Part 3 (1/2)

A man may divorce his wife for one of the seven following reasons:--Want of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e.

supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as ”leakage”), jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver has affixed three qualifying conditions. He may not put her away on any of the above grounds if she has duly pa.s.sed through the period of mourning for his parents; if he has grown rich since their marriage; if she has no longer any home to which she can return.

Altogether, the Chinese woman has by no means such a bad time as is generally supposed to be the case. Even in the eye of the law, she has this advantage over a man, that she cannot be imprisoned except for high treason and adultery, and is to all intents and purposes exempt from the punishment of the bamboo. Included in this exemption are the aged and the young, the sick, the hungry and naked, and those who have already suffered violence, as in a brawl. Further, in a well-known handbook, magistrates are advised to postpone, in certain circ.u.mstances, the infliction of corporal punishment; as for instance, when either the prisoner or they themselves may be under the influence of excitement, anger or drink.

The bamboo is the only instrument with which physical punishment may legally be inflicted; and its infliction on a prisoner or recalcitrant witness, in order to extort evidence, const.i.tutes what has long been dignified as ”torture;” but even that is now, under a changing system, about to disappear. This must not be taken to mean that torture, in our sense of the term, has never been applied in China. The real facts of the case are these. Torture, except as already described, being const.i.tutionally illegal, no magistrate would venture to resort to it if there were any chance of his successful impeachment before the higher authorities, upon which he would be cas.h.i.+ered and his official career brought abruptly to an end. Torture, therefore, would have no terrors for the ordinary citizen of good repute and with a backing of substantial friends; but for the outcast, the rebel, the highway robber (against whom every man's hand would be), the disreputable native of a distant province, and also for the outer barbarian (e.g. the captives at the Summer Palace in 1860), another tale must be told. No consequences, except perhaps promotion, would follow from too rigorous treatment in such cases as these.

Resort to the bamboo as a means of extorting the confession of a prisoner is regarded by the people rather as the magistrate's confession of his own incapacity. The education of the official, too easily and too freely turned into ridicule, gives him an insight into human nature which, coupled with a little experience, renders him extremely formidable to the s.h.i.+fty criminal or the crafty litigant. As a rule, he finds no need for the application of pain. There is a quaint story ill.u.s.trative of such judicial methods as would be sure to meet with full approbation in China. A magistrate, who after several hearings had failed to discover, among a gang accused of murder, what was essential to the completion of the case, namely, the actual hand which struck the fatal blow, notified the prisoners that he was about to invoke the a.s.sistance of the spirits, with a view to elicit the truth. Accordingly, he caused the accused men, dressed in the black clothes of criminals, to be led into a large barn, and arranged around it, face to the wall.

Having then told them that an accusing angel would shortly come among them, and mark the back of the guilty man, he went outside and had the door shut, and the place darkened. After a short interval, when the door was thrown open, and the men were summoned to come forth, it was seen directly that one of the number had a white mark on his back. This man, in order to make all secure, had turned his back to the wall, not knowing, what the magistrate well knew, that the wall had been newly white-washed.

As to the punishment of crime by flogging, a sentence of one or two hundred--even more--blows would seem to be cruel and disgusting; happily, it may be taken for granted that such ferocious sentences are executed only in such cases as have been mentioned above. An acute observer, for many years a member of the munic.i.p.al police force in Shanghai, whose duty it was to see that floggings were administered to Chinese criminals, stated plainly in a public report that the bamboo is not necessarily a severe ordeal, and that one hundred blows are at times inflicted so lightly as to leave scarcely a mark behind, though the recipient howls loudly all the time. Those criminals who have money can always manage to square the gaoler; and the gaoler has acquired a certain knack in laying on, the upshot being great cry and little wool, very satisfactory to the culprit. Even were we to accept the cruellest estimate in regard to punishment by the bamboo, it would only go to show that humanitarian feelings in China are lagging somewhat behind our own. In _The Times_ of March 1, 1811, we read that, for allowing French prisoners to escape from Dartmoor, three men of the Nottingham militia were sentenced to receive 900 lashes each, and that one of them actually received 450 lashes in the presence of pickets from every regiment in the garrison. On New Year's Day, 1911, a eunuch attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate one of the Imperial Princes. For this he was sentenced to be beaten to death, some such ferocious punishment being necessary, in Chinese eyes, to vindicate the majesty of the law. That end having been attained, the sentence was commuted to eighty blows with the bamboo and deportation to northern Manchuria.

The Chinese woman often, in mature life, wields enormous influence over the family, males included, and is a kind of private Empress Dowager.

A man knows, says the proverb, but a woman knows better. As a widow in early life, her lot is not quite so pleasant. It is not thought desirable for widows to remarry; but if she remains single, she becomes ”a rudderless boat;” round which gathers much calumny. Many young women brave public opinion, and enter into second nuptials. If they are bent upon remarrying, runs the saying, they can no more be prevented than the sky can be prevented from raining.

The days of ”golden lilies,” as the artificially small feet of Chinese women are called, are generally believed to date from the tenth century A.D., though some writers have endeavoured to place the custom many centuries earlier. It must always be carefully remembered that Manchu women--the women of the dynasty which has ruled since 1644--do not compress their feet. Consequently, the empresses of modern times have feet of the natural size; neither is the practice in force among the Hakkas, a race said to have migrated from the north of China to the south in the thirteenth century; nor among the hill tribes; nor among the boating population of Canton and elsewhere. Small feet are thus in no way a.s.sociated with aristocracy or gentleness of birth; neither is there any foundation for the generally received opinion that the Chinese lame their women in this way to keep them from gadding about.

Small-footed women may be seen carrying quite heavy burdens, and even working in the fields; not to mention that many are employed as nurses for small children. Another explanation is that women with bound feet bear finer children and stronger; but the real reason lies in another direction, quite beyond the scope of this book. The question of charm may be taken into consideration, for any Chinaman will bear witness to the seductive effect of a gaily-dressed girl picking her way on tiny feet some three inches in length, her swaying movements and delightful appearance of instability conveying a general sense of delicate grace quite beyond expression in words.

The lady of the tenth century, to whom the origin of small feet is ascribed, wished to make her own feet like two new moons; but whether she actually bound them, as at the present day, is purely a matter of conjecture. The modern style of binding inflicts great pain for a long time upon the little girls who have to endure it. They become very shy on the subject, and will on no account show their bare feet, though Manchu women and others with full-sized feet frequently walk about unshod, and the boat-girls at Canton and elsewhere never seem to wear shoes or stockings at all.

The ”pigtail,” or long plait of hair worn by all Chinamen, for the abolition of which many advanced reformers are now earnestly pleading, is an inst.i.tution of comparatively modern date. It was imposed by the victorious Manchu-Tartars when they finally established their dynasty in 1644, not so much as a badge of conquest, still less of servitude, but as a means of obliterating, so far as possible, the most patent distinction between the two races, and of unifying the appearance, if not the aspirations, of the subjects of the Son of Heaven. This obligation was for some time strenuously resisted by the natives of Amoy, Swatow, and elsewhere in that neighbourhood. At length, when compelled to yield, it is said that they sullenly wound their queues round their heads and covered them with turbans, which are still worn by natives of those parts.

The peculiar custom of shaving the head in front, and allowing the hair to grow long behind, is said to have been adopted by the Manchus out of affectionate grat.i.tude to the horse, an animal which has played an all-important part in the history and achievements of the race. This view is greatly reinforced by the cut of the modern official sleeves, which hang down, concealing the hands, and are shaped exactly like a pair of horse's hoofs.

In many respects the Manchu conquerors left the Chinese to follow their own customs. No attempt was made to coerce Chinese women, who dress their hair in styles totally different from that of the Manchu women; there are, too, some tolerated differences between the dress of the Manchu and Chinese men, but these are such as readily escape notice.

Neither was any attempt made in the opening years of the conquest to interfere with foot-binding by Chinese women; but in 1664 an edict was issued forbidding the practice. Readers may draw their own conclusions, when it is added that four years after the edict was withdrawn. Hopes are now widely and earnestly entertained that with the dawn of the new era, this cruel custom will become a thing of the past; it is, however, to be feared that those who have been urging on this desirable reform may be, like all reformers, a little too sanguine of immediate success, and that a comparatively long period will have to go by before the last traces of foot-binding disappear altogether. Meanwhile, it seems that the Government has taken the important step of refusing admission to the public schools of all girls whose feet are bound.

The disappearance of the queue is another thing altogether. It is not a native Chinese inst.i.tution; there would be no violation of any cherished tradition of antiquity if it were once and for ever discarded. On the contrary, if the Chinese do not intend to follow the j.a.panese and take to foreign clothes, there might be a return to the old style of doing the hair. The former dress of the j.a.panese was one of the numerous items borrowed by them from China; it was indeed the national dress of the Chinese for some three hundred years, between A.D. 600-900. One little difficulty will vanish with the queue. A Chinese coolie will tie his tail round his head when engaged on work in which he requires to keep it out of the way, and the habit has become of real importance with the use of modern machinery; but on the arrival of his master, he should at once drop it, out of respect, a piece of politeness not always exhibited in the presence of a foreign employer. The agitation, now in progress, for the final abolition of the queue may be due to one or all of the following reasons. Intelligent Chinese may have come to realize that the fas.h.i.+on is c.u.mbrous and out of date. Sensitive Chinese may fear that it makes them ridiculous in the eyes of foreigners. Political Chinese, who would gladly see the re-establishment of a native dynasty, may look to its disappearance as the first step towards throwing off the Manchu yoke.

On the whole, the ruling Manchus have shown themselves very careful not to wound the susceptibilities of their Chinese subjects. Besides allowing the women to retain their own costume, and the dead, men and women alike, to be buried in the costume of the previous dynasty, it was agreed from the very first that no Chinese concubines should be taken into the Palace. This last condition seems to be a concession pure and simple to the conquered; there is little doubt, however, that the wily Manchus were only too ready to exclude a very dangerous possibility of political intrigue.

CHAPTER VI--LITERATURE AND EDUCATION

The Chinese people reverence above all things literature and learning; they hate war, bearing in mind the saying of Mencius, ”There is no such thing as a _righteous_ war; we can only a.s.sert that some wars are better than others;” and they love trade and the finesse of the market-place.

China can boast many great soldiers, in modern as well as in ancient days; but anything like a proper appreciation of the military arm is of quite recent growth. ”Good iron is not used for nails, nor good men for soldiers,” says the proverb; and again, ”One stroke of the civilian's pen reduces the military official to abject submission.” On the other hand, it is admitted that ”Civilians give the empire peace, and soldiers give it security.”

Chinese parents have never, until recent days, willingly trained their sons for the army. They have always wished their boys to follow the stereotyped literary curriculum, and then, after pa.s.sing successfully through the great compet.i.tive examinations, to rise to high civil office in the state. A good deal of ridicule has been heaped of late on the Chinese compet.i.tive examination, the subjects of which were drawn exclusively from the Confucian Canon, and included a knowledge of ancient history, of a comprehensive scheme of morality, initiated by Confucius, and further elaborated by Mencius (372-289 B.C.), of the ballads and ceremonial rites of three thousand years ago, and of an apt.i.tude for essay-writing and the composition of verse. The whole curriculum may be fitly compared with such an education as was given to William Pitt and others among our own great statesmen, in which an ability to read the Greek and Roman cla.s.sics, coupled with an intimate knowledge of the Peloponnesian War, carried the student about as far as it was considered necessary for him to go. The Chinese course, too, has certainly brought to the front in its time a great many eminent men, who have held their own in diplomacy, if not in warfare, with the subtlest intellects of the West.

Their system of compet.i.tive examinations has indeed served the Chinese well. It is the brightest spot in the whole administration, being absolutely above suspicion, such as attaches to other departments of the state. Attempts have been made from time to time to gain admission by improper means to the list of successful candidates, and it would be absurd to say that not one has ever succeeded; the risk, however, is too great, for the penalty on detection may be death.

The ordeal itself is exceedingly severe, as well for the examiners as for the candidates. At the provincial examinations, held once in every third year, an Imperial Commissioner, popularly known as the Grand Examiner, is sent down from Peking. On arrival, his residence is formally sealed up, and extraordinary precautions are taken to prevent friends of intending candidates from approaching him in any way. There is no age limit, and men of quite mature years are to be found competing against youths hardly out of their teens; indeed, there is an authenticated case of a man who successfully graduated at the age of seventy-two. Many compete year after year, until at length they decide to give it up as a bad job.

At an early hour on the appointed day the candidates begin to a.s.semble, and by and by the great gates of the examination hall are thrown open, and heralds shriek out the names of those who are to enter. Each one answers in turn as his name is called, and receives from the attendants a roll of paper marked with the number of the open cell he is to occupy in one of the long alleys into which the examination hall is divided.

Other writing materials, as well as food, he carries with him in a basket, which is always carefully searched at the door, and in which ”sleeve” editions of the cla.s.sics have sometimes been found. When all have taken their seats, the Grand Examiner burns incense, and closes the entrance gates, through which no one will be allowed to pa.s.s, either in or out, dead or alive, until the end of the third day, when the first of the three sessions is at an end, and the candidates are released for the night. In case of death, not unusual where ten or twelve thousand persons are cooped up day and night in a confined s.p.a.ce, the corpse is hoisted over the wall; and this would be done even if it were that of the Grand Examiner himself, whose place would then be taken by the chief a.s.sistant Examiner, who is also appointed by the Emperor, and accompanies the Grand Examiner from Peking.

The long strain of three bouts of three days each has often been found sufficient to unhinge the reason, with a variety of distressing consequences, the least perhaps of which may be seen in a regular percentage of blank papers handed in. On one occasion, a man handed in a copy of his last will and testament; on another, not very long ago, the mental balance of the Grand Examiner gave way, and a painful scene ensued. He tore up a number of the papers already handed in, and bit and kicked every one who came near him, until he was finally secured and bound hand and foot in his chair. A candidate once presented himself dressed in woman's clothes, with his face highly rouged and powdered, as is the custom. He was arrested at the entrance gate, and quietly sent home to his friends.

Overwork, in the feverish desire to get into the Government service, is certainly responsible for the mental break-down of a large proportion of the comparatively few lunatics found in China. There being no lunatic asylums in the empire, it is difficult to form anything like an exact estimate of their number; it can only be said, what is equally true of cripples or deformed persons, that it is very rare to meet them in the streets or even to hear of their existence.

As a further measure of precaution against corrupt practices at examinations, the papers handed in by the candidates are all copied out in red ink, and only these copies are submitted to the examiners. The difficulty therefore of obtaining favourable treatment, on the score of either bribery or friends.h.i.+p, is very much increased. The Chinese, who make no attempt to conceal or excuse, in fact rather exaggerate any corruption in their public service generally, do not hesitate to declare with striking unanimity that the conduct of their examination system is above suspicion, and there appears to be no valid reason why we should not accept this conclusion.