THE "HORSE-DEER" OF SHANSI 221 



the cooking fires underneath the hang, and the clay 

 bricks retain their temperature for several horn's. 



At best the north China natives lead a cheerless ex- 

 istence in winter. The house is not a home. Dark, 

 cold, dirty, it is merely a place in which to eat and sleep. 

 There is no home-making instinct in the Chinese wife, 

 for a centuries' old social system, based on the Con- 

 fucian ethics, has smothered every thought of the priv- 

 ileges of womanhood. Her place is to cook, sew, and 

 bear children; to reflect only the thoughts of her lord 

 and master — to have none of her own. 



Wu-tai-hai was typical of villages of its class in all 

 north China; mud huts, each with a tiny courtyard, 

 built end to end in a corner of the hillside. A few acres 

 of ground in the valley bottom and on the mountain 

 side capable of cultivation yield enough wheat, corn, 

 turnips, cabbages, and potatoes to give the natives food. 

 Their life is one of work with few pleasures, and yet 

 they are content because they know nothing else. 



Imagine, then, what it meant when we suddenly in- 

 jected ourselves into their midst. We had come from 

 a world beyond the mountains — b. world of which they 

 had sometimes heard, but which was as unreal to them 

 as that of another planet. Europe and America were 

 merely names. A few had learned from passing sol- 

 diers that these strange men in that dim, far land had 

 been fighting among themselves and that China, too, 

 was in some vague way connected with the struggle. 



But it had not affected them in their tiny rock-bound 

 village. Their world was encompassed within the val- 



