The Awakening of China Part 27

[Page 292]

II.

UNMENTIONED REFORMS[*]

[Footnote *: Written by the author for the _North-China Daily News_.]

The return of the Mission of Inquiry has quickened our curiosity as to its results in proposition and in enactment. All well-wishers of China are delighted to learn that the creation of a parliament and the subst.i.tution of const.i.tutional for autocratic government are to have the first place in the making of a New China. The reports of the High Commissioners are not yet before the public, but it is understood that they made good use of their time in studying the inst.i.tutions of the West, and that they have shown a wise discrimination in the selection of those which they recommend for adoption. There are, however, three reforms of vital importance, which have scarcely been mentioned at all, which China requires for full admission to the comity of nations.

1. A CHANGE OF COSTUME

During their tour no one suggested that the Chinese costume should be changed nor would it have been polite or politic to do so. But I do not admire either the taste or the wisdom of those orators who, in welcoming the distinguished visitors; applauded them for their graceful dress and stately carriage. If that indiscreet flattery had any effect it merely tended [Page 293]

to postpone a change which is now in progress. All the soldiers of the Empire will ere long wear a Western uniform, and all the school children are rapidly adopting a similar uniform. To me few spectacles that I have witnessed are so full of hope for China as the display on an imperial birthday, when the military exhibit their skilful evolutions and their Occidental uniform, and when thousands of school children appear in a new costume, which is both becoming and convenient. But the Court and the mandarins cling to their antiquated attire. If the peac.o.c.k wishes to soar with the eagle, he must first get rid of his c.u.mbersome tail.

This subject, though it savours of the tailor shop, is not unworthy the attention of the grand council of China's statesmen. Has not Carlyle shown in his "Sartor Resartus" how the Philosophy of Clothes is fundamental to the history of civilisation? The j.a.panese with wonderful foresight settled that question at the very time when they adopted their new form of government.

When Mr. Low was U. S. Minister in Peking some thirty years ago, he said to the writer "Just look at this tomfoolery!" holding up the fas.h.i.+on plates representing the new dress for the diplomatic service of j.a.pan. Time has proved that he was wrong, and that the j.a.panese were right in adopting a new uniform, when they wished to fall in line with nations of the West. With their old shuffling habiliments and the cringing manners inseparable from them, they never could have been admitted to intercourse on easy terms with Western society.

[Page 294]

The mandarin costume of China, though more imposing, is not less barbaric than that of j.a.pan; and the etiquette that accompanies it is wholly irreconcilable with the usages of the Western world.

Imagine a mandarin doffing his gaudy cap, gay with ta.s.sels, feathers, and ruby b.u.t.ton, on meeting a friend, or pus.h.i.+ng back his long sleeves to shake hands! Such frippery we have learned to leave to the ladies; and etiquette does not require them to lay aside their hats.

Quakers, like the mandarins, keep their hats on in public meetings; and the oddity of their manners has kept them out of society and made their following very exiguous. Do our Chinese friends wish to be looked on as Quakers, or do they desire to fraternise freely with the people of the great West?

Their cap of ceremony hides a shaven pate and dangling cue, and here lies the chief obstacle in the way of the proposed reform in style and manners. Those badges of subjection will have to be dispensed with either formally or tacitly before the cap that conceals them can give way to the dress hat of European society. Neither graceful nor convenient, that dress hat is not to be recommended on its own merits, but as part of a costume common to all nations which conform to the usages of our modern civilisation.

It must have struck the High Commissioners that, wherever they went, they encountered in good society only one general type of costume. Nor would it be possible for them to advise the adoption of the costume of this or that nationality--a general conformity is all that seems feasible or desirable. Will the Chinese [Page 295]

cling to their cap and robes with a death grip like that of the Korean who jumped from a railway train to save his high hat and lost his life? As they are taking pa.s.sage on the great railway of the world's progress, will they not take pains to adapt themselves in every way to the requirements of a new era?

2. POLYGAMY

We have as yet no intimation what the Reform Government intends to do with this superannuated inst.i.tution. Will they persist in burning incense before it to disguise its ill-odour, or will they bury it out of sight at once and for ever?

The Travelling Commissioners, whose breadth and ac.u.men are equally conspicuous, surely did not fail to inquire for it in the countries which they visited. Of course, they did not find it there; but, as with the question of costume, the good breeding of their hosts would restrain them from offering any suggestion touching the domestic life of the Chinese.

The Commissioners had the honour of presentation to the Queen-Empress Alexandra. Fancy them asking how many subordinate wives she has to aid her in sustaining the dignity of the King-Emperor! They would learn with surprise that no European sovereign, however lax in morals, has ever had a palace full of concubines as a regular appendage to his regal menage; that for prince and people the ideal is monogamy; and that, although the conduct of the rich and great is often such as to make us blush for our Christian civilisation, it is true this day that the crowned heads of Europe are in general setting a worthy example of [Page 296]

domestic morals. "Admirable!" respond the Commissioners; "our ancient sovereigns were like that, and our sages taught that there should be '_Ne Wu Yuen Nu, Wai wu Kw.a.n.g-tu_' (in the harem no pining beauty, outside no man without a mate). It is the luxury of later ages that keeps a mult.i.tude of women in seclusion for the pleasure of a few men, and leaves the common man without a wife. We heartily approve the practice of Europe, but what of Africa?"

"There the royal courts consider a mult.i.tude of wives essential to their grandeur, and the n.o.bles reckon their wealth by the number of their wives and cows. The glory of a prince is that of a c.o.c.k in a barn-yard or of a bull at the head of a herd. Such is their ideal from the King of Dahomey with his bodyguard of Amazons to the Sultan of Morocco and the Khedive of Egypt. Not only do the Mahommedans of Asia continue the practice--they have tried to transplant their ideal paradise into Europe. Turkey, decayed and rotten, with its black eunuchs and its Circa.s.sian slave girls, stands as an object-lesson to the whole world."

"We beg your pardon, we know enough about Asia; but what of America--does polygamy flourish there?"

"It did exist among the Peruvians and Aztecs before the Spanish conquest, but it is now under ban in every country from pole to pole. Witness the Mormons of Utah! They were refused admission into the American Union as long as they adhered to the Oriental type of plural marriage."

"Ah! We perceive you are pointing to the Mormons as a warning to us. You mean that we shall not be admitted into the society of the more civilised nations [Page 297]

as long as we hold to polygamy. Well! Our own sages have condemned it. It has a long and shameful record; but its days are numbered.

It will do doubt be suppressed by our new code of laws."

This imaginary conversation is so nearly a transcript of what must have taken place, that I feel tempted to throw the following paragraphs into the form of a dialogue. The dialogue, however, is unavoidably prolix, and I hasten to wind up the discussion.

With reference to the Mormons I may add that at the conference on International Arbitration held at Lake Mohonk last July, there were present Jews, Quakers, Protestants and Roman Catholics, but no Mormons and no Turks. Creeds were not required as credentials, but Turk and Mormon did not think it worth while to knock at the door. Both are objects of contempt, and no nation whose family life is formed on the same model can hope to be admitted to full fraternity with Western peoples.

The abominations a.s.sociated with such a type of society are inconsistent with any but a low grade of civilisation--they are eunuchs, slavery, unnatural vice, and, more than all, a general debas.e.m.e.nt of the female s.e.x. In Chinese society, woman occupies a shaded hemisphere--not inaptly represented by the dark portion in their national symbol the _Yinyang-tse_ or Diagram of the Dual principles. So completely has she hitherto been excluded from the benefits of education that a young man in a native high school recently began an essay with the exclamation--"I am glad I am not a Chinese woman. Scarcely one in a thousand is able to read!"

[Page 298]

If "Knowledge is power," as Bacon said, and Confucius before him, what a source of weakness has this neglect of woman been to China.

Happily she is not excluded from the new system of national education, and there is reason to believe that with the reign of ignorance polygamy will also disappear as a state of things repugnant to the right feeling of an intelligent woman. But would it not hasten the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the s.e.x, and rouse the fair daughters of the East to a n.o.bler conception of human life if the rulers would issue a decree placing concubinage under the ban of law? Nothing would do more to secure for China the respect of the Western world.

3. DOMESTIC SLAVERY

Since writing the first part of this paper, I have learned that some of the Commissioners have expressed themselves in favour of a change of costume. I have also learned that the regulation of slavery is to have a place in the revised statutes, though not referred to by the Commissioners. Had this information reached me earlier, it might have led me to omit the word "unmentioned"

from my general t.i.tle, but it would not have altered a syllable in my treatment of the subject.

Cheering it is to the well-wishers of China to see that she has a government strong enough and bold enough to deal with social questions of this cla.s.s. How urgent is the slave question may be seen from the daily items in your own columns. What, for example, was the lady from Szechuen doing but carrying on a customary [Page 299]

form of the slave traffic? What was the case of those singing girls under the age of fifteen, of whom you spoke last week, but a form of slavery? Again, by way of climax, what will the Western world think of a country that permits a mistress to beat a slave girl to death for eating a piece of watermelon--as reported by your correspondent from Hankow? The triviality of the provocation reminds us of the divorce of a wife for offering her mother-in-law a dish of half-cooked pears. The latter, which is a cla.s.sic instance, is excused on the ground of filial duty, but I have too much respect for the author of the "Hiaoking," to accept a tradition which does a grievous wrong to one of the best men of ancient times. The tradition, however unfounded, may serve as a guide to public opinion. It suggests another subject, which we might (but will not) reserve for another section, viz., the regulation of divorce and the limitation of marital power. It is indeed intimately connected with my present topic, for what is wife or concubine but a slave, as long as a husband has power to divorce or sell her at will--with or without provocation?

Last week an atrocious instance, not of divorce, but of wife-murder, occurred within bow-shot of my house. A man engaged in a coal-shop had left his wife with an aunt in the country. The aunt complained of her as being too stupid and clumsy to earn a living. Her brutal husband thereon took the poor girl to a lonely spot, where he killed her, and left her unburied. Returning to the coal-shop, he sent word to his aunt that he was ready to answer for what he had done, if called to account. "Has he been called to account?"

[Page 300]

I enquired this morning of one of his neighbours. "Oh no! was the reply; it's all settled; the woman is buried, and no inquiry is called for." Is not woman a slave, though called a wife, in a society where such things are allowed to go with impunity? Will not the new laws, from which so much is expected, limit the marriage relation to one woman, and make the man, to whom she is bound, a husband, not a master?

Confucius, we are told, resigned office in his native state when the prince accepted a bevy of singing girls sent from a neighbouring princ.i.p.ality. The girls were slaves bought and trained for their shameful profession, and the traffic in girls for the same service const.i.tutes the leading form of domestic slavery at this day--so little has been the progress in morals, so little advance toward a legislation that protects the life and virtue of the helpless!

But the slave traffic is not confined to women; any man may sell his son; and cla.s.ses of both s.e.xes are found in all the houses of the rich. Praedial servitude was practised in ancient times, as it was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and in Russia till a recent day.

We read of lands and labourers being conferred on court favourites.

How the system came to disappear we need not pause to inquire. It is certain, however, that no grand act of emanc.i.p.ation ever took place in China like that which cost Lincoln his life, or that for which the good Czar Alexander II. had to pay the same forfeit.

Russia is to-day eating the bitter fruits of ages of serfdom; and the greatest peril ever encountered by the United States was a war brought on by negro slavery.

[Page 301]

The form of slavery prevailing in China is not one that threatens war or revolutions; but in its social aspects it is worse than negro slavery. It depraves morals and corrupts the family, and as long as it exists, it carries the brand of barbarism. China has great men, who for the honour of their country would not be afraid to take the matter in hand. They would, if necessary, imitate Lincoln and the Czar Alexander to effect the removal of such a blot.

It is proposed, we are told, to limit slavery to minors--freedom ensuing on the attainment of majority. This would greatly ameliorate the evil, but the evil is so crying that it demands not amelioration, but extinction. Let the legislators of China take for their model the provisions of British law, which make it possible to boast that "as soon as a slave touches British soil his fetters fall." Let them also follow that lofty legislation which defines the rights and provides for the well-being of the humblest subject. Let the old system be uprooted before a new one is inaugurated, otherwise there is danger that the limiting of slavery to minors will leave those helpless creatures exposed to most of the wrongs that accompany a lifelong servitude.

The number and extent of the reforms decreed or effected are such as to make the present reign the most ill.u.s.trious in the history of the Empire. May we not hope that in dealing with polygamy and domestic slavery, the action of China will be such as to lift her out of the cla.s.s of Turkey and Morocco into full companions.h.i.+p with the most enlightened nations of Europe and America.

[Page 302]

III.

A NEW OPIUM WAR

The fiat has gone forth--war is declared against an insidious enemy that has long been exhausting the resources of China and sapping the strength of her people. She has resolved to rid herself at once and forever of the curse of opium. The home production of the drug, and all the ramifications of the vice stand condemned by a decree from the throne, followed by a code of regulations designed not to limit, but to extirpate the monster evil.

In this bold stroke for social reform there can be no doubt that the Government is supported by the best sentiment of the whole country. Most Chinese look upon opium as the beginning of their national sorrows. In 1839 it involved them in their first war with the West; and that opened the way for a series of wars which issued in their capital being twice occupied by foreign forces.