
LITTLE LADS.
LITTLE URCHINS.
To face p. 46.
The birth of a son is hailed with delight in every home in China, from the highest to the lowest. In the palace ofthe Emperor, when the heir to the throne is born, there are rejoicings that extend from the capital to the furthest extent of the Empire, and every mother’s heart goes out in sympathy and gladness for the queen who has given a ruler to sit on the Dragon Throne. The birth of this Royal Son has brought such happiness to the Imperial Home that it is felt that it ought to be commemorated by a special act of grace that would bring freedom and deliverance to large numbers of the most unhappy of the Emperor’s subjects.
This is called the “Great Forgiveness,” because no sooner is it known that the Empress has borne a son, than an edict is issued, stamped with the vermilion seal, and dispatched to the viceroys and great mandarins in every province and department of the Empire, ordering them to at once release certain classes of prisoners who are confined in prison, and who without this royal clemency might lie confined within their dingy cells for years to come without any hope of release. This is a noble act, and all connected with the coming of a little son, who has only just opened his eyes to the light of heaven, and who yet has had the happiness of flinging wide the prison doors and of setting free countless numbers of men and women, who otherwise would have pined and fretted within their dungeons till hope had died out of their hearts, and, filled with despair, they had closed their eyes upon life.
Let us now try and picture another scene. The little one, long expected and long speculated about, that has filled the fancy of the mother, and that has helped to weave a story of romance in the mind of the father, turns out after all to be not a boy, but a girl—only a girl. The visions die away, and the poetry loses its romance, and becomes the commonest prose, when it is found that the stranger is a girl. It is quite safe to make the assertion that in all the countless homes that exist in the hugepopulation of China not one of them is prepared to welcome a girl or to feel that she could ever take the place of a boy.
We become convinced of this when we look upon the scene that I am endeavouring to picture, for it is a typical one, and the ages have stereotyped it, as one of the correct photographs of social life in this land.
No sooner is it announced that the child is a girl than a kind of dismay falls upon the household. The father’s face becomes darkened with a scowl that shows the passion that is raging in his heart. His very love for his wife is for the moment turned into bitterness, for he considers that she has wronged him and brought disgrace upon the home.
The mother, instead of being loyal to her sex and gathering the little one to her bosom, as she would have done had it been a boy, thrusts it indignantly from her and refuses even to look at it. She now begins to weep and sob out her sorrow in tears and bitter expressions at the bad fate that is clouding her life. The baby has been wrapped up hastily and thrown with contempt upon a bench in the room, where, uncared for and despised, as something that has brought bad luck into the home, she sends forth her wailing cry without its once touching the mother near by.
It is at this particular period in the little girl’s history that the greatest peril to her life arises, for it is just at this point that so many take their last look at the world and vanish into darkness. With a mad passion of disappointment in the hearts of both parents, it is so easy to snap the thread of the little life, and sweep away the sorrow and the shame from their home.
On one occasion we had a nurse in our family. She was a woman of a great deal of character, modest in her demeanour and a willing and untiring worker. Her name was the one thing about her that was peculiar, and that inChinese meant “Picked up.” It was a most unusual one, and I felt that there was a history connected with it that would reveal some incident in her early life. Anxious to learn what that was, I said to her one day, “What an extraordinary name you have. How did it come about that your mother gave it you?”
A smile lighted up her plain features, whilst she exclaimed, “I can easily explain that. The name was given me very soon after my birth, in remembrance of a rather tragic affair in which, as my mother believed, Heaven interfered to preserve my life. The evening I was born, both my father and mother were so distressed at my being a girl, that in a fit of anger the former seized hold upon me and threw me out into the open courtyard in front of our house. Fortunately it was the height of summer, and the night air was hot and scorching, and so as I lay there all night long, I received no injury from the wind that blew over me.
“At dawn next morning, my father came out for something, and was astonished to find that I was still alive. He had expected that the fall on the hard stone slabs that paved the courtyard and the long exposure would have killed me. He was a very superstitious man, and so he believed that my escape from death had been due to the intervention of Heaven, and that it was designed by it that my life should be preserved. Impressed with this idea, he picked me up and carried me to my mother, who took me to her heart and decided that I should not be destroyed. In memory of that eventful night, and my father’s rescue of me next morning, I was called, ‘Picked up.’”
There is no doubt but that countless baby girls have thus disappeared within the first two or three hours of their birth, when the unnatural passion of the parents has been excited by anger and disappointment. If they are spared long enough to let that cool down, and the child still lives, the voice of nature begins to be heard, and the mother willask for the little one to be given her, and from that moment there will be no more talk of putting it to death.
Under the most favourable circumstances, and where it has been decided to rear the child, no congratulations are ever uttered by any one on her birth. To do so would be considered so grim a joke that it would be looked upon as an insult so marked and so offensive that a perpetual feud would be engendered that would never be dissolved as long as life lasted.
The neighbours who have been on the alert with their congratulations all ready to offer to the happy parents in the event of a son being born, are placed in the most awkward position, and they get out of it as deftly as they can by the use of polite phrases and airy nothings of which the Chinese language has such an abundance. In these attempts no one would ever dream of using the common word “Girl.” That would grate harshly on the ears of those whose sensitive feelings are only too ready to think that some reflection is intended by a reference to their daughter. A polite phrase is used instead, which means “A thousand pieces of gold,” a title which by a subtle species of legerdemain lifts the poor forlorn little mite, who has barely escaped drowning or suffocating, into the region of an heiress with a large fortune with which to begin her life.
The early years of a child seem on the whole to be happy ones. In the swarms of children that one sees almost anywhere, one gets the impression that on the whole they thoroughly enjoy themselves. They run about and romp and dance and gambol very much as a similar number of English children would do on the village green, or in the streets and lanes of a home city.
The Chinese are far from being a gloomy race of people. Their hearts are full of fun and vigorous life, and this is seen in the sturdy urchins that race about with each other and that fill the air with their merry sounds of childish laughter.
STUDIES OF CHINESE BOYS.
To face p. 51.
With very young children this is all the more remarkable since so little is provided for their amusement. Such things as pictures or story-books or toys in the large and profuse sense with which our nurseries are supplied in England, do not exist in this land. Childhood is left very much to its own resources to find out the means of passing the time pleasantly. It is pathetic to watch how, with the fewest and simplest materials, the little ones will pass the day, with apparently perfect contentment. The method most popular, because it involves no expense, is the making of mud pies, and the building of miniature houses with broken pieces of tiles that can be picked up from the streets.
The parents never seem to consider it a part of their duty to suggest means of recreation for their children. The mothers are intensely ignorant and slovenly, and are too occupied with their household duties to have any time to devote to the education or amusement of their little ones, and so they are allowed to grow up very much as nature or their surroundings mould them, until the time has arrived, for the boys at least, when they must enter school, and come under the discipline of a school-master.
It is interesting at this point to consider what are the moral restraints that are at the command of the parents to train up their children to be good and honest citizens of the Empire. Apart from the natural conscience which no amount of heathenism can entirely eradicate, and the lofty ideals which their sages and teachers in olden times sent forth as beautiful spirits to permeate and wander through succeeding generations, the family has no influence whatsoever in guiding the little ones into a noble and virtuous life.
How could one expect that it should? There is absolutely no religion in it, for the occasional worship of the idols, when some favour is requested from them or some sorrow to be averted, has no moral effect upon a singlemember of the home. The idols are supposed to be mysterious forces that have great power in the supernatural world, who have to be bribed and coaxed not to send down evil upon men, for whom in their inmost hearts it is believed that they have a natural antipathy. They are never appealed to as loving or caring for men. There is nothing that will bring a smile over the yellow face sooner than to ask a man if the idols love men. It is a question that is so brimming over with fun to a Chinaman that it is irresistible in its effects, and the soberest face will be wreathed with smiles whenever it is put.
There is no Bible, of course, and not a single book in the home, and if there were the mothers could not read them. It will be seen, then, that the machinery in the West for the training of the children does not exist out here. There is no God, no churches, no Sunday or Sunday schools, no pictures, and no special literature to influence the minds of the young to withstand the evil forces that grow rank and wild all around them in whatever grade of society they may happen to be.
It may be said without any exaggeration that it is in the home that the children learn the evils that cling to them all their lives, and that it is the mothers that are the principal teachers of them. Lying, for example, as a fine art is one that is indoctrinated by the mothers’ example. It is upon it that they mainly depend for the governing of their children. As a rule there is no proper discipline in the home, and no attempt made to make the children obey promptly any order that is given. The result is that the mother, who has most to do with them, depends largely upon loud-voiced threatenings and an occasional beating when her passion gets the control over her, though this latter is rare, since the Chinese parents really love their children, and seldom resort to this severe method of curbing the unruly or high spirits of their offspring.
The great weapon in her armoury in the earlier days of her children’s lives is a technical expression that is known in every family of “Deceiving the Children.” One day a visitor called upon a family with which he was acquainted. The lady of the house was in and so also was her little son of four or five years of age, a bright, interesting child, with snapping black eyes, and as full of life as a healthy child could be.
During the conversation the child got restless and was inclined to get into mischief. He was approaching a corner of the room, when his mother called out in a loud, excited voice, “Don’t go there, there is a huge rat waiting for you, that will pounce out upon you, and tear out your eyes.” The little fellow, with terror depicted upon his face and with an agonized cry, made a bee-line to the opposite side of the room, and crouched near his mother in the most abject terror.
After a while, having nothing to do, he began to move about in what his mother considered forbidden paths, when once more, with a shriek that had assumed a natural look of alarm, she shouted in her loudest tones, “Come away quickly, don’t go there; there is a black snake hiding in the corner. It will bite you, and you will die in a few minutes.” Again a wild look of horror on the little fellow’s face, and a sudden rush to his mother’s side to escape the deadly serpent that was lying in wait for him, and sobs of agony broke from him as he clung to her for protection.
After a while he once more, with the restlessness of childhood, began to move about in search of something to amuse himself with, and was once more getting on ground that his mother considered unsafe, when again, with red, excited face and shrill tones she yelled out, “Why do you go there? Don’t you know there is a devil hiding round the corner that has a great love for the flesh of a young boy, and he will seize you and devour you, and crunch your bones with his great teeth?”
At this juncture the gentleman said to the mother, “How is it that you have in a very short time deceived your son three times by telling him that something will happen that you know cannot possibly occur? Are you not afraid of teaching him to be a liar? He will find out in time that what you say cannot be relied upon, and then he will lose faith in you and learn to regard lying as a thing of no importance.”
The woman’s face became suffused with smiles, and then she broke out into laughter, which for some time she could not suppress. “Oh,” she said, “I did not think of all the terrible things that you talk of so seriously. I merely wanted to keep the little fellow quiet. I knew that he would not obey me if I simply asked him to be a good boy, and so I thought I would frighten him. Everybody uses this plan in China, and I don’t see that there is any harm in it.”
Another exceedingly injurious habit that is learned in the home is swearing. It seems an incredible thing, but it is no doubt a fact that every one swears in China, without distinction of sex or position in society. The rough coolies that one meets with on the roads interlard their ordinary conversation with the foulest expressions, but only let two of them fall out with each other, and there will be such a torrent of obscenity and such a bombardment of one another by filthy epithets that one recoils with disgust at the degrading terms that flow from their lips.
You are standing talking to a fine, scholarly gentleman. His home near by is a perfect mansion as compared with the hovels that press up against the wall that surrounds his property. You are charmed with his manner, so elegant and refined is he in his conversation with you. His talk, too, is high toned, and shows that he has been imbued with the ethics of the great sage Confucius, who drew a wonderful picture of the ideal man, that he called “The son of aKing,” and that he has been studying his lineaments so that he might copy him in his own life.
All at once two coolies come along with a steady run, bearing between them a great heavy pig, that squeals and grunts with pain from the ropes that cut into its feet. The road is rough and uneven, and they make a false step and bump heavily against the scholar, who falls to the ground. The transformation that takes place in this refined and gentlemanly person is instantaneous and amazing. His company manners have fled, the picture of the ideal man has vanished from his brain, and he now stands on the level of the most profane coolie, that has never read Confucius, and has never studied etiquette of any kind. The language that flows from him is obscene and so filthy, and of such a Sodom and Gomorrah character that you turn away from him in absolute loathing as a man that would pollute and contaminate you by his very presence.
Two women have a difference, and, like all Chinese quarrels, it has to be fought out in the open street, where every one can hear and decide for himself the merits of the case. They begin with a few desultory remarks, not very highly complimentary, and with just sufficient edge in them to show that each of them means war to the knife, and that they are now fleshing their swords for the real encounter that is imminent. By and by a single word is shot like a poisoned arrow by one of them that inflames the other to madness. The flood-gates are now open, and there pour from the lips of each a perfect cataract of foul and obscene language, that makes many of the bystanders, whose minds are stored with these very terms, actually shudder with a vague sense of abhorrence.
Now all this is learned in the home. The first notes of this terrible language were first heard from father and mother, but mainly from the latter. In her anger and passion she will hurl epithets at her daughter that willdescribe her as one of the vilest of her sex, whilst the boys, from the awful terms she uses about them, might be the very refuse and offscourings of the earth. The little ones can say nothing, but they store up in the innermost recesses of their minds these awful phrases, to be used as the years go by when passion stirs up the fiercest elements of the heart into wild bursts of fury.
And thus the years go by for both boys and girls, with nothing very eventful in the lives of either, until they are about eight. The Chinese are not an idle race of people, and as soon as the little ones can put their hands to anything, their small services are utilized for the general benefit of the home. If they are poor, the boys go out and gather grass and fallen twigs to be used as firewood, whilst the girls help as far as they can in the ordinary duties of the household.
Their main occupation, however, is play, and the most of their hours are devoted to that. Chinese children develop slowly. Neither in intelligence nor in physical development are they at all equal to the boys and girls in England, so up till they are ten years of age it is considered that their services are of no material value to the family, and that their time is best spent by doing nothing but running wild.
At about eight preparations are made for the lad to go to school. Terms are made with the school-master of the nearest school, a certain number of books splashed and dotted over with mysterious-looking hieroglyphics are bought, and one morning at early dawn, just as the pale grey light begins to colour the landscape, the little fellow finds his way along the silent road to the school-house. Here for six or seven years he will spend the best part of his days in the study of books that contain the ideals of the nation.
A BOY CARRYING BASKETS.
To face p. 56.
They are the driest of dry books, and were reallywritten for scholarly men, and for men of thought, whose thinking powers were considerably developed. There is not a single story in their pages. No child or woman’s voice is heard from beginning to end, and no laughter, and no sob of pain, or any touch of the finer qualities of the human heart.
The boy begins at eight not with “Jack and Jill,” or the “House that Jack built,” or with any nursery rhyme that would appeal to a child’s imagination, but with the solemn statements on high ethical questions that some of the greatest thinkers and teachers of China have produced. Some idea of the style of the books that these little urchins have to grind at, may be gathered from the fact that the first book that is put into the hands of that eight-year-old scholar is calledThe Three Words Classic, from the fact that each sentence is made up of three words rhythmically set. It is about as crabbed and as profound a piece of writing as exists in the whole language. Its first sentence makes a dogmatic statement which has not been generally accepted in China, viz. “Man by nature is originally good.” Just imagine a boy of ten, accustomed till to-day to run as wild as a climbing plant, that creeps up trees, or over ruined walls, or down the side of a precipice, brought face to face with a statement like this, instead of the conventional one, “My dog,” or “His cat,” that confronts the English lad as he first enters the domain of learning.
Try and conceive the wear and tear upon a child’s spirit in having for years to shout and scream out at the top of his voice, as Chinese scholars do, such profound teaching as the above, and you will then have caught a glimpse of the steep and precipitous way along which these eight-year scholars have to travel in their pursuit after knowledge. A more dreary system of education, where imagination and humour, and poetry and romance, and all the finer emotions of the soul are rigorously excluded, it would be impossibleto conceive than that which every Chinese scholar has to go through in every school throughout the Empire to-day.
And so the years go by, childhood is being slowly left behind, and young manhood comes with its own responsibilities and its own ambitions. It is a dreary road along which the young scholar travels. He gets no knowledge of life that will make him tender and sympathetic with his fellow-men in their sins or their sorrows. He acquires a profound contempt for every other country but his own. His natural hardness and selfishness of heart are intensified by a pride that nothing can soften, whilst his antipathy to any change or progress either in his own village or in his country is deeply rooted and the adoption of new ideas or liberal thoughts is considered a heresy so abominable as to brand any one that adopts it with the terrible name of “Barbarian,” a term from which every self-respecting Chinaman shrinks as from a plague.
With the leaving of school, childhood has passed away, and now the lads will have to select the occupations they are going to pursue in the future. Some elect to be scholars, especially if they have shown proficiency in their studies, and they finally join the great army of school-masters that are required for the countless schools throughout the country. Others become clerks in business houses, but as arithmetic is not a branch of school education, they are obliged to pay a small premium and learn the use of the abacus or counting boards, in one of the cash shops in the town. Others, again, engage themselves as book-keepers or shop assistants, or in some of the many employments that are open to young men who can read and write.
Not a few of them drift into evil habits and finally become opium-smokers and gamblers. If they are clever scamps, which this class usually are, they turn their attention to medicine, and gathering together a few herbs they travel through the country as strolling doctors, professing to cureevery disease to which the human frame is heir, and living a most precarious and, on the whole, a very wretched life.
About the same time that the great change takes place in the experience of the boy, the girl too comes to a point where the easy conditions under which she has hitherto lived suddenly stop and the great trial of her life begins. I refer to foot-binding.
In every home that professes to any respectability, foot-binding is an absolutely essential thing for the girls in it. To neglect this would be to confound them with slave girls, whose feet are never bound, and with the children of the very lowest classes whose poverty would not admit of their adopting this polite custom. It has been found by a very large experience that a girl must be eight years old before her feet will bear the tremendous strain that is put upon them, in the effort to destroy the handiwork of nature.
It is true that in some of the more wealthy homes, where a very small foot is a sign of blue blood, they begin as soon as the girl is six to put her to the torture, but this is not the general rule. By the time the girl is eight, the bones of the feet have become sufficiently hardened to bear the incessant pressure that is put upon them to contract the feet into such a small compass that they will go into a shoe of two or three inches in length.
The process begins by turning all the toes, except the large one, on to the sole of the foot. This of course is a slow but an exceedingly painful one. It is continued week after week and month after month for several years until the toes have been thrown back, at the expense of the instep, which is made to bulge out by the pressure of the bandages; until finally the “Golden lilies,” as these unsightly objects are called, are complete, and the poor girl is a veritable cripple for life.
The cruelty that is practised upon these poor children during the initial operation of binding is very severe. Thefirst few weeks are so very trying that attempts are made by the girls to tear the bandages from their aching, tortured feet. This is resisted by their mothers, who have to resort to brutal methods to keep the little hands from endeavouring to relieve themselves of the pain that has become intolerable.
Tears and shrieks and groans that last all day long, and are heard through the sobs of the poor things, as sleep, restless and disturbed, comes to try and make them forget the agony they are enduring, are the constant experiences in that unhappy home.
The girl begs and entreats the mother to loosen the bandages a little so that the agonizing pain may be diminished, and life may become somewhat more tolerable. The only reply is a tighter wrench upon them, and a strain, that were not nature so elastic, would send the poor thing mad. The morrow comes and the rebandaging takes place. For an instant, as the feet are relieved of the old bandages, and they are shown inflamed and discoloured, a momentary relief is felt by the poor girl who has slept in fitful dozes during the past night, but the moment they are rebound by the new ones, a cry of horror proceeds from her as though a raw sore had been touched, and the house resounds with her screams, whilst the mother, apparently untouched by the agony of her daughter, proceeds with her revolting task, as though she had no heart and no feeling left in her heathen soul.
This terrible martyrdom goes on with scarcely any alleviation for three or four years, the poor victim to fashion suffering acutely all the time. There are moments often repeated when the poor child actually quivers all over from excruciating pain, and it would seem as though flesh and blood could no longer endure the frightful strain put upon her, but must dissolve in tears and groans and unutterable agony.
Foot-binding is one of the most senseless and cruel customs it is possible to imagine. Its origin is dimly hidden in the maze and mist of the past, and no one can say positively how it originated. Tradition holds that it arose in the palace of an Emperor, who had a most beautiful concubine, but whose feet were deformed. To hide their defect they were so manipulated that their glaring deformity was concealed, and the ladies of the court in order to gain her favour bandaged their own in such a manner as to be an exact imitation of those of the royal favourite. From that time, it is said, the insane and hideous custom began to spread from the court into the capital, and from there it began to be copied by the women of the Empire.
The popular legend makes this woman to be T’a Ki, the famous concubine of Show Sin, the last ruler of the famous Chow Dynasty (B.C.1146). She is said to have been the most beautiful woman that ever lived, but to have been inhuman and vicious beyond anything that human language can express. She was the cause of the fall of the dynasty, a dynasty in which was enshrined the great names of Confucius, Mencius, Tau-tze the founder of Tauism, and Wu Wang.
To account for the fatal influence of this famous beauty, it is declared that she was a fox fairy, who had assumed the form of a woman in order to be able to hurry on the ruin of China. In the transformation everything was changed but her feet, and in order to disguise these she had to resort to the most ingenious methods. To curry favour with her the ladies-in-waiting in the palace bound theirs to imitate the appearance of hers, and so the custom of foot-binding was commenced that has lasted all these ages.
This legend has become part of the national faith and is firmly believed in by every one. Of course it is absurd, and one that originated in an after age, but with the innatelove of the Chinese for the mysterious and the supernatural, it is transmitted age after age as though it were part of authentic history.[1]
Foot-binding is a lifelong misery even after the first few years during which the feet are being tortured into such a hideous mass of deformity that no women will willingly show them to any one. Nature never becomes reconciled to the cruel caricature they present. She continues to make a vigorous protest by pains and suffering that more or less last as long as life itself. The bandages may never be loosed even for a single day, for nature, as if on the eternal watch, would at once begin to revert to the original size and shape with which she was born, and the feet would gradually return to their original shape, though with marks of the cruel treatment to which they have been exposed, and which can never be entirely effaced, no matter how long the owner may live.
The girls are employed in household duties, in learning to embroider, to weave cotton cloth, to make their own shoes, and to learn all kinds of sewing. The years pass on, and when they reach the age of sixteen their childhood begins to vanish, and womanhood, with its responsibilities and its stern demand that the girls shall leave their own clan and become members of others, looms up before them. The transition stage may be delayed for a year or two, but when a girl gets to be eighteen it is considered ample time for her to open her wings and to fly for ever from the parent home.
We have thus taken a very rough and bird’s-eye view of Child Life in China. There are countless details that might have been gone into, but they would have required an entire book for themselves. The main outline that has been given will suffice to convey a very general idea of thekind of life that the black-eyed children of the Empire have to go through.
There is one thing about which there can be no manner of doubt, and that is that the children never forget the home in which they were reared. The home is to the Chinese what the country is to the most devoted patriot of other nationalities. The home is larger and dearer than the nation. It is the one thought that is always enshrined in his inmost heart, and which never dies out. A Chinaman went abroad and lived for a quarter of a century in Australia. He married an Irish woman, had several almond-eyed daughters, who had caught the brogue of their mother and might have been emigrants from Cork or Kerry. He had a thriving money-making business, he possessed a vote, and he was a man of substance in the community.
One day the home hunger came upon him. He handed over his business to his wife and daughters, took his balance out of the bank and returned to his home in China. This was situated by the edge of the sea on a sand dune, the most forlorn and mouldy-looking place one could possibly imagine. He regained his spirits as soon as his feet touched the desolate spot that lay within a few yards of the home where his childhood was spent, and nothing could induce him ever to think of returning to the far-off land where the family he had left behind him were living.
A strong and vigorous coolie showed symptoms of being far from well. Physically there seemed nothing the matter with him. Gradually he lost his appetite and his spirits. He occasionally acted as though his mind was affected. One day he said to his master, “I must go home. I feel very ill, but I am convinced that no medicine that I can take will cure me. Let me go home.” Themal du paysof the Switzer was upon him, and whenpermission was given him, his eye brightened and his step became elastic, and by the time he reached the old homestead every trace of disease had entirely vanished.
A man becomes a mandarin and is sent to another part of the Empire. He is gradually advanced in rank until he becomes a Viceroy of two Provinces, and rules over thirty millions of people. He marries, and has sons and daughters, and he amasses property in the place where his greatest honours have come to him.
He never has time to get away to his ancestral home, which is more than a thousand miles distant, but it is never out of his thoughts, and when he dies full of honours and wealth, his coffin is carried to his far-off village where he was born, and he is laid to his final rest almost in sight of the house in which his boyhood was passed.
The Americans are greatly distressed because when the Chinese come to their country they do not bring their wives and families with them. The fact is to do so would be opposed to the spirit and genius of their race. It would tend to alienate them from their home, which they intend to revisit as soon as ever they can, and to finally lay their bones amongst their kindred there. Every merchant and scholar, every coolie that lands with but the clothes he has on his back, every spendthrift and opium-smoker and gambler, and every millionaire of the Yellow race in the United States has one dream that never dies out of his brain, and that is the picture of his home, which either in life or in death it is his unalterable purpose to visit. To move their families and become denizens of their adopted country would be to run counter to one of the strongest instincts of their race.
AN IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN TEMPLE.
RELIGIOUS FORCES IN CHINA
Chinese efforts to propitiate their gods—Figures of men on roofs of houses—Stone tiger—Fung-Shuy—The “Mountain City”—The county of “Peaceful Streams”—Density of population—The “dead hand”—Ancestral worship—Idolatry—Koan-Yin—Heaven—Description of a scene in a popular temple.
Chinese efforts to propitiate their gods—Figures of men on roofs of houses—Stone tiger—Fung-Shuy—The “Mountain City”—The county of “Peaceful Streams”—Density of population—The “dead hand”—Ancestral worship—Idolatry—Koan-Yin—Heaven—Description of a scene in a popular temple.
The Chinese are an exceedingly superstitious people, but they are capable of being intelligently religious when they become acquainted with the truths of the Gospel. Until then all their offerings and ceremonies and ritual are performed, either to avert the sorrows that the supernatural beings might bring upon them, or for the purpose of putting the minds of their gods into such a pleasing state of satisfaction that they will be ready to send sons into the family and prosperity into the business, and riches and honour and a continued stream of blessings upon the home. The spirits and the gods of all denominations are credited with having unlimited wealth at their command, which they can dispose of to any one who has gained their favour, without in the least degree impoverishing themselves. They are also believed to be high-spirited, easily offended and vindictive, and careless as to the moral qualities of those who worship them. The great thing is to keep these capricious beings in a good humour by making them constant offerings, which though comparatively valueless in themselves, by some sort of a hocus-pocus during the process of reaching the idols, become worth large sums of money to them.
Evidences of superstition abound in almost any direction in which one may turn. Looking at the roofs of the houses,one is struck with the large numbers of miniature figures of men, in all kinds of fantastic shapes and attitudes, armed with bows with which they seem to be shooting at the sky. These are supposed to be fighting with the invisible forces that are flying through the air, seeking for opportunities to descend into the houses and to bring plague or pestilence upon the people residing within them. Were it not for these little warriors it is believed that human life could not exist, and the homes that are now happy and prosperous would be filled with mourning and lamentation.
Walking along a straight street that terminates in another that is at right angles to it, one is surprised at seeing in the wall of the house at the extreme end of this road a rough slab of stone about three feet high and one in breadth, with the three words cut into it, “I dare defy.” Where the road is winding, or deviates from the straight, no such stone is ever found.
The reason for its existence at all is simply a superstitious belief that everywhere prevails that evil spirits who are at war with mankind have special power to work mischief along roads that have no turnings in them. Mad with glee, they fly swifter than the wind along them, and woe betide anything that lies in their course whilst they are careering along. It is for this reason that the owners of the house that abuts on this racecourse of the gods hasten to put up the stone with its three-worded inscription in order to avoid the baleful effects of their coming full tilt against it. Some calamity, they believe, would certainly be the result, but no sooner do the spirits see the words “I dare defy,” than, paralyzed with fear, and trembling at the mystic words that have struck terror into them, they fly in disorder from the scene.
The Chinese on the whole are endowed with broad common-sense, and in anything that has to do with money-making or with commercial matters they are as wideawakeand as shrewd as a canny Scotsman or a Yorkshireman. They are gifted, too, with a keen sense of humour, and yet when they come to deal with the question of spirits and ghosts and ogres, they seem to lose their reasoning faculties, and to believe in the most outrageous things that a mind with an ordinary power of perception of the ludicrous would shrink from admitting.
Quietly sauntering along by a road that skirts a hill, a rock is pointed out that plays an important part in the fortunes of the town that may be seen stretching away over the plain in front of us. Looked at from a certain angle it certainly conveys to one the impression that it is a huge crouching tiger. It has a defiant look about it, and an air of alertness, as though some enemy were about, that it must be on its guard against. Its gaze is fixed on the smokeless city, from which no sound can be heard and which would seem to be a veritable abode of the dead.
It turns out that this great stone brute that nature has so deftly chiselled is the presiding genius of the city that lies so silently in front. The Chinese believe that objects in natural life which, by a freak of fortune, have any resemblance to bird or beast are inhabited by the spirits of that animal, and have all the natural powers of such, only in a greatly intensified degree. The physical strength of the tiger and its naturally ferocious character make it an object of dread, and so when a district is found to possess the figure of such, only in an immensely exaggerated size, then it is seized upon as the embodiment of physical and supernatural forces that can be used for the protection of a city or sometimes of a whole region many miles square.
In this particular instance, the stone tiger, with its massive jaws and huge body that seems to be vibrating with nervous energy, is looked upon as the real protector of the town and region which it overlooks. Through its mysterious influence plague and pestilence are kept away, and tradeprospers, and twin sons appear in certain families, and boys are born and the ratio of girls is kept down, whilst a general air of prosperity pervades the city and the villages and hamlets on the plain beyond. This is not the casual belief of a few cranks. It is the profound conviction of the scholars and literary men, who are the leaders of thought. It is also one of the articles in the creed of the working men, and of the coolies and labourers, and it is tenaciously held by every woman in all the region. If any one should have the daring to suggest that this impostor of a tiger should be blown up by dynamite to see what it was made of, he would be looked upon as a dangerous heretic who ought to be put into a lunatic asylum, only there does not happen to be such a thing in the whole of China.
This form of superstition meets one in every direction, and is popularly called “Fung-Shuy,” which means “Wind and water,” chiefly, I presume, because in the province of the natural world these are the two agencies that seem to have a tremendous power in producing changes on the earth’s surface.
We have another instance of its dominating influence in this beautiful valley before us. More exquisite scenery one could hardly find in the whole of China than that which has been grouped here by Nature’s artistic hand. A mountain stream runs right through the centre of it, and night and day the sounds of its music break upon the air. The hamlets and villages scattered over it add to the beauty of the scene, for they give the charm of life to the silent forces that lie around.
The most beautiful feature about the whole, however, is the hills, which group themselves so artistically around this charming valley. They seem like colossal walls that mighty heroes built in ancient days to turn it into a city of which they should form the battlements. So obviously does this seem to have been the purpose, that theplace has been called the “Mountain City.” Now the stone of which these hills are composed is a beautiful granite, that is specially adapted for house-building, and one would naturally imagine that the houses in the valley and in the city which lies just over the hills would all be built of the stone that is found in such abundance around.
But such was not the case. A tradition has come down from the past that underneath these hills are mighty spirits who would never tolerate that the granite they contained should ever be quarried, and that should any one dare to lay a chisel upon these rocks they would send disease and death upon the valley and exterminate every human being in it.
The result was that all the stone that was used in this region had to be carried up the river from some place fifty or sixty miles distant, where the geomancers had declared that no spirits were to be found. Such is the force of superstition that all the rocks and boulders and stones of this region are absolutely safe from the chisel of the mason, and the people prefer to go to the expense of importing the material for their homes and bridges, rather than incur the anger of the spirits, who would use all the terrible power they possess to avenge themselves upon them.
Superstition has been a most potent force during the whole course of Chinese history in preventing the development of the nation. The mineral resources of the country are exceedingly abundant, and if they had been rightly exploited, would have been the means of enriching great masses of people who are now in extreme poverty. To understand this let us come in imagination to one district in the county of “The Peaceful Streams.” As we stand gazing upon the scene before us, we are struck with the grandeur and magnificence of its scenery. In the far-off distance the mountains are piled up, one range higher thananother, till the last with its lofty peaks seems to be resting against the sky.
In the foreground are countless hills along whose sides the tea plants flourish, and there are undulating plains, and miniature valleys, and gently flowing streams that have come from the distant mountains, and which have lost a good deal of their passion as they have travelled away from them. The soil is poor, and the farmers have to expend the severest toil upon it to be able to extract out of it enough to keep their families from starvation. The struggle for existence is so severe that large numbers every year have to leave their homes and their farms and emigrate to other countries, where they hope to make sufficient money to be able in the course of a few years to return to the old homesteads and start a new life of independence and comfort.
Now, but for a wretched superstition, this region ought to be one of the richest in China, and its people should be living in affluence; and instead of having to desert the land and being scattered in Singapore, and Penang and the Malay Peninsula, toiling to save their ancestral homes from perishing through poverty, every man would be called back in hot haste to share in the wealth that would be enough to enrich ten times the number of people that now exist on the land struggling to make ends meet.
The land that stretches before us is rich in coal, and one hill at least contains such a large percentage of the finest iron, that one engineer who examined it reported that there was enough of the ore in it to “supply the whole world for a thousand years,” and still it would remain unexhausted. Expert after expert has visited this region, and with unvarying unanimity they have declared that seams of coal abound throughout it that if worked would turn this poverty-stricken district into one of the great workshops of the South of China, and would give employmentnot only to its own population, but also to large numbers from the adjoining counties.
Now the one controlling reason why this great natural wealth, that God has put into the soil of this beautiful county for the service of man, is left untouched is because it is believed that there are huge slimy dragons who lie age after age guarding the treasures of coal and iron, and that any attempt to take them from them would end in the destruction of the people of the whole region. The pickaxe and the shovel and the dynamite would disturb their slumbers, and, filled with passion and mad with anger, they would hurl plague and sickness and calamities upon the unfortunate dwellers on the land. These unseen terrors, more potent than hunger and poverty and famine, have kept the mines unopened and the iron from being smelted, and have driven thousands of people into exile, very few comparatively of whom have ever come back to look upon the land of great mountains and peaceful streams, where untold riches lay ready for the gathering.
China is a country that is distinguished for its dense population. Wherever you travel you never seem to be able to get away from the human Celestial. The great cities and market towns and public thoroughfares present a never-ending succession of Chinese forms and faces that becomes absolutely monotonous. It is natural to expect them in these great centres of population, but you go into the most out-of-the-way places, and even there you are confronted with the same perplexing problem.
You wish, for example, to be alone, absolutely alone for a time, where no Mongolian visage with its acres of features and its yellow bilious-looking smile shall gaze upon you. There is a hill near by that you believe to be entirely deserted, and you think if you could only get up there, the desire of your heart would be gratified.
You walk briskly down the street, as though youwere projecting a good long constitutional, in order that no one may be mad enough to think of following you. By and by you make a sudden flank movement that takes you into a lane leading off from the main road. Casting hurried glances back on the way you have just travelled to see that no one is watching you, you make rapid strategic doubles in the direction of the hill, till you find yourself calmly and with a contented mind slowly rising higher and higher, until at last you have fairly left all traces of human life behind you, and you are actually alone.
Seating yourself on a grassy mound, you look out on the broad expanse before you, and you breathe a sigh of content. No mechanical sounds of voices, as though they were being ground out by some creaking machinery, fall upon your ears. You hear the sighing of the wind and you see the grasses waving their heads as though they would talk in dumb show with you. You look down at the river, that winds like a silver thread along the plain, and you feel that this contact with nature is a most delightful break on the eternal monotony of faces that may suggest humour and pathos and lurking fun behind a yellow exterior, but never beauty.
All at once you receive a shock. You catch the gleam of an eye through an opening in two or three bushes that you never dreamed of concealing anything human behind them. You are startled, for you feel that the Chinaman has outwitted you. You turn round and cast suspicious glances towards a hedge, where wild flowers are growing and that you thought to be the very picture of sylvan solitude, and you see several figures dodging behind it.
The delightful sense of being alone vanishes, and you realize that that is an impossibility in China. You stand up disgusted, but with the feeling of amusement predominant, and one after another comes out of his hiding-place, where the black, piercing eyes have been scanning yourevery movement for the last ten minutes, and at least a dozen ungainly forms creep up to you and with smiling faces try to make friends with you.
Now, mighty and overwhelming though the living force of Chinese life may be, it is an undoubted fact that the dead and sleeping nation, as a religious factor, in many respects controls and dominates the living tides of men that impress us so vividly with their vast numbers. Even the casual traveller in China cannot help but be impressed with the way in which the graves of the dead thrust themselves upon the attention of the living. There is no getting away from them. The mountain sides very often are so thickly covered with them that one has to tread upon them if one would pass from one part to another. Every uncultivated spot on the lower levels has been eagerly seized upon as spaces where to bury the dead. Even the cultivated fields have been invaded by them, and mounds right in the centre of some diminutive rice or potato patches show how the little farm has been narrowed down in order to make room for some members of the family that have passed away. These graves thrust themselves up to the edge of the great roads, and seem to be prevented from grasping even them only by the incessant march of the countless feet that hurry along them from dawn till dark. The clearings and little hills outside the cities that cannot be used for cultivation are all seized upon as unprotected cemeteries for the dead, and the little mounds like tidal waves advance up to the very edge of the walls of the town, and are stayed in their progress only by these huge bulwarks.
But it is not simply by the signs that appeal to the eye that one gets an idea which is apt to appal one of the vast problem of the dead in China. In countless houses throughout the land, and more especially in those of the rich, one is astonished to find how many lie in their coffins,hermetically sealed, for weeks and months, without being buried. It is a most gruesome sight, and would give an Englishman the shivers to have the dead in the next room for many months and sometimes for years.
Now, it is an unquestionable fact that the “dead hand” is a most mighty and a most potent factor in the religious life of the people of China. All the gods and goddesses that are worshipped throughout the Empire are not believed to have the same influence over human life in sending misery or in bestowing happiness as the dead members of a family have in regard to their relatives that are still alive on the earth. A man, for example, dies. He was a poor worthless fellow when he left the earth, and his life was a constant record of failure and incapacity. He never accomplished anything, and he was a mere nonentity not only in society but also in his own home till the very last. All that is changed now, and as he lies in his tomb he has acquired a new power that, in conjunction with the unseen forces that are supposed to gather round the grave, will enable him to pour riches and power upon the home he has left.
The dead to-day all over China hold the living within their grip. They are believed in some mysterious way of having the ability to change the destinies of a family. They can raise it from poverty and meanness to wealth and to the most exalted position, but if they are neglected and offerings are not made to them at the regular seasons, they will take away houses and lands from it, and turn the members of it into beggars.
A man died in a certain village. He was so poor that a grave was dug for him by the roadside and he was buried with but the scantiest of ceremony. He had never shown any ability in the whole course of his life, and he seemed in no way different from the ordinary commonplace looking men that one meets in shoals anywhere.
The eldest son who buried him was a young man of exceptional ability. He was rough and overbearing in his manners and a very unpleasant man to have to oppose, but he had the keen passion of the trader, and seemed to know by instinct every phase of the market, and what it was safe for him to speculate in. As he had no capital of his own, he was compelled to begin his life at the very bottom and to work his way up. This he did with great success, so that in the course of time he amassed a considerable fortune, and his name was known as that of one of the merchant princes in the region in which he lived.
Now, this man’s steady rise from poverty to wealth was not put down to his own ability or to any skill that he had shown in the management of his business affairs, but almost entirely to the old father who lay buried at the crossroads. It was he, the son believed, that guided the golden stream that flowed into his life, and it was his mysterious hand that had so prospered the combinations which the son had made, that the firm was built up till it was distinguished for the magnitude of its transactions. So convinced was he of this that he would never allow the grave to be touched, and he would never have a stone put up to show to whom this common-looking, neglected mound of earth belonged. He was afraid lest careless hands should break the spell that hung around it, and perhaps annoy the old man so that the run of prosperity should be broken, and in anger he should send misfortune instead.
Countless instances could be given similar to the above, all illustrating the profound faith that the Chinese have in the power of the dead to influence the fortunes of the living either for weal or for woe. From this has arisen the most powerful cult, ancestor worship, that at present exists in China. Its root lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and in dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind mentogether when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home.
Looked at from a sentimental point of view, ancestor worship seems to be very beautiful and very attractive, but it is not really so. The unselfish love that is the charm that binds the members of a family to each other, and the willingness to endure and suffer for each other, are entirely absent in the worship that the living offer to their dead friends. The bond that binds them now is a vague and a misty one, and exists solely because there are hopes that lands and houses and wealth may come in some mysterious way from the unseen land, and sorrow and pain and disaster may be driven from the home. It is no wonder that this worship has such a powerful hold on the faith and practice of the Chinese, when it is considered how much that men hold dear is involved in it. It is the greatest religious force in the land, and will survive in some form or other even when all the others that are at present recognized have passed away from the hearts of the people.
We now turn to what to a casual onlooker might naturally seem to be the dominant and most powerful factor in the religious life of the people of this Empire of China, and that is idolatry. This popular and universal form of worship meets one everywhere and is practised by every class and condition of people throughout the country. The rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the common coolie who earns his living in the streets and the most learned scholar who has risen to the highest rank in his profession, men and women of all grades, good, bad, and indifferent, all more or less believe in the idols and worship them.
That this is so, is evident from the almost universal presence of the idols. Every house has at least one, whichis the household god of the family, whilst the more religious and devout will have several others as well. Then the cities abound with temples dedicated to certain well-known gods that have been built, some of them at great expense, and are kept in constant repair by the free-will offerings of the people. The villages, too, not to be outdone by the towns, have each of them at least one public temple where the people can make their offerings to their patron god, and where on the birthday of the idol the whole population gather to witness the play which is performed in honour of it.
Then, again, there are monasteries scattered very liberally through the provinces, some of them so large that they will have over a hundred resident priests, all engaged in the one duty of chanting the praises of the various gods in them, and in superintending the worship of the throngs of people who crowd to such places to make their offerings to the different idols. There are also numerous nunneries where women devote their lives exclusively to the service of the Goddess of Mercy, and spend their years in trying to get from her the peace of mind they have not been able to obtain in their own homes. The inhabitants of these establishments are nearly always widows whose homes are unhappy, or married women who, dissatisfied with life, and with the consent of their husbands, have retired to the quiet and solitude of these retreats, in the hope that by prayer and meditation the unrest of spirit that has made life intolerable may be exchanged for one of calmness and contentment.
In addition to the above, there are mountain temples that abound in all the hilly regions, and little shrines built by the roadsides, where passing travellers may offer up their devotions to the gods enshrined within them, and a multitude of devices for drawing the attention of men and women to the duty of remembering the services they oughtto pay to the gods of the land they live in. The more one studies this question, the more one is impressed with the fact that idolatry is a huge system that completely covers the whole of the Empire with its ramifications. If the faith of the Chinese is to be measured by the money that they are willing to put out for its support, then it must be profound indeed. When one considers the innumerable number of temples of all sizes and description that meet one in every direction, and that the expense of building them and keeping them in repair falls entirely upon the people, one cannot but be struck with the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of their gods. But when one considers further that the huge armies of Buddhist and Tauist priests who are connected with these religious establishments are all supported by voluntary gifts freely bestowed upon them, one stands amazed at the amount of money that must be annually expended throughout the Empire upon a system that has no State endowment, but which depends entirely upon the spontaneous offerings of the people at large for its very existence.
But it is now time to go into detail with regard to the working of idolatry in order to understand what is its exact effect on the masses who practise it, and in order to make the picture as vivid as possible, I shall first describe how the home is affected by this form of religion. Any house taken at random will do equally well for our purpose, for, like the Chinese themselves, they are all built on the same general model, and a description of one would do for all the rest.
As we pass through the courtyard and enter in at the front door which stands open all day long, no matter what the weather may be, the first thing that we catch sight of is an oblong table on which is seated the family idol. The most popular and the most generally worshipped is Kwan-Yin, or the Goddess of Mercy. Her face is placid, andthere is a look of tenderness about it that has won the hearts of the millions of China so that in nearly every home in the land her image is found as the one conspicuous object towards which all hearts are drawn.
Her whole attitude and the air of benevolence that sits so naturally upon her agree well with the beautiful story we have of her life, and the reason why she, an Indian woman, should have become almost the national goddess of the Chinese nation.
Kwan-Yin was the daughter of an Indian prince, and as a child she showed herself to be possessed of a most loving heart. As a girl she used to run in and out of the houses of the common people that stood near her father’s palace, and she was so distressed at the sights of poverty and sorrow that she constantly witnessed that she made a vow that when she became a woman she would never marry, but would devote her life to alleviate the miseries that the women of India were compelled to endure.
This vow she carried out to the very letter, and her days were spent in ministering to the wants and ailments of women, no matter how low in society they happened to be. Her fame spread far and near, and the story of her devotion and self-denial touched every one that heard it. With true Oriental imagination people declared that she was a fairy that had been born into the world in human shape, for never had such tenderness and compassion been shown by any human being, and therefore her home must originally have been amongst the gods and the goddesses that lived in the land of eternal sunshine, where no shadow ever fell upon their hearts to dim the happiness that perpetually filled their lives.
When she died it was felt that such a woman should be deified, and that her name and image should be added to the list of those that were worshipped by the nation. The story of this beautiful life somehow or other travelled overthe mountains and plains and deserts that divide India from China, and the “Black-haired race” became so enamoured with it, that those who heard it declared that she was worthy, even though she were a foreigner, of being placed amongst the gods that they trusted in. With wonderful rapidity her cult was adopted by all classes, but especially by the women, till to-day her image is found in nearly every home in the Middle Kingdom.