encouraged painting and poetry for them, they did not, on that account, cease to desire
female company of the artistic and literary type. The sing-song girls cultivated these
things because they did not need ignorance as a bulwark of their virtue. So the
scholars all went to Ch' inhuaiho. There in the summer night, when darkness had
transformed the dirty creek into a Venetian canal, they would sit in a house-boat and
listen to the singing of love ditties by girls in the neighbouring "lantern boats'*
passing up and down.
In this atmosphere scholars sought for those hetaeras who could distinguish
themselves from the rest either in poetry, music, painting or witty repartee. Of such accomplished and well-known hetaeras who flourished especially at the end of the
Ming Period, perhaps the one best loved by all was Tung Hsiaowan, who became the
mistress of Mao Pichiang. To the T'ang Dynasty belonged Su Hsiaohsiao, whose tomb
by the side of the West Lake has become the object of pilgrimage of every scholar
tourist for ages. Not a few were closely connected with the political destinies of the
nation, as in the case of Ch'en Yuanyiian, the beloved mistress of General Wu
Sankwei. Her capture by Li Tziich'eng during the latter's conquest of Peking led Wu
Sankwei to enter Peking with the assistance of Manchu troops for her recovery, and in
this way directly contributed to the founding of the Manchu Dynasty. It is
noteworthy that after Wu had thus brought about the downfall of the Chinese Ming
empire, Ch'en Yuanyuan separated from him and chose to live as a nun in a specially
built monastery on Shangshan. We have also the case of Li Hsiangchiin, who was
reputed for her constancy and whose political inclinations and courage put many a
man to shame by comparison. She had more political chastity than many men
revolutionists of to-day. After her lover had been hounded out of Nanking she shut
herself up, and when she was forcibly brought to the home of the official in power
and commanded to sing at a wine- feast, she improvised songs of satire in the presence
of her captors, who were her political enemies, calling them "adopted sons of the
eunuch." Poems and songs written by these ladies have been handed down to the
present. The history of Chinese intellectual women will have to be sought partly in the
lives of such accomplished courtesans as Hstieh T'ao,Ma Hsianglan,LiuJushih and
others. The courtesan supplied the need for courtship and romance which many men
missed in their youth before marriage. I speak of "courtship" advisedly, because
the sing-song girl, differing from the common prostitutes, had to be courted. Such was
the respect for ladies in China that, as we are told in the novel Chiuweikuei
(Nine-Tailed Tortoise) describing modern times, many a man had to court a
lady of supposedly easy virtue for months and spend three or four thousand dollars
before he was permitted to pass a night in her boudoir. Such a preposterous situation
was possible only with the seclusion of women, but when men could not find female
company and romance elsewhere, it was also perfectly natural. The man,
inexperienced in female company and tired of his wife-cookand-sock-darner, began to
experience what Western men call romance before their marriage. He saw a lady who
took his fancy, desired her, and began to have a feeling analogous to falling in love.
The lady, being so much more experienced and accomplished, had an easy game, and
the man sometimes had a feeling almost of worship. It was, in fact, the one kind of
courtship legitimate and proper in China.
Sometimes an actual romance developed, as with Western men and their mistresses.
The story of Tung Hsiaowan and Mao Pichiang, from the difficulties of their first
meeting to their short- lived, blissful wedded life, reads in no way differently from any
other romance. There were romances with happy and unhappy endings. While Li
Hsiangchiin ended up in a monastery, Ku Hengp'o and Liu Jushih ended up as grandes
dames in rich official families, to the envy and admiration of their generation.
The courtesan, therefore, taught many Chinese romantic love, as the Chinese wife
taught them a more earthly, real love. Sometimes the situation was actually confusing,
and Tu Mu, who led a wild life for ten years, came back to his old wife after an
awakening. Sometimes, too, the chastity of the courtesan was amazing, as in the case
of Tu Shihniang. Besides, she carried on the musical tradition of the country, which
without her would have died off. She was more cultivated, more independent, and
more at home in men's society than were the family women; in fact, she was the
emancipated lady in ancient China. Her influence over high officials often gave her a
measure of political influence, for sometimes it was in her house that political
appointments were interceded for and decided upon.
A really deserving courtesan often became a concubine or mistress, as did practically
all the above-mentioned women. Concubinage is as old as China itself, and the
problem behind concubinage is as old as monogamy. When the marriage is unhappy
the Oriental solves it by going to the sing-song girl or taking a concubine, while the
Occidental solves it by keeping a mistress or having occasional escapades. The modes
of social behaviour are different, while the fundamental problems axe curiously the
same. What makes a difference is the social attitude, especially that of women, toward
such behaviour. Chinese take mistresses with public consent, while Weste rners have
the decency not to talk about it.
The insistence on male progeny also greatly encouraged concubinage. Some Chinese
wives actually pleaded with their husbands to take concubines, when they themselves
had failed to produce a son. The laws of the Ming Dynasty officially sanctioned the
marrying of concubines in the case of a man reaching forty without male progeny.
Moreover, concubinage in a way takes the place of divorce in Western countries.
Marriage and divorce are the most complicated social problems, and no one has yet
solved them. No perfect solution has yet been invented by the human mind, except
that Roman Catholic solution which ignores the existence of such problems altogether.
The only thing sure is that marriage is the safest protection for women, and whenever
men's morals relax it is the women who suffer, whether it be through divorce,
concubinage, companionate marriage or free love. There is by nature something
eternally unequal and unfair in the sexual arrangement. For sexual equality is an
unknown word in nature, whose sole concern is the propagation of the race. The
so-called modern marriages on a fifty- fifty basis have always become a seventy-five
and twenty-five arrangement in favour of the men with the advent of children, and if
the woman is sporting enough to release the husband "when love ceases" the man of
forty enjoys advantages which the divorced woman of forty and mother of three
children cannot have. No true equality is possible.
It is in this sense that some defence may be made in favour of concubinage. The
Chinese regard marriage as a family affair, and when marriage fails they accept
concubinage, which at least keeps the family intact as a social unit. The West, in turn, regards marriage as an individual, romantic and sentimental affair, and therefore
accepts divorce, which breaks up the social unit. In the East, when a man gets too rich,
has nothing to do, degenerates and neglects his wife for his favourite, the wife
suppresses her libido but keeps her established posit ion, still very highly honoured as
head of the family and surrounded by her own children. In the West, the modern wife
sues for divorce, gets her alimony and goes away, perhaps to remarry. Whether the
wife who remains neglected by her husband but honoured by. the household and
holding at least a theoretic supremacy over the concubines, or the wife who gets her
alimony and lives apart is happier is a question that is perplexing in the highest degree.
In China, where the women have not the spirit of independence of their Western
sisters, the castaway wife often seems an infinitely pathetic spectacle, with her social
position lost and her home broken. Always there is one happy woman, and one who
cannot be made happy by any human arrangement. Even real economic independence
of women will not solve it.
In China such cases are happening every day before our eyes, and it has sometimes
seemed to me that the modern woman who drives out the old wife with her feminine
ferocity approximates very nearly the state of barbarism of our forefathers, in spite of
the fact that she is modern enough not to tolerate living under the same roof with
another woman as her equal. In the past a really good woman, who was caught in
circumstances that involved her with a married man and who truly loved him, was
willing to go to his family as concubine and serve the wife with humility and respect.
Now driving one another out and taking one another's place by turn in the name of
monogamy seems to the women to be the better way. It is the modern, emancipated,
so-called civilized way. If women prefer it that way, let them have it, since it is they
who are primarily affected by it. The young and beautiful ones, however, will win in
the battle against their own sex at the expense of the older women. The problem is
really so new and yet so old. The marriage system will be imperfect as long as human
nature is imperfect. Let us therefore agree to leave the problem unsolved. Perhaps
only an innate sense of equity and fair-play and an increased sense of parental
responsibility will ever reduce the number of such cases.
Of course, it is useless to defend concubinage, unless one is ready to defend
polyandry at the same time. Ku Hungming, the Edinburgh M.A. and profuse quoter of
Thomas Garlyle and Matthew Arnold, once defended concubinage by saying: "You
have seen a tea-pot with four tea-cups, but did you ever see a tea-cup with four
tea-pots?" The best reply to this are the words of P'an Chinlien, concubine of Hsimen
Ch' ing in Ckinp*inmei: "Do you ever see two spoons in the same bowl that do not
knock against each other?" She knew what she was talking about.
psychopathology. As much artistic finesse was exercised in the appreciation of
different types of bound feet as was ever expended over the criticism of T'ang poetry.
When one remembers that really small and well- shaped feet were rare, perhaps less
than ten in a city, it is easy to understand how men could be moved by them as they might be moved by exquisite poetry. Fang Hsien of the Manchu Dynasty wrote an
entire book devoted to this art, classifying the bound feet into five main divisions and
eighteen types. Moreover, a bound foot should be (A) Fat, (B) Soft and (G) Elegant;
so says Fang:
Thin feet are cold, and muscular feet are hard. Such feet a re incurably vulgar. Hence
fat feet are full and smooth to the touch, soft feet are gentle and pleasing to the eye,
and elegant feet are refined and beautiful. But fatness does not depend on the flesh,
softness does not depend on the binding, and elegance does not depend on the shoes.
Moreover, you may judge its fatness and softness by its form, but you may appreciate
its elegance only by the eye of the mind.
All those who understand the power of fashion over women will understand the
persistence of this institution. It is curious to note that the decree of the Manchu
Emperor K'anghsi to stop footbinding among the Chinese was rescinded within a few
years, and Manchu girls were soon imitating Chinese girls in this fashion until
Emperor Ch' ienlung issued an edict and forbade them. Mothers who wanted their girls
to grow up into ladies and marry into good homes had to bind their feet young as a
measure of parental foresight, and a bride who was praised for her small feet had a
feeling analogous to filial gratitude. For next to a good face, a woman was
immeasurably proud of her small feet, as modern women are proud of their small
ankles, for these feet gave her an immediate distinction in any social
Yti Chenghsieh (1775-1840),, all scholars of independent minds and considerable
influence. But the custom was not abolished until the Christian missionaries led the
crusade, a debt for which Chinese women ought to be grateful. But in this the
missionaries have been fortunately helped by the force of circumstances, fo r Chinese
women have found in the modern high-heeled shoes a tolerable substitute. They
enhance the women's figures, develop a mincing gait and create the illusion that the
feet are smaller than they really are. Li Liweng's profound observation in his essa ys
on the art of living is still true: "I have seen feet of three inches without heeled shoes
and feet of four or five inches on heeled shoes stand on the same place, and felt that
the three- inch feet are bigger than the four- or five- inch feet. Because with heels, the
toes point downwards, the flat feet seem pointed, while without heels, the jade
