Chinese Sketches | Page 7

such a system cuts both ways, as the time may come
when the said relatives supply, in their turn, the daily meal; and the
support of parents in a land where poor-rates are unknown, has tended

to place the present high premium on male offspring. Thus, though
there is a great deal of poverty in China, there is very little absolute
destitution, and the few wretched outcasts one does see in every
Chinese town, are almost invariably the once opulent victims of the
opium-pipe or the gaming-table. The relative number of human beings
who suffer from cold and hunger in China is far smaller than in
England, and in this all-important respect, the women of the working
classes are far better off than their European sisters. Wife-beating is
unknown, though power of life and death is, under certain
circumstances, vested in the husband (Penal Code, S. 293); while, on
the other hand, a wife may be punished with a hundred blows for
merely striking her husband, who is also entitled to a divorce (Penal
Code, S. 315). The truth is, that these poor women are, on the whole,
very well treated by their husbands, whom they not unfrequently rule
with as harsh a tongue as that of any western shrew.
In the fanciful houses of the rich, the Chinese woman is regarded with
even more sympathy by foreigners generally than is accorded to her
humbler fellow-countrywoman. She is represented as a mere ornament,
or a soulless, listless machine--something on which the sensual eye of
her opium-smoking lord may rest with pleasure while she prepares the
fumes which will waft him to another hour or so of tipsy forgetfulness.
She knows nothing, she is taught nothing, never leaves the house, never
sees friends, or hears the news; she is, consequently, devoid of the
slightest intellectual effort, and no more a companion to her husband
than the stone dog at his front gate. Now, although we do not profess
much personal acquaintance with the /gynecee/ of any wealthy Chinese
establishment, we think we have gathered quite enough from reading
and conversation to justify us in regarding the Chinese lady from an
entirely different point of view. In novels, for instance, the heroine is
always highly educated--composes finished verses, and quotes from
Confucius; and it is only fair to suppose that such characters are not
purely and wholly ideal. Besides, most young Chinese girls, whose
parents are well off, are taught to read, though it is true that many
content themselves with being able to read and write a few hundred
words. They all learn and excel in embroidery; the little knick-knacks
which hang at every Chinaman's waist-band being almost always the

work of his wife or sister. Visiting between Chinese ladies is of
everyday occurrence, and on certain fete-days the temples are crowded
to overflowing with "golden lilies"[*] of all shapes and sizes. They give
little dinner- parties to their female relatives and friends, at which they
talk scandal, and brew mischief to their hearts' content. The first wife
sometimes quarrels with the second, and between them they make the
house uncomfortably hot for the unfortunate husband. "Don't you
foreigners also dread the denizens of the inner apartments?" said a
hen-pecked Chinaman one day to us--and we think he was consoled to
hear that viragos are by no means confined to China. One of the
happiest moments a Chinese woman knows, is when the family circle
gathers round husband, brother, or it may be son, and listens with rapt
attention and wondering credulity to a favourite chapter from the
"Dream of the Red Chamber." She believes it every word, and wanders
about these realms of fiction with as much confidence as was ever
placed by western child in the marvellous stories of the "Arabian
Nights."
[*] A poetical name for the small feet of Chinese women.

ETIQUETTE
If there is one thing more than another, after the possession of the
thirteen classics, on which the Chinese specially pride themselves, it is
/politeness/. Even had their literature alone not sufficed to place them
far higher in the scale of mental cultivation than the unlettered
barbarian, a knowledge of those important forms and ceremonies which
regulate daily intercourse between man and man, unknown of course to
inhabitants of the outside nations, would have amply justified the
graceful and polished Celestial in arrogating to himself the proud
position he now occupies with so much satisfaction to himself. A few
inquiring natives ask if foreigners have any notion at all of etiquette,
and are always surprised in proportion to their ignorance to hear that
our ideas of ceremony are fully as clumsy and complicated as their own.
It must be well understood that we speak chiefly of the educated classes,
and not of "boys" and compradores who