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 A CORNER OF CATHAY
 
 THE FERRY
 
 STUDIES FROM LIFE AMONG THE CHINESE 
 
 BY 
 
 ADELE M. FIELDE 
 
 AUTHOB OF A "DICTIONARY OF THE SWATOW DIALECT," "PAGODA SHADOWS 
 "CHINESE NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT, " ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY ARTISTS IN THE CELEBRATED SCHOOL 
 OF GO LENG, AT SWA TOW, CHINA 
 
 fforfc 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 .AND LONDON 
 1894 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1894, 
 BY MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped March, 1894. Reprinted 
 November, 1894. 
 
 NortoootJ 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith. 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 TO 
 
 . 35. fH. 
 
 WHOSE PATIENT LOVE, STEADFAST AS STARS 
 
 SELF-LIGHTED, FAR AWAY, 
 
 ILLUMED FOR ME, THROUGH ALL THE YEARS, 
 MY CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 2226969
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 THESE studies were made during a residence of fifteen 
 years in China, chiefly at Swatow, in the southeastern 
 corner, with frequent sojourn in villages which no other 
 foreigner had ever visited, and with extensive travel in 
 other parts of the empire. Acquaintance with the local 
 dialect and with many native women enabled the 
 writer to gain information directly from all classes and 
 from both sexes; and whatever is here recorded has 
 been amply verified by personal observation. The sub- 
 jects treated have been discussed with many natives, 
 and only such ideas are set forth as were generally 
 agreed upon as true, at least for the eastern department 
 of the Kwangtung province. 
 
 A portion of this volume consists of papers previously
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 published in the Popular Science Monthly and other 
 periodicals. 
 
 The importance of the Chinese question, and the 
 grave political issues connected with its solution, make 
 it worth while to understand the character of our Mon- 
 golian guests, and to know whether the thoughts con- 
 cealed by their immobile visages are very unlike our 
 own. 
 
 There is a singular homogeneity in the Chinese, and 
 a remarkable general conformity to type. While many 
 things here portrayed are local, it is believed that all 
 are typical of the nation as a whole. 
 
 Where economic questions are considered, the Eng- 
 lish reader may estimate the dollar at four shillings, 
 and two cents as a penny. 
 
 NEW YORK, 1894.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FARM-LIFE IN CHINA 1 
 
 ECONOMY, HOUSEHOLD AND PERSONAL .... 14 
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES 24 
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS .49 
 
 BABIES AND THEIR GRANDMOTHERS 71 
 
 CHILDREN'S GAMES 79 
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING 94 
 
 MEASURES OF TIME Ill 
 
 SUITS IN LAW , 120 
 
 FABULOUS PEOPLE AND ANIMALS 132 
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS 139 
 
 A QUEER AUTUMN ENTERTAINMENT 152 
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION .... 158 
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS 166 
 
 THE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS .... 214 
 
 CHINESE PIETY, FILIAL, FRATERNAL, AND FRIENDLY . 257
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THE FERRY Frontispiece 
 
 OPPOSITE PAGE 
 
 A FRIENDLY CHAT 10 
 
 A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE 26 
 
 THE DEPARTURE OF THE BRIDE 38 
 
 SETTING OUT FOR THE CEMETKRY .... 68 
 
 GOING TO VISIT A MARRIED DAUGHTER .... 76 
 
 A FAMILY MEAL 110 
 
 THE HOLE-IN-THE-CHEST PEOPLE 132 
 
 PYGMIES OUT FOR A WALK 138 
 
 THE WOMEN'S APARTMENT 156 
 
 WOMEN AT A SHRINE 214 
 
 AN HONORARY PORTAL 264
 
 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 FARM-LIFE. 
 
 THE number of persons that may subsist upon 
 the products of an acre of land appears to have been 
 practically determined by the Chinese. On ground 
 that has been tilled for thousands of years they, by 
 a skilful use of fertilizers and by attention to the 
 welfare of each plant, raise crops that would honour 
 a virgin soil. 
 
 In the Swatow region probably nine tenths of the 
 men are engaged in agriculture. The farmers live 
 in villages, isolated dwellings being uncommon. The 
 villages are walled, contain no wasted space, and are 
 densely peopled. The wide-spreading, flat fields, 
 lying along the river-banks at the foot of the hills, may
 
 2 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 be made to yield a constant series of crops without 
 interval on account of winter. Their chief produc- 
 tions are rice, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, pulse, gar- 
 den vegetables, peanuts, indigo, sesamum, ginger, 
 the grass-cloth plant, tobacco, and wheat. Rice is the 
 staple food of the people, and in the best years the 
 local product just supplies the local demand. Sugar 
 is the principal export. The cane requires less labour 
 than any other crop, and will grow upon unwatered 
 land, which is unsuitable for rice-culture. One crop 
 of cane or two crops of other produce may be grown 
 in the same year upon unwatered land. On the best 
 rice-fields three crops are sometimes raised. The early 
 rice is sowed in April and harvested in July; the 
 late rice is sowed in August and harvested in Novem- 
 ber, and the field is then sometimes planted with 
 garden vegetables, which are pulled in March. The 
 expense of fertilizing the third crop is so nearly equal 
 to its value that it is never reckoned as a source of 
 profit to the cultivator.
 
 FARM-LIFE. 3 
 
 The whole country belongs theoretically to its sov- 
 ereign, and upon all land that can be tilled with profit 
 a tax is paid into the imperial treasury. The sum 
 due annually to the government for the use of land is 
 fixed for each field, amounts to from sixty cents to 
 two dollars, and averages a dollar and a half upon 
 each acre. 
 
 When a father dies, his land is divided equally 
 among his sons, the eldest receiving an additional 
 tenth on account of the extra expense to which he is 
 put in worshipping the spirits of the ancestors. The 
 land is distributed very generally, though unequally, 
 among the people, and is usually tilled by its peas- 
 ant proprietors. Few own so much as two hundred 
 acres; one who owns ten acres is reckoned wealthy, 
 and he who owns one acre possesses a competence. 
 Those who own from one tenth to one half an acre 
 are most numerous, and therefore there are many 
 who till land for a share of the produce. Land that 
 is too sterile for profitable cultivation or for taxation
 
 4 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 sells for from six to sixty dollars an acre, while good 
 farm-land is valued at from three hundred to eight 
 hundred dollars an acre. Rice-fields not in the 
 vicinity of a city sell readily for six hundred dol- 
 lars an acre, and are not always to be bought at that 
 price, because those who own land find it the safest 
 investment, and part with it only when under the 
 stress of debt. The bursting of dikes, drought, and 
 bad habits, are the chief causes of the transfer of 
 land, and the sale of a child often precedes that of 
 the rice-field. Interest on money lent is from twelve 
 to twenty per cent, according to agreement between 
 lender and borrower. 
 
 The chief expense of tillage is in fertilizers, beans 
 and seeds from which the oil has been expressed be- 
 ing commonly used, at an outlay of from six to 
 forty and an average of twenty-four dollars upon 
 every acre of land. Besides this, potato-peelings, 
 hair from shaven heads, and all other vegetable and 
 animal refuse is carefully husbanded and methodi-
 
 FARM-LIFE. 5 
 
 cally applied to the soil. The clods of the field are 
 laid up into little ovens to retain and be enriched 
 by the smoke of the stubble burned underneath 
 them. Adobe houses, whose walls have for many 
 years absorbed the fumes of a kitchen and the ex- 
 halations of human inmates, are pulverized and 
 added to the ever-hungry earth. Each growing 
 plant separately receives distinguished consideration, a 
 scrap of tobacco-stalk being sometimes put beside its 
 root to destroy underground grubs, while its leaves 
 are frequently examined and sedulously freed from 
 vermin. The rotation of crops is always practised. 
 As no milk, butter, nor cheese is used, the only 
 quadruped seen on the farm is the water-buffalo, 
 or the zebu, which assists in ploughing and harrowing. 
 Many farmers rear ducks, which are taken to the 
 fields to devour the snails, crabs, and young frogs 
 which thrive there at planting-time. Fowls often 
 accompany the harvesters, picking up the last grains 
 left among the stubble.
 
 6 A CORNER O.F CATHAY. 
 
 Few families are without the ubiquitous black hog, 
 whose usual habitat is the door-step. Its food is the 
 bran of the rice hulled and eaten in the house ; its 
 head is the chief offering set before the gods, and 
 its flesh is most highly esteemed among festive viands. 
 It is reared at small expense, makes no disputed 
 demand on space, furnishes the unctuous element in 
 a satisfying bill of fare, and can always be sold at 
 ten cents a pound. 
 
 The farming appliances are simple, and a complete 
 outfit can be bought for forty dollars. A plough with 
 two shares, a pair of harrows, and a fanning-mill 
 each cost two dollars; a pump worked by treadles 
 in irrigating the fields, four dollars; a water-buffalo, 
 twenty dollars; hoes, sickles, baskets, and sundries, 
 ten dollars. 
 
 When land is leased, the owner pays the taxes, 
 and the lessee furnishes all that is required in till- 
 age. Payment to the landlord is always made in 
 unhusked rice, and when the land is worked on
 
 FARM-LIFE. 7 
 
 shaves, this amounts to about one half the crop. The 
 usual bargain for the use of land is a ton and a 
 quarter of unhusked rice, worth about thirty dollars, 
 for each acre. If the year be remarkably bad, the 
 lessee may insist upon the landlord's taking one half 
 the crop, though that be manifestly much less than 
 the amount agreed upon as payment. If the year 
 be good and the land excellent, the lessee may pay 
 one third of his crop to the landlord, may have 
 expended another third upon fertilizers, and may 
 have the other third as net profit for his labour. As 
 one man is unable to till more than one acre alone, 
 the average yearly earnings of men who work land 
 on shares is less than thirty dollars. One acre of 
 good land produces on the average 3648 pounds 
 of clean rice. 
 
 A farmer may be hired by the year for from eight 
 to fourteen dollars, with food, clothing, head-shaving, 
 and tobacco. Those who work by the day receive 
 from eight to ten cents, with a noon-day meal. At
 
 8 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the planting and harvesting of rice, wages are from 
 ten to twenty cents a day, with five meals ; or thirty 
 cents a day, without food. Few land-owners hire 
 hands, except for a few days during the planting 
 and harvesting of rice. Those who have more land 
 than they and their sons can till, lease it to their 
 neighbours. 
 
 Much land is held on leases given by ancient 
 proprietors to clansmen whose descendants now till 
 it, paying from seven to fourteen dollars' worth of 
 rice annually for its use. 
 
 Food averages little more than a dollar a month 
 for each member of a farmer's family. One who 
 buys, cooks, and eats his meals alone, spends from 
 one and a half to two dollars a month upon the raw 
 material and fuel. Two pounds of rice, costing three 
 and a half cents, with relishes of salt fish, pickled 
 cabbage, vegetables and fruits, costing a cent and a 
 half, is the ordinary allowance to each labourer for 
 each day. Abernethy's advice to a luxurious patient,
 
 FARM-LIFE. 9 
 
 "Live on sixpence a day and earn it," is followed 
 by nearly every Chinaman. One or two dependent 
 relatives frequently share with him the sixpence. 
 
 Five dollars, wisely spent, each year, will supply 
 comfortable and even elegant clothing for a man or 
 a woman. The clothing is usually woven in hand- 
 looms in the farmer's house, from the fibre of the 
 grass-cloth plant {Boehmeria nivea), or from imported 
 cotton yarn. The average amount of clothing pos- 
 sessed by a farmer may be reckoned at four dollars 
 in value. 
 
 A room may be comfortably furnished by an outlay 
 of five dollars, and such a room would usually be 
 occupied by three or four persons. The house varies 
 in value, from the twenty-dollar cabin of the poor 
 to the thousand-dollar dwelling of the rich. The 
 value of the land in the villages in which the agri- 
 culturists live is from six to eight hundred dollars 
 an acre. 
 
 As the emigration of men is constant, and the
 
 10 A CORNER OF OATHAY. 
 
 smothering of female infants is common, it is proba- 
 ble that the land will support no more than its pres- 
 ent population. One sixth of an acre to each mouth 
 to be filled is commonly declared to be the least 
 that will enable the cultivator to live upon his own 
 land, even with the highest tillage and the utmost 
 frugality. One acre, tilled by the peasant proprietor 
 alone, will feed six persons the peasant, his wife, 
 his aged father and mother, and his two young chil- 
 dren. It will yield rice, hulled in the house, and 
 vegetables, raised between rice-crops, sufficient for 
 food. The straw and stubble will serve as fuel, 
 and the pig and fowls will supply meat. The cloth- 
 ing will be woven and made by the wife, while the 
 old couple take care of the children. The aged and 
 the young are thus provided for through the land 
 which has been the property of the one and will be 
 the inheritance of the other. If dirt, superstition, 
 and mendacity were eliminated from such a home, 
 its inmates would appear eminently fit to survive.
 
 A FRIENDLY CHAT
 
 FAKM-LIFE. 11 
 
 A process of natural selection has doubtless adapted 
 the Chinese to their environment. 
 
 The following cases illustrate a multitude of their 
 kind: 
 
 Two brothers of my acquaintance, aged thirty-one 
 and thirty-two years, inherited from their father 
 one acre of land, half of which is watered. Their 
 house, with the ground on which it is built, is 
 worth fifty, their furniture fifteen, their clothing 
 twenty, and their farming appliances thirty dollars. 
 They live as well as their neighbours, have paid 
 up a debt inherited with their land, and are now 
 laying up money to invest in wives. Twenty years 
 ago a wife could be betrothed for thirty dollars, 
 whereas none can now be obtained for less than a 
 hundred dollars, #nd the price is rapidly rising. 
 Last year they got twenty-seven dollars' worth of 
 rice from one half their farm, after having put on 
 twelve dollars' worth of fertilizers. On the other 
 half they planted sugar-cane, put on fifteen dollars'
 
 12 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 worth of manure, and sold the standing crop for 
 forty dollars. The younger brother did nearly all 
 the work. 
 
 Pong Hia lives in a village of three hundred per- 
 sons, in which about thirty men are land-owners, 
 having altogether forty-five acres of land. Pong Hia 
 owns two acres, inherited from the father who adopted 
 him. His land is worth one thousand dollars. His 
 family consists of ten persons. He is himself forty- 
 six years old, his wife is forty-one, his son is twenty- 
 two, his son's wife is twenty-one, his four daughters 
 are from ten to seventeen, and his two grandchil- 
 dren are three and seven years old. He and his 
 son till the land, hiring help at harvest-time, and 
 weaving straw mats on rainy days. The women-folk 
 make the clothing, rear pigs and fowls, and do all 
 the house-work. Their dwelling, with its site, is 
 valued at a hundred and twenty dollars, their furni- 
 ture at forty-four dollars, their clothing at forty 
 dollars, their farming appliances at forty dollars.
 
 FAKX-OFEL 13 
 
 They hare a watra-lnffialo, tiro lugs, thirty fowls,, 
 tea dudes, a pur of geese, a dog, and a cat. Last 
 year Pong HSa sold twenty dottus' worth of rice 
 from M> Jbzm. and paid $.60 in. taxes. He las 
 two hundred doUais out at interest* at eighteen per 
 
 At this rate off production and consumption, the 
 
 aimHe land in the St^ie iof Xew Y*ork. wida a 
 tion of one balf iits menujrns cm aiDDCMiLni of lies 
 ncffthem latitude, wiowaltii smppoint ibe tonal 
 
 JT JT 
 
 tion of the Cmiied States at u2n<e pnesemi lime 
 the oeeapied arable land of the Cmited Siaies. 
 its producing power dimiioishied, on account of <dli- 
 mate, to one half thait of land at Swatow. wwaliii 
 feed a population equal to that of the whole worid, 
 or oyer 1,400,000,000.
 
 PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 
 
 The starving is most troubled by his emptiness ; 
 
 When filled, he's troubled that no wife his home doth bless ; 
 
 Having brought home a wife, and helpmeet of the best, 
 
 He's troubled that he hath no children to caress ; 
 
 With five strong sons, and four fair daughters at his side, 
 
 He's troubled that he doth not broader rooms possess ; 
 
 Having built houses, granaries, and porches wide, 
 
 He's troubled lest the great should scorn him or oppress ; 
 
 Raised to the highest rank and power, he's troubled lest 
 
 His sovereign's wrath should bring on him some new distress ! 
 
 THIS translation of a popular stanza shows the real 
 order in which carking cares arise in the Chinese 
 mind. Gravity and prudence, the power of foregoing 
 present gratification for the sake of future well- 
 being, characterize the people generally, especially 
 those of the south. 
 
 In regard to the first requirement of the body, 
 
 14
 
 PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 15 
 
 food, they are singularly free from prejudices which 
 interfere with the utilization of any harmless nutri- 
 tive substance. Grubs, worms, snails, snakes, 
 squids, and jelly-fishes, as well as the flesh of the 
 rat, cat, and dog, make for them savoury messes, 
 though these are not staples in the markets. The 
 blood of fowl and quadruped is made into edible 
 dishes, and no portion of any animal or vegetable is 
 wasted. Milk and its products are disliked only 
 because they are essentially costly, and therefore 
 uncommon. The ground required for feeding a cow 
 may be planted with pulse, and the pulse will fur- 
 nish much more of that important food-element, 
 caseine, than would the milk of the cow. Beans, 
 peas, and lentils, in great variety, and rich in the 
 nutritive elements of milk, are constantly eaten in 
 toothsome preparations, including a peculiar curd 
 which resembles cheese. 
 
 Grain, used in food-stuffs, as milled by them, 
 keeps in its flour as much of the outer portion of
 
 16 A COENER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the kernel as is digestible. Vegetable oils, always 
 cheaper than animal fats, are much used in frying, 
 and for pastry. Brown sugar, one of the chief prod- 
 ucts of the south, retains its saccharine and its colour 
 in numberless confections, and reaches its most at- 
 tractive aspect in rock-candy. All sorts of fish, 
 fowl, and flesh are salted and dried, for consumption 
 at seasons when fresh meat is dear. 
 
 The appliances for cooking are extremely simple. 
 A few thin earthen pots and pans, set upon small 
 clay stoves, over tiny charcoal fires, suffice for pre- 
 paring a great number of viands. All that is needed 
 for furnishing a kitchen where the most elaborate 
 meals may be perfected, can be procured for a few 
 dimes. 
 
 The custom of cutting all food into shreds and 
 morsels during the culinary process saves time at 
 meals, and diminishes the service required at table. 
 Meats, vegetables, and pasties are brought to the 
 board in such form that no knife nor fork need be
 
 PEESONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 17 
 
 there applied to them, and only a simple implement 
 for lifting them to the mouth is laid beside the 
 plate. The relegation of all carving to the kitchen 
 vastly simplifies the equipage for dining, without 
 destroying the individuality or diminishing the deli- 
 cacy of the dishes. The crockery used on the table 
 is therefore of very small size, and the cupboards 
 occupy little space. 
 
 The usual method of lighting a room is by a 
 small saucer of vegetable oil, having the pith of a 
 bulrush laid within it as a wick. This gives an 
 illumination sufficient for reading native books. One 
 quarter of an ounce of peanut oil will thus burn for 
 four hours; but the many who sleep from dark to 
 dawn expend hardly anything on artificial light. 
 
 At night, only one article, a straw mat in sum- 
 mer, a cotton mattress in winter, is spread beneath 
 the sleeper; while a single coverlet, varying in 
 thickness with the weather, is laid over him. As 
 the night-clothes are of precisely the same shape as
 
 18 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 are those worn by day, faded suits generally render 
 final service in bedrooms. 
 
 As the changes of fashion in dress are but slight, 
 a man or woman may, without being out of the 
 style, wear any garment a lifetime. A fixed fashion 
 saves all the wear and tear of nerve incident to 
 cutting by new patterns, and all reckoning as to the 
 amount of cloth required. The only measurements 
 necessary for fitting any individual, are, for a tunic, 
 from the centre of the chest to the wrist, and from 
 the neck to the knees. For a pair of trousers or a 
 kirtle, simply the length from hip to ankle is taken. 
 The wearer may grow thinner or stouter without 
 remodelling the garments. This permits one to get 
 costly raiment, and then to lay it away and to main- 
 tain for many succeeding years that peace of mind 
 which accompanies a consciousness of being prepared 
 for all social emergencies. It encourages exquisite 
 weaving and rich embroidery, because it allows the 
 possessor of beautiful and costly robes to leave them
 
 PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 19 
 
 as useful heirlooms. Women whose fashions in 
 clothing are permanent are morally justified in 
 arraying themselves, as do Chinese ladies, in works 
 of true and high art. 
 
 The patterns and the material for clothing are 
 nearly the same for both sexes and all ages. The 
 shape is such that not a scrap of the fabric is wasted 
 in the cutting. When suspended to dry after wash- 
 ing, the cloth hangs straight and requires no ironing. 
 When folded for packing away for the season, or 
 for a journey, the greater the pressure, the smoother 
 the garment when taken out for wear. A large and 
 handsome wardrobe may be kept in three cubic feet 
 of space, and a lady can carry a half dozen dresses 
 in a bundle cinctured by a pocket-handkerchief. 
 The weight hangs upon the shoulders, and there is 
 no compression nor restriction of any muscle. While 
 the costume is modest and protective, the amount 
 of fabric used is but small. Seven square yards or 
 less make a complete summer suit, and thirteen
 
 20 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 square yards a complete winter suit, including all 
 inner and outer garments, worn at any one time by 
 either a man or a woman. In winter, warmth is 
 obtained at small cost by quilting raw cotton between 
 light and cheap textures. Four pounds of wadding, 
 judiciously distributed from neck to feet, keep the 
 wearer warmer than would thick and heavy goods, 
 or great expenditure in fuel. In the coldest weather 
 a man may be comfortably and handsomely dressed, 
 in what would be worn at a festival and out of 
 doors, for about twelve dollars. This estimate is 
 made from the average of the totals gained by set- 
 ting down the actual cost of every garment worn at 
 one time by several prosperous men in holiday attire. 
 A woman's raiment has nearly the same value, but 
 three dollars must be added for indispensable jew- 
 elry bracelets, ear-rings, and aigrettes belonging 
 to feminine costume. A well-dressed man rarely 
 wears, including head and footgear, what has cost more 
 than fifteen dollars; and a woman may be elegantly
 
 PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 21 
 
 attired, with all her ornaments and for the open air, 
 at an expense of twenty dollars. 
 
 In spite of all this thrift, the necessary expenses 
 of the Chinese labourer are great in proportion to 
 his wages; and the vast majority are labourers. 
 While the highest offices are open to every man 
 through the competitive examinations, and though 
 personal property and real estate are secured to their 
 owners, probably not more than one person in ten 
 thousand is beyond the necessity of daily earning 
 daily bread, or of having his children earn it for 
 him. Wealth is accumulated toilsomely, and there 
 is, as in other countries, an idea that it is dissipated 
 in about four generations. A popular verse says : 
 
 One generation toils, and meanly fares ; 
 The next, broad robes of fur and satin wears ; 
 The third sells off the fields and pawns the home ; 
 Its heirs, in tatters, hungry, houseless, roam. 
 
 As a rule, but little of " the unearned increment " 
 is visible about the household. Phlegm, persistence,
 
 22 A CONNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 and frugality account for all possessions. If a man 
 has a wife, two children, and no vicious habits, and 
 works all day for the support of his family, he can 
 scarcely keep the wolf from the door. No one with- 
 out an income from capital dares marry. The ex- 
 penses of a household having only the necessaries 
 of life, as is the case in almost all Chinese fami- 
 lies, would, for a man, his wife, and two children, 
 be about as follows: rent for one room, two dollars 
 a year; decent clothing, made by the wife, twelve 
 dollars a year; food, cooked by the wife, thirty-six 
 dollars a year. As the wages of a labouring man 
 on a farm, in porterage, or in any work below that 
 of an artisan, are but ten cents a day, it would take 
 five hundred days' work to pay the outlays of the 
 year. The possession of a bit of land, or an income 
 from rents, is therefore deemed essential to the ex- 
 istence of every family. An artisan, whose wages 
 are twice those of the unskilled labourer, could 
 barely support his family. 
 
 As only the simplest and rudest machinery is used
 
 PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 23 
 
 either in arts or agriculture, the time required for 
 production makes everything intrinsically costly. 
 The tiny light given by a bulrush pith in a saucer 
 of peanut oil costs the Chinese labourer only one 
 tenth of a cent an hour; but that represents one 
 hundredth part of a day's earnings. 
 
 The food eaten by the labourer costs on the aver- 
 age but five cents a day, but that is one half his 
 day's wage, and so his plain boiled rice, salt-fish, 
 and pickled cabbage take half his time in the earn- 
 ing. His clothing, all woven and made by hand, 
 costs him only six dollars a year, but that is sixty 
 days' wages. The farmer's floorless and ceilingless 
 house can be built for -three hundred dollars, but 
 this is as much as he could earn in ten years. 
 
 He is saved from extinction by making the utmost 
 possible use of his material; he is saved from envy, 
 by being as well off as his neighbours. He suffers 
 because he never invents, and he is lonely because he 
 always works for personal and not general good.
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 
 
 THE Great Pure Dynasty, founded in 1644, when 
 the Tartars for the second time took possession of 
 the throne of the Middle Kingdom, has from that 
 time to the present maintained a consistent internal 
 policy, based on the assumption that the emperor is 
 the Son of Heaven and the Father of his people. 
 The Penal Code is comprehensible only when the 
 inquirer understands that, under the Mongolian sys- 
 tem of government, seniors- are held to account for 
 the doings of juniors. A parent is publicly re- 
 warded for the public services of his son; or he 
 may, on the other hand, be beheaded for his grand- 
 son's crime. The elders of a village may have their 
 houses burned, by direction of a magistrate, if they 
 
 fail to put into the hands of the constables an 
 
 24
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 25 
 
 offender belonging to their clan. Officers are con- 
 sidered responsible for the behaviour of those under 
 their jurisdiction; and throughout all ranks and 
 relationships the recognition of the solidarity of the 
 family and clan is held to be the foundation of 
 good order. So interlinked and reticulated are the 
 threads that make the web of Chinese life, that, if 
 one thread be broken, the rent must finally extend 
 throughout the fabric. 
 
 Women are the chattels of their elders, male and 
 female. For no woman is there an honourable 
 career outside of domestic life. To be killed or to 
 be married is the universal female fate. As a help- 
 meet and a producer of sons, she has in her youth 
 a commercial value, and the law deals with her 
 as property belonging to her seniors in her own fam- 
 ily before marriage, and to her seniors in her hus- 
 band's family after marriage. 
 
 The law requiring a marriage to be explained 
 before contraction, so as to be clearly understood by
 
 26 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the two families interested, is commonly violated. 
 Oppressive upon women as are the marriage laws, 
 the common practices are still harsher; for if decep- 
 tion be used by the go-between, the matrimonial 
 agent employed to negotiate the marriage, there is 
 no redress except through a law-suit, which is sure 
 to be won by the litigant who can offer the magis- 
 trate the highest bribe. I have known a girl to be, 
 unknown to herself and to her parents, legally 
 bound, beyond help or recall, to a maniac; and I 
 have known a girl, declared by the go-between to 
 be sound and fair, to be discovered by her waiting 
 mother-in-law and husband to be incurably maimed. 
 Greed of lucre, and misjudgment as to what consti- 
 tutes well-being, produce conjugal misery. There is 
 redress for the man, soon after marriage, if he deter- 
 mines to put away his wife; but there is none for 
 the woman, save by death. After a girl is regu- 
 larly affianced, by the acceptance, through her par- 
 ents or guardian, of the betrothal presents, if her
 
 L 
 
 A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAOE
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 27 
 
 family repent and refuse to execute the marriage 
 contract, then the person amongst them who had 
 authority to give the girl away, is punished with 
 fifty blows, and the marriage is completed. Although 
 the marriage contract should not have been drawn 
 up in writing, the acceptance of the presents is con- 
 sidered sufficient evidence of agreement between the 
 parties. 
 
 If, after the girl is affianced, but previous to the 
 completion of the marriage, her family promises her 
 in marriage to another, the person having authority 
 to give her away is punished with seventy blows, and 
 the original contract is fulfilled. If the person who 
 accepts such a promise is aware of the existence of a 
 previous contract, he must participate equally in the 
 punishment, and forfeit to the government whatever 
 betrothal presents he may have transmitted to the 
 girl's family. If ignorant of the previous contract, 
 he is not * punished, and the betrothal presents are 
 restored to him.
 
 28 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 In case the family of the bridegroom repents the 
 contract, the same punishments are inflicted as in 
 the case aforementioned. 
 
 A Chinaman can have but one principal wife, 
 though he may take any number of inferior wives or 
 concubines. The penalty for attempting to degrade 
 the chief wife to the position of an inferior wife, 
 or of raising an inferior wife to the condition of a 
 chief wife during the lifetime of the latter, is pun- 
 ished with a hundred blows, which must be followed 
 by the restoration of each wife to her original rank. 
 Any man who, having a chief wife, enters into a 
 contract of marriage with another woman, is pun- 
 ished with ninety blows, the marriage considered 
 null and void, and the woman returned to her 
 parents. 
 
 Poor men, and men of the middle classes, rarely 
 have more than one wife, because of the cost of a 
 large household, and the objections usually made by 
 a chief wife to the taking of concubines. Even
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 29 
 
 when no children are born to the first wife, attempts 
 are usually made to obtain these in some other way 
 than by the taking of an inferior wife. As adopted 
 children stand in precisely the same legal relation- 
 ship to their adopted parents as do own children to 
 their progenitors, and as the adoption of children is 
 usually feasible, those who have no children gener- 
 ally supply themselves with posterity by the expen- 
 diture of a few scores of dollars in the purchase of a 
 young son. Polygamy is, however, common among 
 the wealthy and in families of rank. The chief wife 
 is always a woman with dwarfed feet, while the in- 
 ferior wives are usually natural-footed. The chief 
 wife is wedded with elaborate formalities, while the 
 concubines are taken without other ceremony than 
 the transfer of a sum of money to their parents. 
 The children of concubines are reckoned as the issue 
 of the wife; they call her mother, and after her 
 death make at her grave the same offerings that they 
 make at their father's tomb. The children of the
 
 30 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 chief wife do not address a concubine as mother, nor 
 do they ever make offerings at her grave. 
 
 Persons having the same surname may not marry, 
 though there be no blood relationship between them. 
 This law doubtless conduces greatly to the homoge- 
 neity of the nation. Local attachments being strong, 
 and clan feuds frequent, there would be permanent 
 division between clans were there no necessity for 
 going beyond the bounds of one's tribe to get a 
 wife. Parents are averse, however, to having their 
 daughters go very far from them, and sometimes 
 official effort is made to prevent girls being married 
 into distant families. Occasionally a magistrate 
 issues a proclamation forbidding the betrothal of 
 girls dwelling within his district to men who live 
 beyond its boundaries. He thus prevents marriage- 
 able maidens, made scarce through the practice of 
 female infanticide, from being disposed of to the 
 highest bidders, and keeps them for the populating 
 of the region under his jurisdiction.
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 31 
 
 In general, all marriages between persons related 
 to each other within remote degrees are punishable, 
 being reckoned incestuous. A marriage with the 
 widow of any male relative, however remote, is ille- 
 gal, and punishable with a hundred blows. "Who- 
 ever marries his brother's widow shall be strangled," 
 saith the code. One may perceive how much law and 
 custom have to do in the production of moral senti- 
 ment, if he observe the horror exhibited by a Chi- 
 nese woman on being told that there are nations in 
 which a man may marry his deceased brother's wife. 
 Her disgust would be no more than equalled by that 
 of an American woman told of a people among 
 whom it was not unusual for men to marry their 
 granddaughters. The only legal termination of a 
 betrothal is in marriage. After marriage, the law 
 gives a man almost limitless power over his wife. 
 If he kills her, or if she is so treated in his family 
 as to cause her to kill herself, then her own rela- 
 tives may make requisition for her life; but on
 
 32 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 account of any suffering less than that of death, the 
 members of her own family are not expected to in- 
 terfere. The law gives the wife no right to leave 
 her husband under any circumstances ; but it permits 
 the husband to divorce his wife for any of " the 
 seven justifying causes " ; namely, for barrenness, 
 lasciviousness, disregard of her husband's parents, 
 talkativeness, thievish propensities, envious and sus- 
 picious temper, and inveterate infirmity. None of 
 these seven causes will, however, justify a divorce 
 if the wife has mourned three years for her hus- 
 band's parents, if the family has become rich since 
 the time of her marriage, or if she has no parents 
 living to receive her back again. 
 
 If the wife be guilty of adultery, the law not 
 only authorizes, but requires, that she shall be 
 divorced, and that the husband shall receive a pun- 
 ishment of eighty blows if he retains her. 
 
 The usual way of disposing of an obstreperous 
 daughter-in-law, or of a wife who appears to have
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 33 
 
 brought ill-luck to the house, is to sell her in mar- 
 riage to some other man. No matter how old a 
 woman may be, nor how many times she may have 
 been married, she can make no legal marriage ex- 
 cept she be given away by an authorized person in 
 the family to which she legally belongs. In law, 
 she is always a minor. 
 
 The few American ladies who have married edu- 
 cated Chinamen can hardly have given due consid- 
 eration to the fact that, in law, every married 
 woman takes the nationality of her husband; and 
 that, as a Chinese woman, she is unable to hold 
 property, is subject to the dominion of her husband's 
 chief wife, is bound to serve his parents, and must 
 worship his departed ancestors. 
 
 Sexual selection, which has doubtless greatly in- 
 fluenced the development and advancement of certain 
 races, has been inoperative in China during many 
 centuries, because, under the prevailing usages, the 
 contracting parties have, before espousal, no oppor-
 
 34 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 tunity to judge of the strength, beauty, or intelli- 
 gence of their consorts. Romantic love has no part 
 in marriage or its issue. This may be one of the 
 causes of China's arrested civilization, and of the 
 astonishing fact that her astute people have invented 
 nothing and discovered nothing during hundreds of 
 years. 
 
 Marriage being essential to the continuance of the 
 line of worshippers before the lares and penates, a 
 man who will not marry is reckoned guilty of filial 
 impiety. Spinsters are unknown, and bachelors are 
 few. The universal and intense desire for posterity 
 in the male line of descent leads to much self- 
 sacrifice on the part of parents, in order to secure 
 wives for sons, and causes them to make provident 
 arrangements for their marriage at an early age. 
 Betrothals of expected infants, conditional upon their 
 being of different sexes, are not rare. Among the 
 poor it is not uncommon for a newly born daughter 
 to be given away, that a girl of another clan may
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 35 
 
 be taken by the mother, reared at her breast, and 
 bestowed upon her son in after years. In many 
 families there is at least one little daughter-in-law 
 being brought up in the house of her future husband. 
 Parents of moderate means endeavour to provide 
 wives for their sons by the time they are twenty 
 years old, while but few keep a daughter after she 
 is sixteen. Those who have a marriageable son, and 
 the means of meeting the expense of taking a 
 daughter-in-law, place their case in the hands of an 
 old female friend, who finds among her acquaint- 
 ances that which is required by her client. The 
 parents of the two young people do not meet for con- 
 ference, and are not usually known to each other even 
 by name. The negotiation is conducted by the go- 
 between, who is the sole medium of communication 
 between the two families. When all details have 
 been settled, and a sum of money carried from the 
 parents of the groom to those of the bride, the be- 
 trothal is completed.
 
 36 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 When the bride knows that she is to be married, 
 she must evince by word and manner the deepest 
 melancholy, and she gains commendation and repute 
 if her lamentations are poetical. An acquaintance 
 of mine, who was spoken of with approval, always, 
 from the time of her betrothal to that of her mar- 
 riage, referred to the latter as to her funeral. To 
 her little brother the only member of a bride's 
 family that may before the birth of her first child 
 visit her in her husband's house she said, "When 
 I am buried, you must come frequently to burn 
 incense at my grave." To her elder brothers and 
 to her sister-in-law she said, "After I am dead, do 
 not kill the lizards and the centipedes that may crawl 
 about the house, for it may be that my spirit will 
 come back and dwell in the vermin about my home 
 rather than abide in the grave into which I shall 
 have been put." A gifted girl makes many such 
 allusions without instruction, while the stupid have 
 to be privatel} 7 taught what to say when they wail
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 37 
 
 their adieus to maiden life. How much of a girl's 
 distress is real and how much of it is piously 
 feigned can be guessed only by those who under- 
 stand how deeply Chinese character is affected by 
 Chinese customs. 
 
 The vexations of a betrothal and a wedding are 
 so great as to have given rise to the proverb, 
 "Don't say you have had trouble until you shall 
 have married off a daughter or brought home a 
 daughter-in-law." The sum of money paid to the 
 bride's parents is usually spent upon her marriage 
 outfit. The smallest dowry is a feAV suits of new 
 clothing. The wealthy give hundreds of garments, 
 and sometimes one or two bondmaids, with a field 
 that reverts to the bride's family upon her decease. 
 
 The bride is carried from her father's house to 
 that of her father-in-law in a sedan-chair that is 
 carefully closed and covered with scarlet. She is 
 accompanied by none of her own family. The go- 
 betweens and a messenger from the house of the
 
 38 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 groom direct the bearers who carry her trousseau with 
 her in a procession along the streets. 
 
 Early on the morning of the wedding, the bride 
 is bathed in water in which twelve kinds of flowers 
 have been steeped; has her hair stiffened with ban- 
 doline and wrought into a marvellous coiffure with 
 many golden aigrettes; is attired in gorgeous ap- 
 parel, which she puts on with an appearance of 
 bitter unwillingness, and enters the red sedan-chair, 
 weeping loudly. The marriage procession is headed 
 by a man carrying a branch of a banyan-tree, whose 
 local name is identical in sound with another word 
 which means completed or perfected. It signifies the 
 fact that all that is necessary to legal matrimony 
 has been done in this case. This leader is followed 
 by two men, each bearing a lantern on a stalk of 
 sugar-cane, the former being a part of the bride's 
 outfit, and the latter, rising stage by stage to a 
 climax broad and flourishing, symbolizing the hope 
 that the bride's life may likewise widen out. The
 
 THE DEPARTURE OF THE BRIDE
 
 MARKIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 39 
 
 next in the file is a man carrying over his shoulder 
 a bamboo, the emblem of rapid increase, having a 
 red bundle of foot-gear on one end of it, and a red 
 coverlet on the other. After him come as many 
 burden-bearers as are necessary to carry all the red 
 boxes containing the trousseau. 
 
 On arriving at the door of the house, the bride 
 sees her husband for the first time, and recognizes 
 him, among those who await her, by his rich attire. 
 By previous arrangement, she is first greeted by 
 some woman reckoned lucky and prosperous, in the 
 hope that she will be like the one who gives her 
 earliest welcome in her new home. A mistress of 
 ceremonies who has been engaged to see that during 
 three days all is done according to established usage, 
 throws upon the door-sill some burning straw, half 
 extinguishes it, and leads the new-comer across it, 
 
 saying: 
 
 Now, fair young bride, the smoke bestride ; 
 This year have joy, next year a boy.
 
 40 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 This rite is supposed to disinfect the bride from 
 any evil influence to which' she may have been sub- 
 jected by demons or white tigers along her route. 
 She then immediately enters the room in which her 
 red bedstead has been set up, and in which her 
 possessions are all deposited. There she sits silent 
 all the rest of the day, among her red boxes, no 
 one speaking to her, nor noticing her in any way 
 except by bringing her food. A feast is spread in 
 the evening for male friends, who have been invited 
 by card, and its preparation occupies the whole 
 household. After the supper, the guests are per- 
 mitted to see the bride, who is brought forward by 
 the duenna toward the door of the bedroom. In 
 some cases only those who can offer a felicitous 
 stanza are allowed to approach the bedroom door, 
 and there is much rivalry in the composition of 
 poetry to be recited. The stanzas usually contain 
 allusions to posterity, as in the following transla- 
 tions from the vernacular :
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 41 
 
 The bride is high-browed, fair and sweet ; 
 Like awls her small and sharp-toed feet. 
 Brought home this year with honours meet, 
 Next year an infant son she'll greet. 
 
 Fresh twigs upon the pine, new sprouts on the bamboo ; 
 
 The groom brings home the bride to rule his house : his field 
 To her a thousand-fold its annual crop shall yield, 
 
 And she will be a mother-in-law at thirty-two. 
 
 Practical jokes usually accompany the entertain- 
 ment. Sometimes a guest enters, disguised as an 
 aged man, and after persuading the duenna to bring 
 the bride close to him by a plea that his sight is 
 very dim, he suddenly tosses off his cap and spec- 
 tacles and appears as a hilarious youth. This creates 
 much merriment. Another popular joke is to leave 
 a bundle of fire-crackers under the bedstead, with a 
 slow match so placed as to explode them after mid- 
 night, and this is often accompanied by an artificial 
 shower falling through the roof upon the bridal 
 couch. When the guests depart, they frequently 
 carry with them articles which they know the groom
 
 42 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 will require next day, and which he is bound to 
 redeem from them with packages of confectionery. 
 It is said that a merry company of the fellow- 
 students of a groom decoyed him from his house 
 after his wedding-supper, and fastened him to a tree 
 in a copse, so that he should not be able to return 
 home that night. His parents finally induced them 
 to go to release him, but whe*h they arrived at the 
 copse, they found he had been eaten by a tiger. To 
 avoid probable discomforts, the groom sometimes 
 conceals himself from supper-time until after the 
 departure of all the guests. The fate of Ginevra 
 would be possible to a Chinese groom, but not to a 
 Chinese bride. 
 
 On the second day the young pair worship the 
 images of the ancestors in the main room of the 
 house, and make obeisance to each of the senior 
 members of the family. In the afternoon the last 
 presents are sent off from the groom's family to the 
 bride's parents. They include pork, fish, cakes, and
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 43 
 
 confectionery, according with the amount stipulated 
 at the time of betrothal. During the second and 
 third days all who choose may enter the house and 
 view the bride, and the crowd of spectators is some- 
 times large. They say: 
 
 We look at the new, and not at the old ; 
 We all have, at home, old things to behold. 
 
 The third day is a busy one for the bride, as she 
 must then formally begin her domestic duties. 
 Early in the morning she washes clothes for herself 
 and her husband, under the direction of the duenna. 
 Then this mistress of ceremonies takes her hand, 
 holds it upon the long handle of a ladle, and stirs 
 up the food in a jar, from which she is to feed and 
 fatten pigs. She meanwhile recites a rhyme, of 
 which this is a close version : 
 
 Stir up the swill, make the jar fume ; 
 
 Raise hogs that are bigger than cows. 
 Stir deep and long, stir into spume ; 
 
 Give thousand-weight swine to your spouse.
 
 44 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 At noonday the bride cooks the family dinner, 
 under the superintendence of her mother-in-law. 
 In the intervals between other occupations she 
 begins and completes the making of a pair of trou- 
 sers for her husband. On no account must she be 
 assisted in this task, nor fail to accomplish it before 
 the time for cooking the evening meal, else bad 
 luck may follow all her subsequent career. Some 
 time during the forenoon of this third day a messen- 
 ger from her mother, usually her younger brother, 
 brings her a bottle of hair-oil, takes dinner with her 
 husband, and returns home accompanied by the 
 duenna, who has then finished her duties. 
 
 On the fourth day the bride must rise long be- 
 fore daylight to dress her hair in the complex style 
 of a married woman, and, as she is unaccustomed 
 to performing this difficult work alone, she may suc- 
 ceed only after many trials. She this day lays aside 
 her finery, and takes up all the occupations of a 
 daughter-in-law, serving her elders in various ways, 
 and doing the hardest of the housework.
 
 MARRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 45 
 
 If she hates her husband, and cares little for the 
 comfort of her parents, she may waste food, break 
 dishes, threaten suicide, and make herself so disa- 
 greeable that the family she has entered will soon 
 consider the expediency of marrying her off into 
 another household. If she desires to remain where 
 she is, she strives to please her mother-in-law. A 
 husband who takes the part of his wife against his 
 mother is reckoned unfilial, and has little peace in 
 the home of his ancestors. If he takes the part of 
 his mother against his wife, the wife may be driven 
 to suicide, and this would furnish opportunity for 
 her family to make an inquisition financially ruin- 
 ous to him. The mother and the wife, each jealous 
 of the man's devotion, are the members of the 
 family who are most likely to be unfriendly to each 
 other. The existence of countless families in which 
 three or four generations of both sexes live in ap- 
 parent amity under one roof proves that the Chinese 
 have great power of self -repression.
 
 46 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 At the end of a month the bride's mother sends 
 her a basket of artificial flowers, that she may make 
 acceptable presents to her young neighbours. No 
 bonnets nor other head-coverings are used by youthful 
 ladies in China, and flowers are worn in the hair 
 on all festive occasions. 
 
 At the end of four months, on a day selected as 
 lucky by a wizard, the bride goes to pay her first 
 visit to her mother, unless some event has made it 
 mystically unsafe for her to leave her present domi- 
 cile or to enter her old one. The length of the 
 bride's* stay in her former home varies in different 
 villages. In some she remains a month in her 
 mother's house, and in others it is considered very 
 unlucky if she does not return the same daj r , before 
 the smoke from the village chimneys indicates that 
 supper is being cooked. But any circumstance that 
 renders either of the families ceremonially unclean, 
 and therefore unpropitious to luck, prevents the 
 bride from having this outing. Uncleanliness is of
 
 MAKRIAGE LAWS AND USAGES. 47 
 
 two sorts that which results from a death, and that 
 which follows the birth of a child. 
 
 They are distinguished as that of bad fortune and 
 that of good fortune, the former continuing three 
 years, and the latter one month. Were the bride to 
 approach any unclean person, she would herself incur 
 the danger of becoming an occult cause of calamity 
 among her relatives. During the first few months 
 after marriage she must carefully guard against ex- 
 posure to any influence adverse to good luck. 
 
 A neighbour of a Chinese friend of mine had one 
 daughter, an only child, of whom she was passion- 
 ately fond. The girl was married off when sixteen 
 years old. When the first four months were nearly 
 past, her mother's neighbour died, and her visit to 
 her old home had therefore to be delayed for a hun- 
 dred days. Before this period of the neighbour's 
 daily worship of the manes had passed, the bride's 
 mother-in-law died, and she had to go into mourn- 
 ing for three years. Just before she put off mourn-
 
 48 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 ing, she bore a son, and that made it necessary for 
 her to again delay her first visit to her mother's 
 house. Her mother, meanwhile, became subject to 
 hallucinations, under which she frequently saw her 
 child entering her door. She said she could dis- 
 tinctly perceive her face, could discern every detail 
 in her dress, and could hear the jingle of her 
 bangles. She would exclaim, "O my child, you 
 have come!" but, when she clasped the vision, she 
 found only empty air in her arms. At last the 
 daughter, who had all these years been but two 
 miles away, really came to visit her mother. The 
 two embraced each other and wept aloud; and there- 
 after the mother's hallucinations ceased. 
 
 After the first visit, a married daughter may go 
 to the home of her parents at any time, and they, 
 after the birth of her first child, may occasionally 
 go to see her in her husband's house.
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 
 
 WHEN the Chinese wish to declare the extreme 
 vexatiousness of any piece of work, they say, "It 
 is more trouble than a funeral"; the obsequies of 
 a parent being reckoned the most maddening affair 
 in human experience. 
 
 Infants are buried summarily, without coffins, and 
 the young are interred with few rites ; but the fune- 
 rals of the aged, of both sexes, are elaborate in pro- 
 portion to the number of the descendants and to 
 their wealth. When a childless married man dies, 
 his widow may perform all the duties of a son 
 toward him, may remain in his house, and may 
 adopt children to rear as his heirs and as worship- 
 pers of the family manes. If his widow purposes 
 marrying again, a young male relative may, with 
 
 49
 
 50 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the consent of senior members of the clan, undertake 
 the services expected from a son, and may inherit the 
 estate of the deceased. 
 
 When one is about to die, he is removed from 
 his couch to a bench or to a mat on the floor, be- 
 cause of a belief that he who dies in bed will cany 
 the bedstead as a burden into the other world. He 
 is washed in a new pot, in warm water in which a 
 bundle of incense-sticks is merged. After the wash- 
 ing, the pot and the water are thrown away to- 
 gether. He is then arrayed in a full suit of new 
 clothing, that he may appear in Hades at his best. 
 He breathes his last in the main room, before the 
 largest door of the house, that the departing soul 
 may easily find its way out into the air. A sheet 
 of spirit-money, brown paper having a patch of gild- 
 ing on one surface, is laid over the upturned face, 
 because it is said that, if the eyes are left uncov- 
 ered, the corpse may count the rows of tiles in the 
 roof, and that in such case the family could never 
 build a more spacious domicile.
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 51 
 
 The sons unbraid their queues, and by this di- 
 shevelment indicate the confusion of the household. 
 They also take off their tunics, turn one half side- 
 wise over the other half, and put them on again in 
 such a way as to clothe only a moiety of the body. 
 The left shoulder is made bare if it be the father, 
 and the right shoulder if it be the mother, who has 
 died. Thus the son shows that he is denuded of 
 his usual protection, on the one hand or the other, 
 the left ranking above the right in Chinese eti- 
 quette. If he be orphaned, he goes naked to the 
 waist in any weather. He also girds himself with 
 a wadded garment twisted into a rope. This cum- 
 brous girdle expresses the fact that he has been 
 obliged to hastily brace himself for the arduous 
 labours that have come upon him through bereave- 
 ment. 
 
 Messengers go to inform all his kindred of the 
 demise, and an elderly man, of the same surname 
 as the deceased, dressed in sackcloth and followed
 
 52 A COENER OF CATHAY. 
 
 by the eldest son, takes a new earthen saucepan, goes 
 to a running stream, throws three sheets of spirit- 
 money upon it, and, dipping in the direction of the 
 current, takes water with which to cleanse the corpse. 
 A sprig of bamboo or of banyan is inserted in the 
 snout of the saucepan, the bamboo with its straight, 
 evenly-jointed stem being the type of paternal rule, 
 and the banyan, with its unfading verdure, being 
 the symbol of maternal affection. While the son is 
 gone to buy the water of purification, the relatives 
 assemble in the house, and, when his return is an- 
 nounced by his moans, they burst out simultaneously 
 into a loud wail, each naming the relationship of 
 the deceased to himself. It is thought that the son 
 may be comforted by this indirect reminder that 
 his parent had many friends who share the grief of 
 the nearest of kin. The corpse is sprinkled with the 
 water shaken from a branch of pomegranate, the 
 many-seeded emblem of increase, and it is then 
 ready for encoffining. Two paper images, one of a
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 53 
 
 man, the other of a maid-servant, are bought and 
 placed beside the body. A son puts some boiled 
 rice in the mouth of the corpse, saying, "You fed 
 me while I grew, I feed you when you are dead," 
 and then commands the two images to obey the be- 
 hests of the departed and to run on all errands as 
 directed by him. The images stand rigid before any 
 number of prostrations made by the mourners, but 
 are blown down by a breath of wind. They perhaps 
 inspire the general feeling of superstitious aversion 
 against being fanned by another, and originate the 
 common polite inhibition, "I would receive a hun- 
 dred obeisances from you sooner than one puff of air 
 from your fan." 
 
 The male relatives then go in a body to the tem- 
 ple of the local tutelary deity, and announce the 
 death. Thej r carry lighted lanterns, because the 
 daytime of men is the night of gods and spirits. 
 The bell is tolled, the eldest son prostrates himself 
 before the shrine as many times as will correctly
 
 54 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 indicate the years of the departed, and gives the 
 sad information of his decease. They then return 
 to the house of mourning, and some one goes to a 
 soothsayer to ascertain what time will be lucky for 
 the encoffining of the corpse. The natal dates, recorded 
 for every member of the family, must be laid before 
 the soothsayer, and some moment must be chosen 
 whose signs are geomantically in accord with those 
 of the birthdays and hours of the living, else evil 
 will accrue to any whose horoscope conflicts. To 
 lay the dead in the coffin without regard to the 
 birth-times of those who assist would endanger life 
 needlessly. Some propitious hour, during the first, 
 second, or third day, is usually discovered and fixed 
 upon. This time having arrived, the clothes of the 
 deceased, or new cloth cut into lengths sufficient 
 for a tunic, are distributed among the assistants, 
 used as girdles while the body is lifted into the 
 coffin, and afterward kept by the wearers. 
 
 Thrifty elderly persons have stanch coffins made
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 55 
 
 for themselves while in good health. These are kept 
 in a loft, receive a new coat of lacquer occasionally, 
 and harden during, perhaps, a score of years, for final 
 use. If the coffin has not been previously prepared, 
 a son buys one from a maker, who gives the buyer 
 a couple of oranges or a package of confectionery, 
 that the transfer of goods may not be an unmixed 
 sadness to his customer. Some person, familiar with 
 the route, must guide the bearers by the shortest 
 road to the house of the purchaser, for an empty 
 coffin imperils the welfare of the inmates of any 
 dwelling to which it is taken, and a mistake in 
 regard to its destination would bring rough treat- 
 ment to those who carried it. 
 
 After the body is laid in the coffin, a piece of 
 silver, real or counterfeit, is placed under the tongue. 
 It is said that in ancient times the full value of a 
 man's possessions was paid to him by his heirs at 
 his demise, and was deposited with him in his coffin 
 for burial. But later on, though long ago, a man
 
 56 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 who had foreknowledge, warned his children that 
 there would be a rebellion in their day, and that a 
 certain noble would rifle graves to get funds for the 
 carrying out of his treasonable designs. When this 
 man died, the prospective rebel was invited to assist 
 in encoffining the corpse, and the sons put into the 
 coffin only a small piece of silver, which they 
 slipped under his tongue. Years passed, and the 
 prophecy of the dead father was fulfilled; but, while 
 other graves were opened, his remained undisturbed, 
 because the rebel chieftain knew it contained no 
 treasure. Since that time the practice of putting a 
 bit of silver under the tongue has superseded the 
 older custom of burying large sums of money with 
 the corpse. 
 
 The evening after the encoffining, a supper is 
 spread for all the relatives of other surname than 
 that of the deceased. Those of the same surname, 
 reckoning themselves sinners and therefore in sor- 
 row, cook and serve the banquet.
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 57 
 
 As soon as the corpse is encoffined, a screen of 
 white cloth is stretched across the main room, just 
 in front of the shelf on which sit the household 
 gods, opposite the front entrance to the house. The 
 coffin stands parallel with the screen and close 
 behind it, shut off from the view of those who pass 
 the open door. In front of the screen, at its centre, 
 a chair is placed, holding an effigy of the deceased, 
 and dressed in his clothing. This is called the seat 
 of the spirit. Before the effigy a square table is 
 set as an altar, and draped with a white cover and 
 valance. A pair of large bouquets of white artificial 
 flowers, stuck in balls of clay, are set upon the 
 altar, and the worship of the dead then commences. 
 Many female relatives stay behind the screen to 
 wail. A child is appointed to watch and give 
 notice of the approach of a worshipper, and at his 
 signal the women wail in chorus. A male relative 
 goes out, receives the guest, and kneels beside him 
 while he bows and touches his forehead to the
 
 58 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 ground. The guest is then invited into another 
 room to partake of tea, and the wailing ceases until 
 another visitor arrives. Friends of various surnames 
 and clans come during the first six days to pay 
 obeisance to the dead, and bring bundles of spirit- 
 money to be burned before the altar. The son of 
 the recipient of these posthumous honours returns to 
 each a present of a few feet of home-made white 
 cloth, and invites all to the great performances of 
 the seventh day. 
 
 The effigy and altar remain a hundred days, and 
 before them the near relatives bow down and weep 
 twice a day. Those who can wail in verse, eulogiz- 
 ing the departed, gain much approbation. Every 
 morning and evening, so long as the coffin is in the 
 house, or for one hundred days if the burial should 
 be longer delayed, a daughter-in-law puts upon the 
 altar a meal of vegetable food. The deceased is 
 supposed to partake of its essence, and it is after- 
 ward added to the family mess. Beside the fare set
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 59 
 
 forth for the dead man, there is laid upon the table 
 a single chopstick and an egg for the jailer that has 
 charge of the spirit until it is judged in Hades. 
 Having but half a pair of chopsticks to use, he 
 must needs eat slowly, and so the dead man may 
 get his share of the viands set forth! 
 
 Besides the occupations already described, the men 
 of the afflicted family must procure food-stuffs, in- 
 cluding pork, geese, and ducks, for the entertain- 
 ment of guests; must hire mourning garments, or 
 buy cloth for making them; must put an awning 
 over the court in front of the house, to enlarge the 
 space wherein the priests are to perform the cere- 
 monies of the seventh day; and must order, at. 
 the shops where outfits for ghosts are made, all the 
 paper paraphernalia to be burned at the funeral. 
 
 The women must, meanwhile, cook abundant 
 meals for all who assist in the obsequies; must 
 pound bushels of rice into flour for making steamed 
 cakes to offer, with tea, to all comers; must make
 
 60 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 many little white bags, and put into each two long 
 rolls of raw cotton, some green peas, some unhusked 
 rice, and two copper coins, and must fasten these 
 bags upon cords, whereby they can be tied around 
 the waist. On the seventh day each son and son's 
 wife wears three of these bags, all the children of 
 the sons wear two bags, and each married daughter 
 and son-in-law wears one bag. Mourning badges 
 must also be made: wristlets of white for all the 
 sons, and wristlets of blue for all the grandsons. 
 These are to be worn on the seventh day, and there- 
 after until they drop off through decay. The women 
 must also make new red shoes for themselves, and 
 cover them with sackcloth, and must make new 
 mourning garments, or else sew shreds of white 
 cotton along the seams and edges of their old 
 tunics, to make them look like unfinished dresses 
 that have been put on under the stress of sad cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 On the seventh day after the demise, the deceased
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 61 
 
 is supposed to become aware that he has departed 
 this life, and on that day is performed the ceremony 
 of accompanying him to the land of shades. Priests, 
 Buddhist and Tauist, have been engaged for a fixed 
 sum of money, with their entertainment tobacco to 
 smoke, tea to sip, and at least three substantial 
 meals. Early in the morning the sons and daughters- 
 in-law put on tunics of coarse sackcloth. The sons 
 wear shoes patched with linen, a small or a large 
 patch on the toe indicating whether one or both 
 parents are dead. They put on a tall cap of sack- 
 cloth having a wad of spirit-money suspended on 
 either side to dangle over the ears and shut out the 
 criticisms of relatives who may be dissatisfied with 
 their management of the funeral rites or with the 
 quality of the repasts provided for the assisting 
 mourners. 
 
 The Buddhist priests arrive and hang upon the 
 white screen three pictures of Buddha, which are 
 worshipped by the members of the bereaved family,
 
 62 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 especially by its women. Water is heated for the 
 deceased to bathe in, and is put into a tub beside 
 the coffin, and inclosed by a new mat. A paper 
 towel and a complete suit of paper clothing are 
 burned beside the coffin to furnish the spirit with 
 suitable attire for the day's exercises. The Buddhist 
 priests meanwhile chant an invitation to make use 
 of the things provided. They continue to chant at 
 intervals during the day, acting in concert with the 
 Tauist priest, who takes the lead in conducting the 
 spirit to Hades. For one or three days and nights, 
 according to the wealth and faith of the family, the 
 priests continue their incantations, ringing bells, 
 sprinkling the altar with holy water from a pome- 
 granate-branch, and burning incense whose smoke 
 fills the court. A plank is supported at its ends by 
 two stools, and represents bridges. The Tauist 
 priest, followed by the eldest son carrying an armful 
 of copper coins, and by all the rest of the family in 
 file carrying lighted incense-sticks, goes on a circuit
 
 MORTUAKY CUSTOMS. 63 
 
 through the house, court, or street, repeatedly cross- 
 ing the mimic bridge. This is the exponent of the 
 long journey made by the deceased across marshes, 
 meadows, streams, and mountains toward the bourn 
 from which no traveller returns. After many weari- 
 some circuits, the priest stops and calls for the open- 
 ing of the gate into Hades. An assistant responds 
 that the gate-keeper's fee must first be paid, and 
 the eldest son throws coins into the priest's bowl. 
 After a turn or two more, the call is repeated, the 
 invisible door is opened, and the spirit is supposed 
 to pass in and to mount a lofty platform, from which 
 it takes a final view of the house and village in 
 which it has dwelt. The priests chant its valedic- 
 tion, saying : 
 
 On the last, highest lookout now I stand, 
 
 And gaze toward home, with weeping loud and sore ; 
 
 Those who go farthest on an earthly strand 
 
 May come again to kin and native land, 
 But he who enters hell returns no more.
 
 64 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 The mourners wail loudly, and the spirit is con- 
 sidered to have departed into the realm of shadows. 
 The party, led by the priest, now take the short re- 
 turn journey, crossing the mimic bridge but once; 
 for they say : 
 
 For going, ages scarce suffice ; 
 The coming back takes but a trice. 
 
 The priest then brings a miniature artificial lotus- 
 garden, on whose terraces are images of the immor- 
 tals, and sets it whirling on its standard over a 
 basin of clean water. The mourners throw coins 
 into the basin, to secure an abundance of pure water 
 for the use of the deceased in the nether world. 
 Various arts are used by the priest, at this and 
 other stages of the performance, to increase the 
 amount of cash thrown into his basin. 
 
 At nightfall the offerings which supply the dead 
 with the necessaries of spirit-life are sent to him by 
 burning them. Silver and gold coins, clothing of 
 every sort and in many colours, opium and tobacco-
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 65 
 
 pipes, spectacles, wallets, boxes, horses, sedan-chairs, 
 boats, and servants, counterfeited skilfully in paper, 
 and costing hundreds of dollars, are offered by the 
 descendants and friends of the deceased, and are 
 consumed in little bonfires that fill the court-yard 
 with flame, smoke and ashes. Married daughters 
 bring armfuls of paper clothing and add it to the 
 blaze, kneeling and leaning their heads against a 
 bar from their looms. Neighbours and acquaintances 
 bring packages of similar goods, and commit them, 
 through the flames, to the care of the deceased, to 
 be transferred by him to their own relatives in the 
 region to which he is going. Some offer real arti- 
 cles, which are spread on tables, with edibles, and 
 these are usually carried away during the night by 
 poor souls still in the flesh. Supplies of paper 
 goods are also burned for the poverty-stricken and 
 friendless dead, who might without this pacification 
 rob the beloved traveller of the things intended for 
 his sole behoof. All night the fires glow, the smoke 
 ascends, the priests chant and the mourners wail.
 
 66 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 On the morning of the eighth day the priests 
 usually depart, and the family resumes, in some de- 
 gree, its ordinary occupations. Three times, at the 
 new and the full moon, the married daughters of 
 the deceased each bring a pig's head and a large 
 steamed cake, and join their brothers in worship 
 before the seat of the spirit in their father's house. 
 On the sixth day of the sixth Chinese month after 
 the removal of the seat of the spirit, the sons buy 
 one cock, one water-melon, cakes, and incense, and 
 offer them to their father's spirit, that being the 
 day on which he, having been judged before ten 
 courts in Hades, crosses its narrow bridge and passes 
 into a region decreed to him according to his deserts. 
 The cock wakens him, and is afterward presented 
 by him to the keeper of the bridge; the melon and 
 cakes are distributed on the route, and the incense 
 is burned in ceremonious respect to the deceased. 
 After the first hundred days, the dead parent receives 
 offerings of food with the burning of incense and
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 67 
 
 spirit-money about ten times a year, including always 
 his birthday and the anniversary of his death. 
 
 White is, in a general way, the colour of mourn- 
 ing. Sons, during the first three days, wear the 
 tunic wrong side out and on one side of the body only. 
 After that time they wear, like other mourners, gar- 
 ments of unbleached hempen cloth, except on the 
 seventh day, when they and their wives wear sack- 
 cloth tunics, usually hired from a shop at which 
 coffins are sold. The sons do not shave their heads 
 for one hundred days, and they wear mourning for 
 twenty-seven months, during which time they cannot 
 legally marry. Daughters and daughters-in-law put off 
 mourning at the end of one year, when they resume 
 their golden head-ornaments and don some bit of red. 
 
 The burial of the encoffined body is sometimes 
 deferred for many years, awaiting the death of a 
 spouse, or the favourable decision of a geomancer con- 
 cerning a site for a tomb. As the prosperity of 
 every man's descendants is thought to depend upon
 
 68 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 his being laid in a spot so situated with regard to 
 wind and water as will afford him undisturbed 
 repose, the selection of a place of interment is some- 
 times difficult, and there are men who make their 
 living by searching out good places for graves. 
 
 The grave being prepared, friends are informed of 
 the burial, and they assemble at the appointed time 
 to follow the coffin to the hills. The coffin is cov- 
 ered with a red pall. Two lanterns are tied together 
 with a red cord, and arranged so as to hang one on 
 either side of the coffin; and there may be as many 
 pairs of lanterns as there are married couples among 
 the descendants of the deceased. Small bags, with 
 a red and a green side, are also hung upon the coffin, 
 one for each member of the mourning household. 
 The bags contain linen thread, cotton rolls, peas, 
 rice, hemp-seed, and coins, emblems of longevity, 
 fecundity, and wealth. They have an occult influ- 
 ence on the weal of the living. 
 
 Before the procession moves, twelve bowls of
 
 SETTING OUT FOR THE CEMETERY
 
 MORTUARY CUSTOMS. 69 
 
 soup, in which pellets of dough float, are offered, 
 Avith prostrations, to the dead. The number twelve 
 and the vernacular name of the pellets express com- 
 pleteness, and are a funereal charade. Four or more 
 men, hired for high wages, bear the coffin. It is 
 followed to the grave by male friends, all in mourn- 
 ing, with tall white caps. The women, with white 
 scarfs on their heads, go but a short distance from 
 the house to a fork in the road, where a lad has 
 been stationed with a banyan-branch. There they 
 burn incense, make obeisance to the coffin, break off 
 a twig of the banyan, and return by a route other 
 than the one by which they came. A convenient 
 superstition preserves them from a long journey on 
 their maimed feet, and declares that they "must not 
 follow the dead to death." 
 
 The sons of the deceased carry each a staff of 
 bamboo or of banyan, which is left at the grave. 
 Spirit-money is scattered along the road to buy right 
 of way from demons that might oppose. The coffin
 
 70 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 being lowered, each person in the procession takes 
 up some mortar in the flap of his tunic and casts it 
 into the grave. When the pit is filled and rounded, 
 sesame, whose vernacular name means completion, is 
 planted on the top, to grow in sun and rain. A 
 new, small, gilded image, that has been brought with 
 the coffin to the tomb, has a dot added to a hiero- 
 glyphic upon it, changing the meaning of the said 
 hieroglyphic from king to lord. At this instant it 
 becomes a household god, and is carried back with 
 reverence to be placed on the shrine of the lares in 
 the house, and worshipped with oblations. 
 
 During three years, on the anniversary of the death, 
 presents of paper clothing are sent to the deceased by 
 burning them. So long as there are male descendants 
 living, they worship the grave in the seventh month 
 of each year. When the family becomes so large 
 that a division of the estate and separate dwellings 
 are expedient, the images of the progenitors are 
 inherited by the eldest son.
 
 CHINESE BABIES AND THEIR GRAND- 
 MOTHERS. 
 
 I HAVE had frequent occasion to congratulate or 
 to console Chinese women; and when I came near 
 enough to them to discern the true source of their 
 joy or their grief, I have seldom found it to be the 
 same as that which floods an American woman's 
 heart under the same circumstances. The tendency 
 of their environment is to make them to the last 
 degree earthly and sordid; and who searches out 
 the foundation of their woes or pleasures usually 
 discovers sooner or later that these have a money 
 basis. 
 
 One day I said to a pagan Chinese woman, "I 
 hear that your daughter has a son. I suppose you 
 are pleased that the baby is a boy." "Well," re- 
 
 71
 
 72 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 plied she, "if it were my son's son, I should be 
 glad. The child would then belong to my own 
 family, would live in my house, would have duties 
 to me while I am alive, and would make offerings 
 to me when I am dead. A daughter's son is of no 
 use to its grandmother, though it causes her much 
 outlay. A daughter is a troublesome and expensive 
 thing, anyway. Not only has she to be fed, but 
 there is all the trouble of binding her feet, and of 
 getting her betrothed, and of making up her wed- 
 ding garments; and even after she is married off she 
 must have presents made to her when she has chil- 
 dren. Really, it is no wonder that so many baby 
 girls are slain at their birth!" 
 
 The welcome which a Chinese infant receives, and 
 the rites attending its growth, vary with its sex, the 
 social condition of its parents, and the number of its 
 predecessors. The following account applies in full 
 only to the first-born son. 
 
 Soon after birth, one small bowl of rice, one of
 
 CHINESE BABIES AND THEIR GRANDMOTHERS. 73 
 
 sugar, one of salt cabbage, and one of wine are 
 placed beside the child. The smallness of the bowls 
 indicates that he who eats from them will not be a 
 gourmand. The food in them being such as robust 
 men relish, indicates that the eater will be strong 
 and will have a healthful appetite. A picture of 
 the sun, the symbol of a bright intelligence, is cut 
 from an almanac, dipped in the wine, and used to 
 wash the child's mouth, after which it is made to 
 swallow a few kernels of the boiled rice, a speck of 
 cabbage, and a little sugar. 
 
 The child is wrapped in old cloth, and is usually 
 laid in a shallow basket, suspended by cords from 
 the roof-beams. It is first washed, one day, three 
 days, or thirty days after its birth, according to the 
 traditions of its father's family. In each case the 
 family tradition probably took its origin from an 
 ancestress who successfully reared many sons, and 
 who was, therefore, supposed to have hit upon a 
 lucky day for their first bath.
 
 74 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 During the first three days of the child's life, the 
 relatives of the father, near and remote, send con- 
 gratulatory presents of pork, eggs, and vermicelli. 
 One half of each person's gift is accepted, the other 
 half being returned by the messenger who brought 
 it. -The mother's relatives also send presents, and 
 of these the whole are accepted. The maternal 
 grandmother puts into a pot having a nozzle one 
 pound of cooked pork and twelve boiled eggs with- 
 out their shells. She then wraps the pot in red, the 
 colour of joy, and sticks into its nozzle a branch of 
 pomegranate, suggesting fruitf ulness ; and she puts 
 the whole into the centre of a large basket, sur- 
 rounding it with a hundred ducks' eggs and a hun- 
 dred hens' eggs, all uncooked. To this, the mater- 
 nal great-grandmother, the aunts, the cousins, and 
 the old neighbours, add presents of pork and vermi- 
 celli, and the whole is sent to, and accepted at, the 
 home of the little new-comer. During the first 
 three days, the house is kept astir, and the paternal
 
 CHINESE BABIES AND THEIR GRANDMOTHERS. 75 
 
 grandmother made busy, by the arrival and depart- 
 ure of messengers with gifts. 
 
 From the fourth day to the ninth, the mother and 
 infant are supposed to require rest; and during that 
 time friends make no calls and send no messages. 
 After the birth of the child, the mother eats pork 
 and eggs, but abstains from fish, the latter being 
 considered too heavy a diet. On the ninth or the 
 twelfth day, family customs varying, and the day 
 being often decided upon by a soothsayer, she par- 
 takes of fish. On the same day, the gods of the 
 bedstead and of the kitchen are worshipped, offerings 
 being made to them by the paternal grandmother, or 
 some other female relative. Afterward, a bowl of 
 sweet soup and a bowl of cooked vermicelli are 
 carried to each of the relatives and friends of the 
 father, those who sent presents during the first three 
 days. On no account must any donor be forgotten. 
 
 When the boy is about a month old, on a day 
 indicated by certain omens as lucky, his head is
 
 76 A COKNEU OF CATHAY. 
 
 shaven for the first time. Elaborate preparation for 
 this event must be made by the maternal grand- 
 mother. She must then present to her grandson at 
 least four jars of bean catsup, one jar of confection- 
 ery, one jar of pastry, one jar of sugar, one jar of 
 dried fruit, a primer, an inkstand, two pens, two 
 cakes of ink, five hats, twelve sorts of garments, 
 two scarfs in which he may be tied upon his 
 mother's back, two razors, two cotton rolls ready for 
 spinning, and two eggs coloured red. The first five 
 are for the use of those who take care of him, the 
 second five are to encourage him to make an early 
 beginning in his literary career, and the remainder 
 are for immediate service. With the razors, his head 
 is shaven in spots, many little tufts of his black 
 h:iir being left to presage the number of trunks his 
 future bride will require for packing her trousseau. 
 The two cotton rolls then serve as a sponge to wash 
 his little pate, and the two red eggs are rubbed 
 gently over it, after which their shells are removed,
 
 GOING TO VISIT A MARRIED DAUGHTER
 
 CHINESE BABIES AND THEIR GRANDMOTHERS. 77 
 
 and they are cut in small pieces with a thread, put 
 into a bowl, and partaken of by all the assembled 
 relatives and by the children of the neighbours. 
 The eating of the egg is looked upon as an expres- 
 sion of love and a pledge of future kindness toward 
 the child. 
 
 The making ready of all these things to be pre- 
 sented at the head-shaving requires many months of 
 time, and often forces the maternal grandmother to 
 severe personal economy. Then, if the infant proves 
 to be a despised girl, much of her labour is wasted, 
 and must all be repeated until a boy has been duly 
 welcomed in her daughter's house. Every woman 
 has these things to do, not because they are enforced 
 by imperial law, but because they are what other 
 people expect and require from her. 
 
 If the child be healthy, and its relatives meet 
 with no misfortunes, so that blind fortune-tellers 
 and expositors of demonolatry are not called to in- 
 terfere in its fate, it may live and grow for a few
 
 78 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 years uneventfully. With its bead-like black eyes, 
 its serious little chrome-yellow face, and its parti- 
 coloured garments rivalling in brightness the hues of 
 the macaw, it is one of the queerest bits of human- 
 ity to be found on the globe.
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 
 
 THOUGH Chinese children are habitually grave, 
 and always quiet when in the presence of their 
 elders of superiors, and although they are often 
 engaged in assisting grown people in hard work, 
 they are like other children in having many sports. 
 
 Little Chinese girls seldom amuse themselves with 
 dolls, but they frequently acquire skill in playing 
 with a single ball, hitting it with foot, forehead, or 
 hand, as it bounds from roof, wall, and floor. The 
 player often whirls quickly around while the ball is 
 in the air, and meeting it upon its rebound, sends it 
 up again. Some girls are expert in tossing marbles, 
 keeping as many as five in air at one time. Both 
 boys and girls play with tops and shuttlecocks, but 
 boys alone fly kites. 
 
 79
 
 80 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 In many games a servitor or leader is chosen in 
 the following way. The children stand in pairs, 
 and each suddenly thrusts out an arm with one 
 digit extended from the closed fist. One or the 
 other, in each pair, is vanquished if he holds out a 
 finger reckoned to be of lesser power than the one 
 extended by his neighbour. The thumb is counted 
 as the local idol ; the forefinger as a fowl ; the middle 
 finger as a gun; the ring finger as a fox; the little 
 finger as a white ant. If a thumb be opposed to a 
 forefinger, the thumb vanquishes, because fowls are 
 commonly slain as offerings to idols. If a thumb 
 be opposed to a middle finger, the thumb vanquishes, 
 because a god is greater than the gun, which is often 
 used to announce the presence of the gods. If a 
 thumb be opposed to a ring finger, there is neither 
 a victory nor a defeat, because gods and foxes are 
 supposed to be always on friendly terms, and so 
 there must be another trial. If a thumb be opposed 
 to a little finger, the thumb is vanquished, because
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 81 
 
 white ants often devour idols. If a forefinger be 
 opposed to a middle finger, the latter is victor, be- 
 cause guns destroy fowls. If a forefinger be opposed 
 to a ring finger, the former is conquered, because 
 foxes eat fowls. If a forefinger be opposed to a 
 little finger, the latter is defeated, because fowls eat 
 white ants. If a middle finger be opposed to a ring 
 finger, the latter is defeated, because guns kill 
 foxes. If a middle finger be opposed to a little 
 finger, there must be another trial, because guns 
 and white ants have no mutual influence. If a 
 ring finger be opposed to a little finger, the same 
 result follows, because foxes and white ants have no 
 known relationship to each other for either good or 
 ill. When the vanquished in each couple is de- 
 clared, then these defeated ones pair off, and com- 
 pete among themselves, until a servitor is announced 
 by the showing of the last pair of hands. 
 
 In a game called "The Mud Turtle," a "mother- 
 turtle " is chosen in the way above described. Then
 
 82 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 each player furnishes a pair of shoes, and these are 
 given to the mother-turtle to cover as her eggs. 
 She piles them in the middle of the floor, and 
 sprawls over them, turtle-like, on all fours, guard- 
 ing them from prowlers. The other children steal 
 the eggs at every opportunity; but any prowler who 
 is touched by the turtle's hand or foot must take 
 her place. The eggs that have been stolen must be 
 brought back by the turtle who lost them, payment 
 being made in forfeits to the successful thief. 
 
 Blindman's-buff is played under the title "Fishing- 
 by-hand." A limit is set, beyond which none may 
 pass during the game. The leader holds her right 
 arm level, with the palm of her hand ( downward, 
 and the other players touch her palm with the point 
 of the index finger. Whoever she can catch, by 
 suddenly closing her hand upon the finger, must put 
 on the blinder and become "fisherman." If the 
 blinded fisher calls out, saying, "The tide is rising," 
 the fish must clap their hands to suggest their
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 83 
 
 activity in high water; but if the fisher says, "The 
 tide is falling," then the fish must steal about cau- 
 tiously, as if they had but little water to sport in. 
 When a fish is caught, the fisher must guess its 
 name before taking off the blinder. 
 
 A game of hide-and-seek is played under the 
 name of "The Butcher's Account." Each player 
 chooses a colour for his marks, using charcoal for 
 black, chalk for white, a fragment of soft tile for 
 red, a bit of stucco for gray. The servitor leans 
 her head against a wall, closes her eyes, and remains 
 to be the seeker. The other children take their 
 marking material, and go off and make each a mark 
 somewhere within the limit agreed upon. Any one 
 who is at any time called by the seeker must in- 
 stantly respond to her name. When all the markers 
 have returned, the seeker takes their pencils and 
 goes to find their marks, crossing each mark with its 
 own colour. If the seeker fails to find any of the 
 marks, she has to pay a forfeit to the one whose 
 mark she fails to find.
 
 84 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 A game resembling that of " Button " is played by 
 ranging several children in a row within some area 
 large enough for them to run in. The servitor 
 holds a fruit-pip between her hands, and passes 
 along the line of players, pretending to deposit some- 
 thing in the hands of each, and saying as she 
 
 goes : 
 
 Something for all, a pip for one ; 
 Four-o'clock seeds and pineapple bun ; 
 Pewter, peas, and powder. Run I 
 
 At the word Run, she who has received the pip 
 speeds toward a place of refuge in a room previously 
 agreed upon, and the others try to catch the runner 
 before she reaches the refuge. If the fugitive is 
 caught, the pip goes back to the servitor, and the 
 game begins anew. But if she who holds the pip 
 reaches the refuge, those left behind give them- 
 selves names; perhaps of flowers,^>erhaps of animals, 
 perhaps of articles of furniture. The servitor then 
 calls out to the pip-holder, telling her all the names
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 85 
 
 chosen, and asks which she will take. She mentions 
 one of the names, and the one so named must go 
 and bring the pip-holder pick-a-back to the play- 
 ground, taking the pip from her before starting on 
 the journey. If the carrier forgets to secure the 
 pip before returning, she who holds it may again 
 run to the refuge, and the carrier must a second 
 time bring her out pick-a-back. 
 
 In a game called "The Water Sprite," the servitor 
 acts as sprite, and stands in the middle of a hall 
 taken to represent a river. The players range them- 
 selves along the sides of the hall, as if standing on 
 the banks of the stream, and then all in a file make 
 the circuit of the hall three times, singing: 
 
 Years glide along, and the third one is here : 
 Whom will the water-sprite take this year ? 
 
 The couplet is an allusion to a popular superstition 
 that when one person has fallen into a well, pool, 
 or creek, another will, after three years, be pulled
 
 86 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 in by the resident demon. So, after the lines of 
 folk have three times crossed and recrossed the pre- 
 tended stream, they return to their places on its 
 banks, and thereafter the sprite waiting in its waters 
 tries to catch whoever crosses it. The folk run to 
 and fro, and when one is caught between the banks, 
 he takes the place of the sprite, who then joins 
 those on the banks. 
 
 A game involving much muscular exercise is 
 called "The Lame Chicken." It is played by jump- 
 ing on one foot between shoes that have been placed 
 across a road, with intervals of about ten inches. 
 When the end of the line of shoes is reached, the 
 last shoe in the line is kicked away by the " lame " 
 foot, and then it is picked up and carried back over 
 the route, to the other end of the line, when a 
 second shoe may be likewise kicked away and picked 
 up before returning. Only one foot may touch the 
 ground, and may touch it but once in each inter- 
 space. No shoe may be touched except the ones
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 87 
 
 which end the line, and the shoes kicked away must 
 be picked up without putting the "lame" foot upon 
 the ground. When the "chicken" violates any of 
 these rules, he must at once give place to another 
 performer. The shorter the line, the more difficult 
 it is to collect shoes, because each shoe taken 
 involves turning around without using the "lame" 
 leg. The winner in the game is lie who has at 
 the end of it the greatest number of shoes. These 
 are redeemed by their owners, as forfeits. 
 
 A game called "The Water-demon Seeking a 
 Den " is played by five persons precisely as is 
 "Puss-in-the-Corner." This is a native, not an 
 imported game; and no one knows whether Chinese 
 and European children invented it independently, 
 or whether the knowledge of it was inherited by 
 both from ancient, common ancestors. The same 
 may be said of "The Cat's Cradle," which is made 
 with a string, and passed from one pair of hands to 
 another pair, precisely as among children in Amer-
 
 88 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 ica and Europe; but the Chinese call it "Sawing 
 Wood," in allusion to the final act in the perform- 
 ance. Possibly the games of children may give, as 
 do languages, a clue to the descent of nations. 
 
 " A Water-wheel " is made by a goodly number 
 of children, of nearly the same height, joining hands 
 and forming a circle, all facing inward. Then two 
 of the children raise two arms to form an arch, and 
 those opposite them in the circle pass under the 
 arch, followed in order by their successors in the 
 circle, until all have passed the arch. The children, 
 who should never unclasp their united hands, then 
 all face outward. Those who first passed under the 
 arch now quickly raise two hands, and those oppo- 
 site them in the circle pass under, and the children 
 follow, till all in the circle again face inward. This 
 may be indefinitely repeated, and if the movement 
 be smooth and rapid, and if the children meanwhile 
 imitate with their voices the sound of bubbling water 
 and of a creaking wheel, the play is a very pretty one.
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 89 
 
 When the children "Make a Centipede," they join 
 1 lands, the tallest at the head, and the others ranged 
 in order of height down to the smallest at the end 
 of the line. Each child then puts his head under 
 the arm that is nearest his taller neighbour, and 
 follows him in a route which is dictated by the 
 movement of the tallest. 
 
 For "Turning the Wheel," a strong jar or a round 
 stone may be used as a hub, which is laid upon a 
 smooth, solid surface. Four or five children, facing 
 each other, and placing their feet firmly upon the 
 hub, form the spokes, and an equal number, alternat- 
 ing with the spokes, and standing on the ground, 
 form the fellies. Each child then joins hands with 
 its nearest neighbours, and the fellies walk, all in 
 the same direction. If the spokes be rigid, and the 
 fellies firm, the wheel thus composed turns round 
 and round, the hub revolving in its fixed place. 
 
 Other games give exercise to mind and muscle, 
 and have the charm to which children, the world
 
 90 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 over, are most susceptible, that of appealing to the 
 imagination. " The Hornets " are imitated by chil- 
 dren cuddling around a chair or a tree, as their 
 nest. Two grass-cutters come along and pretend to 
 cut grass thereabout, talking meanwhile of current 
 events. They finally sit down to rest and smoke, 
 and while so doing they discover the hornets' nest. 
 They agree to burn it, and pretend to hold their 
 pipes to it to set it on fire. The hornets then rush 
 after and sting them, using their forefingers as 
 stings. The men run, the hornets pursue, until the 
 tired stingers return to their nest, or the grass- 
 cutters reach home. 
 
 In the play of "The Dog-buyers," one child per- 
 sonates an old man who lives among the mountains 
 and rears fine dogs. Several children retire with 
 him behind a door, and represent his pets. Two 
 or three other children personate villagers who have 
 heard of the excellence of the old man's dogs, and 
 who desire to buy puppies. These walk several
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 91 
 
 times over stairs or benches, which represent rugged 
 portions of their supposed journey, singing as they 
 travel : 
 
 Up the hills and down the dales, 
 
 To buy little dogs we go ; 
 Through the woods, across the vales, 
 
 To buy little dogs we go. 
 
 When they knock at the old man's door, he in- 
 quires who is there, and they tell him their errand. 
 Without opening the door, he replies in a surly 
 manner that the puppies have not yet got their eyes 
 open, and cannot leave his house till they are larger. 
 The would-be buyers return over the road by which 
 they came, and soon make the journey a second 
 time, singing as before. Again they make their 
 request at the old man's door, and again he attempts 
 to delay the time of their taking the puppies; but 
 they insist upon seeing his stock. When he can 
 no longer withstand their demands, he opens the 
 door, the dogs rush out, barking, snarling, and paw-
 
 92 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 ing the buyers, so that they run for life, pursued by 
 the dogs. The bravest of the strangers seizes a dog 
 and drags it away with him, and the other dogs 
 retreat to their master. 
 
 In playing "The Vegetable Garden," all of the 
 children, except three, arrange themselves as vegeta- 
 bles in garden-beds. A green-grocer then conies 
 with the gardener, comments upon the size and 
 quality of the vegetables, bargains for them, and 
 agrees to pay a certain price for the whole. The 
 amount being accepted, the gardener promises to 
 pull and trim the vegetables, that they may be ready 
 for the grocer to carry away the next morning. The 
 gardener and the grocer then depart, but the gar- 
 dener soon returns, pulls up the vegetables, trims off 
 their leaves, and lays them on the ground to dry. 
 When he has gone, the night is supposed to come 
 on, and with it comes a thief who carries off all the 
 vegetables to his hiding-place. He has a pole over 
 his shoulder, and to this he attaches the vegetables
 
 GAMES OF CHINESE CHILDREN. 93 
 
 by their hands, and they walk along with him. The 
 morning having come, the grocer goes to take his 
 vegetables and finds the garden empty. He seeks 
 the gardener, who is appalled by the disappearance 
 of the produce, and both go in quest of the thief. 
 After much search, they discover the vegetables, 
 stacked up in a corner, and determine to lie in hid- 
 ing and await the coming of the thief, that they 
 may catch and punish him. He appears, they seize 
 and bind him, and while the gardener marches him 
 off to the magistrate, the grocer carries off the veg- 
 etables hanging on a pole. 
 
 In the next scene the thief may be tried before 
 the magistrate, and condemned to pay for a puppet 
 show for the amusement of the populace, and in this 
 scene the vegetables appear again as puppets.
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 
 
 AN error that has shown great tenacity to life, 
 after many contradictions, remains extant in recent 
 books, in the statement that education is universal 
 among the men of the Middle Kingdom. As a 
 matter of fact, not more than one Chinese man in a 
 hundred, taking the empire through, knows how to 
 read, and still fewer can write a letter. Of women, 
 not more than one in a thousand can read, and these 
 are members of wealthy families, and have, in the 
 happy past, been the domestic pets of their learned 
 fathers and brothers. Only boys go to school. 
 
 There is no system of public instruction, and all 
 learning is acquired in private classes. A man who 
 has sons or grandsons whom he wishes* to educate, 
 and who may be called a self-elected trustee, finds 
 
 94
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 95 
 
 out how many of his friends and neighbours are 
 willing to join in the establishment of a school, and 
 will pay the usual rate for the instruction of a pupil 
 two or three dollars in silver, one peck of rice 
 worth from thirty to fifty cents, and a hundred 
 copper cash, worth nine cents. From ten to twenty 
 boys are enough to meet the expenses of a school. 
 The trustee hires the teacher, and becomes responsi- 
 ble for the payment of his salary, as well as for as 
 much rice, fuel, tea, tobacco, and paper as will sup- 
 ply his needs. The teacher expects, besides, from 
 each pupil, a small present of cash, amounting to 
 from three to five cents, at each of the six festivals 
 of the school year. The income of a teacher, in a 
 village school, seldom amounts to more than thirty 
 dollars a year beyond current expenses. A teacher 
 who has taken a literary degree may receive from 
 fifty to ninety dollars a year, but he is usually em- 
 ployed as tutor in a city. 
 
 The trustee provides a schoolroom, which is often
 
 96 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 an ancestral temple or an empty dwelling-house. 
 He also supplies the teacher with a chair, desk, bed- 
 stead, and cooking-utensils. Each pupil brings his 
 own desk, stool, and whatever else is required by 
 him in the schoolroom, including what are commonly 
 called "the four gems of the study" the brush 
 used in writing hieroglyphics, the cake of ink which 
 is rubbed upon a wetted inkstone to make the pig- 
 ment in which the brush is dipped, the inkstone, in 
 which there is a little well to hold water, and the 
 set of books to which all aspiring youths devote 
 themselves. 
 
 On the day of opening the school, the trustee 
 makes a noonday feast, to which he invites the 
 teacher and as many other guests as will make a 
 party of eight. These guests sit down at two small 
 square tables. After dinner the pupils assemble, 
 and the teacher pastes upon the schoolroom wall a 
 sheet of paper upon which he has written, in large 
 characters, the name of Confucius. On a table, set
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 97 
 
 as a temporary altar before the revered name of the 
 philosopher, are placed lighted candles, censers, three 
 cups of tea, and some packages of molasses candy, 
 made into tubes symbolic of the unobstructed mind. 
 Before this altar the teacher and pupils burn incense- 
 sticks and spirit-money in homage to the sage. 
 The teacher stands nearest the altar, and the boys, 
 grouped behind him, kneel with him, and thrice bow 
 the forehead to the floor. The teacher then informs 
 Confucius of the day, month, and year in which the 
 school is opened, and prays for his favour, saying: 
 "Oh, greatest and holiest of sages! Bless these thy 
 disciples ; open their understanding, and make it 
 easy for them to learn. When they write, make their 
 wrists flexible as willow withes, and when they 
 recite, make their words to flow like water in a 
 mountain brook. Help them to compose both in 
 prose and verse, and to attain literary degrees." The 
 obeisance to Confucius having been thrice repeated, 
 the teacher stands beside his chair, and the pupils
 
 98 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 one by one pay homage to him by kneeling once and 
 touching the floor with the forehead. The trustee 
 then distributes the molasses candy among the boys, 
 and they take it home and present it to their parents 
 and friends. The name of Confucius remains upon 
 the wall during the year, and is worshipped by the 
 pupils, each by himself, on the first and the fifteenth 
 day of every lunar month, and at all the chief festi- 
 vals. At the end of the year the teacher and pupils 
 again worship it together, with the same formalities 
 as at the opening of the school, and then take it 
 from the wall and reverently burn it. 
 
 The school opens about a month after the New 
 Year, and continues, in a desultory way, for eleven 
 months. The teacher goes to his native place when- 
 ever there is a dramatic performance, or any other 
 festivity of especial importance there. He also goes 
 when the rice is harvested and he needs to receive 
 his share of the produce of his farm, when there is 
 a funeral in his clan, and when there is a birth or
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 99 
 
 a wedding in his family. He is also absent for a 
 few days at each of the stated festivals that of 
 worshipping at the tombs of the ancestors, in the 
 third month; that of the races of the dragon boats, 
 in the fifth month; that of homage to the god of the 
 bedstead, in the seventh month; that of the harvest- 
 home, in the tenth month; and that upon the short- 
 est day of the year, in the eleventh month. 
 
 The pupils expect a vacation, on their own ac- 
 count, whenever a play is performed in their vil- 
 lage, and they easily get leave of absence when 
 domestic duties call them from study. Truancy is, 
 however, punished by the rod. Every forenoon and 
 afternoon each pupil, as he comes, takes from a cup 
 upon the teacher's desk a tally which he lays be- 
 fore the teacher. If any tally remains too long in 
 the cup, the teacher sends some pupil to bring the 
 truant, and, unless the parents come to explain his 
 absence, he is whipped. After all the boys are 
 accounted for, the teacher replaces the tallies in
 
 100 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the cup, and, thereafter, if any boy desires to leave the 
 room, he must take his tally and lay it before the 
 teacher, replacing it when he returns. 
 
 It is customary for all the pupils to go to the 
 schoolroom at dawn silently to con their lessons. 
 When the sun is well risen, the eldest boy knocks 
 at the teacher's door and asks permission to recite. 
 The teacher emerges and hears the recitation, and 
 the pupil then goes home to his breakfast. When 
 all have recited and breakfasted, they return to 
 sweep the schoolroom and wash the teacher's dishes 
 before beginning study again. About noon they go 
 home to dinner, and play until the middle of the 
 afternoon, when they resume their lessons, and con- 
 tinue study until sunset. After their early supper, 
 the older ones go back to the schoolroom for study 
 during the evening. 
 
 The teacher is usually accompanied by a son or 
 nephew, who does his cooking, and benefits by in- 
 struction with the local students. The pupils all
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 101 
 
 assist the teacher in his simple housekeeping, and 
 their mothers do his washing, mending, and sewing, 
 without other compensation than his diligence in 
 imparting knowledge to their sons. When the 
 teacher has ascertained which woman is most expert 
 in the cutting and making of garments, he honours 
 her by sending his cloth to her to be made up. 
 
 A story is told of a schoolmaster who bought just 
 enough of cotton fabric for one tunic, and sent one 
 of his pupils home with a message to his mother to 
 make of the cloth a tunic to wear in the street, a 
 gown to sleep in, two pockets for carrying books, 
 and a. face towel. The mother feared to offend her 
 son's teacher by sending back the material uncut, 
 and as there was not enough of it for anything more, 
 she made a tunic, and told her son to take it to the 
 master and say that his sewing was finished. If the 
 master inquired for his sleeping-gown, the boy was 
 to point to the tunic and say that, when it was 
 slept in, it would be a sleeping-gown. If he asked
 
 102 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 for the two pockets for carrying books, the boy was 
 to direct his attention to the upturned ends of the 
 wide sleeves as a suitable and common receptacle 
 for books; and if he said anything about the towel, 
 the boy was to suggest that it was there, in the 
 flap. The pupil carried out the plan and got credit 
 for having a shrewd mother. 
 
 Those who are anxious to have their sons make 
 rapid progress, encourage the teacher by presents of 
 dainties. A woman who wished to have her son's 
 teacher well disposed toward him sent the master a 
 skilfully prepared dish of fish, with vegetables sur- 
 rounding it. But instead of sending the whole fish, 
 she savingly cut out its middle portion and joined 
 the head and tail parts so nicely that she hoped the 
 removal of the best half would not be discerned. 
 
 The teacher enjoyed the savoury odour as the plate 
 appeared, and sat down to it in expectation of a 
 luscious meal. He ate it with pleasure, but he 
 thought that a fish having so large a head could
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 103 
 
 not so suddenly dwindle into a tail. Therefore, 
 having eaten up his dinner he wrote upon the 
 
 plate : 
 
 A big perch makes a savoury dish, 
 
 In a chowder, in broth, or in pickle : 
 But the head is as void as a drum, 
 And the tail is as thin as a sickle. 
 
 The boy took the plate to his mother, and read to 
 her the verse upon it, and she sent him back to the 
 teacher with the following message : 
 
 In my house, things are not as in yours ; 
 
 There is dearth in the pot and the griddle; 
 The old grandmother wanted some fish, 
 
 So I stole a wee bit from the middle. 
 
 The teacher could not complain when a woman 
 showed regard for her mother-in-law as well as for 
 her son's teacher, and he thought it worth while to 
 instruct diligently a boy whose mother could com- 
 pose verses. 
 
 The course of study includes only reading, writ-
 
 104 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 ing, and composition. Any one who desires to learn 
 arithmetic, calculation on the abacus or computing- 
 machine, letter-writing, and the art of detecting 
 counterfeit money, must study these branches under 
 one or more specialists who fit young men for com- 
 mercial pursuits. The reckoning of accounts, the 
 writing of epistles, and the inspection of coins are 
 each a vocation whereby many men earn their liv- 
 ing. The course of those who hope to be true 
 literati lies distinctly among the classics. 
 
 The Chinese primer is an ancient book of rhymes 
 with three monosyllables in each line. After this 
 follows the book of one thousand different characters, 
 metrically arranged in lines of four words. Having 
 mastered these, the student plunges into the revered 
 conversations of the sages, taking in order three 
 books of Confucius and two of Mencius. These are 
 all committed to memory. When they have been 
 thus mastered, the learner returns upon his route, 
 and studies each of these books with notes and a
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 105 
 
 commentary, supplemented by the explanations of the 
 teacher. After that, he studies a volume which con- 
 tains all five of these books, with more extended 
 notes on the whole; and he endeavours to get light 
 upon the text by reading the expositions of many 
 authors, and by listening to the conversations of the 
 learned. 
 
 The beginner in study takes his book to the 
 teacher and hears him read a column or more, after 
 which the pupil returns to his desk and cons this 
 lesson aloud, until he can recite it without looking 
 at it. He then takes his book again to the teacher, 
 turns his back to the master, and recites what he has 
 learned. This is called "backing the lesson." In 
 this way the pupil commits the whole book to 
 memory, and he is expected to learn it so thor- 
 oughly that he can at any moment repeat the whole 
 of any passage whose initial words are mentioned 
 to him. 
 
 Writing begins soon after reading. At first, the
 
 106 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 learner blackens, with a little brush dipped in pig- 
 ment, the red hieroglyphics printed in his copy-book. 
 When he can do this neatly, he traces the same 
 upon transparent paper laid over the copy. Later 
 on, he copies from the books he reads, and, still 
 later, he writes from memory. 
 
 Composition, which is regarded as the real test of 
 scholarship, is begun at an early age. Just before 
 the noonday recess, the teacher writes a sentiment, 
 a proverb, or a proposition upon a slip of red paper, 
 and pastes it upon the door. Each boy, as he goes 
 out, reads the line, and in the afternoon renders to 
 the teacher another line which will, with the first, 
 make a couplet. The more advanced a pupil, the 
 more time does he devote to composition; and odes, 
 blank verse, ballads, and madrigals are followed by 
 the highest style of prose, written in imitation of 
 the classics. 
 
 All honours, social, pecuniary, and official, await 
 the scholar, and the teacher has always at hand
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 107 
 
 illustrious examples to hold up for the emulation of 
 those who become discouraged. Among the ancients, 
 as among the moderns, many who were poor or stupid 
 rose to eminence by sheer diligence and self-disci- 
 pline. The teacher tells of So Chin, who, being 
 afflicted with drowsiness when at his nightly studies, 
 thrust a needle through his flesh so that pain might 
 keep him awake; and of the restless Sai Lin, whose 
 active body revolted against sitting at his books, 
 and who cured himself of a constant disposition to 
 rise and leave them, by placing a pail of cold water 
 where his feet would be immersed in it whenever he 
 stood up. 
 
 A warning is given in the career of the unscrupu- 
 lous Pang Kien, who cut off the ends of the straws 
 that his teacher told him to arrange evenly, while 
 the careful and honest Sung Pin separated a similar 
 bundle and laid the straws straight, one by one, and 
 found that they were all of uniform length without 
 cutting. The character thus manifested by the two
 
 108 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 showed their teacher which of his pupils would best 
 repay his efforts, and his judgment was justified by 
 the event, for Pang Kien came to no good, while 
 Sung Pin won renown and wealth, and great hon- 
 our came through him to his preceptor. Such exam- 
 ples stimulate the ambitious student, and he has, 
 besides, ever before him the hope of a first place at 
 the examinations. 
 
 The preliminary examinations are held twice in 
 every three years, at the chief city of the district. 
 No less a person than the district magistrate, who 
 has himself taken three literary degrees and the 
 title of "Advanced Scholar," conducts the examina- 
 tions. They are continued twenty days, and at the 
 end of that time the names of all the students, 
 ranged in the order of merit, are placarded on the 
 wall of the Confucian temple. A hundred or two 
 who rank first among the thousand or more that 
 have entered for examination are considered suitable 
 candidates for the first literary degree, that of
 
 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING. 109 
 
 "Flowering Talent," and these are invited by the 
 magistrate to a banquet at his residence. 
 
 A month after the examination at the district city, 
 another, at the departmental city, is conducted by a 
 chancellor, a member of the National Academy, sent 
 from Pekinsr. He who succeeds in this examination 
 
 o 
 
 takes the degree of Flowering Talent, and receives 
 an ovation on his return to his native place. He 
 may afterward go to the provincial capital, where, 
 once in three years, an envoy of the emperor super- 
 intends the examination of those who have taken the 
 first degree and aspire to the second, that of "Pro- 
 moted Men." 
 
 Having attained the rank of a Promoted Man, the 
 student may go to Peking and there be examined for 
 the third degree, that of "Advanced Scholar." He 
 who takes this degree becomes "An Expectant of 
 Office," and is sure, sooner or later, of position, 
 power, and riches. 
 
 Many strive for the first degree until they are
 
 110 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 gray-haired, and fail of attaining it; while others 
 gain the third even in youth. It is said that "in 
 these degenerate times, it is not as it was of old," 
 and that money often secures the coveted degree 
 that scholarship fails to win.
 
 A FAMILY MEAL
 
 MEASURES OF TIME. 
 
 TIME is the one good of which all men have the 
 same amount. Other valuable possessions are un- 
 equally distributed; but the hours are of like length 
 to all. The use of time is ultimately a matter of 
 free will, and constitutes the main difference be- 
 tween the weak and the wise. One who is so con- 
 scientious as to hold in careful regard other people's 
 time, is evidently on the road to perfection. 
 
 The Australian savage who notes only day and 
 night, and the European who habitually carries a 
 watch marking the seconds of which he heeds the 
 flight, are at the two extremes of human culture. 
 The Chinese are midway between. They have gone 
 as far in civilization as any men who have no 
 clocks. 
 
 Ill
 
 112 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 The longest fixed measure of time among the 
 Chinese is a cycle of sixty years, invented in the 
 reign of the Emperor Hwangti, 2637 years before 
 Christ. This sexagenary cycle is the only Chinese 
 measure of years, and is used not only throughout 
 China, but by the Mongols, the Coreans, the Japa- 
 nese, the Loochooans, the Annamese, and the Sia- 
 mese. When Tennyson declares fifty years in 
 Europe to be better than a cycle in Cathay, his 
 affirmation has less emphasis than he intends, and 
 less than the truth warrants. 
 
 The seventy-fifth great cycle ended in 1863, with 
 the 4500th year of Chinese annals. The great cycle 
 is made up of six cycles of ten, called stems, and 
 five cycles of twelve, called branches, the stems and 
 branches being contemporaneous. Each year is desig- 
 nated by two monosyllables, the first of which denotes 
 the place of the year in the cycle of ten, and the 
 second of which denotes the place of the year in the 
 cycle of twelve. The ten stems have a dual combi-
 
 MEASURES OF TIME. 113 
 
 nation, and the pairs agree respectively with the five 
 elements, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, and 
 also with the five planets, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, 
 Venus, and Mercury. 
 
 The names of the twelve branches are also the 
 names of the twelve signs of the zodiac, of the 
 twelve points of the compass, and of the twelve 
 hours of the day. Each is symbolized, and is sup- 
 posed to be dominated, by an aninnl, and the names 
 of these animals are the common appellations of the 
 years. These symbols are the rat, the ox, the tiger, 
 the hare, the dragon, the serpent, the horse, the 
 goat, the ape, the cock, the dog, and the boar. If 
 you ask a Chinaman in what year he was born, he 
 is apt to mention only the name of the animal sym- 
 bolizing his branch, and to leave you to do the 
 necessary reckoning. The stems and branches are 
 supposed to rule individual and national destiny, 
 and they enter into complex and abstruse geomantic 
 and astrological calculations, and furnish the basis
 
 114 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 for the elaborate operations of myriads of fortune- 
 tellers and soothsayers. 
 
 Epistles and business documents are dated accord- 
 ing to the year of the reign of the present sover- 
 eign. 
 
 The Chinese year contains either twelve or thir- 
 teen months, which correspond closely with the 
 moon's changes. The first day of the month is new 
 moon; the middle of the month, full moon; and the 
 end of the month, old moon. There are either 
 twenty-nine or thirty days in a month, and the 
 number of days in a certain month may be different 
 in different years. The calendar for the year tells 
 the number of days in each month for that year; 
 and when one wishes to know whether there are 
 twenty-nine or thirty days in the month he inquires, 
 saying, "Is this month a greater or a lesser one?" 
 One year in every three has an intercalary month, 
 some month being repeated, and called the second 
 fifth month, or the second eighth month, as the case
 
 MEASURES OF TIME. 115 
 
 may be. Any month, except the first or the twelfth, 
 may be thus repeated. There is no division of time 
 into weeks, and the native Christian keeps his Sab- 
 bath in the midst of a populace pursuing week-day 
 avocations. Days are designated solely by their order 
 in the month, as first, second, third, etc. 
 
 Holidays are numerous, and certain trades cele- 
 brate on special days the birth of illustrious founders 
 or of patron saints. There are also many local 
 festivals, beside the seven great feasts kept by 
 the whole nation. The New Year is universally 
 observed; for he who would be prosperous during 
 the entire year must, on its first day, wear new 
 clothes, eat good food, hear only cheering words, 
 and think only happy thoughts. As it takes several 
 days to prepare for, and several days to recover 
 from, the enjoyment of New Year's, there is an 
 utter cessation of other business for about two weeks 
 at this festival. Then follows the feasts of the full 
 moon of the first, fifth, seventh, and eighth months,
 
 116 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 and the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. At all 
 the festivals there is much worshipping of the gods, 
 with offerings of spirit-money and edibles. Indeed, 
 all the festivals are nominally in honour of the 
 deities, and every pious native observes them. Un- 
 happily, among the Chinese, and some other people, 
 probity is not in direct ratio to piety. The devout- 
 est pagan is not the most trustworthy. The days, 
 beginning at 11 o'clock P.M., are divided into 
 twelve periods. These two-hour periods are again 
 divided each into eight periods. This period, fifteen 
 minutes in length, is the shortest fixed Chinese 
 measure of time. 
 
 Contrivances for marking the time are few and 
 simple. In the city of Canton there is a very 
 ancient bronze clepsydra, in which the water leaks 
 from a large ornate vase, and fills a smaller vase in 
 just two hours, while the leakage from the lesser 
 vase fills one an eighth as large in just fifteen 
 minutes. Portable sun-dials are common in the
 
 MEASURES OF TIME. 117 
 
 shops, and so must be in demand, though they are 
 not often seen in practical use. The dial is a 
 square box, a few inches across, with a compass in 
 the centre. When opened in the sunshine, and so 
 placed that the needle points south, the raised lid 
 of the box casts a shadow on a disk surrounding the 
 compass and bearing lines which denote the time of 
 day. 
 
 When the sun is visible, the Chinese judge very 
 accurately of the time by its altitude. Short periods 
 are indicated in speech by all sorts of familiar inci- 
 dents, such as, "The time it takes to eat a meal," 
 or, "As long as it takes an incense-stick to burn 
 out." Hour and minute glasses are unknown; but 
 pastilles are sometimes burned, when brief similar 
 periods of time need to be marked. Medicines are 
 not usually administered at exact intervals, nor in 
 the night. I once had occasion to insist on some 
 doses of medicine being given during the night, at 
 intervals of exactly two hours. There was, in the
 
 118 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 family, no visible means of ascertaining the time, 
 but I was earnestly assured by the relatives of the 
 patient that the medicine would be given at the 
 required moment. After considerable insistence on 
 my part, the old mother, acting as nurse, endeav- 
 oured to alleviate my anxiety by informing me that 
 she had a reliable means of knowing the time of 
 night, for, like everybody else, she was acquainted 
 with the fact that she breathed through her two 
 nostrils alternately, the change from one nostril to 
 the other being made exactly on the hour! I have 
 been gravely assured by the Chinese that they respire 
 through the right nostril from 11 P.M. to 1 A.M., 
 and then through the left nostril from 1 A.M. to 3 
 A.M., and so 011 throughout the hours, both nostrils 
 giving exit to the air just at the passing of one 
 hour into the next. 
 
 American clocks are now generally seen among the 
 bric-a-brac of wealthy Chinamen; but the masses of 
 the people have no time-pieces. As a consequence,
 
 MEASURES OF TIME. 119 
 
 appointments are made with a broad margin for wait- 
 ing, and he who meets one within an hour or two 
 of the time fixed, is thought to practise that punct- 
 uality which is the politeness of princes.
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 
 
 A COMMON saying of the underlings that swarm 
 in a yamun, the official residence of a Chinese mag- 
 istrate, is that "Rice does not grow on a court-house 
 pavement." That means that clients who expect to 
 have business attended to, must provide the consta- 
 bles with means of subsistence. The yamun is a 
 spot where two common proverbs are verified. The 
 one is that "When the moneyless speak, the hearer 
 hastens away," and the other is that "If you have 
 enough money, you can hire a demon to turn your 
 mill." Success needs be certain before a suit is 
 entered upon, for "If you hit a tiger and do not kill 
 him, you become his prey." 
 
 There are fixed days, four or five in each month, 
 when complaints may be legally entered at the 
 
 120
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 121 
 
 yamun. By force of bribery they can also be 
 entered upon other days, and be pressed so rapidly 
 on their course as to take the defendant unprepared 
 and at great disadvantage. Any one who wishes to 
 bring a suit before the magistrate, first buys, for 
 about five cents, a sheet of paper bearing the official 
 stamp of the incumbent. He then goes to a scribe 
 known to be competent, and for a dollar or more, 
 gets him to write the complaint in terse phrases. 
 He then takes it to a certain bureau in the yamun, 
 where a clerk reads it and stamps it, for a fee of 
 forty cents and upward, depending on its importance. 
 If the statement is not clear, if the case be compli- 
 cated, or if the payment be reckoned insufficient, 
 the clerk declines to forward the paper to the magis- 
 trate. If the plaintiff be destitute of money or of 
 social influence, his suit will strand in the first 
 bureau. If he be rich and powerful, and the charge 
 be against any one who has personal acquaintances 
 in the yamun, the defendant will receive unofficial
 
 122 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 information of the complaint, and the case will be 
 settled privately. If the defendant apprehends the 
 entering of a charge against him, he prepays some 
 one in the yamun to remain on the watch for it 
 and send him a copy of the complaint as soon as 
 it is entered. He then has time to prepare for the 
 fray, if he decides on battle. 
 
 The amount of money given to the underlings of 
 the court determines the speed with which the com- 
 plaint reaches the hands of the magistrate; and then 
 if there be no personal gain in the case, the magis- 
 trate gives the plea no attention, plaintiffs being 
 many and lucrative business pressing. 
 
 The plaintiff then enters in the same way another 
 complaint, backed up with more money, and perhaps 
 by influential allies whose interest he has managed 
 to secure. When the pressure from outside has 
 become so strong as to force action, the magistrate 
 sends from four to seven constables to the house of 
 the defendant, and these emissaries quickly measure
 
 LEGAL PKOCESSES. 123 
 
 the breadth of the opportunity for plunder. Even the 
 poorest can be made to yield some sort of profit, ac- 
 cording to the saying, " If chaff is squeezed with suffi- 
 cient force, it will yield oil." The family usually 
 flees on the appearance of the constables, and the 
 latter smash dishes and break furniture till some 
 responsible negotiator presents himself. The consta- 
 bles then declare their intention of hauling to prison 
 a certain member of the household. That individual 
 is always absent, and is said to be visiting a distant 
 relative, or to have gone abroad on business. A 
 bribe and a breakfast is offered, but the harpies are 
 not easily appeased. They bluster, poke holes with 
 their staves in the tile roofing, batter the iron pans, 
 dislocate the tables, and threaten arrest, till a sum 
 of money, as large as the afflicted family can, by 
 begging, borrowing, and pawning, scrape together, 
 is handed over to them. Meantime, they are invited 
 to smoke opium; a fowl is caught and put in the 
 pot; pork and wine are bought, and a meal, that
 
 124 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 must not be less than a banquet, is served to them. 
 Not until they have wrung the utmost possible out 
 of their victims, can they be induced to depart. 
 
 If they are received instantly, with speedy dole of 
 viands, opium, and silver enough to constitute what 
 they consider a reasonable as well as seasonable 
 offering, they may return to the yamun and report 
 that there is no cause for action in the case. 
 
 Should the accused at once allow himself to be 
 dragged to the unspeakable filth and horror of a 
 Chinese prison, he would have no food beside what 
 his relatives could bring him, and he might remain 
 there for years, untried, but already condemned, 
 and fully in the power of his enemies. No one 
 thinks of suffering arrest as an alternative from the 
 exactions of the yamun-runners. 
 
 If, after the first visit of the constables, no counter- 
 charge is entered at the yamun, their visits are re- 
 peated until the family is ruined. The counter- 
 statement is entered in the same manner as was the
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 
 
 125 
 
 complaint, and with like expenses. The constables 
 then turn their attention to the plaintiff, who goes 
 through a process similar to that suffered by his 
 opponent. He expostulates, feeds, and fees them 
 till they pocket their warrant for his arrest, and go 
 back to the yamun with a report favourable to their 
 last client. He then sends another written com- 
 plaint to the magistrate, and the whole programme 
 is repeated, again and again, till one party or the 
 other succumbs. The suit is a sort of wrestling- 
 match, in which the strongest must finally win. 
 Justice has no influence in the result. It is not 
 therefore strange that every Chinaman wishes above 
 all things to belong to a powerful guild, in which 
 mutual interests will impel every member to put 
 forth his strength for the common weal, and in 
 which the united force of the organization shall be 
 sufficient to protect each constituent. 
 
 The party that is first worn out in the struggle, 
 or who first foresees his own failure, engages an
 
 126 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 agent who acts as a mediator between the contest- 
 ants ; and sooner or later an agreement is made for the 
 settlement of the case. The defendant then engages 
 an advocate, usually a petty official, to withdraw 
 the case from court. He invites his advocate to a 
 supper, and under his advice offers the yamun- 
 officers a certain number of repasts, in compensation 
 for the trouble his case has given them. The repasts 
 are represented by money, and are reckoned at about 
 ten dollars a meal. The poor man must pay several 
 tens, the rich man several hundreds, of dollars, as 
 cost of withdrawal from court. The advocate must 
 also receive compensation, including a present of a 
 pair of shoes, to replace those he is supposed to have 
 worn out in running to and fro upon his client's 
 business. 
 
 When no settlement outside the court appears 
 possible, then the whole effort of each litigant is to 
 get his opponent brought before the magistrate. To 
 accomplish this, he must fee the constables till they
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 127 
 
 bring the prisoner. The one who knows himself to 
 be in the wrong, strives by every means in his 
 power to avoid confronting his accuser. If the trial 
 is actually brought about, both endeavour to get 
 influential friends to accompany them into court, and 
 to appear as important as possible in the eyes of the 
 magistrate. The two litigants kneel before the 
 magistrate, who is himself statute, jury, and judge. 
 Each suitor personally presents his side of the ques- 
 tion at issue. Witnesses may be summoned, and 
 may be separately tortured till they tell the truth. 
 At the end of the examination, the judge throws 
 down a tally on which is marked the number of 
 blows the culprit is to receive, or else gives severer 
 sentence. Blows, banishment, and decapitation are 
 the three methods of punishment for ordinary crimes. 
 The popular dread of legal processes is expressed 
 in many current sayings, such as, "It is better to 
 live on garbage than to go to law " ; " To win a law- 
 suit reduces one to penury"; "If you consort with
 
 128 A COENEK OF CATHAY. 
 
 beggars, you may have a handful of rice given to 
 you, but if you go among lawyers, you will lose 
 your last coin." 
 
 As a rule, no official attention is given to any 
 crime until demand is made by the wronged; and 
 the gaining of protection from the magistrate depends 
 on the acumen with which the case is set before 
 him. 
 
 On a plain that I have often traversed, north of 
 Swatow, there was, a few years ago, a little village 
 inhabited by a small and weak clan, surnamed Stone. 
 There were twelve neighbouring villages, chiefly of 
 the Plum clan, and these all combined against the 
 Stones, whom they far outnumbered. The Stones 
 planted and watered their crops, and the Plums 
 reaped the harvest. There were perpetual raids on 
 the property of the Stones, and they, having no 
 redress for their wrongs, were in danger of utter 
 extinction. But they had among them one scholar, 
 a literary graduate of the first degree, and when a
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 129 
 
 new magistrate came into office at the head of the 
 Department, this scholar wrote an appeal to him for 
 help, as follows : 
 
 The great clans Plum make one small clan, surnamed the Stones, 
 
 their prey ; 
 
 The haughty Plums, in twelve large villages, in strong array, 
 Surround the lone, weak hamlet of the Stones. They spoil their 
 
 fields 
 
 Of ripened grain ; their watch dogs kill ; their cattle lead away ; 
 Their children kidnap and harass ; their women put to shame ; 
 And seize and hold their men in durance till they ransom pay. 
 Unless you soon redress our wrongs, the village of the Stones 
 Will have no habitant. Oh ! Sire, we wait you, night and day ! 
 
 The magistrate was impressed by this appeal, and 
 prepared to make official inquiry into the case. The 
 Plums heard of it, and feared. In order to properly 
 offset the charge against them, another paper as good 
 as the first, a counter-statement to the complaint, 
 must be sent to the magistrate. And who could 
 write it so well as this same scholar of the Stone 
 clan? Their messenger secretly approached him with
 
 130 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 a sufficient sum of money, and he was induced to 
 indite the following defence for the Plums : 
 
 One village with another vies, and each its strength displays 
 As rival of its neighbour. Clans of Plum and Stone, each sways 
 Its region. Though the Plums be many, and the Stones be few, 
 A single stone, if great enough, ten thousand plums outweighs. 
 
 When this had been secretly transferred to the 
 Plums, and by them sent to the magistrate, he 
 admitted that the possession of an astute and accom- 
 plished scholar gave the Stones sufficient power over 
 their enemies, and so he decided to take no immedi- 
 ate measures in their behalf. The clans Plum con- 
 tinued to oppress the Stones until the latter were 
 nearly exterminated. Many of the Stones had en- 
 tered other clans, taking other names; some had gone 
 into voluntary exile in distant cities, and others had 
 fled to foreign lands. The women and children 
 died, or were sold into more powerful tribes, and at 
 last none of the clan Stone remained except the 
 family of the one great scholar. As the Plums
 
 LEGAL PROCESSES. 131 
 
 acknowledged him as a benefactor, he was rich and 
 influential. The Plums, conscious of a debt to him, 
 but in mortal fear of his trenchant pen, and know- 
 ing that he could at any time be bribed to use his 
 talents against them, decided to do him justice. 
 They gave him an ovation. For three days they 
 carried him about, in rich array, and in an open 
 sedan-chair, as they carry their gods. They feasted 
 him, praised him, and then slew him. They consid- 
 ered that they thus duly acknowledged and rewarded 
 his merit, and also punished and prevented his sins. 
 Now the clan Stone no longer exists, and the place 
 of their habitation knows them no more.
 
 FABULOUS ANIMALS. 
 
 OF the many fabulous animals having their habitat 
 in the Mongolian mind, none is more completely 
 domesticated and universally believed in than is the- 
 Dragon, represented upon the national flag, giving 
 name to the throne, and having numberless images 
 in temples. It is the symbol of power and majesty, 
 the expression of authority and dignity. 
 
 The Chinese Neptunes, the Sea-Dragon Kings, 
 live in gorgeous palaces in the depths of the sea. 
 where they feed on pearls and opals. There are five 
 of these divinities, the chief being in the centre, and 
 the other four occupying the north, the west, the 
 south, and the east. Each is a league in length, 
 and so bulky that in shifting its posture it tosses 
 one mountain against another. It has five feet, one 
 
 132
 
 THE HOLE-IN-THE-CHEST PEOPLE
 
 FABULOUS ANIMALS. 133 
 
 of them being in the middle of its belly, and each 
 foot is armed with five sharp claws. It can reach 
 into the heavens, and stretch itself into all quarters 
 of the sea. It has a glowing armour of yellow 
 scales, a beard under its long snout, a hairy tail, 
 and shaggy legs. Its forehead projects over its blaz- 
 ing eyes, its ears are small and thick, its mouth 
 gaping, its tongue long, and its teeth sharp. Fish 
 are boiled by the blast of its breath, and roasted by 
 the fiery exhalations of its body. When it rises to 
 the surface, the whole ocean surges, waterspouts 
 form, and typhoons rage. When it flies, wingless, 
 through the air, the winds howl, torrents of rain 
 descend, houses are unroofed, the firmament is filled 
 with a din, and whatever lies along its route is 
 swept away with a roar in the hurricane created by 
 the speed of its passage. 
 
 The five Sea-Dragon Kings are all immortal. They 
 know each other's thoughts, plans, and wishes with- 
 out intercommunication. Like all the other gods they
 
 134 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 go once a year to the superior heavens, to make an 
 annual report to the Supreme Ruler; but they go in 
 the third month, at which time none of the other 
 gods dare appear, and their stay above is but brief. 
 They generally remain in the depths of the ocean, 
 where their courts are filled with their progeny, 
 their dependants, and their attendants, and where 
 the gods and genii sometimes visit them. Their 
 palaces, of divers-coloured transparent stones, with 
 crystal doors, are said to have been seen in the early 
 morning by persons gazing into the deep waters. 
 A fine Chinese scholar of my acquaintance, a gradu- 
 ate, gravely assured me that he had seen a dragon 
 moving through the heavens, in a storm, and that 
 he had had a distinct, though distant, view of its 
 tail! To see one indicates good luck, and they are 
 seldom seen by any but the righteous. It is said 
 that fish and serpents that live to a vast age are 
 finally transformed into dragons. 
 
 Another animal, frequently represented in bas-
 
 FABULOUS ANIMALS. 135 
 
 relief on the walls of temples, and supposed to ap- 
 pear only when a sage is born, is the Chinese uni- 
 corn. It has a body like a deer, with the head and 
 tail of a lion. It has a horn on its forehead, and is 
 often pictured with the eight precious writing-imple- 
 ments under its feet. One appeared in the time of 
 Confucius, and the boors who saw it killed it, say- 
 ing, "It is neither tiger, ox, nor pig." Confucius 
 saw its dead body and bemoaned its being so un- 
 common that no one had recognized it. 
 
 The well-known Phoenix lives among mountains, 
 and lays cubical eggs. It is several feet high, and 
 has a long neck, long legs, and a long, plumy tail. 
 It has resplendent, variegated plumage, slim wings, 
 a sharp tongue, and gleaming eyes. It gazes at the 
 sun and moon, facing east by day, and west by 
 night. Its voice is flute-like, and when it calls, 
 tigers flee away, and all birds assemble around it, to 
 do obeisance. Its nest has never been found, though 
 its young have been seen. It only appears when a
 
 136 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 wise sovereign is about to be born. It affiliates with 
 the dragon, and dragons are sometimes hatched from 
 its eggs. 
 
 I have several times been asked by uneducated 
 Mongolians whether I had ever visited the country 
 inhabited exclusively by women. I have even been 
 suspected of being a native of that land, commonly 
 known as "The Women's Kingdom." It is said to 
 be surrounded by a sea of lesser density than ordi- 
 nary water, so that ships sink on approaching its 
 shores. It has been reached only by boats carried 
 thither in whirlwinds, and but few of those wrecked 
 on its rocks have survived and returned to tell of 
 its wonders. The women have houses, gardens, and 
 shops. Instead of money, they use gems, perforated 
 and strung like beads. They reproduce their kind 
 by sleeping where the south wind blows upon them. 
 
 Another foreign nation is said to be made up of 
 people who have holes through their chests. They can 
 be carried about on a pole put through the orifice,
 
 FABULOUS ANIMALS. 137 
 
 or may be comfortably hung upon a peg. They 
 sometimes string themselves on a rope, and thus 
 walk out in file. They are harmless people, and 
 eat snakes that they kill with bows and arrows, and 
 they are very long lived. 
 
 The long-eared people resemble the Chinese in all 
 except their ears. They live in the far West among 
 mountains and in caves. Their pendant, flabby ears 
 extend to the ground, and would impede their feet 
 in walking if they did not support them on their 
 hands. 
 
 The feathered people are very tall, and are covered 
 with fluffy down. They have wings in place of 
 arms, and can fly short distances. On the points of 
 the wings are claws, which serve as hands. They 
 are gentle and timid, and do not leave their own 
 country. They have good voices, and like to sing 
 ballads. If one wishes to visit that nation, he must 
 go far to the southeast and then inquire. 
 
 The pigmies inhabit many mountainous regions of
 
 138 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the empire, but are few in number. They are less 
 than nine inches high, but are well formed. They 
 live in thatched houses, that resemble ants' nests. 
 When they walk out, they go in companies of from 
 six to ten, joining hands in a line, for mutual pro- 
 tection against birds that might carry them away, or 
 other creatures that might impose upon them. A 
 husband and wife usually go about hand in hand. 
 A Hakka charcoal-burner once found three of the 
 children playing in his tobacco-box. He kept them 
 there, and afterward, when he was showing them to 
 a friend, he laughed so that drops of saliva flew from 
 his mouth and shot two of them dead. He then 
 begged his friend to take the third and put it in a 
 place of safety before he should laugh again. His 
 friend undertook to lift it from the box, but it died 
 on being touched.
 
 PYGMIES OUT FOR A WALK
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 
 
 THE superstitious beliefs and observances of the 
 Chinese are numberless, and they occupy more or 
 less the time and mind of every individual in the 
 nation. Those here recorded are common among 
 the people near Swatow. I am unable to say how 
 many of them are purely local. 
 
 When a child is just one month old, the mother, 
 carrying it in a scarf on her back, induces it to 
 look down into a well. This is supposed to have 
 a mentally invigorating effect, producing courage 
 and deepening the understanding. 
 
 A mother feeds her young infant from a cup 
 rather than from a bowl or plate, because a bowl, 
 being capacious, has an occult influence in making 
 the child a large eater; while a plate, being shal- 
 
 139
 
 140 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 low, causes him to throw up his food on slight provo- 
 cation. The cup, being small and deep, insures his 
 taking but little food, and keeping it for assimilation. 
 
 When a child becomes ill, the mother gathers 
 thorns from twelve species of plants and makes an 
 infusion in which she washes the child, hoping to 
 wash the disease, with the demon that produces it, 
 into the water. She then carries the water to an 
 open space where many people go to and fro, and 
 there throws it upon the ground. As she goes from 
 her own house, the inhabitants of the streets she 
 traverses shut their doors, to prevent the disease 
 from entering their abodes. A woman of my ac- 
 quaintance recently told me that, having no fear 
 of demons, she did not shut her door when a neigh- 
 bour passed her house carrying water in which a 
 child having fever and ague had just been washed, 
 and the very next day she herself had chills ! 
 
 If a child falls from a high place to the ground, 
 spirit-money is immediately burned upon the spot by
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 141 
 
 the mother, to propitiate the demon who is trying 
 to pull the child down to destruction. 
 
 When a child has fallen, there is danger that he 
 may have left his twelve wits in the earth on which 
 he fell, so the mother at once makes with her 
 empty hand the motion of dipping from the ground 
 to the child's chest. Thus she replaces in the child 
 what might otherwise be permanently lost in the soil. 
 If a man falls into a cesspool or well, a long-handled 
 dipper is used to dip out and restore to his bosom 
 his scattered senses ; then three sheets of spirit- 
 money are thrown burning into the well, and a heavy 
 stone is cast after it. 
 
 It is unlucky to leave much hair on a boy's head 
 when he is old enough to wear a queue ; there- 
 fore the head should be shaved so as to leave but 
 a small patch on the crown. Abundant hair is 
 symbolic of a burden on the head, and a heavy 
 queue may soon bring the care of the family upon 
 the boy through the death of his father.
 
 142 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 During the month succeeding the birth of a child 
 the mother must not cross the threshold of another 
 person's room. Should she do this, she will endanger 
 the welfare of the occupants, and in her next life 
 she will perpetually scrub the floor of the room 
 entered. 
 
 A girl who is partaking of the last meal she is to 
 eat in her father's house previous to her marriage, 
 sits at the table with her parents and brothers ; but 
 she must eat no more than half the bowl of rice set 
 before her, else her departure will be followed by con- 
 tinual scarcity in the domicile she is leaving. 
 
 If a bride breaks the heel of her shoe in going 
 from her father's to her husband's house, it is omi- 
 nous of unhappiness in her new relations. 
 
 A piece of bacon and a parcel of sugar are hung 
 on the back of a bride's sedan-chair as a sop to the 
 demons who might molest her while on her journey. 
 The " Three Baneful Ones " are fond of salt and 
 spices, and the " White Tiger " likes sweets.
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 143 
 
 A bride may be brought home while a coffin is in 
 her husband's house, but not within one hundred days 
 after a coffin is carried out. Domestic troubles are 
 sure to come upon one who is married within a 
 hundred days after a funeral. 
 
 A bride, while putting on her wedding garments, 
 stands in a round, shallow basket. This conduces 
 to her leading a placid, well-rounded life in her 
 future home. After her departure from her father's 
 door, her mother puts the basket over the mouth of 
 the oven, to stop the mouths of all who would make 
 adverse comment on her daughter, and then sits 
 down before the kitchen range, that her peace and 
 leisure may be duplicated in her daughter's life. 
 
 A bride must not, for four months after her mar- 
 riage, enter any house in which there has recently 
 been a death or a birth ; for if she does, there will 
 surely be a quarrel between her and the groom. If a 
 young mother goes to see a bride, the visitor is looked 
 upon as the cause of any calamity that may follow.
 
 144 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 One who has ordered a coffin must guide its 
 bearers by the shortest road to the house in which 
 the corpse lies. The bearers of an empty coffin may 
 not inquire their way at any house nor of any 
 person. To mistake the road when carrying a coffin, 
 or to take it to any house other than that where it 
 is wanted, brings terrible misfortunes on persons 
 thereby disturbed. Any insult may with impunity 
 be offered to coffin-sellers who mistake the destination 
 
 * 
 
 of their goods. 
 
 One should not catch butterflies, since departed 
 spirits frequently incorporate themselves in these in- 
 sects, and flit back to see what is being done in 
 their old dwelling. A man is known to have died 
 the day after killing a butterfly. 
 
 When a cow's tooth is found in a field, it is put 
 on a shelf with the gods, and keeps demons from 
 entering the house. 
 
 If, when one is under the open sky, a bird drops 
 excrement upon one, the omen is bad, and must be
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 145 
 
 immediately offset by going to persons of three dif- 
 ferent surnames, all unlike one's own, and begging a 
 little rice to eat. 
 
 If one who is walking along a road has a sudden 
 attack of colic, he procures three paper bags that have 
 held incense, and burns them on the spot where 
 he was when he began to feel the pain, to pacify the 
 demon of the locality. A demon's day is man's 
 night, and man's day is a demon's night; therefore 
 candles are lighted when offerings are made to 
 demons by daylight. 
 
 If a fly falls into the porridge, if a magpie chat- 
 ters on the roof, or if two chickens fight, it is a 
 sign that a guest is coming. 
 
 A cock that crows before midnight foretells a 
 death in the family. Spirit-money must be burned, 
 a hoop must be put in the front door at its top, 
 and the crowing fowl must be given away or sold. 
 No one would knowingly buy a fowl that crowed 
 before midnight, and, if it were sold, no one would 
 dare use the cash received for it.
 
 146 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 When a person commits suicide by hanging, the 
 beam from which the body hung is cut out from 
 the roof and burned, or thrown into the river, to be 
 carried away by the current. The floor underneath 
 the feet of the hanging corpse is also dug up and 
 replaced by new material. Thus the evil influence 
 which would inhere in the spot is eradicated from 
 the house. 
 
 If a pot of money is found, a rice-flour cake is 
 put in the place of each coin taken, and spirit-money 
 is burned as an offering to any spirit that might be 
 irritated by the removal of the treasure. 
 
 No one picks up a girdle found in the road, through 
 fear that some one may have been hung by it, and 
 that the spirit may follow and worry the possessor. 
 If a single coin or other article is found, it is picked 
 up with fear; but if a pair or an even number of 
 things be found, they are taken without anxiety, fdr 
 odd numbers are unlucky, while even numbers are 
 lucky. Three is a particularly unlucky number.
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 147 
 
 Three persons, therefore, never sit together at a table, 
 and no couple marries when there are six years of 
 difference in age, because six is twice three. 
 
 It is not considered respectable for an old man 
 to be without a beard, nor for a young man to wear 
 one. A youth who puts on an air of wisdom is 
 called a beardless old man. When a man decides to 
 let his beard grow, his sons and sons-in-law make a 
 feast for him, and congratulate him on his longevity. 
 No one who has once grown a beard cuts it off, 
 as such an act would inevitably bring disasters upon 
 his family. 
 
 If one sneezes on New Year's eve while preparing 
 for bed, he fears misfortune during the next year, 
 unless he goes to three families of different surnames, 
 and begs from each a little cake, shaped like a tortoise, 
 and in common use at the end of the year as an 
 emblem of long life. These cakes must be eaten 
 by the sneezer before midnight. 
 
 Sneezing is generally a sign that somebody is think-
 
 148 A COltNEIl OF CATHAY. 
 
 ing of one. A man walking along the road knew 
 that a stranger was walking behind him. The first 
 man sneezed, and, though he was a bachelor, he liked 
 to appear to be the head of a household, and ex- 
 claimed, "Ah, my wife is thinking of me!" The 
 second man, on reaching home, asked his wife why she 
 had not thought of him at all that day. The wife 
 inquired why he asked that unusual question, and, 
 after much persuasion, got him to reveal the reason 
 for his unjust accusation of disregard. When he 
 told her that he had not sneezed, while his fellow- 
 traveller had received that proof of a wife's remem- 
 brance, the wise little woman told her jealous spouse 
 that on the morrow he would have evidence of her 
 consideration. The next morning he went to carry 
 two jars of oil to a neighbouring village, and, as the 
 sun was hot, his wife urged his wearing a wet towel 
 on his head, under his hat, to protect him from the 
 heat. The towel was cold, and gave the poor man 
 a chill. Just as he was going down a steep slope
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 149 
 
 he sneezed violently, stumbled, fell, and spilled the 
 oil. When he reached home that evening, he said 
 to his wife, "If you are going to think of me 
 when I am absent, I wish you would do it when 
 I am on level ground, and not when I am going 
 down hill ! " 
 
 Twenty miles north from Swatow, rising from a 
 plain on which are three hundred villages, is Lily 
 Mountain, on the top of which is the shrine of a 
 god called " The Common Ancestor." Many persons 
 go, after a three-days fast, and pass the ninth night 
 of the ninth month beside this shrine, sleeping in 
 the open air and on the ground, with the expectation 
 of having a dream which will give a clue to the 
 future. 
 
 A scholar thus slept, and had a vision of a man 
 bringing him a pair of boots. Since boots are worn 
 by none but graduates and officials, he inferred that 
 he should soon get his literary degree. Years went 
 by without his attaining the coveted honour, and
 
 150 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 then he was attacked by a disease in his feet and 
 lower legs, and they were painted with tar as a 
 remedy. While he sat looking at his useless mem- 
 bers, he suddenly perceived an interpretation of his 
 dream, and exclaimed, " Ah ! Here I am at last in 
 those long-expected boots." 
 
 A woman dreamed that her fortune would be told 
 by the first person she should meet. This person 
 proved to be a seller of edible snails, that are some- 
 times made gritty by the young that they carry 
 within their shells. The vender of snails recom- 
 mended his merchandise, saying that the snails were 
 without young ; and this saying the woman took as 
 an indication that her hope of offspring of her own 
 was not to be gratified. 
 
 A workingmar> dreamed that some one said to 
 him, "Dead sugar-cane revives when watered." For 
 a long time he could see neither truth in the state- 
 ment, nor application of the untruth to his affairs. 
 But once, under severe suffering, he fainted away,
 
 SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS. 151 
 
 and lay in a swoon until water was dashed upon him ; 
 and then, when he came to himself, he decided that 
 the oracular utterance had been verified. 
 
 Thus superstition is by superstition established.
 
 A QUEER* AUTUMN ENTERTAINMENT. 
 
 IN the eighth month of the year, early in autumn, 
 when the full moon is worshipped; when the gods 
 of grain are rewarded with gifts ; when friends ex- 
 change many souvenirs ; when the upper and nether 
 worlds are thought to touch boundaries then the 
 Chinese women meet privately and fall into trances. 
 Nearly all women are interested in these secret 
 sessions, but many are prevented from being present 
 by necessary occupations elsewhere, or by fear of 
 rebuke from the men of their households. These 
 conclaves are entered by women only, and are re- 
 garded by men with great disfavour. The women 
 assemble in an apartment where they may be for a 
 few hours secure from interruption. From three to 
 
 a dozen or more gather around a table in the centre 
 
 152
 
 A QUEER AUTUMN ENTERTAINMENT. 153 
 
 of the room. Incense-sticks, spirit-money, and bamboo- 
 roots, bought by a previous contribution of farthings, 
 are distributed among all present. A fetich of some 
 sort, a decayed splint hat, an old broom, a chop-stick, 
 or possibly a more uncleanly object, taken from a 
 rubbish heap, is brought in, and spirit-money is 
 burned before it with obeisances. Then those who 
 desire to fall into trance sit down at the table, throw 
 a black cloth over the head, hold a sheet of spirit- 
 money and a lighted incense-stick between the palms 
 before the face, shut the eyes, and remain motionless 
 and silent. Of the other women, some light incense- 
 sticks, and whirl them around the heads of the 
 sitters ; some rap constantly, gently and rapidly, with 
 the bamboo-roots, on the edge of the table ; some 
 chant invocations, petitioning the gods to admit these 
 their children to their abode. Many and diverse in- 
 cantations are iterated. One, given to me by a 
 woman who appeared to be an expert, may be trans- 
 lated as follows :
 
 154 A CORNER, OF CATHAY. 
 
 Sister spirit, ghost of nun, 
 Body take by sharing one ; 
 Two or three await thee here ; 
 Choose in which thou wilt appear. 
 
 Spirit, spirit, come and reach 
 Hand to lead us ; vouchsafe speech ; 
 Be incarnate in us here ; 
 Choose in whom thou wilt appear. 
 
 Two or three of the women, perhaps, fall into 
 trance. Their doing so is indicated by their trem- 
 bling violently, dropping the incense-sticks they were 
 holding, beginning to beat the table with the palms 
 of their hands, and to discourse incoherently. They 
 speak of meeting their own lost friends, or those of 
 other women who are present. They weep bitterly 
 while they appear to converse with the dead. They 
 describe streets, shops, and houses, and say that 
 certain persons are engaged in agriculture or trade. 
 Sometimes they, by request, make inquiry concerning 
 the whereabouts of a dead person, and then give the 
 information that he has been born into the human
 
 A QUEER AUTUMN ENTERTAINMENT. 155 
 
 family for the second time. Sometimes they report 
 that a dead neighbour is shut up in Hades, with 
 nothing to eat but the salted flesh of the infant 
 daughters she destroyed when she was alive. 
 
 Many women go to these meetings merely as ob- 
 servers ; many more go in order to avail themselves 
 of what they believe to be an opportunity to hear 
 from dead relatives ; a few go with the hope that 
 they may themselves fall into trance, and see the 
 spirit of some recently deceased friend. It is said 
 that those who wish to enter Elysium and see the 
 dwellings of the gods and genii, must make the 
 attempt in the forenoon, while those who wish to 
 visit lower spheres get admittance only in the after- 
 noon. 
 
 As no pecuniary benefit accrues, directly or indi- 
 rectly, to the actors in these scenes, there is less 
 reason for suspecting conscious deception than in the 
 case of the public interpreters for the gods. 
 
 No foreign lady can get access to these sittings,
 
 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 and no native Christian woman is admitted to them. 
 It is said that no one falls into the trance-state, if 
 a monotheist be within sight or hearing. My knowl- 
 edge is gained wholly from a score of Chinese 
 women, my pupils, who in former years attended 
 these sittings, and who described to me the scenes 
 of the eighth month. 
 
 Throughout the whole there is indication that the 
 minds of the women are, during these trances, moving 
 in customary grooves. They evidently see what they 
 expect to see. The gardens of Elysium are laid out 
 in Chinese style ; the architecture of the buildings 
 is Chinese ; the punishments are those made familiar 
 to the imagination by Buddhism and Tauism ; the 
 costumes, the implements, and the paraphernalia are 
 such as are common in Swatow. These seekers after 
 truth in the land of the shades bring back no ideas 
 save those which they took with them when starting 
 on their quest ; and this leads one to doubt, in spite 
 of their dishevelled hair, pallor, and exhaustion,
 
 THE WOMEN'S APARTMENT
 
 A QUEER AUTUMN ENTERTAINMENT. 157 
 
 whether they have, after all, really been away from 
 home. 
 
 At nightfall the supposed traveller is lured back 
 by incantations, and then she slips slyly back into 
 her accustomed duties, with no chance, for another 
 whole year perhaps, to take a jaunt either with body 
 or soul.
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 I ONCE had a Chinese teacher, Mr. Khu, and as 
 I was his first foreign acquaintance, as he had never 
 tampered with books of Western origin, and as he 
 was said to have made a special study of the occult 
 sciences and to be devoutly religious, I considered 
 him a treasure-trove. That which I here set down 
 as the Chinese theory of evolution has been trans- 
 lated largely from Mr. Khu's expositions of cos- 
 mogony. It agrees with what I have gathered, 
 through conversations in the vernacular, from other 
 native scholars. 
 
 Neither Laou-Tze, Confucius, nor Buddha, the 
 founders of the three great religions whose tenets har- 
 moniously dwell together in the Chinese mind, has 
 set forth an account of the making of the universe. 
 
 158
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 159 
 
 But the human intellect seems to trend inevitably 
 toward attempts to explain the existence of things 
 seen, and so there is a Chinese theory of evolution, 
 whose exact origin it is difficult to trace through 
 the four thousand years and the myriad volumes 
 that hold the written history of the empire. 
 
 In the beginning all matter was transparent, diffused, 
 and without differentiation. In it dwelt the dual 
 powers both subtle, ethereal, and eternal ; but the 
 one was virile, warm, radiant, and active ; the other, 
 feminine, cold, sombre, and quiescent. 
 These dual powers are symbolized by 
 two similar, conjoined figures, whose 
 outlines may be made by drawing 
 upon the diameter of a circle two 
 oppositely directed semicircles, whose centres are those 
 of the two radii. The reciprocal action of the dual 
 powers, continuing through ages, produced all that is. 
 Puan Ko, sometimes represented as a giant holding 
 up the sun and moon and shaping the mountains, is
 
 160 A CORNEE, OF CATHAY. 
 
 only the personification of the forces that wrought 
 in chaos. 
 
 A zenith, a nadir, and all the points of the com- 
 pass were gradually evolved. There came to be a 
 distinction between the bright heavens, with the seven 
 moving luminaries, and the dark earth, with its seas. 
 The male principle predominated above, the female 
 principle predominated below, as Father Heaven and 
 Mother Earth, each having an all-pervading spirit, 
 but with unlike influence. The body comes from and 
 depends upon the earth; the soul comes from and 
 returns to the heavens. 
 
 The rocks are the bones of the divine body, the 
 soil is the flesh, the metals are the nerves and veins ; 
 the tide, wind, rain, clouds, ( frost, and dew are all 
 caused by its respirations, pulsations, and exhalations. 
 Originally the mountains rose to the firmament, and 
 the, seas covered the mountains to their tops. At 
 that time there was, in the divine body, no life besides 
 the divine life. Then the waters subsided; small
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 161 
 
 herbs grew, and in the lapse of cycles developed into 
 shrubs and trees. As the body of man, unwashed 
 for years, breeds vermin, so the mountains, unlaved 
 by the seas, bred worms and insects, greater creatures 
 developing out of lesser. Beetles in the course of 
 ages became tortoises, earthworms became serpents, 
 high-flying insects became birds, some of the turtle- 
 doves became pheasants, egrets became cranes, and 
 wild cats became tigers. The praying mantis was by 
 degrees transformed into an ape, and some of the 
 apes became hairless. A hairless ape made a fire by 
 striking crystal upon a rock, and, with the spark 
 struck out, igniting the dry grass. With the fire 
 they cooked food, and by eating warm victuals they 
 grew large, strong, and knowing, and were changed 
 into men. There is a story that the ape who first 
 taught cooking had a peculiar origin. He was im- 
 prisoned, from the beginning, in a rock on the sea- 
 shore. The waves beat on the rock century after 
 century, and at last wore away all except the ape
 
 162 A COIINER OF CATHAY. 
 
 that had been its centre. Then the sun warmed him, 
 and the winds breathed upon him, till he became 
 alive, and with a divine impulsion went and taught 
 his kind to cook their food. 
 
 Khu says : " In the early days of man there were 
 peace and plenty, because no one disturbed or mal- 
 treated the body of God. Those who saw a stone 
 removed from its natural site, wept, and carried it 
 back and put it in the place from which it came. 
 Children were taught that if they found a piece of 
 metal, they must not touch it. No silver, nor gold, 
 nor jade, was to be seen in any dwelling. To the 
 wise, dreams were given, in which the universal 
 parent spoke, saying : ' Child, the gold, the jade, the 
 metals, and the gems are all parts of my body. Touch 
 them not, nor meddle with them to my hurt and 
 yours. To take stones from the earth is to dislocate 
 the bones of one's parent ; when the parent suffers, 
 the dependent child is harmed.' In those days the 
 soil was red and rich; it was heavy as iron, and so
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 163 
 
 ductile that it could be drawn into filaments. There 
 was no need of fertilizing the fields. Whatever was 
 planted grew quickly, and the kernels of grain were 
 as large as chestnuts, and the potato-tubers were as 
 large as squashes now are. The products of the 
 earth were so nutritious that one meal a day was 
 sufficient, and so luscious were they that condiments 
 were needless. It is the disrespect shown to the 
 divine body that has made the life of man so hard. 
 One should be content with what may be had without 
 deeply disturbing the soil. The displeasure of Heaven 
 is often manifestly visited upon the agriculturists who 
 give the land no rest, and the lightning frequently 
 strikes those who are at work in the fields. Those 
 who walk on mountains soon tire, because they tread 
 upon the bones, while those who keep to the artificial 
 highways are not so soon fatigued." 
 
 This pantheistic theory being in its loftiest concep- 
 tions too abstract for the masses, it is expressed by 
 them in the assertion that "there is a god to every
 
 164 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 eight feet of space." Every tree, grotto, and hummock 
 has its tutelary deity. Consequently, no man begins 
 to dig a cistern, to remove earth from a hill, to cut a 
 stone, or to till a garden, without offering propitiatory 
 gifts to the local divinity. If fever, headache, or 
 dyspepsia follow the effort, the displeasure of the god 
 is believed to be its cause, and the work is apt to be 
 abandoned. 
 
 It is at once apparent that this pantheistic theory 
 of evolution offers serious hindrance to the utilization 
 of the metals contained in the mountains, to the open- 
 ing of mines, the building of railroads, and the erection 
 of structures requiring deep foundations. It has pre- 
 vented the Chinese from availing themselves of the 
 vast mineral resources of their country, from levelling 
 thoroughfares where they are pressingly required for 
 traffic, and from full use of the products of the earth 
 in promoting the well-being of man. It is the chief 
 reason why the emigration of hundreds of thousands 
 of men in search of work has now become necessary.
 
 THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 165 
 
 If the Chinese were unhampered by fear of the 
 invisible ones who are considered by all to be the 
 real proprietors of the land, they would have an 
 abundance of lucrative work within their own borders, 
 and they need not then afflict other countries by their 
 immigration. The losses that accrue to them through 
 this false theory are both positive and negative. It 
 occasions an enormous outlay upon profitless offerings 
 that must be bought with money earned by hard 
 labour ; and it prevents their use of the wealth stored 
 in their lands. Affecting daily the welfare of hun- 
 dreds of millions of persons, it well illustrates the 
 practical evil of false doctrine, and, by contrast, shows 
 the great economic value of truth.
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 
 
 This review of the life of the great sage of China is condensed 
 from the Prolegomena to " The Chinese Classics," by Dr. Legg, 
 and all the quotations of his words are the translations of Dr. 
 Legg in the same vast and valuable work. Other sources of in- 
 formation have been Dr. Williamson's " Travels in North China," 
 Mr. Waiter's " Confucian Temple," and various papers published 
 by missionaries in the Shantung Province, combined with personal 
 observations among Confucianists. 
 
 CONFUCIUS, whose latinized name is made up from 
 his family name Khong, with his title hu chu, the 
 Master, was born 551 B.C., in what is now the western 
 part of the Shantung Province, in China. At the 
 time of his birth Cyrus had reigned for eight years 
 over the Medes and Persians. Babylon had not yet 
 fallen, and- the son of Nebuchadnezzar walked in its 
 hanging gardens. The prophet Daniel had seen his 
 
 fellow-captives escape unscathed from the fiery furnace, 
 
 166
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 167 
 
 but had himself yet to be cast into the den of lions. 
 Twelve monarchs more were to reign in Macedon 
 before Alexander the Great should consolidate the 
 states of Greece. Socrates, Plato, and Pericles were 
 not yet born, and the Parthenon at Athens and the 
 Temple of Diana at Ephesus were yet unbuilt. 
 Servius Tullius ruled in Rome, whose greatness was 
 yet to be attained, and just five centuries were to 
 pass before Julius Caesar should publish his commen- 
 taries on the invasion of Britain and the conquest 
 of Gaul. Eight years later, Sakya Muni, the Buddha, 
 would die in India ; but of these two men, who 
 would together dominate the minds of a third of the 
 human race through thousands of years, the younger 
 would never hear of the elder; and centuries would 
 roll away before the doctrines of the one would invade 
 the country and capture the imagination of hosts of 
 followers of the other. Laou-Tze, the founder of 
 Tauism, the Chinese Mysticism, was in his prime. 
 The age was one singularly productive of religions.
 
 168 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 Had travelling facilities been what they now are, the 
 personal disciples of Confucius, Laou-Tze, Buddha, 
 and Pythagoras might have met to compare views 
 on life, duty, arid death. 
 
 Confucius had behind him a history of his nation 
 for two thousand years, with four preceding dynas- 
 ties and several tens of sovereigns, in which he 
 might study the lives of rulers already ancient, and 
 hold them up as patterns or as warnings to the 
 princes of his time. During all the years of the 
 nation before Confucius the government had been 
 feudal, and it was not until two hundred and fifty 
 years after his death that feudality ended, and the 
 empire was consolidated under a single sovereign. 
 In the time of Confucius there were thirteen prin- 
 cipalities and many lesser dependencies, governed 
 by adherents to the reigning family of the empire. 
 The emperor exercised more or less control over these 
 many chiefs, who warred among themselves or dis- 
 puted the degree of their subjection to their sovereign.
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 169 
 
 For at least seventeen hundred years the Chinese 
 had already worn finely manufactured garments of 
 silk and other materials. Their present system of ideo- 
 graphic writing had been in use from prehistoric times, 
 the preponderance of evidence being in favour of the 
 reign of Fu Hi, nearly 3000 years B.C. They were 
 accustomed to observe the stars, having been the first 
 to record a conjunction of four planets and the moon, 
 that of Feb. 28, 2446 B.C., and the earliest to reg- 
 ister an eclipse of the sun, that of Oct. 13, 2127 
 B.C. It is reported that one of their rulers, 2000 
 B.C., put the court astronomers to death, because 
 they failed to calculate an approaching eclipse. 
 They cultivated music, and many arts, and must 
 have attained a considerable degree of civilization 
 long before Confucius began to influence them. 
 
 The ancestry of Confucius has been traced back 
 to 1121 B.C., to the imperial house of Yin, and all 
 along the line of descent were many distinguished 
 men. His father, named Hieh, was a soldier of
 
 170 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 great bravery and of enormous strength. Eleven 
 years before the birth of Confucius, when serving 
 at the siege of a town, Hieh, with other assailants, 
 entered a gate which had been left open to entrap 
 them. No sooner were they inside, than the port- 
 cullis was dropped, enclosing the troops in the hands 
 'of the enemy. Hieh seized the heavy structure, and, 
 by main strength, raised and held it up, till every 
 man escaped. At the time of the birth of Confu- 
 cius, Hieh was the governor of Chow, a district 
 lying some forty miles west of Kiu-fu, which was 
 the ancestral home of the Khong family in the king- 
 dom of Loo. In his youth, Hieh had married a 
 chief wife who had borne him nine daughters, and 
 he had also an inferior wife, who had borne him 
 one son, a cripple. When Hieh was over seventy 
 years of age, and a widower, sharing doubtless the 
 views of other men of his race concerning the de- 
 sirability of having male descendants, he sought a 
 wife in the Yen family, in which there were three
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 171 
 
 daughters. Their father said to the three young ladies : 
 " Here is the commandant of Chow. His father and 
 grandfather were only scholars, but his ancestors 
 before them were descendants of the sage emperors. 
 He is a man ten feet high, and of extraordinary 
 prowess, and I am desirous of his alliance. Though 
 he is old and austere, you need have no misgivings 
 about him. Which of you three will be his wife?" 
 The two elder daughters were silent, but the young- 
 est, Ching-Tsae, said: " Why do you ask us, father? 
 It is for you to determine." "Very well," said her 
 father in reply ; " you will do." Ching-Tsae accord- 
 ingly became the wife of Hieh, and afterward the 
 mother of Confucius. She is said to have cherished 
 in him his strong moral sense. 
 
 When he was three years old, his father died. 
 In his childhood he was poor, but he bent himself 
 to learning. When, long afterward, his acquaintances 
 expressed surprise at the variety of his knowledge, 
 he explained it by saying, " When I was young, my
 
 172 A CORKER OF CATHAY. 
 
 condition was low, and therefore I acquired ability 
 in many things." Possibly the sage Mencius, great- 
 est among the followers of Confucius, had the ex- 
 perience of his master in mind when he wrote : 
 "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on 
 any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering 
 and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his 
 body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme pov- 
 erty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these 
 methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature 
 and supplies his incompetencies. From these things 
 we see how life springs from sorrow and calamity, 
 and death from ease and pleasure ! " 
 
 When Confucius was nineteen, he married, and in 
 the following year his son Li was born. No mention 
 is made of his having other children except one 
 daughter. As the duke of Chow sent him a couple 
 of carp on the birth of his son, he must, even at 
 that early period in his life, have commanded the 
 respect of the great. When about twenty years old,
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 173 
 
 he became the keeper of the public stores of grain, 
 and a year later he was put in charge also of the 
 public lands. It seems that he scrupulously discharged 
 his duties, saying of his care of the stores, "My cal- 
 culations must all be right " ; and of his charge of 
 the fields, "The oxen and sheep must be fat and 
 strong and superior." 
 
 When in his twenty-second year, he commenced his 
 career as a public teacher, and his house became a 
 resort for young men who wished to learn the doc- 
 trines of antiquity. However small the fee his pupils 
 could afford, he never rejected one on account of 
 poverty; and, late in life, was able to say, "From 
 the man bringing his bundle of dry flesh for my 
 teaching, upward, I have never refused instruction 
 to any one." He required, however, in his pupils, 
 an ardent desire for improvement, and some degree 
 of capacity. He said: "I do not open up the truth to 
 any who are not eager to get knowledge, nor help 
 out any one who is not himself anxious to explain.
 
 174 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 When I have presented one corner of a subject to 
 any one, and he cannot, from it, learn the other 
 three, I do not repeat my lesson." 
 
 When he was twenty-three years old, his mother 
 died ; and he resolved that her body should lie in the 
 same grave with that of his father, and that their 
 common resting-place should be in Loo, the home of 
 the Khong family. His father had been dead twenty 
 years, but his coffin was carried with that of his wife, 
 and interred in the native country of his ancestors. 
 Confucius mourned for his mother during the fixed 
 period of twenty-seven months, and when, five days 
 after laying aside mourning garments, he took his 
 lute, he could not accompany the instrument with 
 his voice, and another five days passed before he was 
 heard to sing. 
 
 After the obsequies of his mother, Confucius re- 
 mained in Loo, probably pursuing his researches in 
 history and literature, and instructing the inquirers 
 who resorted to him. When he was thirty-four years
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 175 
 
 old, one of the principal ministers of Loo, in dying, 
 directed that two scions of his house should go and 
 study under the direction of Confucius. Their wealth 
 and standing gave their teacher a better position than 
 he had before obtained, and when he afterward ex- 
 pressed a wish to visit the dukedom of Chow, the 
 duke of his country, on the representation of his 
 pupils, put a carriage and horses at his disposal for 
 the journey. While at Chow, he sought and con- 
 versed with Laou-Tze, the founder of the Tauist or 
 Mystic sect; but no reliable record of the conference 
 of these two great sages has been preserved. While 
 at Chow, he also visited the grounds set apart for the 
 sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, inspected the Hall 
 of Light, in which princes of the empire had audience 
 with their sovereign, and examined the ancestral tem- 
 ples and the court. But within a year he returned 
 to Loo, and continued his work of teaching. His 
 fame increased, and disciples came to him from differ- 
 ent parts of the empire to the number of three thou-
 
 176 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 sand. Thereafter he moved in the midst of a company 
 of devoted and admiring followers, who probably had 
 their individual vocations, and came about him at 
 times when they specially desired his counsel. The 
 year after his return from Chow, great political dis- 
 order prevailed, and civil strife rent the state. In 
 order to avoid the confusion, he withdrew to Tse, on 
 the north of Loo. There the duke conferred with 
 him upon governmental measures, and proposed to 
 appoint him as governor of the town of Lin-kew, 
 from the revenues of which he might derive a sup- 
 port; but Confucius refused the gift, and said to his 
 disciples: "A superior man will only receive reward 
 for services he has done. I have given advice to the 
 duke, but he has not yet obeyed it, and now he would 
 endow me with this place ! Very far is he from un- 
 derstanding me ! " The duke soon tired of having 
 such a monitor as Confucius near him, and finally 
 said, "I am old; I cannot use his doctrines." This 
 was reported to Confucius, who did not consider it
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 177 
 
 consistent with his self-respect to remain longer in 
 Tse, and he returned to Loo, where he remained for 
 fifteen years without official employment. It was a 
 time of political disturbance, and he devoted the 
 years to researches in poetry, history, rites, and music. 
 When in his fiftieth year, he was made chief magis- 
 trate of the town of Chung-too, in his native Loo. 
 There he soon produced a marvellous reformation in 
 the manners of the people. He established rules for 
 the living, assigning different food to the old and 
 to the young, and made regulations for the obsequies 
 of the dead, directing that inner coffins should be 
 four inches thick, and outer ones five, while graves 
 were made upon high grounds, no mounds being 
 raised over them, and no trees planted around them. 
 Different burdens were assigned to the strong and to 
 the weak, and different portions of the street to males 
 and to females. A thing dropped on the road by one 
 person was not picked up by another. There were 
 no fraudulent marks on vessels of measurement. Sucli
 
 178 A COliNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 was the perfection of his government, that the princes 
 wished to imitate his style of administration. The 
 duke of Loo then appointed him Assistant-Superin- 
 tendent of Works, and while in this office, he sur- 
 veyed the lands of the state, and made many im- 
 provements in agriculture. He was then made judge 
 of the Criminal Court, and his appointment alone 
 was enough to put an end to crime. When any mat- 
 ter came before him for adjudication, he took the 
 views of many individuals upon it, and thus enlisted 
 general sympathy, and carried public opinion with 
 him in his administration of justice. 
 
 The fame of the reformation in Loo spread abroad, 
 and the neighbouring princes began to fear that a 
 country so well governed would become supreme 
 among the states. The duke of Tse, being nearest, 
 was most alarmed, and in conference with his minis- 
 ters hit upon a scheme for separating the duke of 
 Loo from his counsellor. Eighty beautiful girls, 
 accomplished in music and dancing, with a hundred
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 179 
 
 and twenty-five fine horses, were selected and sent 
 as a present to the duke of Loo. They were lodged 
 outside the capital, and the duke was inveigled into 
 going to look at them. He was captivated, the gifts 
 Avere received, and the sage was neglected. Then 
 Confucius regretfully took his departure from Loo, 
 going slowly, that he might be easily overtaken by 
 any messenger sent to recall him. But the duke con- 
 tinued in his abandonment; and the sage, now in the 
 fifty-sixth year of his age, went forth to thirteen years 
 of wandering, accompanied by several of his disciples. 
 He first went westward to the state of Wei. His 
 fame had gone before him, and on arriving at the 
 capital, the reigning duke assigned him a revenue 
 of sixty thousand measures of grain. The duke, 
 however, was dissipated, and was married to a lady 
 noted for wicked intrigues. The duchess insisted 
 upon an interview with the sage; and, although it 
 was unwillingly granted, his disciples were greatly 
 dissatisfied at his having been in company with such
 
 180 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 a woman. One day the duke drove out through the 
 streets of the capital in the same carriage with the 
 duchess, and made Confucius follow them in another. 
 Confucius was ashamed, and said, " I have not seen 
 any one who loves virtue as he loves beauty." Wei 
 was no place for him, and he left it, taking his way 
 southward to Chin. There he spent a year or more, 
 lodged with the warden of the city wall. Chin was 
 much disturbed by attacks from Woo, a large state 
 on the east, and Confucius determined to retrace 
 his steps to Wei. He was again received with dis- 
 tinction, but the duke paid no more attention than 
 before to his precepts. It was then that he uttered 
 his complaint, saying that if any of the princes would 
 employ him, he could perfect the government in three 
 years. 
 
 His attention having been directed to the state of 
 Tsin, he travelled as far as the Yellow River, that 
 he might see one of the principal ministers of that 
 country, but he soon returned again to Wei. After
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 181 
 
 further ineffectual attempts to influence the duke to 
 right living, he became disgusted at being questioned 
 by him about military tactics, and went back to Chin. 
 In the next year the duke of Loo died, and on 
 his death-bed charged his successor to recall the sage, 
 but several years passed before the injunction was 
 obeyed. In the meanwhile Confucius went to three 
 other of the states, and spent five years more in Wei. 
 His return to Loo, his native state, was brought about 
 by one of his disciples, whose glowing eulogy of his 
 master caused his chief to determine to bring Con- 
 fucius back. Three officers were sent with appropri- 
 ate presents to invite the wanderer home, and he 
 returned with them to Loo. He was now in his 
 sixty-ninth year. He had met with sorrow and dis- 
 appointment. He had attained to that state, he tells 
 us, wherein he " could follow what his heart desired 
 without transgressing what was right " ; but other 
 people were no more inclined than they had been 
 to abide by his counsels. Though the rulers con-
 
 182 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 ferred with him, his words had little influence in 
 affairs of state, and he devoted himself to literary 
 labour. He wrote the prefaces to his compilation of 
 " Historical Documents," made a careful digest of the 
 rites and ceremonies determined by the ancient kings 
 and scholars, collected and arranged the ancient 
 poetry, and undertook the reform of music. He 
 devoted much time to the study of the " Book of 
 Changes," a work on divination, and made an appen- 
 dix to it. Of this classic he said, " If some years 
 were added to my life, I would give fifty to the 
 study of the ' Book of Changes,' and then I might 
 come to be without great faults." He completed 
 the " Annals " when in his seventy-first year. 
 
 During his latest years he was afflicted by the 
 deaths of three of his favourite disciples. His son Li 
 died three years before him, leaving one son, Khong 
 Kieh. Confucius knew that his end was approach- 
 ing, and disappointed hopes embittered his soul. Of 
 all the princes ruling in the empire, he had not
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 183 
 
 found one who would accept his teachings as a 
 guide in government. His soul longed to see the 
 great ones of his country acting upon his principles, 
 but his efforts to serve his generation through his 
 powerful setting forth of the laws of propriety had 
 apparently failed. His disciples adhered to him, but 
 no wife nor child cheered his old age. When he 
 knew that his time to die had come, he expressed 
 no hope, uttered no prayer, betrayed no fear. To 
 himself he softly crooned: 
 
 The great mountain must crumble, 
 
 The strong beam must break, 
 
 And the wise man wither away like a plant. 
 
 After seven days on his couch, attended by his dis- 
 ciples, he, at the age of seventy-three, passed beyond 
 the known. 
 
 He had hardly gone, when his merit began to be 
 lauded by those who had, during his life, failed to 
 avail themselves of his wisdom. The duke of Loo, 
 who had previously shown no great interest in his
 
 184 A COKNEB OF CATHAY. 
 
 lessons, on hearing of his death, exclaimed : " Heaven 
 has not left to me the aged man. There is now 
 none to assist me on the throne. Woe is me ! " He 
 caused a temple to be erected to the memory of Con- 
 fucius, and ordered that sacrifices should be offered 
 to him at the four seasons of the year. The founder 
 of the Han dynasty, on passing through Loo, 194 B.C., 
 visited his tomb and offered an ox in sacrifice to 
 him. Many other emperors have since made pilgrim- 
 ages to the spot. 
 
 At first the worship of Confucius was confined to 
 the country of Loo, but in 57 A.D. it was enacted 
 that sacrifices should be offered to him in the Impe- 
 rial College, and in the colleges of the principal ter- 
 ritorial divisions. The second and most noted emperor 
 of the present dynasty set the example of laying his 
 forehead thrice in the dust before the image of the 
 sage. At present there are, by the laws of China, 
 Confucian temples in every city and market town. 
 The image of the sage occupies the chief place, facing
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 185 
 
 south, and the images of many of his disciples, who 
 are canonized as saints, are ranged along the lofty 
 main hall. From ten to a hundred of his immediate 
 followers and relatives are represented by images and 
 tablets. Twice a year, on a fixed day in spring and 
 autumn, the worship of Confucius is solemnly per- 
 formed in all these temples, by the chief magistrates 
 and worthies, attended by bands of musicians and 
 minuet-boys. In the Imperial College, at Peking, the 
 emperor himself attends in state and is the chief 
 performer. 
 
 Besides these semi-annual sacrifices, offerings of 
 flowers, fruit, and vegetables are set forth on the 
 first day of every month ; and on the fifteenth day, 
 that of full moon, there is a solemn burning of 
 incense. Every school-boy, in his school-room, wor- 
 ships twice a month before the name of the great 
 sage, written on red paper and pasted on the wall. 
 
 The most magnificent structure in the empire is 
 the Confucian temple at Kiu-fu, the city of the Khong
 
 186 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 clan. A part of it stands upon the place where Con- 
 fucius once lived. In its grounds are cypress trees 
 said to have been planted by Confucius himself. It 
 contains a statue of the sage, eighteen feet high, and 
 a genealogical tree with the branches turned down- 
 ward, showing the descent of the Khongs of the pres- 
 ent time from the grandson of Confucius. In the 
 patriarchal manner of life, where a family lives per- 
 petually on the same land and keeps its records with 
 scrupulous care, there appears to be good reason for 
 believing such a register correct, though it cover 
 twenty-four centuries, and eighty generations. 
 
 Near the temple is the mansion which was the 
 ancestral home of Confucius, and in which some 
 lineal descendant of his has lived since his day. In 
 the year 1671 A.D., his male issue numbered eleven 
 thousand, chiefly of the seventy-fourth generation. 
 At present, the city of Kiu-fu is mainly inhabited by 
 his posterity, four families out of every five bearing 
 his surname. The men are large-boned, tall, and
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 187 
 
 strong. The head of the clan bears the title of duke, 
 which title passes unchanged from generation to gen- 
 eration, except when some emperor by royal decree 
 adds new honours to the name and line of the sage. 
 The duke is an independent nobleman of the empire, 
 next to the reigning family in rank, and he has an 
 estate of 166,650 acres. He holds authority over the 
 whole district, but does not concern himself with 
 petty affairs. The governor of the Shantung prov- 
 ince, which is as large and as populous as England, 
 has to prostrate himself nine times when he enters 
 the ducal presence. 
 
 A portion of the wall of the present ducal mansion 
 is that of the ancient dwelling of Confucius, and is 
 that in which was found the celebrated copy of one 
 of the works of Confucius, hidden away about 212 B.C., 
 from that destroyer of books and authors, the emperor 
 Tsin, and discovered some tens of years later when 
 the house was being rebuilt. A portion of this price- 
 less relic, with valuable jewels, vases, and carvings, 
 was destroyed by fire in 1887,
 
 188 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 The tomb of Confucius is outside the north gate 
 of Kiu-fu, and is a grassy mound, fifteen feet high, 
 with cypress trees growing around it, and with many 
 stone archways, pavilions, and gigantic animals in 
 the vicinity. In front of the grave is a tall tablet, 
 with characters meaning, " The resting-place of the 
 Great Perfection." There is also a small stone altar, 
 such as is commonly placed before Chinese graves. 
 Through all the convulsions and revolutions that 
 have shaken the country, the mound in which the 
 body of the illustrious sage was laid has remained 
 in its original simplicity and integrity. A hut is 
 always to be seen on the spot where the most 
 faithful disciple of Confucius made a poor shelter 
 for himself, and dwelt in sorrow by his master's 
 grave for six years after his burial. Around the 
 grave are interred tens of thousands of the Khong 
 family, within an enclosure fourteen miles in cir- 
 cumference. 
 
 Probably there is no other historical character of
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 189 
 
 whom more is known than of this ancient sage. He 
 was tall, strong, and well built, with a full, ruddy 
 face and thick beard. We know where and how he 
 spent every year of his long life. His habits are 
 minutely recorded. He was fastidious in dress, and 
 careful to wear what was appropriate to the occasion. 
 He never wore anything of red, or purple, or plum 
 colour. His under-clothing was of silk, and he 
 required his sleeping-garments to be half as long 
 again as his body. He did not sit on a mat that 
 was not straight. When in bed, he did not speak. 
 He liked his rice finely cleaned, and his minced 
 meat chopped small. He did not eat meat that 
 was not properly cut, nor served without its appro- 
 priate sauce, and he was never without ginger at 
 his meals. He ate little, and when eating did not 
 converse. He was punctilious in etiquette, he de- 
 lighted in ceremony, and he was elaborately con- 
 sistent. When he was eating by the side of a 
 mourner, he never ate to the full, and he did not
 
 190 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 sing on the same day in which he had been weeping. 
 When he saw a person in mourning, or any one in 
 full dress, or a blind person, he would, on their ap- 
 proach, rise up, even though they were younger than 
 he. When any of his friends died, having no rela- 
 tions that could be depended upon for the necessary 
 offices, he would say, "I will bury him." 
 
 In his domestic life he was austere, and it is a dis- 
 puted question whether he divorced his wife. One 
 of his disciples, hoping to learn something that he 
 had taught his son, inquired of the latter, "Have 
 you heard any lessons from your father, different 
 from what we have all heard?" "No," said Li. 
 "He was standing alone once, when I was passing 
 through the court with hasty steps, and he said to 
 me, 'Have you read the Odes?' On my replying, 
 ' Not yet,' he added, ' If you do not learn the Odes, 
 you will not be fit to converse with.' Another day 
 in the same place and the same way, he said to me, 
 ' Have you read the rules of Propriety ? ' On my
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 191 
 
 replying, ' Not yet,' he added, ' If you do not learn 
 the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be 
 established.' I have heard only these two things from 
 him." The disciple was delighted, and observed: 
 " I asked one thing, and I have got three things. I 
 have heard about the Odes. I have heard about 
 the rules of Propriety. I have also heard that the 
 superior man maintains a distant reserve towards 
 his son." 
 
 In forming an opinion of Confucius, it is well to 
 consider what his immediate disciples thought of him. 
 Among their utterances we find the following : " Our 
 master is benign, upright, courteous, temperate, and 
 complaisant." " The master is mild and yet digni- 
 fied, majestic and yet not fierce, respectful and yet 
 easy." "The talents and virtues of other men are 
 hillocks and mounds, which may be stepped over. 
 His are like the sun and moon, which cannot be 
 stepped over." " Our master cannot be attained unto, 
 just as the heavens cannot be gone up to by a stair."
 
 192 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 " From the birth of mankind until now, there has 
 never been another like our master." Those whom 
 he personally taught and led, those who accepted 
 and followed him, declared him to be among men, 
 "As the dragon among quadrupeds, the phoenix 
 among birds, the mountain among hillocks, and the 
 sea among rain-pools.'* Their judgment has been 
 sustained by the masses of Chinese scholars from 
 that time to this. Confucius is to all his compatriots 
 the perfect example of social virtue, of intellectual 
 culture, of political wisdom, and of moral excellence. 
 He is their ideal man, and his sayings are consid- 
 ered a sufficient guide to all the duties of life, 
 whether the inquirer be monarch or peasant. No word 
 of disrespect toward him is ever uttered by high or 
 low. Whatever native superstition a Chinaman may 
 practise, or whatever foreign religion he may adopt, 
 he always treats Confucius reverentially. At present 
 the number of Confucianists are hundreds of mil- 
 lions. Confucian books, and commentaries upon them,
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 193 
 
 constitute the bulk of all the libraries, and the 
 curriculum of all the schools of the empire. For 
 more than twelve centuries all civil officers have 
 been selected from among the successful competitors 
 in the examinations upon these books. Every man 
 in authority is versed in all that is recorded of 
 Confucius, and in the ancient literature and usages 
 that he preserved. All learning and all political 
 power are gained at his shrine. It may be said that 
 the private, social, and public life of every indi- 
 vidual in China is other than it would have been 
 had Confucius never lived. Directly and indirectly, 
 the rules for correct living, enunciated by him, affect 
 the doings of all members of all classes from birth 
 to death. No other teacher since the world began 
 has had equal practical influence on the conduct of 
 an equal number of human beings. To a great extent 
 he has formed the character of the Chinese. In fact, 
 one may trace many of their distinguishing traits 
 directly to him, though in the reproduction the
 
 194 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 characteristic is sometimes modified or exaggerated. 
 He was intensely conservative, seeking knowledge 
 only in one direction, and among the ancients. His 
 compatriots also gaze forever backward, holding with 
 invincible bigotry to that which is sanctified by 
 antiquity. Confucius believed his country to be 
 the centre and main portion of a flat world; and, 
 since his time, his countrymen have seen no reason 
 for investigating this subject, and have taken no 
 forward step in art, science, or literature, except 
 such as they have been forced to make by outside 
 powers. That which is ancient is sacred, and that 
 which has always been ought always to be. One 
 of the most common expressions of disapproval among 
 the Chinese, even of things apparently old, is this: 
 "It is not like the ancient pattern." 
 
 How far the example of Confucius in once break- 
 ing his parole has affected the habits of his followers 
 in the present century it is impossible to say, but 
 certain it is that mendacity is universal among them,
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 195 
 
 and that being discovered in a falsehood produces 
 no sense of shame. A lie that does no known harm 
 is considered to have in it no quality of evil. Once, 
 when on his way to Wei, Confucius was laid hold 
 of by a rebellious officer of the state, and made to 
 promise that he would not proceed to the capital. 
 Notwithstanding this, he continued his route, and 
 when one of his disciples asked him whether it was 
 right to violate an oath lie had taken, he replied, 
 " It was a forced oath ; the spirits do not hear 
 such." Had Confucius known how many millions of 
 spirits dwelling in human bodies were thereafter to 
 hear of this oath and its violation, he would doubt- 
 less have kept it, for example's sake, though the 
 keeping might have been very inconvenient. But 
 he did not know he was to be made into a god, 
 and, through ignorance, underrated his responsibility. 
 This one known slip in practice has doubtless greatly 
 weakened the force of his iterated injunctions to 
 truthfulness.
 
 196 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 His dread of inconsistency was expensively mani- 
 fested on one occasion, when, in travelling, he found 
 that a former host of his had died, and that the 
 funeral ceremonies were going on in the house. He 
 went in to condole with the mourners, and on return- 
 ing to his carriage he told a disciple, Tsze-kung, to 
 take one of the horses and give it as a contribu- 
 tion toward the expenses of the funeral. Tsze-kung 
 remonstrated, saying, "You never did such a thing 
 at the funeral of any of your disciples ; is it not too 
 great a gift on this occasion of the death of an old 
 host ? " Confucius responded : " When I went in, 
 my presence brought a burst of grief from the chief 
 mourner, and I joined him with my tears. I dislike 
 the thought of my tears not being followed by any- 
 thing. Do it, my child." And the Chinese of the 
 present day are not only careful to express no more 
 sympathy than will accord with the amount of help 
 given, but they expect from others material good that 
 is great in proportion to the expression of interest or 
 of affection.
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 
 
 Perhaps the contempt which the Chinese feel 
 toward one who boasts, and their tendency to mock 
 humility, may have been increased by the commenda- 
 tion which Confucius gave to Mang-che-fan, who, 
 having gallantly placed himself in the rear on an 
 occasion of flight, whipped up his horse as they were 
 about to enter a place of safety, saying, " It is not 
 that I dare to be last : my horse would not advance." 
 The apology was false and weak, but Confucius saw 
 in it nothing but what was worthy of praise. One 
 who studies both him and his compatriots, comes to 
 feel that their formal, wearisome, and wholly unreal 
 self-depreciation would have pleased their great 
 teacher. 
 
 The intense love of ceremony manifested by Con- 
 fucius, and evident throughout his writings, has had 
 much to do in forming the customs of his people. 
 His is the only country which has a section of its 
 legislative body devoted to the maintenance and pro- 
 mulgation of its rites and ceremonies, and in which
 
 198 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the minutise of its established manners are so gene- 
 rally observed, that in China one may justly doubt 
 the scholarship of a man who walks rapidly, or the 
 social quality of a woman who crosses her feet. His 
 devotion to etiquette and ceremonial usage has riveted 
 upon his people heavy shackles, which not only re- 
 strain them from license, but which withhold them 
 from wholesome liberty of action. Under his elabo- 
 rate rules, every act of life is performed mechanically, 
 and the actor never knows the joy of simplicity and 
 spontaneity, the two wings on which the soul mounts 
 and is refreshed. 
 
 Some one inquired of Confucius, " What do you 
 say concerning the principle that injury should be 
 recompensed with kindness ? " He replied, " Recom- 
 pense injury with justice, and recompense kindness 
 with kindness. He who recompenses injury with 
 kindness is a man who is careful of his person." To 
 this, a commentator of the second century adds, that 
 "to recompense injury with kindness would be incor-
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 199 
 
 rect on the part of propriety." The Chinese of the 
 present invariably look upon submission to injustice 
 as an acknowledgment of weakness and inferiority, 
 and are tempted by it into contempt, extortion, or 
 oppression. 
 
 The master's utterance of the golden rule, in its 
 negative form, "Do nothing to others which you 
 would not have others do to you," was a noble one ; 
 but it seems in practice to be less admirable than the 
 affirmative command. The Chinese are really addicted 
 in a wonderful and commendable way to letting others 
 alone ; they are neither obtrusive nor officious. But 
 an act of pure chivalry is seldom to be beheld among 
 the four hundred millions. Foreigners who have lived 
 among them for tens of years have never seen a 
 chivalrous soul dash out to rescue a suffering captive, 
 nor save a stranger who was in peril. 
 
 Confucius never conceived of any form of govern- 
 ment beside a despotism ; he never thought of woman 
 as anything other than the chattel of man ; he was
 
 200 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 not in advance of his age. He upheld in strong terms 
 the duty of blood revenge, and entertained no thought 
 of obtaining more perfect justice, by leaving vengeance 
 in other hands than that of the wronged. He said : 
 " With the slayer of his father a man may not live 
 under the same heaven ; against the slayer of his 
 brother a man must never have to go home to fetch 
 a weapon; with the slayer of his friend a man may 
 not live in the same state." 
 
 It is a moot question whether Confucianism is a 
 religion. Long before the days of Confucius, and 
 probably five thousand years ago, the Chinese wor- 
 shipped the spirits of the hills and rivers, and believed 
 in the continuance of the soul after death. They 
 divide spiritual beings into three classes, Heaven, that 
 which is highest of all things, and that which is 
 appealed to for justice ; gods, the beneficent immortals 
 having their abode in the heavens with the Supreme 
 Ruler; the spirits of the dead, inhabiting Hades, and 
 generally considered harmful to the living. The wor-
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 201 
 
 ship of ancestors was practised long before the time 
 of Confucius, and was sustained by him. Reward and 
 retribution were regarded as the natural outcome of 
 wise or evil conduct, as was expressed by a minister 
 of Loo, who, 535 B.C., gave orders that his son should 
 become the disciple of Confucius, referring to the 
 ancestors of the sage, and saying that in him was 
 about to be verified the frequent statement of an 
 eminent scholar, that, "If a wise and good man does 
 not get distinguished in his own time, there is sure 
 to be among his posterity some one of vast intelli- 
 gence." This is the form in which the doctrine of 
 reward is held by Chinese moralists, "Virtue and 
 vice have their appropriate issues ; if not in the 
 experience of the individual, certainly in that of his 
 posterity." 
 
 Confucius did not originate the religion of his 
 country, but handed it down from prehistoric times. 
 He was, as he himself declared, " a transmitter, not a 
 maker; believing in and loving the ancients." He
 
 202 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 pretended to no revelation of divine truth, and would 
 not have himself regarded as a sage, saying : " I am not 
 one who was born in the possession of knowledge ; I 
 am one who is fond of antiquity and earnest in seeking 
 it there. I learn without satiety, and teach without 
 being tired." While he never declared himself out- 
 rightly against anything believed in or practised by 
 the ancients, he showed no interest in any part of their 
 creed which was not practical. He said, "To give 
 one's self earnestly to the duties due to man, and 
 while respecting spiritual beings to keep aloof from 
 them, may be called wisdom." One of the foremost 
 of his disciples once asked him about the service of 
 the spirits of the dead, and he replied, " While you 
 are not able to serve men, how can you serve their 
 spirits?" The disciple went on, saying, "I venture 
 to ask about death," and he was answered, "While 
 you do not know life, how can you know death?" 
 Another distinguished follower asked him whether 
 the dead had knowledge of the services rendered
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 203 
 
 to them. The master replied : " If I were to say the 
 dead have such knowledge, I am afraid the filial sons 
 and dutiful grandsons would injure their substance 
 in paying the last offices to the departed ; and if I 
 were to say that the dead have not such knowledge, 
 I am afraid the unftlial sons would leave their parents 
 unburied. You need not wish to learn whether the 
 dead have such knowledge or not. There is no present 
 urgency about the point. Hereafter you will know 
 it for yourselves." He habitually avoided the dis- 
 cussion of subjects that were unprofitable. " He did 
 not like to talk about extraordinary things, feats of 
 strength, states of disorder, nor spiritual beings." He 
 did not speculate on the creation of man, nor seek to 
 know about his hereafter. In his character of student 
 and preserver of the usages of the ancients he upheld 
 the laws of the emperors Yu and Shun, who had 
 reigned gloriously seventeen hundred years before him, 
 and he went from ruler to ruler, striving to find one 
 who would learn to reign as they did.
 
 204 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 Confucius constantly urged the fulfilment of the 
 duties arising from the five natural human relation- 
 ships. He enunciated numerous wise sayings, which 
 have remained current among his people, and of which 
 the following are examples : 
 
 " Virtue is not left to stand alone ; he who prac- 
 tises it will have neighbours." 
 
 " If a thing be really hard, it may be ground with- 
 out being made thin ; and if it be really white, it may 
 be steeped in a dark fluid without being made black." 
 
 "Fine words and an insinuating appearance are 
 seldom associated with true virtue." 
 
 " He who exercises government by means of his 
 virtue, may be compared to the north polar star 
 which keeps its place, and all the stars turn toward it." 
 
 "In the Book of Poetry there are three hundred 
 pieces, but the design of them all may be embraced 
 in one sentence : Have no depraved thoughts." 
 
 " Learning, without thought, is labour lost ; thought, 
 without learning, is perilous."
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 205 
 
 "It is only the truly virtuous man who can love, 
 or who can hate others." 
 
 "A man should say, I am not concerned that I 
 have no place ; I am concerned how I may fit myself 
 for one ; I am not concerned that I am not known ; I 
 seek to be worthy to be known." 
 
 " The reason why the ancients did not readily give 
 utterance to their words was, that they feared their 
 actions should not come up to them." 
 
 " Where the solid qualities are in excess of accom- 
 plishments, we have rusticity; where the accomplish- 
 ments are in excess of the solid qualities, we have 
 the manners of a clerk ; when the accomplishments 
 and the solid qualities are equally blended, we have 
 the man of complete virtue." 
 
 " Men of principle are sure to be bold, but those 
 who are bold may not always be men of principle." 
 
 " Those whose courses are different cannot lay 
 plans for one another." 
 
 To his disciples, and to the potentates over whom
 
 206 A COKNElt OF CATHAY. 
 
 his soul yearned, Confucius perpetually held up an 
 ideal man, and asked them to be like this pattern. 
 What he thought a man should be is set forth in the 
 following selections from the "Analects": 
 
 " He who aims to be a man of complete virtue, in 
 his food does not seek to gratify his appetite, nor in 
 his dwelling-place does he seek the appliances of 
 ease ; he is earnest in what he is doing, and careful 
 in his speech ; he frequents the company of men of 
 principle that he may be rectified." 
 
 "The superior man is catholic, and not partisan; 
 the mean man is partisan, and not catholic." 
 
 " The superior man in the world does not set his 
 mind either for or against anything; what is right, 
 he will follow." 
 
 "The superior man, in regard to what he does not 
 know, shows a cautious reserve." 
 
 " The superior man is modest in his speech, but 
 exceeds in his actions. The superior man acts be- 
 fore he speaks, and afterward speaks according to his 
 actions."
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 207 
 
 " The superior man does not promote a man simply 
 on account of his words, nor does he put aside good 
 words because of the man." 
 
 " The superior man is correctly firm, and not firm 
 merely." 
 
 " What the superior man seeks is in himself ; what 
 the mean man seeks is in others." 
 
 " The object of the superior man is truth. The 
 superior man is anxious lest he should not get truth ; 
 he is not anxious lest poverty come upon him." 
 
 " There are three things of which the superior man 
 stands in awe. He stands in awe of the ordinances 
 of Heaven, he stands in awe of great men, he stands 
 in awe of the words of sages." 
 
 " The man who in view of gain thinks of right- 
 eousness, who in view of danger is prepared to give 
 up his life, and who does not forget an old agree- 
 ment, however far back it extends, such a man may 
 be reckoned a complete man." 
 
 " The superior man cultivates himself so as to 
 give rest to others."
 
 208 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 "The determined scholar and the man of virtue 
 will not seek to live at the expense of injuring 
 their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives 
 to preserve their virtue complete." 
 
 " Tsze-kung said, ' What do you pronounce con- 
 cerning a poor man who does not flatter, and a 
 rich man who is not proud?' The Master replied, 
 ' They will do ; but they are not equal to him who, 
 though poor, is yet cheerful, and to him who, though 
 rich, loves the rules of propriety.' " 
 
 "The superior man helps the distressed, but does 
 not add to the wealth of the rich." 
 
 "The superior man seeks to develop the admi- 
 rable qualities of men, and does not seek to develop 
 their bad qualities. The mean man does the oppo- 
 site of this." 
 
 " The man of perfect virtue, wishing to be estab- 
 lished himself, seeks also to establish others ; wish- 
 ing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge 
 others."
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 209 
 
 " The superior man thinks of virtue ; the small 
 man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks 
 of the sanctions of the moral law; the small man 
 thinks of the favours he may receive." 
 
 "Tsze-kung said, 'Has the superior man his 
 hatreds also ? ' The Master said, ' He has his hatreds. 
 He hates those who proclaim the evils of others. 
 He hates the man who, being in low station, slan- 
 ders his superiors. He hates those who have valour 
 merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates 
 those who are forward and determined, and at the 
 same time of contracted understanding.' " 
 
 " Tan-che asked about perfect virtue. The Master 
 said, ' It is, in retirement, to be sedately grave ; in 
 the management of business, to be reverently atten- 
 tive ; in intercourse with others, to be strictly 
 sincere.' " 
 
 This ideal is a high one. No asceticism is incul- 
 cated. If all the doctrines of Confucius were ac- 
 cepted and acted upon by all everywhere, through all
 
 210 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 time, they would not destroy the human race as 
 would the doctrines of Buddhism in which celibacy 
 and mendicancy are set forth as duties. Priests 
 and nuns are not popular among the thrifty, pos- 
 terity-desiring Confucianists. It seems fair to 
 test the truth of a doctrine by the query whether, 
 if it were practised by all, everywhere and forever, 
 it would conduce to the well-being of the human 
 family. Any system which does not permit all to 
 enter upon a struggle for the attainment of that 
 which it holds to be the highest good, lacks the 
 basis of justice, and must eventually fall. Tested 
 by this standard, the Superior Man of Confucius 
 appears fit to be multiplied indefinitely on the face 
 of the earth, and worthy to inherit it all, and to 
 find the highest good in being himself. Why, then, 
 has the teaching of Confucius, through twenty-three 
 hundred years, in the most populous of empires, pro- 
 duced so few Superior Men? It is true that no 
 religion or moral philosophy yet promulgated has
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 211 
 
 withheld all its followers from fraud, malice, and 
 uncleaimess, nor made them all just, sincere, and 
 brave. But when one considers the excellence of 
 the ethical teaching of Confucius, the length of 
 time it has been accepted, and the thoroughness 
 with which it has been inculcated in a vast and 
 isolated nation, the moral results appear meagre. 
 During a residence of a score of years among 
 Confucianists, I have learned that no people have 
 a clearer perception of right and wrong. Conscience 
 is in them a discriminating, but not a motive, power. 
 They can set forth the law of righteousness with 
 amazing delicacy and exactitude, and at the same 
 time entertain sufficient private reasons for not 
 following it. I have humbly tried to solve this 
 puzzle, and have for myself reached a conclusion. 
 The ultimate reason for good behaviour under the 
 Confucian theory is the desirability of being a perfect 
 man, and enjoying the rewards of perfection. In 
 one form or another Confucius perpetually iterates
 
 212 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 this saying, "To be able to practise five things 
 everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue, 
 gravity, generosity, sincerity, earnestness, and kind- 
 ness. If you are grave, you will not be treated with 
 disrespect. If you are generous, you will win all. If 
 you are sincere, people will repose trust in you. If 
 you are earnest, you will accomplish much. If you 
 are kind, this will enable you to employ the services 
 of others." To be a model of correct deportment, 
 and an example of perfect character, is no mean 
 aspiration, but it is, after all, a selfish aim. He who 
 fulfils all duties through a desire for personal per- 
 fection, and in consideration of the advantages accru- 
 ing to himself therefrom, is less noble than he who 
 fulfils the same duties solely through regard for 
 the welfare of those whom he serves. He who acts 
 with the motive of obtaining present or future 
 reward for himself, or with the object of securing the 
 approval of any being, visible or invisible, is less apt 
 to have a constant reason for restraining his harmful
 
 CONFUCIUS AND HIS TEACHINGS. 213 
 
 propensities, and for doing what is best for his 
 neighbour, than has he who loves his neighbour as 
 himself. It seems to be by a natural psychological 
 process that "he that loveth is born of God." In 
 direct ratio to one's knowledge of the good and 
 evil effects of what he does, and to the reality of 
 his regard for the well-being of others, is his effort 
 after righteousness. 
 
 Whatever the errors and the limitations of Con- 
 fucius, he lived nobly, esteeming lightly, as do all 
 the immortals, every worldly emolument. In brave 
 and patient toil, in hardship and humility, he held 
 his ideal before his countrymen. They have accepted 
 it, and exalted him. And when the science of Com- 
 parative Ethics shall have from the enlightened 
 world the esteem it deserves, then the moral philos- 
 ophy of Confucius will have due study in lands 
 other than his own.
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC 
 ARTS. 
 
 TAUISM, the theosophy of China, is based upon 
 the teachings of Laou-Tze, and its chief sacred book 
 is the one volume that he wrote. Laou-Tze, or the 
 aged philosopher, was born 604 B.C., in the Honan 
 Province, Central China. Popular tradition declares 
 that he was not brought forth till eighty-one years 
 after his conception, and that snowy hair and an 
 appearance of great age distinguished him through 
 life. Nothing is known of his parentage, except that 
 he was of the Li family. His individual name, Hi 
 the Flat-eared, was, doubtless, like that of many of 
 his countrymen, given on account of a personal pecu- 
 liarity. He was librarian at the royal court of Chow, 
 and when Confucius visited the capital in 517 B.C., 
 
 214
 
 WOMEN AT A SHRINE
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 215 
 
 he sought Laou-Tze in order to converse with him 
 about the ancient ceremonies. Confucius was then 
 thirty-five, and Laou-Tze eighty-eight years old. It 
 is recorded that after the interview, Confucius said 
 to his disciples, " I know how birds can fly, fishes 
 swim, and beasts run. But the runner may be snared, 
 the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. 
 But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts 
 on the wind through the clouds to heaven. To-day 
 I have seen Laou-Tze, and can only compare him to 
 the dragon." 
 
 Laou-Tze chose to remain obscure, and gathered 
 about him no school; but there is evidence that 
 he had disciples who practised in their homes, 
 and taught in their fields, the doctrines that he 
 brooded over. After long service in his civil office, 
 seeing that the dynasty was decaying, he left the 
 capital and went through the frontier pass that led 
 out of the royal domain to the northwest. The gate- 
 keeper, named Yin Hi, recognized him, and said to
 
 216 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 him, "You are about to withdraw yourself out of 
 sight; I pray you first compose for me a book." 
 Laou-Tze remained with the gate-keeper, and wrote 
 a book of five thousand words. He then went away 
 to the west, and nothing more was ever heard of 
 him. Unlike Confucius, he founded no house ; and 
 the heads of the sect that calls itself after his doc- 
 trines are not of his lineage. The book which he 
 wrote, the only one which has come down to us 
 from his pen, when translated into English, fills but 
 sixty-two octavo pages. It is entitled " The Classic 
 of Reason and Virtue," and it sets forth a system 
 of philosophy which advocates cleanness and empti- 
 ness of heart as the highest objects of aspiration and 
 the cure for all ills. It declares that the primal cause 
 and ultimate reason for all things is Tau ; which no 
 synalogue has been able to define in a single phrase, 
 but which Laou-Tze explains as follows : " There was 
 something chaotic in nature, which existed before 
 heaven and earth. It was still ; it was void. It stood
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 217 
 
 alone, and was not changed. It pervaded everywhere, 
 and was not endangered. It may be regarded as the 
 mother of the universe. I know not its name, but 
 give it the title of Tau" 
 
 "Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth 
 takes its law from Heaven ; Heaven takes its law 
 from Tau; and Tau takes its law from what is in 
 itself." 
 
 " We look at it, and do not see it ; it is named 
 the colourless. We listen for it, and do not hear it; 
 it is named the soundless. We try to grasp it, and 
 do not get hold of it; it is named the incorporeal. 
 With these three qualities it cannot be investigated 
 and defined; and hence we blend them together and 
 form a unity." 
 
 The modern followers of Tau are unable to define 
 it more fully than did its ancient discoverer. It is 
 not a person ; it is not reason as exercised by a con- 
 scious being; it is not a human rule of righteousness. 
 The word in common colloquial utterances is used
 
 218 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 to express the concept of right reasoning ; the under- 
 lying principles which determine the course of things ; 
 the essentially correct method of action; the way 
 which accords with the eternal law of nature. When 
 the Chinese wish to say, "He has right on his side," 
 they declare that "he is in harmony with Tau" 
 Every Chinaman shrinks before proof that what he 
 does or maintains is contrary to Tau. Whatever Tau 
 may be, as an idea in the Mongolian mind, it theoret- 
 ically receives supreme reverence. 
 
 Throughout " The Classic of Reason and Virtue " 
 humility is inculcated. The lowly and weak are 
 exalted above the hard and masterful. Laou-Tze says : 
 "Man in his life is supple and tender; in his death 
 he is rigid and strong. It is the same with every- 
 thing. Grass and trees are in their life weak and 
 tender, and in their death withered and tough. 
 Therefore rigidity and toughness are the attendants 
 of death, and tenderness and weakness are the attend- 
 ants of life."
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 219 
 
 War is lamented, ambition is disesteemed, and even 
 the exaltation of merit is discountenanced, on the 
 ground that it excites contention. " Not exalting 
 worth keeps the people from rivalry. Not prizing 
 things hard to procure keeps the people from theft. 
 Not looking on objects of desire keeps the heart from 
 disorder. The government of the sage consists ac- 
 cordingly in emptying the heart of desires and filling 
 the stomach; in weakening the will and strengthen- 
 ing the bones; in continually keeping the people 
 from the knowledge and the desire of evil ; and in 
 making those who have knowledge not dare to act." 
 
 Avarice is reckoned as its own punishment, and 
 the accumulation of wealth is discouraged. " When 
 gold and gems fill the hall, nothing can protect 
 them." "The sage does not lay up treasures. The 
 more he does for others, the more he is increased." 
 "There is no calamity more direful than the desire 
 of possessing." 
 
 Quietism is always enjoined. The greatest and
 
 220 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 best of things is Tau. In order to be in accord with 
 it, one must have the mind emptied of all worldly 
 ambitions, must be free from all prejudices and pre- 
 occupations, and must be in a condition of receptivity. 
 This is the condition essential to all true usefulness. 
 "It is the way of Tau not to act from any personal 
 motive ; to conduct affairs without feeling the trouble 
 of them; to taste without being aware of flavour; to 
 account the great as small, and the small as great." 
 "The sage deals with affairs as if he were doing 
 nothing, and performs his teaching without words. 
 In the same way all things in nature shoot up in 
 spring without a word, and grow without a claim 
 for their production." 
 
 These quotations, taken from " The Classic of Rea- 
 son and Virtue," as translated by Dr. Chalmers, and 
 published under the title "The Speculations of the 
 Old Philosopher," show the trend of the doctrines of 
 Laou-Tze. Dr. Legg, in his book on " The Religions 
 of China," calls attention to the fact that twenty-
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 221 
 
 five hundred years ago Laou-Tze, in one terse utter- 
 ance, announced a principle that was new in the 
 ethics of the East, "Recompense injury with kind- 
 ness." When one of the disciples of Confucius in- 
 quired of him concerning his opinion of this principle, 
 he, from his point of view as schoolmaster and magis- 
 trate, uttered his dicta, saying, " Recompense kind- 
 ness with kindness, and injury with justice." The 
 far-sighted acumen of Laou-Tze appeared to Confu- 
 cius to he nothing more than the wisdom of one who 
 was "careful of his person." 
 
 Laou-Tze was a hermit rather than a philosopher. 
 He withdrew from the world because it did not 
 please him, instead of remaining to fight its battles 
 as did Confucius, because there was need of him. 
 The older man sought obscurity, despised formalities, 
 aimed at the utmost simplicity of mind and habit, 
 studied to be content with little, and put away all 
 wearing ambitions, believing that the best was to be 
 attained by and among the lowly. The younger sage
 
 222 A CORNEB OF CATHAY. 
 
 perceived a sanctifying influence in rituals and cere- 
 monies, was strenuous concerning etiquette and pro- 
 priety, and spent his long life in brave effort to lead 
 the great and powerful to be correct ensamples to the 
 common folk, who, according to his theory, must 
 imitate their superiors. Both men were great and 
 true, but the transcendental abstraction from worldly 
 cares, and the abstruse doctrines of Laou-Tze, have 
 formed a foundation for a system of superstition that 
 has increased through the ages, while the practical and 
 natural duties of human relationships, which lie at 
 the base of all the teachings of Confucius, have, 
 through his clear expositions, won a regard which 
 has saved China from barbarism. Well is it for the 
 great nation that Confucianism, not Tauism, became 
 the state religion. 
 
 Tauism appears to have spread widely during the 
 life of Laou-Tze, and to have gained eminent adhe- 
 rents during the centuries succeeding his death. It 
 seems to have, also, at an early date, coalesced with
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIE MAGIC ARTS. 223 
 
 ancient superstitions, and to have become the creed 
 of diviners, alchemists, and wonder-workers. In the 
 third century B.C. the founder of the present empire, 
 the subjugator of the feudal states, the builder of the 
 Great Wall, evinced his faith in its tenets by fitting 
 out and sending off an expedition in search of the 
 isles of the immortals, from whence he hoped to have 
 brought to him an herb that would give eternal life. 
 The emperor Wu, during his long reign in the first 
 and second centuries B.C., was ardently devoted to 
 its doctrines. In the first century of our era, the first 
 and second emperors of the Han dynasty invited to 
 court the first Tauist pope. But it was not until 
 66 A.D., that Laou-Tze was canonized, and ranked 
 among the Tauist gods as the Great Supreme, the 
 Emperor of the Dark First Cause. 
 
 Chang-tau-ling, the first Tauist pope or patriarch, 
 is said to have mastered "The Classic of Reason and 
 Virtue" at the early age of seven. After arriving 
 at great eminence as a scholar, he declined office,
 
 224 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 retired to a mountain fastness, and devoted himself 
 to meditation and the study of alchemy. His later 
 years were spent in the Dragon Tiger Mountain ; and 
 there, after compounding and swallowing the elixir 
 of life, the receipt for which he had found in a treatise 
 miraculously bestowed upon him by Laou-Tze, he, at 
 the age of 123, ascended to the abodes of the immor- 
 tals. Before leaving the earth, he bequeathed his 
 secret knowledge to his son, Chang Heng, from whom 
 it has been handed down to later patriarchs. In 
 748 A.D., the reigning emperor confirmed the heredi- 
 tary privileges of Chang-tau-ling, with the title of 
 Heavenly Master, and in 1016 A.D., the emperor 
 enfeoffed the existing representative of the family 
 with large tracts of land. The Mongol emperors 
 were also liberal patrons of the Tauist popes, and so 
 secure is their tenure of their domains in the Dragon 
 Tiger Mountain, that it is a common saying that 
 "however the empire be disordered or convulsed, the 
 Changs (the heirs of the first Tauist patriarch) and
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 225 
 
 the Khongs (descendants of Confucius) have no rea- 
 son to be troubled." 
 
 The headship of the Tauist sect is said to be per- 
 petuated by the transmigration of the soul of Chang- 
 tau-ling from one to another of his successors, the true 
 heir being revealed by a miracle. The office is not 
 strictly hereditary, but, upon the death of the patriarch, 
 his family meet, and cast iron plates, containing each 
 a name, into a well ; and he whose name floats becomes 
 Master. The Changs have held the office of Master 
 or pope since the first century, with but one period 
 of interruption, having the seat of their spiritual 
 authority in the Dragon Tiger Mountain, in the Kiang 
 Si Province, in the department of Kuang-sin, and the 
 district Chang-si. 
 
 Although Tauism is reckoned heterodox, and is one 
 of the strange doctrines condemned by the seventh 
 edict of Khang-Hi, it is everywhere tolerated, and is 
 even officially recognized. Mayers, in his "Chinese 
 Government," says that "two Tauist office-bearers are
 
 226 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 appointed in each district, department, and prefecture, 
 throughout the empire, as principal and deputy. The 
 appointment is made by local authority, by selection 
 among the leading priests, and is submitted for ap- 
 proval, when made by the subordinate officials, to the 
 provincial government. The superior thus appointed 
 acts as the medium of communication between the 
 secular authorities and the priesthood, for whose gen- 
 eral good conduct he is considered responsible, and 
 over whose cases of litigation among themselves he 
 exercises certain judicial powers. The superior of the 
 Metropolitan district is a person enjoying much con- 
 sideration, and wielding no small amount of authority, 
 but the position elsewhere is attended with little respect. 
 " Though Tauism is not, and has never been, the 
 state religion, there are Tauist priests connected with 
 the state temples devoted to the worship of the 
 powers of nature ; and two hierophants are employed 
 in the state temples in services intended as acts of 
 propitiation in times of flood or drought."
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. . 227 
 
 The lives of many Tauist patriarchs and priests 
 have been written for the edification of believers. For 
 instance, there is that of Chang-Liang, one of the 
 early popes. He was a poor boy, who, when at work 
 in the fields, saw an aged man, who was passing along 
 in a sedan-chair, drop one of his shoes on the road. 
 Chang-Liang, supposing the shoe to have accidentally 
 fallen off, immediately picked it up and ran a long 
 way to restore it to its owner. The ancient man gave 
 him no thanks, but asked him if he would like to 
 become wise. Chang-Liang expressed his desire for 
 learning, and the venerable sage told him to come to 
 his distant house on a certain day, at dawn. Chang- 
 Liang thereafter inquired the way, and having travelled 
 on foot all one day, and watched through the following 
 night, he presented himself at the house at the 
 appointed time, but was kept waiting till noon before 
 he gained access to the master. Then the master 
 was seated at a sumptuous repast, and the hungry 
 boy sat with downcast eyes against the wall, while
 
 228 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 the feast was slowly consumed. After dining, the old 
 man sent the boy empty away, saying that he had 
 not that day leisure for giving instruction, but that 
 he would at another time fulfil his promise. At the 
 date fixed the boy again presented himself, and the 
 sage received him as a pupil, having ascertained, 
 through his bringing of the shoe, that the boy was 
 deferential to the aged; by his long waiting without 
 complaint, that he was patient; by his not looking at 
 the food when he was hungry, that he was not glutton- 
 ous ; and by his return after a repulse, that he ardently 
 desired knowledge. 
 
 A merchant of the Meng dynasty took into his 
 family an orphan boy in whom he perceived extra- 
 ordinary traits. On discovering that the boy knew 
 letters without having ever been to school, the mer- 
 chant suspected that he was of supernal origin, and 
 treated him with great respect; but the women of 
 the family were less discerning, and they persisted 
 in requiring from him all sorts of menial services.
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 229 
 
 One day when he was sent to the riverside to wash 
 earthen pickle-jars, he was seen to crumple them up, 
 rub them as if they were dish-cloths, wring them out, 
 and shake them again into their original shape. On 
 being told of this feat, the merchant became afraid 
 that the demands of the women-folk would bring 
 upon himself some punishment for irreverent treatment 
 of a superior being, and in order to avert this danger, 
 he gave the boy two hundred ounces of silver, and 
 sent him off to a monastery. The boy went away 
 and dwelt in a cave. When he had spent all his 
 money he picked up gravel and put it into his pot, 
 and, while boiling, it turned into kernels of white 
 rice. This was observed and was commented upon 
 until it came to the ears of the emperor, who sent for 
 the youth, built a temple for him, and thereafter had 
 all the advantages of close communication with an 
 immortal. 
 
 The superstitions of Tauism are chiefly indigenous, 
 though many of its doctrines are foreign. In the
 
 230 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 year 65 A.D. Buddhism was introduced into China 
 from India, and since that time Tauism has been 
 greatly modified by Buddhist tenets and practices. 
 The Tauists saw that if they would have influence 
 among the people, they must, like the Buddhists, have 
 temples and monasteries, and must attract public at- 
 tention by public teaching. In Buddhist temples are 
 three great images called the three precious ones, 
 Buddha, the Law, and the Church. In Tauist tem- 
 ples, also, are three idols called the three pure ones. 
 The first is the Supreme Ruler, taken from the old 
 religion of the country, and worshipped long before 
 Laou-Tze or Confucius was born; the second is the 
 holy one, called Chaos, who was at the beginning of 
 all things; the third is Laou-Tze. The doctrines of 
 purgatory and of metempsychosis are also evidently 
 taken from Buddhism. Not only has Tauism coa- 
 lesced with Buddhism, but it has absorbed and per- 
 petuated the native ancient debasing creeds. Laou- 
 Tze taught no religion, and no supernaturalism of
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 231 
 
 any description; yet, in the course of ages, his doc- 
 trines have taken on by accretion a vast mass of 
 superstition. Tauism began with no gods, and now 
 its gods are countless ; it began with no form of wor- 
 ship, and now its forms are multifold, costly, and gro- 
 tesque. Its only ancient sacred book is " The Classic 
 of Reason and Virtue," and now reason and virtue have 
 in China no foes so subtle and so potent as its priests. 
 The priests are neither the descendants of Laou-Tze, 
 nor of the family of the popes ; but they study the 
 writings of the one, and get instruction from the 
 other. They are supposed to study, in the Dragon 
 Tiger Mountain, the occult sciences, and to attain 
 supernatural powers. The advanced hierophants are 
 believed to know future events; to have powers of 
 clairvoyance ; to be able to converse without speech ; 
 to labour without fatigue ; to send inanimate objects 
 to distant localities without physical agency; to make 
 themselves invisible at will; and to achieve corporeal 
 immortality. The pope, by means of a magic seal,
 
 232 
 
 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 checks or directs the 
 demons of the nether 
 regions. 
 
 The Chinese gener- 
 ally believe that cer- 
 tain persons possess 
 these varied powers. 
 The proudest Confu- 
 cianists and the de- 
 voutest Buddhists are 
 alike more or less sub- 
 ject to Tauist priest- 
 craft. The priests are 
 commonly employed 
 in conflict with evil 
 spirits. Hardly any 
 domestic undertaking 
 or public enterprise 
 is carried on without 
 their coadjutorship. 
 
 The Seal of the Tauist Pope.
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIE MAGIC ARTS. 233 
 
 For example, when a new dwelling-house is finished, 
 and the family gods have been transferred to it, the 
 owner has a Tauist priest and his acolytes come to 
 drive out the demons, before the human occupants shall 
 take up their abode in it. They come by night, bring- 
 ing bells and gongs, and set up a fearful din of incan- 
 tation in the new domicile. They put oil into an 
 iron pan, heat it to boiling-point, hang it by its ears 
 on a trident, spirt alcohol upon it, to increase the 
 blaze, fume, and smoke, and thrust it into all the 
 corners of the rooms. At the same time, pitchforks 
 and bayonets are driven through the air, and the 
 priest loudly announces the name of the true owner 
 and possessor of the premises, and declares his author- 
 ity to expel all invisible inmates. All parts of the 
 building having been consecutively ransacked in this 
 manner, and the doors successively shut, the demons 
 are supposed to have been routed. The neighbours, 
 meanwhile, keep out of the way, and close their own 
 doors and windows carefully, lest the ejected tenants
 
 234 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 should take up a habitation with them. When the 
 demons have been chased outside the town, the family, 
 in the early morning, moves into its new house. 
 
 Every believer in Tauism expends much money 
 upon fortune-telling, a trade that is largely in the 
 hands of blind men, or pseudo-blind men, who itinerate 
 in regions where they are not personally known, and 
 who profit vastly through female credulity. 
 
 Unlike the Buddhist priests, the Tauist priests 
 marry, and live among the laity. The making and 
 sale of charms and amulets occupies many priests. 
 There are few doors upon which a written or printed 
 charm is not affixed. Amulets are commonly worn, 
 and are frequently made by wrapping up a picture 
 of the Tauist pope with ashes taken from the censers 
 of several gods that are thought to have manifested 
 willingness to exert themselves in behalf of their 
 worshippers. The ashes from each censer are sepa- 
 rately wrapped in a scrap of red calico, and tied with 
 red or green sewing-silk. Charms written by Tauist
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC AETS. 235 
 
 priests are often included. The whole number of 
 little parcels, perhaps a dozen altogether, are made 
 into one packet, a cubic inch in bulk, and this is 
 worn upon the neck or wrist as an amulet, or is sus- 
 pended in a room as a fetish. 
 
 A geomancer who is considered to be specially 
 gifted in the discerning of good sites for graves is 
 always employed for locating the tomb of a parent. 
 The occult influence of the resting-place of the dead 
 upon the weal of the living is believed to be so 
 great that no man who has prospered since the burial 
 of his chief ancestor would, on any consideration, per- 
 mit a change in the configuration of the landscape 
 surrounding the tomb. Those upon whom calamity 
 comes soon after the interment of a parent, remove 
 the grave to another site. Pagodas, temples, bridges, 
 houses, and all high structures are thought to exert 
 an occult influence upon the dwellers in lower situa- 
 tions ; and bitter feuds between individuals and be- 
 tween clans result from any interference with the
 
 236 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 geomantic condition termed " the equilibrium of wind 
 and water." 
 
 The empire is full of Tauist necromancers, who 
 may not all be directly connected with the school of 
 the popes, but they all have rendezvous among the 
 mountains, where they learn and teach their art. The 
 legend runs that in the Tang dynasty (620 to 907 
 A.D.), a pope was walking among the mountains, and 
 tapped upon a rock, saying, " Open ! The Heavenly 
 Master has come ! " The rock opened, and disclosed 
 within it a chamber, in which was an altar and all 
 the paraphernalia used in worshipping the dead. The 
 pope went away, the rock closing behind him, and 
 disinterred the bones of his own ancestors, that he 
 might bring and enclose them in a tomb that promised 
 so much of weal to the posterity of its occupant. 
 While he was gone, a small boy, who had, from a 
 copse near by, heard and seen what had been said 
 and done, ran and told his grandfather about it. The 
 wise old man at once went and arrayed himself in
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 237 
 
 his best, as do the Chinese when they know that 
 their end approaches, and went, conducted by the 
 boy, to the rock. He, too, tapped upon it, saying, 
 " Open ! The Heavenly Master has come ! " and the 
 rock divided, displaying its inner chamber. The old 
 man entered, telling his grandson to remain outside 
 and watch for the return of the former visitant. As 
 soon as the old man sat down in the place allotted 
 by custom to the departed, the rock closed, leaving 
 no fissure, and became the sepulchre of its occupant. 
 When the pope came back with the bones of his 
 ancestors, he found that the rock would not again 
 heed his call for admission, and he therefore knew 
 that some one had, in his absence, taken possession 
 of it. He then struck the rock, saying, " If he who 
 occupies this tomb be its discoverer, then let there 
 ever be an emperor among his descendants ; but rf he 
 be an usurper, then let him have forever among his 
 offspring a king of demons." Since that time there 
 has always been among this old man's progeny a real
 
 238 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 necromancer. When the first of these necromancers 
 died, the whole family was called together, and the 
 survivor who could by incantation make the dead 
 man get up from the bed upon which he had breathed 
 his last, and place himself in his own coffin, was 
 accepted and acknowledged by the others as the true 
 inheritor of the power of the departed. It is said 
 that this test is the one whereby the head of the body 
 of necromancers has, from generation to generation, 
 been manifested. The necromancers are all Tauists, 
 and claim the same powers as the priests. 
 
 There is a difference between a necromancer and a 
 juggler in Cathay. The latter is paid for the amusement 
 which he furnishes, and the former is rewarded for the 
 exercise of supposed preternatural powers in communi- 
 cation with invisible beings. The juggler plays in 
 the open air, by daylight, and with simple accoutre- 
 ments. He apparently causes a gourd-seed to sprout, 
 put forth leaves, and bear fruit, all within a few 
 minutes of time ; he slaughters a small boy, puts the
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 239 
 
 pieces into a narrow-mouthed jar, and then by in- 
 cantation makes the victim whole, and breaks the 
 jar to give him exit; and he performs other tricks 
 which cause much wonder and bring him much cash. 
 Though he affects dependence on elfin aid, his arts 
 are not practised in support of a religion, nor by 
 appeal to superstition. His exhibitions of skill are 
 often more marvellous than are those of the magi- 
 cians ; but the pretensions of the latter to supernatural 
 powers give them a peculiar hold on the imagination 
 of the populace, and they have great influence for 
 evil in all communities. Their mystic learning is in- 
 dicated by acts of which they appear to be almost 
 unconscious. They blow out a lamp that stands at 
 a distance, by puffing upon a sheet of paper held 
 between them and the lamp ; they hold a dead fish 
 in the hand, and bring it to life by breathing gently 
 upon it ; they fill their mouths with boiled rice, and 
 then blow the kernels back in the form of live honey- 
 bees. When they have cultivated in their neighbours
 
 240 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 a conviction that they are true sorcerers, they have 
 many clients who desire to learn of what is distant 
 in time or place, and who seek their help in communi- 
 cating with invisible beings. They are considered to 
 be the confreres of the genii, and to have learned 
 their arts. 
 
 The genii are divinities of the Tauist sect, immor- 
 tals intermediate between gods and men, and they 
 have the power of making themselves invisible, or of 
 taking at will the shape of any animate or inanimate 
 object. The Eight, who are the oldest and greatest 
 of their kind, are supposed to have an habitation in 
 the highest heavens, and to be under the immediate 
 tutelage of the Supreme Ruler. They are patrons of 
 the arts, and it is said that they have many times 
 been born as men, and that during their earthly lives 
 they have invented all that is useful in the world. 
 When they are sent to take human form, they forget 
 their past, and are so like other people that their 
 divine origin is revealed only by their genius. These
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 241 
 
 eight genii can be traced back in literature to the 
 Tang dynasty, which held the throne from 620 to 
 907 A.D. Possibly they were wholly human magicians 
 of extraordinary gifts. The eight genii, seven male 
 and one female, have each a recorded personal origin. 
 It is said that the first genie was an old woman who 
 lived among the mountains, and there found and ate 
 a fruit which made her immortal. Having herself 
 partaken of a fig from the tree of life, she acquired, 
 after a thousand years, the power to discern in others 
 a fitness for continued existence. She perceived that 
 Tek Kuai Li, who had killed himself by hard study, 
 ought to live forever, and she sent a messenger to 
 his distant grave to resuscitate him. When Tek 
 Kuai Li emerged from the tomb, his legs were morti- 
 fied, and so the messenger slew a dog, and used two 
 of its legs for making new ones for Tek Kuai Li. 
 He afterwards made new legs of clay for the dog, and 
 sent it off alive and well; but Tek Kuai Li's legs 
 were of unequal length, so that he ever afterward
 
 242 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 limped. When he returned from the grave to his 
 parents, they did not recognize him, and declined to 
 receive him as their sou. He therefore went and pur- 
 sued his studies with the old dame who revived him, 
 and who is called the Mother of the Genii. He car- 
 ries a crutch, and is the special patron of conjurers. 
 
 The second genius is Han Cheng Li, who, having 
 studied long and deeply the doctrines of Laou-Tze, 
 heard from Tek Kuai Li of the Mother of the Genii 
 and her fruit-tree, and sought and gained her help 
 in becoming immortal. He carries a fan, with which 
 he is said to fan and revive the souls of the dead. 
 
 One day when this Han Cheng Li was wandering 
 on the hills, he found the skeleton of a man who had 
 been left there unburied, and pity for the bleaching 
 bones impelled him to restore the dead man to life. 
 But as soon as the resurrection was accomplished, the 
 man accused Han Cheng Li of having stolen his 
 clothes, and dragged him before a magistrate to 
 account for the theft. Han stated the case, telling
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 243 
 
 the magistrate how he had found the tombless skele- 
 ton, and had, through compassion, renewed the man's 
 life. The magistrate refused to believe this state- 
 ment, unless Han would prove his power by taking 
 away, by words alone, the life which he said he had, 
 by words alone, restored. Han then began an incan- 
 tation, and the man's flesh diminished, till nothing 
 but the bare bones were left. This function so 
 impressed the magistrate that he resigned his office 
 and honours, and went with Han to join the genii. 
 He is known as Lu Tong Pin, the patron of fencers, 
 and the protector of the sick, and his symbol is a 
 rapier. It is averred that in one of his earthly exist- 
 ences he was an emperor of the Song dynasty, named 
 Hui Chong. Though he had been wise when among 
 the genii, he forgot his duties on becoming an 
 emperor, and lived in ease and luxury, using his 
 powers for selfish ends. At that time the greatest 
 scholar in the empire was Liang Au, who was faith- 
 ful and humane, and beloved of men and gods. One
 
 244 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 night the emperor dreamed that he would the next 
 day be struck by lightning. He went to the great 
 scholar and said : " To-morrow the lightning will 
 strike me, because I have had place and power and 
 have not rightly used them. I will transform myself 
 into a kernel of rice, which you must put under your 
 finger-nail and press against your body: thus I shall 
 be safe from the stroke. All that day the emperor 
 appeared to be very ill, and remained in bed, while 
 his soul in the kernel of rice was safely kept by 
 Liang Au, who, at night, returned it to its own 
 place. 
 
 The fourth genius, Chiang Ku Lao, remained 
 unborn for eighty years, knowing that his mother 
 would die in giving him birth. He had white hair 
 and beard even in infancy, and he became a genius 
 without delay. He carries writing-implements and 
 guides authors to a good style. 
 
 The fifth, Chau Kok Ku, by meditating upon 
 Tauism, came to despise rank, riches, and office, and
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 245 
 
 went away to a retreat among the mountains. There 
 the Mother of the Genii found him, and gave to 
 him the fruit of her tree. He carries castanets, and 
 is the patron of mummers and actors. 
 
 The sixth, Hang Siang Chu, left a family who had 
 no sympathy with his longings for knowledge, and 
 went and lived as a recluse in a forest. He plays 
 the pipe, and assists musicians. 
 
 The seventh, Na Chai Hua, was a sage youth who 
 was one day picking flowers on the mountains. He 
 saw six genii roaming there, and joined himself to 
 them. He aids florists, and is often represented with 
 a flower-basket and a spade. 
 
 The eighth, O Sien Ko, was a pious woman who 
 kept an inn. She was so cleanly that Lu Tong Pin, 
 who frequented her house, thought she deserved 
 immortality, and led her to become a genie. She is 
 said to have invented boats. Her first craft was a 
 mere raft, without means of propulsion. But one 
 day when she was washing clothes in the river, she
 
 246 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 took a hint from a fish that was rowing with its fins 
 and steering with its tail, and she then put oars and 
 a rudder upon her boat. She carries a lotus-flower, 
 and helps in housewifery. 
 
 Each of the chief genii has many servants. These, 
 like their superiors, can instantly change themselves 
 into animals, stones, water, trees, or whatever will best 
 serve their purpose. Men who have proven worthy 
 to enter into the mysteries of Tauism have learned 
 their arts and may follow their practices. They are 
 certainly skilled in legerdemain, and some of them 
 are doubtless powerful mesmerists. In the Song 
 dynasty (960 to 1127 A.D.) there was a magician 
 named Ang, who sometimes took his friends with 
 him on his flying mat that made journeys of many 
 leagues in a few minutes. The visits were always 
 made to scenes with which the passenger was familiar. 
 Ang put his arm around his friend, and burned a 
 charm upon each of the four corners of his mat. 
 He warned his fellow-passenger that he must sit still
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 247 
 
 and keep his eyes shut, else he would be dropped on 
 the way. To the passenger, the mat appeared to 
 move swiftly and gently, as a cloud through the air, 
 until he was told that he might open his eyes, since 
 they had arrived at their destination. Then he found 
 himself in the city to which he had expected to go, 
 spent the day in sight-seeing, and returned to his 
 home at nightfall, upon the wonderful mat, which 
 the wizard spread outside the city wall. One pas- 
 senger, who wanted to see how far he had gone upon 
 his homeward way, opened his eyes a few minutes 
 after starting, and he instantly fell to the ground. 
 He found himself four leagues from home, and had 
 to walk all that distance in the dark, before he 
 reached his own door. On arriving there he found 
 Ang waiting for him, ready to disclaim all responsi- 
 bility for the result of his disobedience. 
 
 Priest Ang had rivals, in his day, in the Seven 
 Sisters, who, like him, practised the arts of the mys- 
 tics. They were the daughters of one mother, and
 
 248 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 lived together on the seashore. As they called them- 
 selves more expert than Ang, he invited them to 
 compete with him openly, to prove whether they or 
 he was the greater in necromancy. Ang, in order 
 to get ready for the contest, went to sleep for three 
 days and nights, after having told his children that 
 they must on no account awaken him during that 
 time. On the third day of his nap, one of the Seven, 
 wishing to find out what he was doing, changed her- 
 self in^o the semblance of his youngest sister, and 
 came to his house, saying that she wished to confer 
 with him about an important family matter. His 
 children told her that he was taking a three-days' 
 sleep, and must not be disturbed. The counterfeit 
 sister refused to believe this, and in order to pacify 
 her, she was permitted to look into his room to see 
 him. She at once threw him into a state of coma, 
 and then declared that he was dead; and when his 
 family had assembled around his bed, she shyly manip- 
 ulated a grain of rice into a maggot and inserted
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 249 
 
 it in his nostril. When the maggot crawled out, his 
 relatives were persuaded that he was indeed dead, 
 and they put him into a coffin and buried him. 
 Having disposed of their enemy, the seven women 
 rejoiced. -But as soon as Ang's spirit could come 
 back to his eldest son in a vision, he gave orders 
 that his coffin should be disinterred, enclosed in an 
 iron box, and cast into the sea. His son obeyed this 
 behest, and, in the next storm, the iron coffin, riding 
 upon the waves, acted as a battering-ram, and beat 
 down the house of the Seven Sisters, that was upon 
 the seashore. 
 
 Ang left an apt pupil in Yang Kuang, who became 
 almost as celebrated as his master, whose books he 
 inherited. When he had grown old and blind, he 
 was one day sitting under a tree, and some labourers 
 said to him, "A young lady is approaching. If you 
 will make her take off her tunic before she reaches 
 here, we will give you a leg of pork." Yang Kuang 
 took up a handful of straw, murmured over it an
 
 250 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 incantation, and blew the straw toward the young 
 lady. She immediately pulled off her tunic, exclaim- 
 ing that it was covered with centipedes. The labourers 
 laughed, and went off to get the pork for Yang Kuang. 
 He took the pork home, and told his wife how he 
 got it. She thereupon informed him that the young 
 lady was their married daughter, who had just arrived, 
 disarrayed and ashamed, and she at once went in 
 anger and burned up his books. He had no son, 
 and some of his arts are now lost to the world. 
 
 A few tens of years ago, there was, at a village 
 near Swatow, a wizard who permitted a friend to 
 ride on his mat; but at the present time most of 
 the wizards are either less powerful or less obliging. 
 There are many who tell of the afflictions their 
 acquaintances have suffered under the visits of un- 
 seen beings. The trouble is invariably preceded by 
 conference with a Tauist fortune-teller or priest. The 
 necromancer gets information of the hour, day, month, 
 and year of birth, and twelve hairs from his victim's
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC ARTS. 251 
 
 head, with money for buying what he declares to 
 be necessary for the performance of incantations. He 
 gives in return a promise to propitiate demons and 
 to obtain aid from the benign spirits. If the woman 
 be good prey, the priest may " conceal his body " ; 
 that is, render himself invisible and tease her. When 
 she is bathing, she may be whisked out of her room, 
 and set down, tub and all, in the court-yard; when 
 she is conversing with guests, she may suddenly find 
 herself barefoot ; when she has a meal spread for her 
 household, offal unaccountably appears upon the chief 
 dish. If the woman runs away to another village, 
 "the concealed man" follows her, and continues his 
 persecutions until the chief priest is appeased by a 
 sufficiently valuable present, after which the mani- 
 festations cease. 
 
 It is thought that any of those who learn the arts 
 of the genii, taught among the mountains where the 
 Tauist patriarch resides, may roam unseen through 
 other person's houses, taking the tid-bits from the
 
 252 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 feast, the gala-dresses from the chest, the silver from 
 the purse. They may, at any moment, invade the 
 boudoir or the council-chamber. 
 
 A family near Swatow had long been afflicted by 
 the depredations and aggressions of one of these 
 unseen foes. Dainties miraculously disappeared; a 
 handsome daughter-in-law pined; and no private con- 
 ference could take place in the house, because the 
 invisible one was always there to hear. The eldest 
 man of the household went secretly to visit his 
 married daughter, and there boiled a leg of pork, 
 which he carefully poisoned and brought home. Hav- 
 ing told the members of his family that the pork 
 was a present from his daughter, and that none beside 
 himself should touch it, he put it away in a cup- 
 board. Not long after, a portion of the pork had 
 disappeared, and somewhat later a dead priest was 
 found in a granary near by. 
 
 A class of persons who profess to be of royal 
 lineage are called the Hong Yang magicians. Hong
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC AKTS. 253 
 
 Yang was in his youth a cowherd. One day he said 
 to his companions, "I am an emperor, and you are 
 my courtiers and ministers. I will kill an ox and 
 make a feast for you." He then took a leaf of 
 pampas-grass, and it became, in his hand, a sword, 
 with which he slew one of the oxen. After the 
 barbecue, Hong Yang spread the ox-hide over a 
 stone, and when the owner of the cattle came to 
 count them and found that one was missing, Hong 
 Yang pointed to the stone as the missing ox. " That 
 is no live ox," cried the owner. But Hong Yang 
 called to the stone, and it lowed in reply, and then 
 sank into the earth. Hong Yang was dismissed from 
 his employment as cowherd, and wandered off to a 
 monastery, where he lodged with the monks and took 
 care of their garden. When the plants were well 
 grown, Hong Yang called them mandarins, and ap- 
 pointed for them lictors and equipage. After that, 
 the monks frequently heard such din of arms, feet, 
 and voices as is incident to the progress of officials.
 
 254 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 They inquired vainly concerning the cause, until 
 Hong Yang confessed that he was to be an emperor, 
 and had assigned rank and duties to the vegetables 
 under his care. The monks sent the uncanny lad 
 away, and after many adventures he came to the 
 throne. When he was old he questioned his heir, 
 saying, " Which choose you, to feed your subjects, 
 or to be fed by your subjects?" His heir replied, 
 "I will be fed by my subjects, as becomes a ruler." 
 Foreseeing a harmful selfishness in his successor, 
 Hong Yang thereupon pronounced a curse which 
 condemned this heir and all his posterity to go 
 forth and beg food during a certain portion of the 
 life of each. Those who call themselves the de- 
 scendants of Hong Yang still wander through the 
 empire as mendicants. It is asserted that if they 
 do not, for at least three years continuously, roam 
 as beggars, a pestilence breaks out among them, and 
 they are thus ever forced to obey the angry mandate 
 of their ancestor. They dress elegantly, and accept
 
 CHINESE TAUISTS AND THEIR MAGIC AETS. 255 
 
 only what is respectfully handed to them on a clean 
 salver. Some of them are jugglers, some are venders 
 of medicines, and some are magicians. They are 
 credited with power to stop the circulation of any 
 person's blood by pointing a finger at him; with 
 working spells under which one slowly pines away 
 and dies ; and with possessing the art of making 
 themselves invisible. When they are known to be 
 in the neighbourhood, the people keep their doors 
 shut and conceal themselves. 
 
 Whatever the name applied to these various classes 
 of persons who support themselves by the practice 
 of magic, they are all Tauists, and generally trace 
 their art back to the Dragon Tiger Mountain, in 
 whose secret recesses the Tauist patriarch carries on 
 psychic research and instructs his followers in mys- 
 ticism. 
 
 Legerdemain, ventriloquism, and hypnotism, directed 
 by the lowest passions and exercised upon the ignorant, 
 doubtless accomplish all that is set forth by un-
 
 256 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 scientific spectators and wonder-loving narrators. Wit- 
 nesses intentionally veracious are often the subjects 
 of hallucination. In the acquisition of truth, which 
 is nothing other than complete conformity to fact, 
 no evidence should be admitted save that of ob- 
 servers duly qualified. Since correct methods of 
 investigation have never been applied to the subject, 
 there is no sound reason for believing that any force 
 unknown to science manifests its potency in Chinese 
 Tauism.
 
 CHINESE PIETY: FILIAL, FRATERNAL, 
 AND FRIENDLY. 
 
 HEATHENISM consists largely in false standards of 
 duty. In China the amount of literature deemed 
 necessary for the establishment of correct notions of 
 piety is in direct ratio to the unnaturalness of the 
 ideas promulgated. On parental duty, whose ful- 
 filment is the foundation of all well-being, little is 
 written or said; while volumes are required to set 
 forth the observances due to a mother-in-law, living 
 or dead. 
 
 Confucius puts all human obligations under five 
 heads, and tersely expounds those between sovereign 
 and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, 
 brother and brother, friend and friend. While virtue 
 is reckoned "its own reward," there is a general 
 
 257
 
 258 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 belief in an occult power that is on the side of right- 
 eousness, and all accept the common saying, "Good 
 comes to the good." Many stories are told of 
 special providences favouring the well-doer, and the 
 following is given as an illustration. A man went 
 to the Departmental City to collect debts. He had 
 collected one hundred and fifty silver dollars, which 
 were in three parcels of fifty each, and he sat down 
 to rest, and look at a passing procession. He laid 
 the parcels between his feet and ate some sugar- 
 cane, the refuse of which gradually formed a pile 
 that covered the dollars. After a while he got up 
 and went away, forgetfully leaving the dollars under 
 his seat. An old man presently came and sat down 
 in the same place, soon felt something hard under 
 his heels, discovered the parcels of dollars, and 
 knowing that the loser must return in search of 
 them, remained on guard. The loser soon came 
 back and asked the old man if he had seen the 
 money, and on describing it with sufficient accuracy
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 259 
 
 to prove that it was his, the old man gave it to 
 him, and he gratefully invited his benefactor to 
 visit him at his home in Am Po. Some months 
 later the old man called at his house, but he was 
 absent. He returned a few minutes after the caller 
 had left, and on hearing who had been there, hur- 
 ried off and overtook his guest just as the latter 
 was embarking on a boat to go to the Departmental 
 City. The young man urged, and finally persuaded, 
 the old man to go home with him and spend the 
 night in his house. That night the boat on which 
 the old man would have embarked was wrecked in 
 a typhoon, and all on board perished. This is 
 thought to show that the saving of the old man's 
 life was a reward, arranged by Heaven, on account of 
 his correct behaviour concerning the dollars. 
 
 According to the Chinese standard, no duty stands 
 before that of worshipping one's departed progenitors. 
 Deceased parents and other ancestors are worshipped 
 about thirteen times a year; that is, on their birth-
 
 260 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 days, on the anniversary of the day of decease, on New 
 Year's Day, on the fifteenth day of second month, at 
 the vernal equinox, on the fifth day of fifth month, on 
 the fifteenth day of seventh month and of eighth month, 
 at the autumnal equinox, on the last day of the year, 
 and at the visitation of the tombs. Whenever one 
 parent is specially worshipped, as on the birthday or 
 death-day of either, the other parent is also worshipped. 
 Ancestors are worshipped by offerings of fish, fowl, 
 pork, cakes, tea, wine, rice, spirit-money, and incense. 
 The very poor use small quantities, the rich great 
 stores, of food-stuffs ; but all must offer the full 
 number of dishes. Parents are worshipped in their 
 own house so long as it is occupied by their male 
 descendants. After the sons or grandsons establish 
 separate families, they take turns in making offer- 
 ings, either in the main room of the ancestral home, 
 or in the ancestral temple where the tablets of 
 ancestors are kept. When any son or grandson 
 dies, one of his children makes the usual offerings
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 261 
 
 in his stead. All require each to do his part in 
 the providing of offerings, but none obliges another 
 to bow down and worship. The tribes, of which 
 each son of the deceased is a chief, hold themselves 
 distinct, and worship as long as they exist, or until 
 the ancestor is forgotten. Thirty generations are 
 said to worship each departed parent. If the ancestor 
 was rich and powerful, he is worshipped, as is Con- 
 fucius, for many more than thirty generations. 
 
 Some worshippers eat their own offerings, some 
 distribute them among the members of the tribe, 
 according to agreement in each case, and according 
 to the number of fields inherited. In the formal 
 annual visitation of the tombs, either in third month, 
 tenth month, or eleventh month, the provisions are 
 weighed, cut up, and then distributed equally to 
 groups having an equal number at each spread. 
 They sit upon the grass, and partake of the food, 
 which has all been cooked before being offered at 
 the graves. What is left after the feast is carried
 
 262 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 home. There are sometimes hundreds of persons 
 who meet in one company to worship at a grave, 
 though the women do not generally join in this 
 particular annual festival. 
 
 Some men set apart a portion, perhaps a tenth 
 part, of the land owned by them, for supplying the 
 expenses of worshipping them after their death. 
 This portion is, after the death of its owner, held 
 as common property by his heirs. The remainder is 
 equally divided among his sons. The eldest son 
 and his descendants generally have the care of the land 
 held as common property by the tribe ; but if the 
 eldest is foolish or lazy, some other branch of the 
 family takes charge of it. Many feuds arise out of 
 a desire to control the Common of the clan. If all 
 agree thereupon, the Common may be sold to one 
 of the tribe, who is ever after to make all the offer- 
 ings at the grave ; but generally the Common is 
 cultivated, and the offerings provided for one year 
 by each of the tribes in turn.
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 263 
 
 Mencius says, " The good man is he who does not 
 lose his child's heart." All Chinese teaching exalts 
 above other virtues that of filial devotion, and the 
 emperor often commands the erection of monuments 
 to the memory of faithful daughters-in-law. To do 
 well is to honour one's parents. The government, 
 recognizing the influence of forebears, ennobles the 
 father and mother of every man who by personal 
 merit attains rank. Titles are extended backward to 
 the ancestors who produced the hero, not forward to 
 the posterity who may be his unworthy issue. 
 
 Near a road that I often travelled was a tomb 
 raised above ground, and its peculiarity was explained 
 by a warning legend. Long ago a poor young man, 
 by diligent study, took the highest literary degree, 
 became a mandarin, and filled an office in a distant 
 province. After several years' absence he returned 
 to his native town, and as he passed along the road in 
 his grand sedan-chair, he was accosted by his mother, 
 who had become a beggar. She called him by name,
 
 264 A CORNER OP CATHAY. 
 
 but he refused to recognize or help her. Finding all 
 her appeals to him vain, she knelt upon the ground, 
 and cursed him, saying, " Tolerate him not, O ye 
 Heavens, and support him not, O ye Earth ! " A few 
 days later he died, and when his coffin was carried to 
 the hills for burial, so soon as it was put into the 
 ground, the thunder roared, the lightning flashed, and 
 the earth cast him forth from his grave. A second 
 and a third time was his body interred, with the same 
 sequence. Then a sepulchre was reared for him 
 above ground, and the coffin therein enclosed. This 
 tomb remained intact, and made known to posterity 
 the sin which the heavens would not tolerate, nor 
 the earth hide. 
 
 The first duty of every married woman is believed 
 to be that of taking care of her husband's mother, 
 and many bright examples of self-sacrifice are kept 
 before the feminine mind in illustrative folk-stories. 
 A popular book tells of one poverty-stricken woman 
 who gave the natural food of her babe to its grandam ;
 
 AN HONORARY PORTAL
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 265 
 
 and of another who sold herself as a slave that she 
 might get the means of buying a coffin for her dead 
 mother-in-law. 
 
 On the contrary, one who fails in devotion to the 
 parents of her husband is sure to come to a bad end, 
 as in the following instructive instance. 
 
 An unfilial son had a wife who hated his old 
 mother. He was an only child, and had been the 
 idol of his mother's heart, the object of her constant 
 care. In her old age she was wholly dependent upon 
 him; and, as she had become bedridden, she needed 
 much attention from his wife. The wife was selfish 
 and hard-hearted, but her husband was fond of her; 
 and when she declared that she would no longer 
 endure his mother's presence in the house, but would 
 leave him and marry some other man, he told her 
 he would carry his mother away, and cast her into a 
 pit. So he deceitfully took his aged parent on his 
 back, telling her it was long since she had been out 
 to take the country air, and that she would be the
 
 266 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 better for a little change of scene. They started 
 toward the woods, and, as they went, the old woman 
 told her son that he had gladdened her heart ten 
 times. The first was when he was born, and when, 
 after much sorrow, she knew that she had a living 
 boy; the second was when she first saw him smile, 
 and she knew that he was comfortable in her arms ; 
 the third was when he first held a thing in his hand, 
 and she knew, by his grasp upon it, that he was 
 strong; the fourth was when he began to walk, and 
 she knew that he would learn to take care of himself 
 and to help her; the fifth was when he first went 
 off with other boys to gather fuel, and she thought 
 that, having him, she could keep the house, and make 
 a home ; the sixth was when she first gave him some 
 money, and he started off without her to buy their 
 food in the market; the seventh was when she could 
 afford to let him go to school, and he came back at 
 nightfall, and told her what the teacher had taught 
 him ; the eighth was when he put on the garb of an
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 267 
 
 adult, and she knew that she had a man to depend 
 on at last; the ninth was when she got a wife for 
 him, had paid all the wedding expenses, and made 
 him able to establish a household of his own ; the 
 tenth was when he just now took her on his back, 
 to carry her out to get sight of the sky and the fields, 
 that she might be refreshed, and live the longer. 
 As she talked thus, her son's heart was softened, and 
 he could not cast away the mother who had loved 
 him so well. He therefore turned about and went 
 homeward, but he did not dare take the old woman 
 back to the house in which his wife was ; and so he 
 put her down in a shed, where ashes were heaped, 
 and straw was stored. He made a bed for her upon 
 and behind some straw, and told her he would bring 
 her food at meal-time. When he went into the house, 
 his wife asked him what he had done with the old 
 woman, and he said he had thrown her into the pit. 
 The wife was satisfied, and became very pleasant 
 toward her husband. The hours passed, the meal-
 
 268 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 times came and went, and the man could not make 
 up his mind to take food to the shed, through fear 
 that his wife would thus discover that his mother 
 was there. The old woman got hungry, and at last 
 crawled out from behind the straw toward the door, 
 to see if her son was not coming to bring food to 
 her. Just at that moment the wife came to empty 
 a pan of ashes in the shed, and as she opened the 
 door she saw the old woman, with dishevelled hair, 
 pallid face, and wild eyes, staring out at her. Stricken 
 with terror at the sight of what she believed to be 
 the ghost of her mother-in-law, she fell backwards, 
 struck her head on a stone, and instantly died. The 
 son afterward brought his old mother back into his 
 house, and took good care of her. 
 
 Chinese law and custom permit a man to divorce 
 a wife who is unkind to his mother. The mother-in- 
 law is often exacting, and, in such case, the husband 
 is apt to chide his wife in public, out of conventional 
 filial respect, and to comfort her in private, out of
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 269 
 
 sincere affection. A man often finds it difficult to 
 adjust the differences between his mother and his 
 wife, and but few are so careful in management as 
 was the husband in the following actual case. 
 
 A man who had a mother and a wife dependent 
 upon him for support, went to foreign parts to seek 
 his fortune. He earned money, and sent it home ; 
 and there was enough of it to keep the two women 
 in comfort. After some years he returned, and his 
 aged mother privately told him that she had, during 
 his absence, suffered from lack of food, and that his 
 wife had been harsh and cruel toward her all the 
 time that he had been gone. The wife also com- 
 plained secretly to him, and said that his mother had, 
 in growing old, grown jealous and peevish beyond 
 endurance, and accused her of constant oppression. 
 The husband did not know which woman to believe ; 
 but he was a filial son, and a kind husband, and he 
 wished to act justly toward both his mother and his 
 wife. After hearing again and again the complaints
 
 270 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 of each against the other, and finding himself unable 
 to discover which was in the wrong, he decided to 
 bring out the truth by a practical test. His busi- 
 ness called him away from home again for some 
 months, and, before going, he told his wife that he 
 would ask her to take care of his mother for this 
 one period only. He did not wish her to be harried 
 and maligned by his mother, who was so dependent 
 and so troublesome, and, when he next time returned, 
 he would quietly dispose of the old creature. There 
 were ways of silently ridding one's self of expensive 
 and worrisome aged persons ; and it would be easier 
 to accomplish the thing without being suspected of 
 it, if the old woman was well-fed, handsomely clothed, 
 and kindly treated for some months beforehand. His 
 wife at once replied that she would see that his 
 mother was well cared for until his return. 
 
 Then he had a private conference with his mother, 
 and told her that since his wife was so unloving 
 toward her, he would on his next return home dispose
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 271 
 
 of her in marriage to some other man, and get for 
 himself a wife who would correctly perform the 
 duties of a daughter-in-law. He asked his mother 
 to be patient and pleasant toward his wife during his 
 absence, and to find no fault with her whatever she 
 might do or neglect to do, because in marrying her 
 off and in seeking a new helpmeet for himself, it 
 would be better that she should have no just ground 
 of complaint against his mother. The old woman 
 agreed to this, and the man went abroad. 
 
 When he came back, some months later, he asked 
 his wife how his mother had treated her during his 
 absence. The wife iterated all her former statements 
 against the mother, and expressed her wish that he 
 would immediately carry out his intention of ending 
 the old woman's existence. He then sought his 
 mother, and said that now he had returned he was 
 ready to act on the plan lie had formed before going 
 away, and to marry off her unfilial daughter-in-law. 
 The old woman begged him not to do any such
 
 272 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 thing, declaring that his wife had repented; had 
 brought pork, fish, and well-cooked rice for her meals, 
 and had given her no reason for fault-finding during 
 all the time he had been gone. 
 
 The man went back to his wife's apartment, and 
 beat her so soundly that the neighbours came in to 
 see what was the matter. When they saw what was 
 going on, they said : " Formerly, when you were away, 
 your wife starved your mother, and was not reproved 
 by you when you came back. Lately, she has taken 
 good care of your mother while you were gone, and 
 now you maul her. What does it mean?" The man 
 explained his ruse to his assembled neighbours and 
 relatives, and they all approved his judgment. His 
 wife sincerely repented and honestly reformed. 
 
 Many romances and dramas owe their interest to 
 the national ideas of filial duty, and are dependent 
 thereupon for their chief situations. A popular play 
 has, for example, the following plot: A man has a 
 second wife, who maltreats his little son and daugh-
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 273 
 
 ter. The wife has a paramour, who daily comes to 
 see her in her husband's absence, and in order to 
 have the children out of the way, she sends them 
 to gather sticks. When the husband returns, he sees 
 the children coming home with heavy loads of fuel. 
 He chides his wife for abusing his children, and the 
 wife therefore hates the children the more. She 
 cooks a dish of pork, poisons it, and leaves it on a 
 table where the children will see it when they return 
 from fuel-hunting. The husband is absent, and the 
 wife and paramour are in another room when the 
 children come in weary and hungry, and see the pork. 
 They gaze at it, but do not touch it, for fear of their 
 step-mother's anger, and they go away safely. The 
 step-mother's little brother then arrives, pilfers and 
 eats the pork, and immediately falls in fatal convul- 
 sions. The husband just then returns, and the wife 
 and paramour accuse the husband of murdering the 
 little brother. The husband is arrested and impris- 
 oned. His children return, hear of his being in
 
 274 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 prison, take all the cash they possess, and go to the 
 jailer, hoping to get access to their father. The 
 jailer takes their cash, but opens only an empty cell 
 for them to look into, and then tells them they 
 cannot see their father for any sum less than ten 
 ounces of silver. The girl begs her brother to sell 
 her, and use the money for helping their father; but 
 this the boy refuses to do. The girl then sells her- 
 self, as a slave, to an old woman, who proves to be 
 wicked, and in whose power she remains. 
 
 The brother, alone and helpless, goes off to a 
 distant province, where he grows up strong and 
 brave. A prince, travelling in that province, is at- 
 tacked by robbers. The young man saves the life 
 of the prince by single-handed prowess, is rewarded 
 by a promise of the hand of the prince's daughter, 
 and is invited to accompany the prince to his own 
 province. He there receives appointment by the 
 emperor to a high office, marries the princess, and 
 takes her in a boat toward his native village, where
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 275 
 
 he intends to effect his father's release. While in 
 his boat, on a river, he picks up a drowning maiden, 
 who has jumped from a window into the water to 
 avoid the loss of her honour. The girl is taken 
 to the princess's barge, restored to her senses, clothed 
 comfortably, and asked to tell her story. The hus- 
 band overhears the narration, recognizes his own 
 sister, goes in and declares his- relationship, arid con- 
 vinces the girl of its truth by recalling events in 
 their childhood. They all proceed together to the 
 native village ; the old father is released and made 
 happy; the magistrate who put him in prison is 
 beheaded; the bad step-mother is quartered; and the 
 filial children rejoice. 
 
 Next to filial piety lies fraternal unity. One of 
 the greatest of sins is reckoned that of setting 
 brothers at variance, while the virtuous woman is 
 she who preserves harmony between her husband 
 and his kin. Much praise is given to a wife who 
 plots wisely for her young brother-in-law.
 
 276 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 There was a man who had a wife and a younger 
 brother, and the three lived in one house. The 
 elder brother was often unjust and discourteous 
 toward the younger, and, as the wife at such times 
 took the part of the brother, she incurred her hus- 
 band's displeasure, and led a troubled life. The 
 behaviour of the husband toward his brother was 
 emphasized by the contrast between it and his treat- 
 ment of a friend, who came constantly to his house, 
 received his fullest confidence, ate his best viands, 
 and had his frequent praise. The wife told her hus- 
 band that his brother was truly a more worthy man 
 than was his friend, and better deserving of his 
 esteem and his dainties ; but this distrust of his friend 
 brought blows upon the wife, and finally caused the 
 expulsion of the brother from the house. The young 
 man went away, hired himself out as a miller, and 
 earned his living by hard day-work. The wife, find- 
 ing that her warnings were disregarded, and that 
 the false friend continued to have her husband's
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 277 
 
 favour, thought out a way whereby her husband 
 should discover his friend's insincerity. She ceased 
 ommending the discarded brother, and lauded the 
 intimate friend. After she had thus conciliated her 
 husband, she took a fagot, made the effigy of a mur- 
 dered man, wrapped it in matting, arid, late at 
 night, secretly laid it on the door-step of her own 
 house. When her husband opened the door next 
 morning at dawn, he saw on the step what he sup- 
 posed to be a dead body, cast there by some mis- 
 creant who desired to divert attention from himself. 
 Knowing that he would be summarily accused of 
 murder should the body be seen on his premises, 
 and that the corpse would be too heavy for him 
 alone to carry away to a burial place, he rushed to 
 his friend, told him what had happened, and besought 
 him to instantly assist him in carrying the body to 
 a certain spot where it could be secretly interred. 
 He dilated upon the danger of delay, but his friend 
 declined to incur risk on his account; said he was
 
 278 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 going to a wedding that day, and had no time to 
 spare ; and that he had duties which forbade his 
 implicating himself in such an affair. The husband, 
 being coldly dismissed by his friend, thought of his 
 brother, hastened to the mill where he slept, hur- 
 riedly told him his plight, and was instantly accom- 
 panied by his sympathizing relative, who assisted 
 him in burying the body in the spot of which the 
 elder brother had spoken to his false friend. Then 
 the two brothers returned to the house of the elder 
 one, and the husband told the wife what had oc- 
 curred. She made the younger brother sit down to 
 breakfast, and then told her husband that he ought 
 now to know which cared for him and his interests 
 the friend who saw him in such a plight and refused 
 to help him, or the brother who, at great risk, hast- 
 ened to rescue him from danger. The husband 
 acknowledged the force of her words, and retained 
 his brother in the old home. 
 
 Soon after this, the husband was accused of murder.
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 279 
 
 His false friend had bargained with a man who made 
 the charge, for the purpose of exacting blackmail, 
 which he was to divide with his informant and insti- 
 gator. The terrified husband conferred with his wife, 
 and she told him to allow himself to be taken before 
 the magistrate for judgment. If the murder were 
 proven, he would be beheaded ; but if he were falsely 
 accused, the accuser should pay him five hundred 
 ounces of silver as damages. This judgment was 
 rendered, and the accuser told where the body was 
 buried. It was dug up, and shown to be an effigy; 
 but the wise wife's part in the transaction was never 
 brought to light. The husband gave the silver to 
 his younger brother, in acknowledgment of his own 
 error; a wife was taken for him, and the whole fam- 
 ily lived thereafter in peace and prosperity. 
 
 Friendships, outside the clan and family circle, ap- 
 pear to be based, among the Chinese, not so much 
 upon personal congeniality as upon practical conven- 
 ience. Whenever any favour has been received, there
 
 280 A COKNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 is usually reasonable gratitude returned. Before any 
 consideration is begged from a stranger, presents are 
 sent, and the acceptance of them is understood as an 
 indication of willingness to oblige. When hospitality 
 has been received, every effort is made to return it 
 in kind or other kind. Many amusing stories are 
 told of the dilemmas of stingy hosts, or of the unex- 
 pected return of visits when it is the luck of both 
 purse and pot to be empty. 
 
 There were two men, one rich and stingy, the 
 other learned and poor. The rich man had, in his 
 journeyings, often lodged at the scholar's house, and 
 had been freely entertained with the best that the 
 family possessed. The scholar was one afternoon re 
 turning from a long journey, which brought him into 
 the rich man's neighbourhood ; and, as it was too late 
 for him to reach home that night, he decided to go 
 and stay till the morrow with the friend he had so 
 many times entertained. On his arrival, the host ex- 
 pressed great delight in seeing him, and in having
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 281 
 
 opportunity to reciprocate one of the many favours 
 received from him. He said that he much regretted 
 that it was too early to catch a fowl from the roost, 
 and that it was too dark to go to one of his pools to 
 catch some fish, and that he would go to his garden 
 and get some fresh vegetables to accompany the boiled 
 rice that they should have for supper. He went and 
 peered about in his large garden ; but the fully grown 
 vegetables and fruits were fit to sell, while the half- 
 grown ones could not be pulled without waste. He 
 could not bring himself to take anything more than a 
 few gourds which he ordered to be boiled, and set 
 upon the table as a relish. 
 
 Not many months after, the scholar was promoted 
 to office, and in the course of official duty he gave 
 command for the removal of a line of shops that 
 lay in the course of a projected road. The rich man 
 owned shops among those on the encumbered land, 
 and so he wrote to the officer, asking him, in memory 
 of the salt they had eaten together, to lay the road
 
 282 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 in another place. The officer replied that, as he had 
 partaken of his hospitality, he would on that account 
 change the route of the new road from the eastern 
 to the western side of the town, and he added, 
 
 At dusk 'tis too light to catch fowls, as you wish, 
 And at dark one qaii't go to the pool to get fish, 
 But a street can be moved just for gratitude's sake : 
 When one sups upon gourds, one remembers the dish. 
 
 The difficulty which may arise out of the accept- 
 ance of hospitality and the strict necessity of its 
 return, is hinted at broadly in the tale of two friends 
 of unequal worldly conditions. Mr. Yang had a 
 friend, Mr. Chong, who used to come frequently to 
 visit him and get the best that the house afforded. 
 After having fed Mr. Chong unnumbered times, and 
 having talked with him uncounted hours with great 
 zest, Mr. Yang went unexpectedly one day to visit 
 his friend in his own house and arrived in the fore- 
 noon. Mr. Chong received his guest with great 
 apparent pleasure; put aside all business and sat
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 283 
 
 down to talk. As the guest had made a long journey, 
 he was tired and hungry, and was somewhat sur- 
 prised that Mr. Chong offered him no refreshment; 
 but he thought that the unexpected pleasure of see- 
 ing him had made his host oblivious of his bodily 
 needs, and he therefore excused the absence of mate- 
 rial hospitality in the steady flow of conversation 
 and inquiry. Noon came and went without invita- 
 tion to partake of food, and the afternoon wore on 
 apace. At last, being too exhausted for further 
 converse, the guest said that he must go home. His 
 host thereupon exclaimed at his own thoughtlessness, 
 in having prepared no refreshment for his visitor, 
 having been so engrossed in the satisfaction of the 
 spirit as to have utterly forgotten the requirements 
 of the flesh. He then begged his guest to stay till 
 a suitable meal should be made ready, and he 
 hastened to the kitchen and, in a voice quite audible 
 to the guest in the parlour, he told his wife to heat 
 the stove while he should go out and buy meats of
 
 284 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 various sorts for a little banquet. The wife heated 
 the stove, and the host presently entered the kitchen, 
 put on a kettle, and when it was very hot threw 
 cold water into it, making much noise with dipper 
 and steam. The guest thought a great dinner was 
 being cooked, and as he was very hungry, he exer- 
 cised a sincere courtesy when he politely called out 
 to his host, urging him to prepare but few viands, 
 and to give him a simple dish of boiled rice. The 
 host replied, saying that he should be unhappy if 
 he did not express his pleasure in his friend's com- 
 pany by setting forth the full complement of meats 
 and vegetables. The clatter in the kitchen continued, 
 until the wife, who had been kept fanning the fire 
 in the hot stove while her husband fried spoonfuls 
 of water, finally fell over in a dead faint. The 
 husband covered the kettles, and then begged the 
 guest to come to the kitchen and suggest a remedy 
 for the heat-stricken housewife, who lay prone on 
 the floor. The guest ran to give aid, but one glance
 
 CHINESE PIETY. 285 
 
 around the kitchen showed him the absence of the 
 usual debris accompanying the preparation of a meal. 
 On pretence of looking for some hot broth for the 
 woman, he hastily lifted the covers from the pots ; 
 and the host seeing further effort useless, sank sense- 
 less beside his wife, while the guest embraced the 
 opportunity to depart without leave-taking. 
 
 Filial piety, among the Chinese, is most fully mani- 
 fested after the parents are dead; fraternal feeling 
 is limited to kith and clan, and seldom extends to 
 an interest in the human family ; and friendship per- 
 missibly exists solely among those of the same sex, 
 and for practical objects. They have fixed rules for 
 behaviour in all relationships toward those included 
 in their scheme of living, but their sages gave them 
 no instruction concerning foreigners, and all aliens 
 are looked upon as natural enemies against whom 
 their first impulse is toward distrust, dislike, and ex- 
 ploitation. But that they are a people of the highest 
 capabilities is well known to the writer through her
 
 286 A CORNER OF CATHAY. 
 
 personal acquaintance with isolated instances of un- 
 selfish tenderness, of lofty self-respect, of true spirit- 
 ual aspiration, and of wide philanthropy, and through 
 her constant observation among them of heroic en- 
 durance, of marvellous patience, and of sublime ear- 
 nestness. 
 
 THE END.
 
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