CORRESPONDENCE.

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA.

[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR:1

Sin,—Having just returned from England after a seven- months' absence the change in China socially is so startling that it seems to call for some notice before the English public. It is not only that the Shanghai Taotai has given a ball, a thing unheard of in the annals of China, or that he dines out at foreigners' houses very frequently, and receives foreigners, both ladies and gentlemen, every Tuesday afternoon at a house he is using as his official residence in the Bubbling Well Road, the fashionable drive of Shanghai, well inside the foreign settlement. All this is surprising enough, but might be explained by the personal element, and is to a certain ex- tent negatived by his wife's non-appearance. She is happy to receive foreign ladies in her private apartments before her husband's official reception, but is unequal to the fatigue of attending at it. What, however, is yet more startling is that ten Chinese ladies sent out an invitation to a sort of public dinner at the large garden on the same Bubbling Well Road where the English community held its St. George's Fête not long ago. These Chinese ladies were from very different parts of this huge Empire ; they were not people of little con- sideration, but the wives of Taotais, and kinsfolk of the General at the Woosung Forts, one, the prime mover, being the wife of the manager of the Chinese telegraph system. The dinner was of a hundred and ten ladies in all, and the foreign ladies invited were all the officials and com- mittee of the Ladies' Society formed here nearly three years ago to do away with the very cruel practice of binding the feet of Chinese women and girls.

When this Society was formed such a short time ago, amongst not a little derision, many people overwhelmed its leaders with counsels that the Chinese would stand anything but interference with their national customs. Even mission- aries, who from closer intercourse might be supposed to be better versed, said; "Religions teaching does not excite the people as this will. We must beware of arousing riots, and move very warily ;" whilst some actually refused to have anything to do with the matter for fear of bringing too much hostility upon themselves. "After all, a bound-foot woman can enter the Kingdom of Heaven," sighed a saintly priest, whom the climate has already laid at rest from his labours in a West

China grave. His spirit, we hope, is rejoicing over those he led to Christ. But now, after all these cautions, when for the first time the ladies of China held out hospitable hands of wel- come in a quasi-public manner to the ladies of other lands, they sent round, in the first instance, and asked for a list of the officers and Committee of the Natural Foot Society, to translate literally its name of T'ien Ten Hui, and invited all en bloc. The occasion was a projected school for the girls of the upper classes of China, whose tenth rule, to translate somewhat literally from the Chinese, runs as follows :—• "Foot-binding is a wicked custom, so after having been admitted into the school the girls shall advise each other to unbind their feet. For the present both girls with feet bound or unbound shall be similarly admitted, but after the lapse of a few years girls with bound feet will not be admitted." And, almost incredible though it may seem in England, so strong and so widely diffused is the principle of local government in China, that this is the way it will probably be worked out, the girls themselves exhorting one another. "This school," to quote again from the proposed rules, "is to be established on the basis of Con- fucianism, and a tablet will be dedicated to his memory." The school is to have two secretaries—one foreign and one Chinese lady—who are always to live in the school, taking care of the pupils ; and of the four teachers two are to teach foreign languages. The curriculum proposed is sufficiently varied and extensive, — spelling and grammar and the " Readers." After that history, geography, philosophy, and industrial arts will be taught. "Three special branches of applied sciences shall be taught,—viz., mathematics, law, medicine and surgery. Each pupil shall take only one branch of these sciences, but those who are inclined to study either medicine and surgery or law must also have a fair knowledge of mathematics. Besides the above three special sciences, a training college will be established to train in the special work of a teacher." It is satisfactory to note after- wards that should the income of the school suffice, the young ladies are to learn the arts of spinning, weaving, painting, and drawing.

The dinner to discuss this projected school was held in the best foreign style, and as far as the difficulties of language would permit, Chinese ladies exhibited their ground plans and obtained the advice of the foreign ladies upon them. There were also speeches. A return invitation was at once issued by the English President of the Heavenly Foot Society, to which all the givers of the dinner and some of their friends were invited, and the wife of the Spanish Consul-General-- all the Consuls-General's wives are on the Committee of the Heavenly Foot Society—has given another party at which there were set speeches, and consequently more serious consideration of the best steps to be adopted with regard to the proposed school, as also towards the doing away of foot-binding. One of the Chinese ladies—an unmarried girl too—proves to be the writer of an essay against foot-binding.

Since then the Foreign Natural Foot Society has held a public meeting, at which a deputation from a recently estab- lished Chinese Anti-Foot-Binding Society attended, and described their method of work. This Society is composed of men of high standing and great influence, and it is "their intention to ask the Superintendents of Northern and Southern Trade to petition the Emperor that children born after the twenty-third year of Kuarg Hell [i.e., 1897] should not be recognised as of standing unless they had natural feet." A very numerously signed petition from Chinese gentlemen from all parts of the country has been presented to the Viceroys of Chikli, Kiangsu and Chekiang, and Hnpeh and Hunan, with the earnest solicitation for their joint memorial to the Throne, praying for the enforcement of the ancient law against foot-binding. Chinese Literati are writing tracts against foot-binding, Chang Chili Tung, the one incorruptible Viceroy of China, and the most re- spected, is circulating a tract with a preface by himself ; whilst Kung Hui Chung, one of the lineal descendants of Confucius, writes : "I have always had my unquiet thoughts about foot-binding, and felt pity for the many sufferers. Yet I could not venture to say it publicly. Now there are happily certain benevolent gentlemen and virtuous daughters of ability, wise daughters from foreign lands, who have initiated a truly noble enterprise. They have addressed our women in animated exhortations, and founded a society for the prohibi•

lion of foot-binding." And this descendant of the great sage, hereditary guardian of the ancient ways, does not denounce the foreign ladies, but is collecting their tracts and himself circulating what he thinks the best bits put together out of them.

Now all this does not mean only that foot-binding, that Moluch of fashion that has crushed the soul and heart out of Chinese women for at least six hundred years, is now doomed, and that these women will no longer be a guantite nggligeable in the great Chinese nation, but take the part for which their broad brows and quiet dignity and shrewd common-sense so eminently qualify them; but that even before they do so, Chinese men are beginning to look to women, not as creatures who, but for the fact of their begetting and suckling sons, had better be done away with, but as helpmeets and fellow-counsellors. And this awakening respect for, and confidence in, women among the best man- hood of China may carry it further than we yet think.

China is an Oriental country with Oriental ideas about women; yet when the other day one of the most learned men of the Empire, a member of the great Hamlin College, and, until he was degraded because of his advanced views, tutor to the ladies of the Imperial household, Mr. Wen, was passing through China, a lady, the organising secretary of the T'ien Tart Hui, was among the five or six foreign guests invited to meet Mr. Wen at dinner, and confer on the present position of things with him, with Lord King East, eldest son of the late Marquis Tseng, the editor of the new Chinese journal, .Progress, a director of the China Merchants Company, &c.

In spite of the great depression among the Chinese prominent in reform, a depression so great that one of their number is reported to have recently died of a broken heart over his country's position, there are more evidences now of China's awakening than ever before. And when the men and women of China go forward hand in hand together, we may find we have a very different people to deal with than the opium-sodden, hand-and-foot-bound, given-over-to-dirt-and- decay Tsungli Yamen of the past. Already a well-known Chinaman, Comprador of the well-known house of Jardine, is expressing the delight he shall feel in presenting his daughter, of eleven years old, the first real Chinese girl to ride a bicycle, to the three round-the-world cyclists expected here before Christmas. This little girl, whose feet were originally bound, hopes soon to receive a medal from the Taotai here for her bravery in breaking the ice for her fellow-countrywomen. And truly it is a long stride from tottering, with dark shades beneath her eyes, upheld by a stick, to flying along upon a wheel.

Europeans have never realised what foot-binding has meant to China. It has meant the sacrifice of one in ten of her little girls during the process or in consequence of it. It has meant the giving up for the nation of all work done by women, the stunting of their intellects, and the stranding of the men in a quagmire of filth and ugliness. For in a country where no women can stand naturally, no house-cleaning is done by women. The awakening is coming, and the way in which the Chinese are holding out hands asking help to the foreigner in their midst is very touching.

But it must not be forgotten that Russian advisers have been urging upon the young Emperor the duty of strengthen- ing his position by supplanting all Chinamen in positions of trust by Mantchus or Tartars, and that the last appointment to the Viceroyalty of Szechuen, a province of the size of France, looks as if he were about to follow their advice, to do Which must of itself, one would think, bring about a revolu- tion. Also that this year, on China's New Year's Day, the .greatest day of all the Chinese year, there is an eclipse of the sun. The stars seem fighting in their courses against the Mantchn Dynasty. And if there is to be an upheaval let England be prepared to show herself the true friend of China. All along the Yangtse valley, up to far-away Yacheo, whence the brick tea is sent over the 11,000 ft. high pass into Thibet, the Chinese have long been looking for a saviour of society, and asking,—Will the English not rule over them ? Should there come a need for a ruler, let England be prepared, and at least not drive China yet deeper into the embraces of her ever-watchful neighbour in the North. Compared with the easy rule of a Chinese Mandarin and his time-honoured and 'well-known squeezes, the rule of Russian satraps would be as scorpions in place of rods. And those who have long lived among the blue-gowned stolidly self-governing race cannot help feeling apprehension at the thought of their possibly being handed over to a stern bureaucracy and elaborately centralised government from Siberia.

In the " T'ui pei t'u," a book written about five hundred years ago, and esteemed so dangerous a possession that not a printed copy is to be had now, and even Europeans who have owned it have been known to burn it rather than run the risk of being found with it in their possession,—in this book there is a prophecy that in the new year beginning for China on January 22nd, China is to be partitioned among five people. And in their pigeon-English Chinese men are saying, "Russia have take topside, and Frenchman he wantchee more Tonquin side, now German man he take Chow-chow Bay, Mellican man and Englishman must wantchee something. So fashion five people." If for " Mellican man" we read "Japan man" the prophecy looks like coming true, and the fact of its diffusion may help much towards its realisation. Meanwhile, social changes are going on with startling rapidity, and one of the most curious features is the way in which now at last foreign women and Chinese women are drawing nearer together. Perhaps it may improve both.

The one great fact, however, for people in England to realise is that the people of China are moving, although just as much as ever it is still the duty of every Mandarin ex- officio to oppose every new step taken by the foreigner. Thus British commerce is shackled on every hand, and does not develop because every advance is of necessity opposed by Chinese officials, and—not of necessity—not supported by the English Government, which yet stands by and sees China trampled on or appropriated by Russians and Germans, whilst refusing, as a rule, even to back the claims of its own "nationals," whose case in the East is, therefore, a parlous one. Whilst all the time the benefits to be reaped in easy-going China far, far surpass those ever to be gained in that dangerous Africa on which the Governments of Europe seem all alike determined notwithstanding to stake their crowns,

[We do not agree with all the conclusions of our corre- spondent, but there can be no doubt as to the interest of the communication.—En. Spectator.]