My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard — Part 2 Letters 10 - 11

Kwei-li.

10 My Dear Mother, My days are passed like a water-wheel awhirl, and I can scarcely find time to attend to the ordinary duties of my household.

I fear I seem neglectful of thee, and I will try to be more regular with my letters, so that thou wilt not need reproach me.

To-night my house is quiet and all are sleeping, and I can chat with thee without the many interruptions that come from children, servants, and friends during the waking hours.

I have had callers all the day; my last, the wife of the Japanese Consul, who brought with her two children.

They were like little butterflies, dressed in their gay kimonas and bright red obis, their straight black hair framing their tiny elfin faces.

I was delighted and could scarcely let them go.

Their mother says she will send to me their photographs, and I will send them to thee, as they seem children from another world.

They are much prettier, in my eyes, than the foreign children, with their white hair and colourless, blue eyes, who always seem to be clothed in white.

That seems not natural for a child, as it is our mourning colour, and children should wear gay colours, as they are symbols of joy and gladness.

My husband watched them go away with looks of hatred and disdain within his eyes, and when I called them Butterflies of Gay Nippon, he gave an ejaculation of great disgust, as at this time he is not o'erfond of the Japanese.

He believes, along with others, that they are helping the rebels with their money, and we know that many Japanese officers are fighting on the side of the Southern forces.

He could not forget the words I used, "Dainty Butterflies," and he said that these dainty butterflies are coming far too fast, at the rate of many tens of thousands each year, and they must be fed and clothed and lodged, and Japan is far too small.

These pretty babies searching for a future home are China's greatest menace.

Japan reels that her destiny lies here in the Far East, where she is overlord, and will continue as such until the time, if it ever comes, when new China, with her far greater wealth and her myriads of people, dispute the power of the little Island.

At present there is no limit to Japan's ambition.

Poor China!

It will take years and tens of years to mould her people into a nation;

and Japan comes to her each year, buying her rice, her cotton and her silk.

These wily merchants travel up her path-ways and traverse her rivers and canals, selling, buying, and spreading broadcast their influence.

There are eight thousand men of Japan in Shanghai, keen young men, all looking for the advantage of their country.

There is no town of any size where you cannot find a Japanese.

They have driven the traders of other nationalities from many places; the Americans especially have been compelled to leave; and now there is a bitter struggle between the people from the British Isles and the Japanese for the trade of our country.

In the olden time the people from Great Britain controlled the trade of our Yang-tse Valley, but now it is almost wholly Japanese.

The British merchant, in this great battle has the disadvantage of being honest, while the trader from Japan has small thoughts of honesty to hold him to a business transaction.

We say here, "One can hold a Japanese to a bargain as easily as one can hold a slippery catfish on a gourd."

The Sons of Nippon have another point in their favour: the British merchant is a Westerner, while the Japanese uses to the full his advantage of being an Oriental like ourselves.

Trade-- trade-- is what Japan craves, and it is according to its need that she makes friends or enemies.

It is her reason for all she does; her diplomacy, her suavity is based upon it; her army and her vast navy are to help gain and hold it; it is the end and aim of her ambitions.

We, Chinese, have people-- millions, tens of millions of them.

When they are better educated, when China is more prosperous, when new demands and higher standards of living are created, when the coolie will not be satisfied with his bowl of rice a day and his one blue garment, then possibilities of commerce will be unlimited.

Japan sees this with eyes that look far into the future, and she wants to control this coming trade-- and I fear she will.

She has an ambition that is as great as her overpowering belief in herself, an ambition to be in the East what England is in the West; and she is working patiently, quietly, to that end.

We fear her; but we are helpless.

I hear the men talk bitterly; but what can they do.

We must not be another Corea; we must wait until we are strong, and look to other hands to help us in our struggle.

We hope much from America, that country which has so wonderful an influence upon us, which appeals to our imagination because it is great and strong and prosperous.

The suave and humorous American, with his easy ways, is most popular with our people, although he cannot always be trusted nor is his word a bond.

He is different from the man of England, who is not fond of people not of his own colour and will not try to disguise the fact.

He is cold and shows no sympathy to those of an alien race, although we must admit he always acts with a certain amount of justice.

America is contemptuous of China and her people, but it is a kindly contempt, not tinged with the bitterness of the other Powers, and we hope, because of that kindliness and also because of trade interests (the American is noted for finding and holding the place that yields him dollars), she will play the part of a kindly friend and save China from her enemies who are now watching each other with such jealous eyes.

There is another reason why we like America: she does not seem to covet our land.

There is no Shang-tung nor Wei-hai-wei for her.

I would that she and England might form a bond of brotherhood for our protection; because all the world knows that where Germany, Russia, or Japan has power, all people from other lands are barred by close-shut doors.

Since hearing my husband talk I see those babies with other eyes, with eyes of knowledge and dislike.

I see them becoming one of the two great classes in Japan-- merchants with grasping hands to hold fast all they touch, or men of war.

There is no other class.

And, too, they have no religion to restrict them, irreverence already marks their attitude toward their gods.

They will imitate and steal what they want from other countries, even as their ancestors took their religion, their art, their code of ethics, even their writing, from other peoples.

Their past is a copy of the East; their present is an attempt to be a copy of the West.

They cannot originate or make a thing from within them-selves.

Their lives are coarse and sordid when stripped of the elaborate courtesy and sham politeness that marks their dealings with the outside world.

Their courtesy, what is it?

This thin veneer of politeness is like their polished lacquer that covers the crumbling wood within.

But we have a proverb, "Even a monkey falls"; and some distant day the Western world that thinks so highly of Japan will see beneath the surface and will leave her, and the great pagoda she has builded without foundation will come tumbling down like the houses of sand which my children build in the garden.

It will be seen that they are like their beautiful kimonas, that hang so gracefully in silken folds.

But take away the kimonas, and the sons and daughters of that Empire are revealed in all their ugliness-- coarse, heavy, sensual, with no grace or spirit life to distinguish them from animals.

[Illustration: Mylady19.

] Do I speak strongly, my Mother?

We feel most strongly the action of the Japanese in this, our time of trouble.

We have lost friends; the husbands, brothers, fathers of our women-folk are lying in long trenches because of training given to our rebels by members of that race.

I should not speak so frankly, but it is only to thee that I can say what is within my heart.

I must put the bar of silence across my lips with all save thee; and sitting here within the courtyard I hear all that goes on in Yamen, shop, and women's quarters.

One need not leave one's doorway to learn of the great world.

I hear my sons speak of new China, and many things I do not understand; my husband and his friends talk more sedately, for they are watching thoughtful men, trying hard to steer this, our ship of State, among the rocks that now beset it close on every side.

My daughters bring their friends, my servants their companions, and the gossip of our busy world is emptied at my feet.

The clock strikes one, and all the world's asleep except, Kwei-li.

11 Dear Mother, She is here, my daughter-in-law, and I can realise in a small degree thy feelings when I first came to thy household.

I know thou wert prepared to give me the same love and care that my heart longs to give to this, the wife of my eldest son.

I also know how she feels in this strange place, with no loved faces near her, with the thought that perhaps the new home will mean the closed doors of a prison, and the husband she never saw until the marriage day the jealous guardian thereof.

I have tried to give her welcome and let her see that she is heart of our hearts, a part of us.

She is different from the young girls I have seen these latter days, different from my daughters, and-- I may say it to thee, my Mother-- a sweeter, dearer maiden in many ways.

She has been trained within the courtyards in the old-fashioned customs that make for simplicity of heart, grace of manner, that give obedience and respect to older people; and she has the delicate high-bred ways that our girls seem to feel unnecessary in the hurry of these days.

She takes me back to years gone by, where everything is like a dream, and I can feel again the chair beneath me that carried me up the mountain-side with its shadowing of high woods, and hear the song of water falling gently from far-off mountain brooks, and the plaintive cry of flutes unseen, that came to welcome me to my new home.

[Illustration: Mylady20.

] With her dainty gowns, her tiny shoes, her smooth black hair, she is a breath from another world, and my sons and daughters regard her as if she were a stray butterfly, blown hither by some wind too strong for her slight wings.

She is as graceful as the slender willow, her youthful charm is like the cherry-tree in bloom, and the sweet thoughts natural to youth and the springtime of life, flow from her heart as pure as the snow-white blossoms of the plum-tree.

She does not belong to this, our modern world; she should be bending with iris grace above goldfish in the ponds, or straying in gardens where there are lakes of shimmering water murmuring beneath great lotus flowers that would speak to her of love.

We are all more than charmed, and gather to the sunshine she has brought.

As they knelt before us for our blessing, I thought what a happy thing is youth and love.

"Kings in their palaces grow old, but youth dwells forever at contentment's side."

But I must tell thee of the marriage.

Instead of the red chair of marriage, my new daughter-in-law was brought from the house of her uncle in that most modern thing, a motor-car.

I insisted that it should be covered with red satin, the colour of rejoicing; and great rosettes trailed from the corners to the ground.

The feasting was elaborate and caused me much care in its preparation, as not only had been provided the many different kinds of food for our Chinese friends, but foreigners, who came also, were served with dishes made expressly for them, and with foreign wines, of which they took most liberally.

The Europeans, men and women, ate and drank together with a freedom that to me is most unseemly, and I cannot understand the men who have no pride in their women's modesty but allow them to sit at table with strange men close by their side.

Behind the archway, we Chinese women "of the old school," as my daughter calls us, feasted and laughed our fill, just as happy as if parading our new gowns before the eyes of stranger-men.

Li-ti is delighted with thy gift, the chain of pearls.

It is a most appropriate present, for "pearls belong of right to her whose soul reflects the colour of youth's purity"; and I, I am so happy in this new life that has come to dwell beneath our rooftree.

I had many fears that she would not be to my liking, that she would be a modern Chinese woman; and another one, oh, Mother mine, would fill to overflowing my bowl of small vexations; but the place is perfumed by her scent, the scent of sandalwood, which represents the China that I love, and flowers of jessamine and purple hyacinths and lilies-of-the-valley, which speak to us of youth and spring and love and hope.