in my wanderings across shansi i came in contact with two missionary systems run with the same object in view but carried out in diametrically opposite ways. of course i speak as an outsider. i criticise as one who only looks on, but after all it is an old saw that the onlooker sees most of the game. there are, of course, many missions in china, and i often feel that if the chinaman were not by nature a philosopher he would sometimes be a little confused by salvation offered him by foreigners of all sects and classes, ranging from roman catholics to seventh day adventists. personally i have received much kindness from english baptists, from the china inland mission and from american presbyterians and congregationalists. amongst them all i—who frankly do not believe in missions, believing that the children at home should first be fed—found much to admire, much individual courage and sacrifice, but for the systems, i felt the american missions were the most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in view.
the chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion. unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable. but the chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission comes to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers and schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins to avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need of china is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. then comes conversion. they tell me that there are many genuine converts. i have only noticed that the great rich american missions rake in converts by tens and twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith missions, which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or tuition. the faith missionaries work hard enough. i have seen a woman just come in from a week's missionary tour in a district where, she explained, she had slept on the k'angs with the other women of the household, and she was stripping off her clothes most carefully and combing her long hair with a tooth-comb, because all women of the class she visited among were afflicted with those little parasites that we do not mention. the chinese have a proverb that “the empress herself has three,” so it is no shame. she thought nothing of her sacrifice, that was what she had come for, everyone else was prepared to do the same; but when so much is given i like to see great results, as in the american missions. they are rich, and the chinaman, with a few glaring exceptions, is a very practical person. to ask him to change his faith for good that will work out in another world is asking rather much of him. if he is going to do so he feels he may as well have a god who will give him something in return for being outcast. at least that is the way i read the results. look at fen chou, for instance, where the americans are thriving and a power in the town, and look at yung ning chou, farther west, where a scandinavian faith mission has been established for over twenty years. they may have a few adherents in the country round, but in the city itself—a city of merchants—they have, i believe, not made a single convert.
of course the china inland mission does not lay itself out to be rich. however many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no more than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries are established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets as much of the fifty pounds as funds allow. the founder of the faith was poor and lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in his footsteps. i understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice implied when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not only do i like best the results of the american system, but i dislike exceedingly that a european should be poor in an oriental country. if missionaries must go to china, i like them to go for the benefit of the chinese and for the honour and glory of the race to which they belong, and not for the good of their own souls.
i came into fen chou fu and went straight to the large compound of the american missionaries, three men and three women from oberlin college, ohio. they had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten, the whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. they teach their faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they teach the manifold knowledge of the west. sanitation and hygiene loom large in their curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into consideration any future life, they must be a blessing to those men and women who under cruel conditions must see this life through. these six missionaries at fen chou fu do their best to improve those conditions with a practical american common-sense and thoroughness that won my admiration.
fen chou fu, unlike t'ai yuan fu, is friendly, and has always been friendly, to the foreigner; even during the boxer trouble they were loath to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were to be slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but sent them out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the city—a very chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
the town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder i had heard all along the road. the weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the verandah of dr watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light on the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the distance, and mr watt pye assured me he had been out in the country and there was nothing to fear, nothing. the chinaman as he had seen him had many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but as far as he knew i might go safely to the russian border. he had not been in the country very long, not, i fancy, a fifth of the time dr edwards had been there, but, listening to him, i hoped once more.
the town is old. it was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite unlike any other i have come across in china. it is a small square city about nine li round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs, also walled. between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to the gates. the eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city, and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way in i was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep browsing. it seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first sight there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
when the manehus drove out the mings, the vanquished imperial family took refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been allowed to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion worthy of babylon itself. the bricks were made seven miles away in the hills, and passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they reached their destination and were laid one on top of another to face the great clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. according to chinese ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only. the mountains to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of evil influences come from the north, and the people fear greatly their effect upon the town. it was possible it might never get a good magistrate, or that, having got one, he might die, and therefore they took every precaution they could to ward off such a calamity. gods they put in their watch tower over the gate, and they sit there still, carved wooden figures, a great fat god—if a city is to be prosperous must not its god be prosperous too?—surrounded by lesser satellites. some are fallen now, and the birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and the cobwebs have gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared away. in a chamber below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a heap as so much useless lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of the city passes in and out beneath the arches of the gateway. in that gateway are two upright stones between whieh all wheeled traffic must pass, the distance between these stones marking the length of the axle allowed by the narrow city streets. any vehicle having a greater length of axle cannot pass in. no mere words can describe the awful condition of the roads of shansi, and to lessen as far as possible the chance of an upset the country man makes his axle very wide, and, knowing this, the town man notifies at his gates the width of the vehicle that can pass in his streets. no other can enter.
besides the gods over the gateway, fen chou fu, owing to its peculiar position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two tall bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. i was quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though i have read about them, i had never met them before. in fen chou fu it appears that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like a comic representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's comb upon his head. it would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was not moved to laughter at the sight. but though the form is crude, on the bronze bases and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the details of a long story. dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange symbols that i do not understand come into it, but how they help to guard the city, except by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits, i must confess i cannot imagine. certainly the city fathers omit the most necessary care: once the walls are finished, the mason is apparently never called in, and they are drifting to decay. everywhere the bricks are falling out, and when i was there in the springtime the birds of the air found there a secure resting-place. there were crows and hawks and magpies and whistling kites popping in and out of the holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs for the making of their nests. they would be secure probably in any case, for the chinese love birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with difficulty and by the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach them.
the ramps up to those walls were extremely steep—it was a heart-breaking process to get on top—but buchanan and i, accompanied by the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by mr leete, one of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. the climate here is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had been freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of the day, and the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. a particularly bad cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a good deal in northern china, even as sheep and cattle do in australia. in shantung a man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly west, very slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they feed on heaven only knows, for it looks to me as though there is nothing, still possibly they pick up something, and i suppose the idea is that they arrive at the various places in time for the harvest, or when grain and products are cheapest. there are inns solely given over to pigs and their drivers in shansi, and the stench outside some of those in fen chou fu was just a little taller than the average smell, and the average smell in a chinese city is something to be always remembered. there were other things to be seen from the top of the wall too—long lines of camels bearing merchandise to and from the town, donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up the dust of the unkempt roadway, small-footed women seated in their doorways looking out upon the life of the streets, riding donkeys or peeping out of the tilts of the carts. i could see into the courtyards of the well-to-do, with their little ponds and bridges and gardens. all the life of the city lay beneath us. possibly that is why one meets so very, very seldom any chinese on the wall—it may be, it probably is, i should think, bad taste to look into your neighbour's courtyard.
and the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it seemed to me. there along the top at intervals were little heaps of good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for the defence of the town. at first i smiled and thought how primeval, but looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, i realised that a big stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a weapon by no means to be despised.
but walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways than in shutting out the fresh air. the summer rains in north china are heavy, and fen chou fu holds water like a bucket. the only outlets are the narrow gateways, and the waters rise and rise. a short time before i came there all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that a woman was drowned. at last the waters escaped through the eastern gate, only to be banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of centuries, the waste rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall of the eastern suburb. it took a long, long while for those flood waters to percolate through the gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place at last in a swamp the other side of that long-suffering town. i must confess that this is one of the drawbacks to a walled town that has never before occurred to me, though to stand there and look at those great gates, those solid walls, made me feel as if i had somehow wandered into the fourth dimension, so out of my world were they.
there was a great fair in a taoist temple and one day mr leete and i, with his teacher and my servant, attended. a wonderful thing is a chinese fair in a temple. i do not yet understand the exact object of these fairs, though i have attended a good many of them. whether they help the funds of the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in this country, i cannot say. a temple in china usually consists of a set of buildings often in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall, and these buildings are not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms which are often let to suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if the stranger knows his way about—i never did—he can get in a temple accommodation for himself and his servants, far superior accommodation to that offered in the inns. it costs a little more, but everything is so cheap that makes no difference to the foreigner. the taoist temple the day i went there was simply humming with life; there were stalls everywhere, and crowds of people buying, selling or merely gossiping and looking on. i took a picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay dresses and gaily painted faces, tottering about, poor things, on their maimed feet, and at the same spot, close against the altar of the god, i took a picture of the priest. with much hesitation he consented to stand. he had in his hand some fortune-telling sticks, but did not dare hold them while his portrait was being taken. however, mr leete's teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened man—in a foreign helmet—and he held the sticks, and the two came out in the picture together. i trust no subsequent harm came to the daring man.
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in fen chou fu i could have walked about the town alone unmolested. i never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as i could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly. on the whole, there was not very much to see. the sun poured down day after day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls or blank grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and uneven, with the ruts still there that had been made when the ground was softened by the summer rains of the year before. away to the south-east was a great pagoda, the second tallest in china, a landmark that can be seen for many a long mile across the plain. this, like the phoenixes, is feng shui. i have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are dotted in apparently a casual manner about the landscape. an immense amount of labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not appear to serve any useful purpose. this one at fen chou fu is meant to balance after a fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford protection for the southern approach to the city. i don't know that it was used for any other purpose. it stood there, tall and commanding, dwarfing everything else within sight. neither do i know the purpose of the literary tower which stands on the southeast corner of the wall. it denotes that the town either has or hopes to have a literary man of high standing among its inhabitants. but to look for the use in all things chinese would be foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be only for artistic purposes. to walk through a chinese town, in spite of filth, in spite of neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the chinaman is an artist to his finger-tips.
the gate to the american church in fen chou fu, for instance, was a circle, a thing of strange beauty. imagine such a gate in an english town, and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. they had no bell, why i do not know, perhaps because every temple in china has a plenitude of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical when the faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to dissociate themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry, even when those practices seem to an outsider like myself rather attractive. at any rate, to summon the faithful to church a man beats a gong.
but there is one institution of fen chou fu which is decidedly utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. a chinaman, i should say, certainly uses on the average less water than the majority of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when he is married, and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead, is the generally received idea of his ablutions, but he does want a little water to carry on life, and in this corner of the town are situated the wells which supply that necessary. it is rather brackish, but it is still drinkable, and it is all that the city gets. they were a never-ending source of interest to me. they were established in those far-away days before history began—perhaps the presence of the water here was the reason for the building of the town—and they have been here ever since. the mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in and year out have come those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn by a harnessed ox or an ox and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled with water. down through all the ages those self-same men, dressed in blue cotton that has worn to a dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff tied round their heads to protect them from the dust or the cold or the sun, have driven those oxen and drawn that water. really and truly our own water, that comes to us, hot and cold, so easily by the turning of a tap, is much more wonderful and interesting, but that i take as a matter of course, while i never tired of watching those prehistoric carts. it was in rather a desolate corner of the town too. the high walls rose up and frowned upon it, the inside of the walls where there was no brick, only crumbling clay with shrubs and creepers just bursting into leaf and little paths that a goat or an active boy might negotiate meandering up to the top. and to get to that part i had to pass the ruins of the old yamen razed to the ground when the government repented them of the boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually that only the two gate-posts, fashioned like lions, chinese architectural lions, survive. a curse is on the place, the people say; anyhow when i visited it fourteen years later no effort had been made to rebuild. not for want of labour, surely. there are no trade unions in china, and daily from dawn to dark in fen chou fu i saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting along, bringing supplies to the men who were building, in the streets i met men carrying water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime there was a never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or without even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been counted scarce worth the cost of transport. any day too i might expect to meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take one to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone knows a coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the most expensive of gifts.
while here i attended a wedding. twice have i attended a chinese wedding. the first was at pao ting fu at christmas time, and the contracting parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay capacity was a strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in miss newton's school. they had never spoken to one another, that would have been a frightful breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church, where there was no screen between the men and the women, as there is in many chinese churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. it is curious how in some things the missionaries conform to chinese ideas and in others decline to yield an inch. in pao ting fu no church member was allowed to smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement, and the schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's wife arranged marriages for such of the girls as came under their guardianship. of course i see the reason for that: in the present state of chinese society no other method would be possible, for these schoolgirls, all the more because they had a little scholarship and education, unless their future had been arranged for, would have been a temptation and a prey for all the young men around, and even with their careful education—and it was a careful education; miss newton was a woman in a thousand, i always grudged her to the chinese—were entirely unfitted to take care of themselves.
still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class americans from virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and the girls who were most suitable for them. it was the most barefaced and open match-making i have ever seen. but generally, i believe, they were very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of the girls at heart.
and this was one of the matches they had arranged. it is on record that on this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance of the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to diligence, and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should be well read and cultured. and seeing that she came of very poor people she might well be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for the bridegroom was educating her. the ignorance of the average chinese woman in far higher circles than she came of is appalling.
christmas day was chosen for the ceremony, and christmas day was a glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air, the keen, invigorating air of northern china, was sparkling with frost. now, in contrast to the next wedding i attended, this wedding was on so-called western lines; but the chinese is no slavish imitator, he changes, but he changes after his own fashion. the church was decorated by devout chinese christians with results which to 'western eyes were a little weird and outré. over the platform that in an anglican church would be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers dotted all over it, and on it chinese characters in cotton wool, “earth rejoices, heaven sings,” and across that again was a festoon of small flags of all nations, while from side to side of the church were slung garlands of gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new republic, and when i think of the time and patience that went to the making of those garlands i was quite sorry they reminded me of fly-catchers. but the crowning decoration was the chinese angel that hovered over all. this being was clad in white, a nurse's apron was used, girt in at the waist, foreign fashion, and i grieve to say they did not give her much breathing-space, though they tucked a pink flower in her belt. great white paper wings were spread out behind, and from her head, framing the decidedly mongolian countenance, were flowing golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators of singed cotton wool.
one o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the church was full.
they did not have the red chair for the bride. the consensus of opinion was against it. “it was given up now by the best people in peking. they generally had carriages. and anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.” so it was deeided that the bride should walk. the church was only a stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. the bridegroom stood at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart chinaman, with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern fashion. he was suitably clad in black silk. he reminded me of “william,” a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an old silk umbrella—this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for “william” was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very best if a little smug occasionally. but if a gentleman who has attained to the proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the girl he has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not a right to look a little smug, i don't know who has. beside him stood his special friend, the chief chinese evangelist, who had himself been married four months before. at the organ sat the american doctor's pretty young wife, and as the word was passed, “the bride is coming!” she struck up the wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to the women's door, while the men, who would not commit such a breach of decorum as to look, stared steadily ahead.
but the wedding march had been played over and over again before she did come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white mosquito netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another bunch in her hand. the bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this great occasion, so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a bronze satin brocade coat.
a model of chinese decorum was that bride. her head under the white veil was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her body moved as she progressed very slowly forward. presumably she did put one foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in the hands of the women on either side—her mother, a stooping little old woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the bridegroom's special friend. each grasped her by an arm just above the elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on wheels. up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head bent and his eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same manner by his friend.
they met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said the closing words the chinese evangelist became master of ceremonies.
“the bridegroom and bride,” said he, “'will bow to each other once in the new style.”
the bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each other in the new style.
“they will bow a second time,” and they bowed again.
“they will bow a third time,” and once more they bowed low.
“they will now bow to the minister,” and they turned like well-drilled soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
“they will now bow to the audience,” and they faced the people and bowed deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the salutation.
“and now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,” and with right good will the congregation, chinese and the two or three foreigners, rose and saluted the newly married couple, also i presume in the new style.
it was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the church, actually together, by way of the women's entrance. but the bride was not on the groom's arm. that would not have been in accord with chinese ideas. the bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward by his friend, as if he had no means of volition of his own—again i thought of “william,” long since departed and forgotten till this moment—and behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner, still with her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too had been a doll.
“all the world loves a lover,” but in china, the land of ceremonies, there are no lovers. this man had gone further than most men in the wooing of his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair chances of success. but even so the girl might not hope for a home of her own.
that would have been most unseemly. the evangelist laundryman had not a mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and he and his bride would live with her and her husband.
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the wedding i attended in fen chou fu was quite a different affair. it was spring, or perhaps i should say early summer, the streets through which we drove to the old house of one of the ming princes where dwelt the bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed down on us. the bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading family, and he wanted a christian wife because he himself is an active member of the church, but the christian church at fen chou fu has been bachelor so long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that there are about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred young men, therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could get was a pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty mexican dollars, roughly a little under three pounds. i, a greek, who do not care much what any man's religion is so long as he live a decent life, understand the desire of that man for a christian wife, for that means here in the interior that she will have received a little education, will be able to read and write and do arithmetic, and will know something of cleanliness and hygiene.
the great day arrived, and the missionaries and i were invited to the bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow. the entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we arrived a little after noon, and we two women, miss grace maccomaughey and i, were ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior one, which was crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array, some servants in the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars in rags who were anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, and were having tea and cake already. overhead the sky was shut out by all manner of flags and banners with inscriptions in chinese characters upon them, and once inside, we made our way towards the house through a pressing crowd. opposite the place that perhaps answered for a front door was a table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the table were two long square candles of red wax with chinese characters in gold upon them. they were warranted to burn a day and a night, and between them was a pretty dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing innumerable white flowers. that table was artistic and pretty, but to its left was a great pile of coal, and, beside the coal, a stove and a long table at which a man, blue-clad, shaven and with a queue, was busy preparing the feast within sight of all. i could have wished the signs of hospitality had not been so much in evidence, for i could quite believe that cook had not been washed since he was three days old, and under the table was a large earthenware bowl full of extremely dirty water in which were being washed the bowls we would presently use.
out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak of. it was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with bands of black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats and loose trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all shansi. it was quite a relief to sit down on the k'ang opposite to a stout and cheerful old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do farmer's wife. she was a childless widow, however, but she had attained to the proud position of bible-woman, receiving a salary of four mexican dollars a month, and consequently had a position and station of her own. in my experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own importance in the world. it is certainly conducive to happiness. i know the missionaries, bless them! would say i am taking a wrong view, but whatever the reason at the back of it all, to them is the honour of that happy, comfortable-looking bible-woman. and there are so few happy-looking women in china!
we sat on the k'ang and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. my feet—i never can tuck them under me—clad in good substantial leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they were unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and the-flesh could not grow between the heel and the toes. she looked at my feet and i laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true chinese:
“the larger the feet the happier the woman.”
i asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
“it hurt like anything,” translated the missionary girl beside me, “but it is all right now.”
the bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out to greet her, or rather to stare at her. first came the bridegroom, and that well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. he wore a most respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk petticoat; round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of orange-red silk, set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum of no mean proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him, was—a rare headgear in china—a hard black felt hat. from the brim of that, on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which were strung ornaments of brass, and i am bound to say that the whole effect was striking.
before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her veil and smear her face with onion. they explained that the bridegroom's mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that these two women would be antagonistic—which i think i could have foretold without the aid of any fortune-teller—therefore the rite was deputed to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at the sehool. then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with husband and children living on the other, down through the crowd came the little bride to her marriage. she was clad in a red robe, much embroidered, which entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were fat or slim it was impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown entirely covering it, and over her face was a veil of thick bright red silk. she could neither see nor be seen. her feet were the tiniest i have ever seen, they looked about suitable for a baby of twelve months old. the tiny red shoes were decorated with little green tassels at the pointed toe and had little baby high heels, and though they say these feet were probably false, the real ones must have been wonderfully small if they were hidden in the manifold red bandages that purported to make the slender red ankles neat.
bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in front of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to think of keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet. the service began, all in chinese, of course, though the officiating minister was an american, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience laughed aloud because she was married by her baby name, her mother having omitted to provide her with another.
the good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl “lead a brother.”
half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. he gave it a hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on one of the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the bride's face for the first time. they had done their best to spoil her beauty with carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a sweet little quivering mouth that was very lovable, and i think the bridegroom, though he never moved a muscle, must have been pleased with his bargain.
when the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back to the k'ang in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and little shoes and made audible comments on them.
“h'm! it's only sham silk,” said one.
“how old are you, new bride?” asked another.
“she's not much to look at,” said a third, which was a shame, for with the paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
it was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together, and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom, without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
we had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon such as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and they served for all the courses. it was lucky i had had nothing since seven in the morning, or i might not have felt equal to eating after i had seen the cooking and the washing-up arrangements. as it was, i was hungry enough not to worry over trifles. after she had sucked them audibly, my friend the bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks, and i managed to put up with that too. i tried a little wine. it was served in little bowls not as large as a very small salt-cellar, literally in thimblefuls, but one was too much for me. it tasted of fiery spirit and earth, and i felt my companion was not denying herself much when she proclaimed herself a teetotaller. what we ate heaven only knows, but much to my surprise i found it very good. chinese when they have the opportunity are excellent cooks.
the bride sat throughout the feast on the k'ang, her hands—three of her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields—hidden under her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette required that she should refuse all food. they chaffed her and laughed at her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. after the feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in, and to every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the men and women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident that she was for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected and laughed at. she was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when kan t'ai t'ai's cart—i was kan t'ai t'ai—was announced, and we went home through the streets as the shades of evening were falling. i had fed bountifully and well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the airlessness of the rooms was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of the narrow street i drew into my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness. it was good to be in the free air again. better still to remember, however i had railed against my fate at times, nothing that could ever happen to me would be quite as bad as the fate of the average chinese woman.
however, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one. the bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer in t'ai yuan fu, leaving his wife with his mother. she was to be sent to the school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of course, her feet were to be unbound. probably, i hope i do not do him an injustice, the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he did want an educated mother for his children, and the missionaries will take no woman with bound feet. they will do the best they can to retrieve the damage done, though she can never hope to be anything but a maimed cripple, but at least she in the future will be free from pain, into her darkened life will come a little knowledge and a little light, and certainly her daughters will have a happier life and a brighter outlook.
missions in china, if they are to do any good, are necessarily patriarchal. they look after their converts from the cradle to the grave. the kindergarten run by a chinese girl under the maternal eye of young miss grace maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the little tots in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done or their heads shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the proud chinese parents—for chinese parents are both proud and tender and loving, though their ways seem strange to us. but babies all the world over, yellow or black or white, are all lovable, and these babies at the kindergarten were delicious.
“beloved guest, beloved guest,” they sang in chorus when i came in and they were told to greet me. “peace to thee, peace to thee.”
and “lao t'ai t'ai” they used to address me in shrill little voices as i went about the compound. lao t'ai t'ai (i shouldn't like to swear i'd spelled it properly) means “old lady”—that is, a woman of venerable years who is rich enough to keep a servant—and it was the first time in my life i had been so addressed, so i looked in the glass to see if i had developed grey hair or wrinkles—riding on a mule-pack would be enough to excuse anything—and then i remembered that if in doubt in china it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance old. i dare say to the children i was old. i remember as a very little girl a maiden aunt asking me how old i thought her, and i, knowing she was older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested in all good faith she might be about ninety. i believe the lady had just attained her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her youthful appearance. at any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me when guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. at least in the west. here in the east i was “old lady” by courtesy.
and they begin the important things of life early in china. at the kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be married. the boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl was the daughter of his wife. he, a widower, sought a wife to look after his little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. her price was thirty tiaous—that is, a little over one pound—and at first he said it was too much and he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little girl he changed his mind and scraped together the money, for the child could be betrothed to his little son and save the expense of a wife later on.
they were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. the boy had his tufts cut short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and were twisted into a plait. such a happy little couple they were, always together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair these little ones always chose each other. possibly the new wife in the home was a wise and discreet woman. she might be glad too at the thought that she need not part with her daughter. anyhow i should think that in fen chou fu in the future there would be one married couple between whom the sincerest affection will exist.
i suppose chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other occasionally, but the chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a different point of view from the westerner. i remember hearing about a new-made widow who came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from a long illness. she was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her turn said in the vernacular:
“and you too have suffered a bitterness. i am sorry.”
“i?” incredulously, as much as to say, who could think i had a sorrow?
“why, yes. you have lost your husband, haven't you?”
“call that a bitterness?” smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
but perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. the new-made widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her head:
“all, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the gospel!” which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether she had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite correctly.
fen chou fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it. when i was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in japan and was ready to back any measures for the good of the town. he was too much imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a christian, but he was full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these enthusiastic young people from oberlin college. there is a large government school here—you may see the courtyards with their lily ponds and bridges from the wall—that has been in existence for hundreds of years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to take it over and institute their modern methods. they might even, so he said, teach their own faith there. the only thing that stood in the way was want of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a way of sticking to the hands through which it passes in china. the missionaries were rather inclined, i think, to have hopes of his conversion, but i do not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded man who sees the good in all creeds. this magistrate was anxious to help his people sunk in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that came in his way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never westernise a chinaman. he will take all that is good—or bad—in the west that appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. this magistrate was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to the mission station and, more progressive than the west itself, he allowed his wife to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved guilty of crime.