The Small-foot Question 207 



daughters. With the exception of the boatwomen in the 

 south (the "Han-shui mei," or salt-water girls), and the 

 aboriginal tribes in the west, as also perhaps a few beggars 

 and outcasts, all the women of China, poor as well as rich, 

 are crippled in this barbarous fashion. Ancient custom 

 appears to have reconciled the people to the habit, and to 

 have hardened the hearts of parents to the sufferings entailed 

 on their children by it. So few Englishmen ever have an 

 opportunity of mixing intimately with the natives and seeing 

 anything of their family life — and then only on rare occasions 

 ■ — that the terrible evils attending this abominable practice 

 seldom come home to one, and by those living at the open 

 ports it is hardly noticed, the women destined to associate 

 with foreigners being specially brought up in a natural 

 manner. Undistorted feet are odious in the eyes of the 

 Chinese, and are associated with all that is vile. Is it not 

 possible that this enfeeblement of the mothers through 

 countless generations has had its effect in stunting the mental 

 growth of the Chinese as a nation ? The Chinese are great 

 Nature-worshippers, and their dread of acting in discord 

 with Nature is shown in their superstitious regard for " Feng- 

 shui." In a country where the monsoons blow with the 

 regularity that they exhibit in China, the doctrine of the 

 evil influences attending the north wind, and the absolute 

 necessity of a southern exposure, are founded on a true 

 observance of nature, and are worthy of close imitation by 

 the foreigners whose lot is cast here. In a country, too, 

 whose Etas' of life is dependent on irrigated fields, inter- 

 ference with the watercourses is rightly guarded by a 

 religious dread of interference with the earth-dragon. But 

 man has a double environment, with both sides of which, in 

 order to be happy, he must try to live in accord, though the 

 two are often incompatible. The Chinese have laboured as 



