)SAAC mVLQl? K£ADlYircD Hut IDR DF CH1XE5E HOfHER £IIP5E iRnyj»lE5| QJorttBU InioEraity Slibrarij Jltt)ara, New ^atk CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1918 Cornell University Library DS 725.H43 3 1924 023 253 994 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL CHINEf^E BROWNIES AT PLAY. The Chinese Boy and Girl BY ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND OF PEKING UNIVERSITY Author of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes Fleming H. Revell Company NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO I V ; V Copyright, 1901 by Fleming H. Revell Company (September) THE CAXTON PRESS NEW YORK. PREFACE No thorough study of Chinese child life can be made until the v\'all of Chinese exclusiveness is biol^" -^ .*' f^ Vv ?;•. "t/-' .ijv V, PLAYING HORSE. CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE Before going to China, I could not but wonder, when I saw a Chinese or Japanese doll, why it was they made such unnatural looking things for babies to play with. On reach- ing the Orient the whole matter was explained by my first sight of a baby. The doll looks like the child! Nothing in China is more common than babies. Nothing more helpless. Nothing more troublesome. Nothing more attractive. Nothing more interesting. A Chinese baby is a round-faced little helpless human an- imal, whose eyes look like two black marbles over which the skin had been stretched, and a slit made on the bias. His nose is a little kopje in the centre of his face, above a yawning chasm which requires constant filling to insure the preservation of law and order. On his shaved head are left 33 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL small tufts of hair in various localities, which give him the appearance of the plain about Peking, on which the traveler sees, here and there, a small clump of trees around a country village, a home, or a cemetery; the remainder of the country being bare. These tufts are usually on the "soft spot," in the back of his neck, over his ears, or in a braid or a ring on the side of his head. The amount of joy brought to a home by the birth of a child de- pends upon several im- portant considerations, chief among which are its sex, the number and sex of those already in the family, and the financial condition of the home. In general the Chinese prefer a preponderance of boys, but in case the family are in good cir- cumstances and already have several boys, they are as anxious for a girl as parents in any other country. 34 A 1 ^ -:;M mmm^^^^ffSftM ll^iem^mm "^^wKrrw^t wKS^^^ ' *^<^^^^^SH ^^^^B^^B ■HpPpt^^y ^^■B H^r Jjf-* - (^14 ^^^^^K ^bI ^^f^^M r^^^H ^H[^^^^?^*''"'*^^^^^^^s ^^^^^K BKL^ IgSXk. timiO iSl^^ll^ B^^ylM^^MKx^ EgKi /^^^"*s[' 'BhpV^^^ ^H^ -y' \~^ "^Ir imh 1 ^ ^ W >^t^ ^^^^^^^^^MSS^m^a B ,4, Xf %^^^^^^i ^M^^^H P "^ ^ jait.-«J^ ^M^'^^ * '.>«^ ^W^^PI^H CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE The reason for this is deeper than the mere fact of sex. It is imbedded in the social hfe and customs of the people. A girl remains at home until she is sixteen or seventeen, during which time she is little more than an expense. She is then taken to her husband's home and her own family have no further control over her life or conduct. She loses her identity with her own family, and becomes part of that of her husband. This through many years and centuries has generated in the popular mind a feeling that it is "bad business raising girls for other people," and there are not a few parents who would prefer to bring up the girl betrothed to their son, rather than bring up their own daughter. "Selfishness! " some people exclaim when they read such things about the Chinese. Yes, it is selfishness; but life in China is not like ours — a struggle for luxuries — but a struggle, not for bread and rice as many suppose, but for cornmeal and cabbage, or something else not more palata- ble. This is the life to which most Chinese children are born, and parents can scarcely be blamed for preferring boys whose hands may help provide for their mouths, to girls who are only an expense. The presumption is that a Chinese child is born with the same general disposition as children in other countries. This may perhaps be the case; but either from the treat- ment it receives from parents or nurses, or because of the disposition it inherits, its nature soon becomes changed, and it develops certain characteristics peculiar to the Chinese child. It becomes fao ch'i. That almost means 35 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL mischievous; it almost means troublesome— a little tartar— but it means exactly t'ao ch'i. In this respect almost every Chinese child is a little tyrant. Father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are all made to do his bidding. In case any of them seems to be recal- citrant, the little dear lies down on his baby back on the dusty ground and kicks and screams until the refractory parent or nurse has repented and succumbed, when he gets up and good-naturedly goes on with his play and allows them to go about their business. The child is fao ch'i. This disposition is general and not confined to any one rank or grade in society, if we may credit the stories that come from the palace regarding the present young Emperor Kuang Hsu. When a boy he very much preferred foreign to Chinese toys, and so the eunuchs stocked the palace nursery with all the most wonderful toys the ingenuity and mechanical skill of Europe had produced. As he grew older the toys became more complicated, being in the form of gramophones, graphophones, telephones, phonographs, electric lights, electric cars, cuckoo clocks, Swiss watches and indeed all the great inventions of modern times. The boy was t'ao ch'i, and the eunuchs say that if he were thwarted in any of his undertakings, or denied anything he very much desired, he would dash a Swiss watch, or any- thing else he might have in his hand, to the floor, breaking it into atoms ; and as there was no chance of using the rod there was no way but to spoil the child. it is amusing to listen to the women in a Chinese home when a baby comes. If the child is a boy the parents are 36 CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE congratulated on every hand because of the "great happi- ness " that has come to their home. If it is a girl, and there are more girls than boys in the family, the old nurse goes about as if she had stolen it from somewhere, and when she is congratulated, if congratulated she happens to be, she says with a sigh and a funereal face, "Only a 'small hap- piness' — but that isn't bad." When a child is born it is considered one year old, and its years are reckoned not from its birthdays but from its New Year's days. If it has the good fortune to be born the day before New Year's day, when it is two days old it is reckoned two years old, being one year old when born and two years old on its first New Year's day. The first great event in a child's life occurs when it is one month old. It is then given its first public recep- tion. Its head is shaved amid kicking and screaming, its mother is up and around where she can receive the congratulations of her friends, its grandmother is the honored guest of the occasion, and the baby is named. 37 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL All the relatives and friends are invited and every one is expected to take dinner with the child, and, which is more important, to bring presents. If the family is poor, this day puts into the treasury of life a day of happiness and a goodly amount of filthy lucre. If the family is rich the presents are correspondingly rich, for nowhere either in Orient or Occi- dent can there be found a people more lavish and generous in their gifts than the Chinese. All the family can afford is spent upon the dinner given on this occasion, with the assurance that they will receive in presents and money more than double the expense both of the dinner and the birth of the child. If they do not "come" they are ex- pected to "send "or they "lose face." Among the middle class, the presents are of a useful nature, usually in the form of money, clothing or silver ornaments which are always worth their weight in bullion. The name given the child is called its "milk" name, and is supposed to last only until the boy enters school. Whether boy or girl it may answer a good part of its life to the place it occupies in the family whether first, second, or third. If a girl she may be com- pelled to answer to " Little Slave," and if a boy to 38 CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE "Baldhead." But the names usually given indicate the place or time of birth, the hope of the parent for the child, or exhibit the parent's love of beauty or euphony. A friend who was educated in a school situated in Filial Piety Lane and who afterwards lived near Filial Piety Gate called his first son "Two Filials." Another friend had sons whose names were "Have a Man," "Have a Mountain," "Have a Garden," "Have a Fish." In conversation with this friend about the son whose "milk" name was "Have a Man," I constantly spoke of the boy by his "school" name, the only name by which I knew him. The old man was perfectly blank — he knew not of whom I spoke, as he had not seen his son since he got his school name. Finally, as it began to dawn on him that 1 was talking of his son, he asked: 39 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL " Whom are you talking about ?" " Your son." " Oh, you mean ' Have a Man.' " This same man had a little girl called "Apple," not an ordinary apple, but the most luscious apple known to North China. 1 have as 1 write a list of names commonly applied to girls from which 1 select the following: Beautiful Au- tumn, Charming Flower, Jade Pure, Lucky Pearl, Precious Harp, Covet Spring; and the parent's way of speaking of his little girl, when not wishing to be self-depreciative, is to call her his " Thousand ounces of gold." The names given to boys are quite as humiliating or as elevating as those given to girls. He may be Number One, Two or Three, Pig, Dog or Flea, or he may be like Wu T'ing Fang a " Fragrant Palace," or like Li Hung Chang, an " Illustrious Bird " or " Learned Treatise." During the summer-time in North China the child goes almost if not completely naked. Until it is five years old, its wardrobe consists largely of a chest-protector and a pair of shoes. In the winter-time its trousers are quilted, with feet attached, its coat made in the same way, and it is any- thing but " clean and sweet." The odor is not unlike that of an up-stairs back room in a narrow alley at Five Points, in which dwell a whole family of emigrants. When the Chinese child is ill he does not have the same kind of hospital accommodations, nursing and medical skill at his command as do we in the West. His bed is brick, his pillow stuffed with bran or grass-seed, he has no sheets, his food is coarse and ill-adapted to a sick child's stomach. 40 CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE While his nurse may be latching them, and again 'the inscriptions told us, "the olones became sheep at his call." Still others represented them in search of the elixir of life, while in others they were riding on a snail. The object of thus bringing in incidents from all these Bud- diiist, Taoist, Confucian, and other sources is that by catering to all classes the book may have wide distribution, and what- ever the Confucianist may say, it must be admitted that the other religions have a strong hold upon the popular mind. The last twenty-six illustrations in Vol. I represent various incidents in the life, history and em- ployments of women. The first of these is an ancient empress " weaving at night by her palace window." Another represents a woman in her boat and we are told that, " leaving her oar she leisurely sang a song entitled, ' Plucking the Caltrops.' " Another represents a woman "wearing a pomegranate-colored dress riding a pear-blossom colored horse." A peculiar combination to say the least. The fisherman's wife is repre- sented in her boat, "making her toilet at dawn using the water as a mirror." While we are assured also that the woman sitting upon her veranda 126 BLOCK GAMES-KINDERGARTEN " finds it very difficult to thread her needle by the pale light of the moon." which fact, few, I think, would question. In one of the pictures "a beautiful maiden, in the bright moonlight, came beneath the trees." This is evidently con- trary to Chinese *,.a.^ ^ ideas of propriety, for the Classic for d\ ^^*>% girls tells us that a go out at night ex- with a servant As it was bright ever, let us hope maiden should not cept in company bearing a lantern, moonlight, how- she was excusable. This sauntering about in the court is not uncommon if we believe what the books say, for in the next picture we are told that: ^ As near the middle summer-house, The maiden sauntered by. Upon the jade pin in her hair There lit a dragon-tly. The next illustration represented the wife of the famous poet Ssu-Ma Hsiang-Ju in her hus- band's wine shop. 127 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL This poet fell in love with the widowed daughter of a wealthy mer- chant, the result of which was that the young couple eloped and were married; and as the daughter was disinherited by her irate parent, she was compelled to wait on customers in her husband's wine shop, which she did without complaint. In spite of their imprudent conduct, and for the time, its unhappy results, as soon as the poet had become so famous as to be summoned to court, the stern father relented, and, as it was a case of undoubted affection, which the Chinese readily appreciate, they have always had the sympathy of the whole Chinese people. One of the most popular women in Chinese history is Mu Lan, the Chinese Joan of Arc. Her father, a great general, being too old to take charge of his troops, and her broth- ers too young, she dressed herself in boy's clothing, enrolled herself in the army, mounted her father's trusty steed, and led his soldiers to battle, thus bringing honor to herself and renown upon her family. We have already seen how diligent some of the ancient worthies were in their study. This, however, is not uni- versal, for we are told the mother of Liu Kung-cho, in order to stimulate her son to study took pills made of bear's 128 BLOCK GAMES-KINDERGARTEN CT^ gall and bitter herbs, to show her sym- /\ys pathy with her boy and lead him to ^— — «-v^^J/\ feel that she was willing to endure Si I bitterness as well as he. \ \L_ II V The last of these examples of noble ^*^ I i~~^ I women is that of the wife of Liang Hung, a poor philosopher of some two thousand years ago. An effort was made to engage him to Meng Kuang, the daughter of a rich family, whose lack of beauty was more than balanced by her remarkable intelligence. The old philosopher feared that family pride might cause domestic infelicity. The girl on her part stead- fastly refused to marry any one else, declaring that unless she married Liang Hung, she would not marry at all. This unexpected constancy touched the old man's heart and he married her. She dressed in the most common clothing, always pre- pared his food with her own hand, and to show her affection and re- spect never presented him with the rice-bowl without raising it to the level of her eyebrows, as in the illustration. It may be interesting to see some of the ornaments and utensils the child made with his blocks. 1 shall therefore add three, a pair of scissors, a teapot, and a seal with a turtle handle. Such is in general the character of the book the official's little boy had with him. 1 afterwards secured seveial copies for myself and learned to make all the pictures first shown 129 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL me by the child, and I discovered that it is but one of several forms of what we may call kindergarten work, that it has gone through many editions, and is very widely dis- tributed. My own set contains 216 illustrations such as I have given. 130 BLIND MAN'S BUFF. -trir^ aT\1 -i''^^ )fc« y '^' CHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTS My little girl came running into my study greatly excited and exclaiming: " Papa, the monkey show, the monkey show. We want the monkey show, may we have it ? " Now if you had but one little girl, and she wanted a monkey show to come into your own court and perform for her and her little friends for half an hour, the cost of which was the modest sum of five cents, what would you do? You would do as 1 did, no doubt, go out with the little girl, call in the passing showman and allow him to perform, which would serve the triple purpose of furnishing relaxa- tion and instruction for yourself, entertainment for the children, and business for the showman. 133 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL This however proved to be not the monkey show but Punch ;ind Judy, a spe- cies of entertain- ment for chil- dren, the exact counterpart of our own entei- tainment of that name. It may be of interest to young readers to know how this show origi- nated, and I doubt not it will be a surprise to some older ones to know that it dates back to about the year looo b. c. We are told that while the Emperor Mu of the Chou dynasty was making a tour of his empire, a skillful me- chanic, Yen Shih by name, was brought into his presence, and entertained him and the women of his seraglio with a dance performed by automaton figures, which were capable not only of rhythmical movements of their limbs, but of ac- companying their movements with songs. 134 CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENTS During and at the close of the performance, the puppets cast such significant glances at the ladies as to anger the monarch, and he ordered the execution of the originator of the play. The mechanic however ripped open the puppets, and proved to his astonished majesty that they were only arti- ficial objects, and instead of being executed he was allowed to repeat his performance. This was the origin of the play in China which corresponds to Punch and Judy in Europe and America. To the question which naturally arises as to how the plav was carried to the West, I reply, it may not have been carried to Europe at all, but have originated there. From marked similarities in the two plays however, and more especially in the methods of their production, we may sup- pose that the Chinese Punch and Judy was carried to Europe in the following way: Among the many traders who visited Central Asia while it was under the government of the family of Genghis Khan, were two Venetian brothers, Maffeo and Nicolo Polo, whose wondering disposition and trading interests led them as far as the court of the Great Khan, where they remained in the most intimate relations with Kublai for some time, and were finally sent back to Italy with a request that one hundred European scholars be sent to China to instruct them in the arts of Europe. This request was never carried out, but the two returned to the Khan's court with young Marco, the son of one of them, who remained with the Mongol Emperor for seven- 135 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL teen years, during which time he had a better opportunity of observing their customs than perhaps any other foreigner since his time. His final return to Italy was in 1295, and a year or two later, he wrote and revised his book of travels. The art of printing in Europe was discovered in 1438, and the first edition of Marco Polo's travels was printed about 1550-59. Our Punch and Judy was invented by Silvio Fiorillo an Italian dramatist before the year 1600. I have found no reference to the play in Marco Polo's works, nevertheless, one cannot but think that, if not a written, at least an oral, communication of the play may have been carried to Europe by him or some other of the Italian traders or travellers. The two plays are very similar, even to the tones of the man who works the puppets. In passing the school court on one occasion 1 saw the students gathered in a crowd under the shade of the trees. A small tent was pitched, on the front of which was a little stage. A manager stood behind the screen from which position he worked a number of puppets in the form of men, women, children, horses and dragons. These were suspended by black threads as 1 afterwards discovered from small sticks or a framework which the manager manipulated behind the screen. 'When one finished its part of the per- formance, it either walked off the stage, or the stick was fastened in such a way as to leave it in a position conducive to the amusement of the crowd. These were puppet shows, and were put through entire performances or plays, the manager doing the talking as in Punch and Judy. After the performance several of the students passed 136 CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENTS /'' ! ^ipHHH i 1 ^■. ^.;^- i»w£^._2MM^^aAiMilS 1 «^ las* ^'^^ ^^^''^^-^^^^riM^HBJ^^^pK^fliPsI "^ .1 ^ ^^ Bft fl "■' around the hat, each person present giving one-fifth or one- tenth of a cent. As 1 came from school one afternoon, the children had called in from the street a showman with a number of trained mice. He had erected a little scaffolding just inside the gateway, at one side of which there was a small rope ladder, and this with the inevitable gong, and the small boxes in which the mice were kept constituted his entire outfit. In the boxes he had what seemed to be cotton from the milk-weed which furnished a nest for the mice. These he took from their little boxes one by one, stroked them tenderly, while he explained what this particular mouse would do, put each one on the rope ladder, which they as- cended, and performed the tricks expected of them. These were going through a pagoda, drawing water, creeping through a tube, wearing a criminal's collar, turning a tread- 137 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL mill, or work- ing some other equally simple tiick. At times the mice had to be directed by a small stick in the hands of the manager, but they were care- fully trained, kindly treated, and much ap- preciated by the children. Although less attractive, there is no other show which impresses itself so forcibly on the child's mind as the monkey, dog and sheep show. The dog was the first to perform. Four hoops were placed on the corners of a square, ten feet apart. The dog walked around through these hoops, first through each in order, then turning went through each twice, then through one and retracing his steps went through the one last passed through. The showman drove an iron peg in the ground on which were two blocks representing millstones. To the upper 138 CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENTS one was ;i lever by which the dog with his nose turned the top millstone as if grinding floar. He was hitched to a wheelbarrow, the handles of which were held by the monkey, who pushed while the dog pulled. The most interesting part of the performance, however, was bv the monkey. Various kinds of hats and false faces were kept in a box which he opened and secured. He stalked about with a cane in his hand, or crosswise back of his neck, turned handsprings, went through various trapeze performances, such as hanging by his legs, tail, chin, and hands, or was whirled around in the air. The leading strap of the monkey was finally tied to the belt of the sheep which was led away to some distance and let go. The monkey bounded upon its back and held fast to the wool, while the sheep ran with ail its speed to the showman, who held a basin of broom-corn seed as a bait. This was repeated as often as the children desired, which 139 THE CHINESE BOY AND GIRL ended the show. Time, — half an hour; spectators, — all who desired to witness it; price, — five cents. The showmen in China are somewhat Iii