education of women was still 'more definitely humanistic. The difference was in
intensiveness rather than in scope.
For, reversing Pope's dictum, the Chinese held that "too much learning was a
dangerous thing for women's virtue." In painting and in poetry they often played a
hand, for the writing of short lyrics seemed especially suitable to women's genius.
These poems were short, dainty and exquisite, not powerful. Li Ch' ingchao
(1081-1141?), the greatest poetess of China, left a handful of immortal, imperishable
verse, full of the sentiment of rainy nights and recaptured happiness. The tradition of
woman's poetry has been practically unbroken, until in Manchu times we can count
almost a thousand women who left poetry in print in this dynasty alone. Under the
influence of Yuan Mei, the man who was against footbinding, a mode was set up for
women to write poetry, which was greatly deprecated by another outstanding scholar,
Chang Shihtsai, as being detrimental to the sound ideal of womanhood. But writing
poetry did not really interfere with women's duties as wife and mother, and Li
Ch' ingchao was an ideal wife. She was no Sappho,
The Chinese girl in ancient times was actually less socially accomplished than the
Western girl, but under a good family breeding she had a better chance of succeeding as wife and mother and she had no career except the career of wife and mother. The
Chinese men are now faced with the dilemma of choosing between the modern girl
and the conservative girl for a wife. The ideal wife has been described as one "with
new knowledge but old character.*5 The conflict of ideals (the new one being the
wife who is an independent being and who looks down upon the expression "helpful
wife and wise mother") calls for a ruthless application of common sense. While I
regard the increased knowledge and education as an improvement and approaching
the ideal of womanhood,, I wager that we are not going to find, as we have not yet
found, a world-renowned lady pianist or lady painter. I feel confident that her soup
will still be better than her poetry and that her real masterpiece will be her
chubby- faced boy. The ideal woman remains for me the wise, gentle and firm mother.
V. LOVE AND COURTSHIP
The question may arise: How with the seclusion of women was romance and
courtship possible in China? Or rather in what way was the natural love between
young people influenced by this classical tradition? In youth and romance and love,
the world is pretty much the same, only the psychological reactions differ as a result
of different social traditions. For secluded as women may be, no classical teaching has
yet succeeded in shutting out love. Its tenor and complexion may be altered, for love,
which is a gushing, overwhelming feeling in nature, can become a small voice of the
heart and thoughts. Civilization may transform love but it never stifles it. Love is
there, only somehow receiving a different tenor and expression accidentally borrowed,
as it were, from a different social and cultural background. It peeps in at the beaded
curtains, it fills the air of the back garden, and it tugs at the maiden's heart. Perhaps
she has no lover, and she does not quite know what ails her. Perhaps she is not
interested in any particular man, but she is in love with man, and being in love with
man she is in love with life. That makes her work a little more neatly at her
embroidery and imagine she is in love with the rainbowcoloured embroidery itself, as
symbolizing life, which seems to her so beautiful. Very probably she is embroidering
the design of a pair of mandarin ducks for someone's pillow, those mandarin ducks
which always go together, swim together, nest together in pairs, one male, the other
female. If she stretches her imagination too much, she is liable to forget herself and
make a wrong stitch. She tries again, but it goes wrong again. She pulls hard at the
silken thread, a little too hard, and it slips out of the needle. She bites her lips and
feels annoyed. She is in love.
That feeling of annoyance at a vague unknown something, perhaps at spring and the
flowers, that sudden overwhelming sense of loneliness in the world, is nature's sign of
a girPs maturity for love and marriage. With the repressions of soc iety and social
conventions, a girl did her best to cover up this vague and strong yearning, but
subconsciously youth dreamed on. Yet pre-marital love was a forbidden fruit in old
China, open courtship was impossible, and she knew that to love was to suffer. For that reason, she dared not let her thoughts dwell too fondly on the spring and the
flowers and the butterflies, which are symbols of love in ancient poetry, and if she
were educated, she would not allow herself to spend too much time on poetry, lest her
emotions be touched,too profoundly. She kept herself busy with her home duties and
guarded her feelings as sacredly as a delicate flower preserves itself from premature
contact with the butterflies. She wished to wait until the time should come when love
would be lawful and sanctified by marriage, and happy was she who escaped all
entanglements of passion. Yet nature sometimes conquered in spite of all human
restraints. For like all forbidden fruits, the keenness of sexual attraction was enhanced
by its rarity. It was nature's law of compensation. Once a girl's heart was distracted,
according to the Chinese theory, love stopped at nothing. That was actually the
common belief back of the careful seclusion of women.
Even in her deepest seclusion every girl generally learned about all the marriageable
young men of her class in town, and secretly distributed her approval and disapproval
in her heart. If by casual chance she met one of the approved young men, even though
it was only an exchange of glances, more than likely she succumbed, and had no more
of the peace of mind of which she had been so proud. Then a period of secret, stolen
courtship began. In spite of the fact that an exposure would mean shame and often
suicide and in spite of the full consciousness that by so doing she was defying all
codes of moral conduct and braving social censure, she would meet her young man.
And love always found a way.
In the mad, mutual attraction of sex it was impossible to say who was wooing and
who was being wooed. A girl had many ingenious ways of making her presence felt.
The most innocent form was showing one's small red shoes beneath the wooden
partitions. Another was standing on the verandah at sunset. Another was
accidentally showing one's face amidst peach blossoms. Another was going to the
lantern festivals of January and June at night. Another was playing on the cKin> a
stringed instrument, and letting the young man in the next house hear it. Another
was asking the teacher of her younger brother to correct her poetry, with the younger
brother as the messenger boy. The teacher, if he were young and romantic, might send
a verse in reply. Still another means of communication was the maid-servant, or
the sympathetic sister- in- law, or the cook's wife next door, or the nun. If both
parties were attracted to each other, a secret meeting could always be arranged. Such
meetings were extremely unhealthy; the young girl did nol know how to protect
herself, and love, which had been denied its gay flirtations, came back with a revenge,
as all Chinese love stories portray, or wish to portray. She might come to expect a
child. A real period of ardent courtship and lovemaking followed, overpowering
and yet tender, precioui because it was stolen, and generally too happy to last.
In this situation anything might happen. The young man o: the young lady might
become betrothed to others by n< consent of their own, and the girl regret having lost
he chastity. Or the young man might go away and, becomin; successful in his official examinations, might have a wife forced upon him by a more distinguished family. Or
one of the families might move to another city and they might never see each other
again. Or even if the young man sojourning abroad should remain faithful, yet a war
might come between, and there might be interminable waiting and delay. For the
young maiden waiting in the secluded chamber there was only sadness and longing. If
the girl were a real and passionate lover she became seriously lovesick (which is
amazingly common in Chinese love stories), with all light and gladness gone from her
eyes, and her parents, alarmed at the situation, would then begin to make inquiries and
save her life by arranging the desired marriage, and so after all they might live happily
ever after.
Love then was mixed with tears and sadness and longing in Chinese thought, and the
effect of this seclusion of women was to introduce a plaintive, languorous tone in all
Chinese love poetry. Any Chinese love song after the T'ang Dynasty is invariably one
of longing, resignation and infinite sadness. Often it is the song of the secluded
maiden pining for her lover, or kweiyiian, or that of the forsaken wife, cKifu, both of
which were, strange to say, extremely favourite topics with the ma le poets.
Consonant with the general negative attitude toward life, Chinese songs of love are
songs of absence, of departure, of frustrated hopes and unquenchable longing, of rain
and the twilight and the empty chamber and the "cold bed," of solitary regret and
hatred against man's inconstancy and the castaway fan in autumn, of departing spring
and faded blossoms and fading beauty, of the flickering candlelight and winter nights
and general emaciation, of self-pity and approaching death. This mood finds its
typical expression in Taiyii's poem before her approaching death, after she knew that
her cousin was going to become Paoyii's wife, lines that are memorable for their
infinite sadness:
This year I am burying the dropped blossoms,
Next year who is going to bury me?
But sometimes the girl may be lucky and may become a "helpful wife and wise
mother." The Chinese drama usually ends up happily with the refrain, "May all the
lovers of the world become united in wedlock!'9
VI. THE COURTESAN AND CONCUBINAGE
This is all very nice so far as woman goes. Woman is "helpful wife and wise mother."
She is loyal, she is obedient, she is always a good mother, and she is instinctively
chaste. The trouble is with man. Man sins, and he must sin, but every time he sins
there is a woman in it.
Eros, who rules the world, rules China also. Some Western travellers have ventured
the opinion that in China we find comparatively less sex repression than in the West,
owing to a more frank acceptance of sex in human life. Havelock Ellis has noted that
modern civilization has surrounded man with the greatest sexual stimulation coupled
with the greatest sexual repression. To an extent, sexual stimulation and sexual
repression are less in China. But this is only half the truth. The more frank acceptance
of sex applies to man and not to woman, whose sexual life is often repressed. The
clearest instance is that of Feng Hsiaoch' ing, who lived when Shakespeare was doing
his best work (1595-1612), and who, as concubine, was forbidden to see her husband
and was shut up in a villa in the West Lake by the jealous wife, and who consequently
developed the most singular case of narcissism. She showed inclinations to look at her
own image in the water, and shortly before her death she had three successive
portraits of herself made, to which she burned incense and offered sacrifice in
self-pity. Accidentally she left some verse in an amah's hands which showed poetic
genius.
On the other hand, there is no sexual repression for men, especially those of the richer
class. Most well-known respectable scholars, like the poets Su Tungp'o, Ch' in Shaoyii,
Tu Mu and Po Chtiyi, went to courtesans' houses, or had courtesans for their
concubines, and frankly said so. In fact, to be an official and avoid dinners with
female entertainers was impossible. There was no opprobrium attached to it. Through
the Ming and Manchu Periods, Ch' inhuaiho, the dirty creek in front of the Confucian
Temple at Nanking, was the scene of many a love romance. The proximity to the
Confucian Temple was appropriate and logical, because it was the place of the official
examinations where scholars gathered for the examinations and celebrated their
successes or consoled their failures in the company of women. To this day some
editors of small papers still frankly detail their adventures in sing- song houses, and
poets and scholars have written so profusely about the sing-song tradition that the
name of Ch' inhuaiho has been intimately associated with Chinese literary history.
It is impossible to exaggerate the romantic, literary, musical, and political importance
of the courtesan in China. Because men thought it improper for decent family girls to
handle musical instruments, which were dangerous to their virtue, or to have too
much literary learning, which was equally subversive of their morality, and but rarely
