My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard

A writer on things Chinese was asked why one found so little writing

upon the subject of the women of China. He stopped, looked puzzled

for a moment, then said, "The woman of China! One never hears about

them. I believe no one ever thinks about them, except perhaps that

they are the mothers of the Chinese men!"


Such is the usual attitude taken in regard to the woman of the flowery

Republic. She is practically unknown, she hides herself behind her

husband and her sons, yet, because of that filial piety, that almost

religious veneration in which all men of Eastern races hold their

parents, she really exerts an untold influence upon the deeds of the

men of her race.


Less is known about Chinese women than about any other women of

Oriental lands. Their home life is a sealed book to the average person

visiting China. Books about China deal mainly with the lower-class

Chinese, as it is chiefly with that class that the average visitor or

missionary comes into contact. The tourists see only the c****e

woman bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of

heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the

neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow

alleyways, patching clothing or fondling their children. They see and

hear the boat-women, the women who have the most freedom of any

in all China, as they weave their sampans in and out of the crowded

traffic on the canals. These same tourists visit the tea-houses and

see the gaily dressed "sing-song" girls, or catch a glimpse of a

gaudily painted face, as a lady is hurried along in her sedan-chair,

carried on the shoulders of her chanting bearers. But the real Chinese

woman, with her hopes, her fears, her romances, her children, and her

religion, is still undiscovered.


I hope that this book, based on letters shown me many years after

they were written, will give a faint idea of the life of a Chinese lady.

The story is told in two series of letters conceived to be written by

Kwei-li, the wife of a very high Chinese official, to her husband when

he accompanied his master, Prince Chung, on his trip around the

world.


She was the daughter of a viceroy of Chih-li, a man most advanced for

his time, who was one of the forerunners of the present educational

movement in China, a movement which has caused her youth to rise

and demand Western methods and Western enterprise in place of the

obsolete traditions and customs of their ancestors. To show his belief

in the new spirit that was breaking over his country, he educated his

daughter along with his sons. She was given as tutor Ling-Wing-pu, a

famous poet of his province, who doubtless taught her the imagery

and beauty of expression which is so truly Eastern.