Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland (miss read books txt) 📕

Prince Su’s fifth sister was fortunate in being married to a Mongol prince who was not a nomad. He had established a sort of village capital of his possessions, the chief feature of which was his own palace. Here he lives during the summers and part of the winters; though once in three years he is compelled to spend at least three months in his palace in Peking when he comes to do homage to the Emperor.

During one of these visits to Peking the Princess sent for me to come to her palace. I naturally supposed she was ill, and so took with me my medical outfit, but her first greeting was:

“I am not ill, nor is any member of my family, but I wanted to see you to have a talk with you about foreign countries.”

She had prepared elaborate refreshments, and while we sat eating, she directed the conversation towards mines and mining, and then said:

“My husband, the Prince, is very much interested in this subject, and believes that there are rich stores of ore on his principality in Mongolia.”

“Indeed, that is very interesting,” I answered.

“You know, of course, it is a rule,” she went on to say, “that no prince of the realm is allowed to go more than a few miles from the capital without special permission from the throne.”

“No, I was not aware of that fact.”

She then went on to say that her husband was anxious to attend the St. Louis Exposition, and study this subject in America, but so long as these hindrances remained it was impossible for him to do so. She then said:

“I am very much interested in the educational system of your honourable country, and especially in your method of conducting girls’ schools.”

“Would you not like to come and visit our girls’ high school?” I asked.

“I should be delighted,” she replied.

This she did, and before leaving the capital she sent for a Japanese lady teacher whom she took with her to her Mongolian home, where she established a school for Mongolian girls.

In this school she had a regular system of rules, which did not tally with the undisciplined methods of the Mongolians, and it was amusing to hear her tell how it was often necessary for the Prince to go about in the morning and wake up the girls in order to get them into school at nine o’clock.

The next time she came to Peking she brought with her seventeen of her brightest girls to see the sights of the city and visit some of the girls’ schools, both Christian and non-Christian. Everything was new to them and it was interesting to hear their remarks as I showed them through our home and our high school. When the Princess returned to Mongolia she took with her a cultured young Chinese lady of unusual literary attainments to teach the Chinese classics in the school. This is the only school I have known that was established by a Manchu princess, for Mongolian girls, and taught by Chinese and Japanese teachers. This young lady was the daughter of the president of the Board of Rites, head examiner for literary degrees for all China, and was himself a chuang yuan, or graduate of the highest standing. Before going, this Chinese teacher had small bound feet, but she had not been long on the plains before she unbound her feet, dressed herself in suitable clothing, and went with the Princess and the Japanese teacher for a horseback ride across the plains in the early morning, a thing which a Chinese lady, under ordinary circumstances, is never known to do. The school is still growing in size and usefulness.

Prince Su’s third sister is married to a commoner, but as is usual with these ladies who marry beneath their own rank, she retains her maiden title of Third Princess, by which she is always addressed.

“How did you obtain your education?” I once asked her.

“During my childhood,” she answered, “my mother was opposed to having her daughters learn to read, but like most wealthy families, she had old men come into the palace to read stories or recite poetry for our entertainment. I not infrequently followed the old men out, bought the books from which they read, and then bribed some of the eunuchs to teach me to read them. In this way I obtained a fair knowledge of the Chinese character.”

She is as deeply interested in the new educational movement among girls as is her sister. When this desire for Western education began, she organized a school, in which she has eighty girls or more, taken from various grades of society, whom she and some of her friends, in addition to employing teachers and providing the schoolrooms, gave a good part of their time to teaching the Chinese classics, while a Japanese lady taught them calisthenics and the rudiments of Western mathematics.

She is aggressively pro-foreign, and is ready to do anything that will contribute to the success of the new educational movement, and the freedom of the Chinese woman. On one occasion when the Chinese in Peking undertook to raise a fund for famine relief, they called a large public meeting to which men and women were alike invited, the first meeting of the kind ever held in Peking. Such a gathering could not have occurred before the Boxer rebellion. The Third Princess, having promised to help provide the programme, took a number of her girls, and on a large rostrum, had them go through their calisthenic exercises for the entertainment of the audience. On another occasion she took all her girls to a private box at a Chinese circus, where men and women acrobats and horseback riders performed in a ring not unlike that of our own circus riders. In this circus small-footed women rode horseback as well as the women in our own circus, and one woman with bound feet lay down on her back, balanced a cart-wheel, weighing at least a hundred pounds, on her feet, whirling it rapidly all the time, and then after it stopped she continued to hold it while two women and a child climbed on top. The Princess was determined to allow her girls to have all the advantages the city afforded.

At the school of this Third Princess I once attended a unique memorial service. A lady of Hang Chou, finding it impossible to secure sufficient money by ordinary methods for the support of a school that she had established, cut a deep gash in her arm and then sat in the temple court during the day of the fair, with a board beside her on which was inscribed the explanation of her unusual conduct. This brought her in some three hundred ounces of silver with which she provided for her school the first year. When it was exhausted and she could get no more, she wrote letters to the officials of her province, in which she asked for subscriptions and urged the importance of female education, to which she said she was willing to give her life. To her appeal the officials paid no heed, and she finally wrote other letters renewing her request for help to establish the school, after which she committed suicide. The letters were sent, and later published in the local and general newspapers. Memorial services were held in various parts of the empire at all of which funds were gathered not only for her school but for establishing other schools throughout the provinces.

The school of the Third Princess at which this service was held was profusely decorated. Chinese flags floated over the gates and doorways. Beautifully written scrolls, telling the reason for the service and lauding the virtues of the lady, covered the walls of the schoolroom. At the second entrance there was a table at which sat a scribe who took our name and address and gave us a copy of the “order of exercises.” Here we were met by the Third Princess, who conducted us into the main hall. Opposite the doorway was hung a portrait of the lady, wreathed in artificial flowers, and painted by a Chinese artist. A table stood before it on which was a plate of fragrant quinces, candles, and burning incense, giving it the appearance of a shrine. Pots of flowers were arranged about the room, which was unusually clean and beautiful. The Chinese guests bowed three times before the picture on entering the room, which I thought a very pretty ceremony.

The girls of this school, to the number of about sixty, appeared in blue uniform, courtesying to the guests. Sixteen other girls’ schools of Peking were represented either by teachers or pupils or both. One of the boys’ schools came en masse, dressed in military uniform, led by a band, and a drillmaster with a sword dangling at his side. Addresses were made by both ladies and gentlemen, chief among whom were the Third Princess and the editress of the Woman’s Daily Newspaper, the only woman’s daily at that time in the world, who urged the importance of the establishment and endowment of schools for the education of girls throughout the empire.

The Chinese Ladies of Rank

Though your husband may be wealthy, You should never be profuse; There should always be a limit To the things you eat and use. If your husband should be needy, You should gladly share the same, And be diligent and thrifty, And no other people blame. —“The Primer for Girls,” Translated by I. T. H.

THE CHINESE LADIES OF RANK[2]

[2] Taken from Mrs. Headland’s note-book.

The Manchu lady’s ideal of beauty is dignity, and to this both her deportment and her costume contribute in a well-nigh equal degree. Her hair, put up on silver or jade jewelled hairpins, decorated with many flowers, is very heavy, and easily tilted to one side or the other if not carried with the utmost sedateness. Her long garments, reaching from her shoulders to the floor, give to her tall figure an added height, and the central elevation of from four to six inches to the soles of her daintily embroidered slippers, compel her to stand erect and walk slowly and majestically. She laughs but little, seldom jests, but preserves a serious air in whatever she does.

The Chinese lady, on the contrary, aspires to be petite, winsome, affable and helpless. She laughs much, enjoys a joke, and is always good-natured and chatty.

One of their poets thus describes a noted beauty: “At one moment with tears her bright eyes would be swimming, The next with mischief and fun they’d be brimming. Thousands of sonnets were written in praise of them, Li Po wrote a song for each separate phase of them. “Bashfully, swimmingly, pleadingly, scoffingly, Temptingly, languidly, lovingly, laughingly, Witchingly, roguishly, playfully, naughtily, Willfully, waywardly, meltingly, haughtily, Gleamed the eyes of Yang Kuei Fei.

“Her ruby lips and peach-bloom cheeks,

Would match the rose in hue, If one were kissed the other speaks, With blushes, kiss me too.”

She combs her hair in a neat coil on the back of her head, uses few flowers, but instead prefers profuse decorations of pearls. Her upper garment extends but little below her knees, and her lower garment is an accordion-plaited skirt, from beneath which the pointed toes of her small bound feet appear as she walks or sways on her “golden lilies,” as if she were a flower blown by the wind, to which the Chinese love to compare her. Her waist is a