Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 3

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-cla.s.s 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 with presents 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE LADS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 of the 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 cla.s.ses 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sertion that in all the countless homes that exist in the huge population 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sion 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 in Chinese 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 superst.i.tious 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 pa.s.sion 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 will ask 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 t.i.tle 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 st.u.r.dy urchins that race about with each other and that fill the air with their merry sounds of childish laughter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sing the time pleasantly. It is pathetic to watch how, with the fewest and simplest materials, the little ones will pa.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.ble 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 single member 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 G.o.d, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumed 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 s.e.x 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 a King," 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 b.u.mp 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 pa.s.sion she will hurl epithets at her daughter that will describe her as one of the vilest of her s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sion 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 gra.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BOY CARRYING BASKETS.

_To face p. 56._]