THE FUTURE IN CHINA.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 22

THE FUTURE IN CHINA.

; In Peking I met an interesting group \ of young women, alert and capable teachers of the new generation (writes .race Thompson Seton). The Misses DanYing Hsuh, Tao' Ling and Ruth Yong were three of them. Their outlook is broad, nnd they are eager to help toward better times for women and for their country generally. A fourth impressed mc especially, Miss Edith Pang (Pang Yun H'siang), a cleancut, brilliant, efficient product of education. Miss Pang is Dean of the Mary Porter Gamewell School in Peking, where sne studied before going to the Union Woman's College and preparatory to attending the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, 0., where she receivd her B.A. Her parents. Dr. and Mrs. H. Chang Pang, are from Hai-ch'eng, in Manchuria. Miss Pang's concise and comprehensive answers to rapid-fire questions were a delight. Indeed, as I review the human scroll of intelligent, often erudite, young women I met in China, their kindly qualities, their sane and steadfast attitude toward life, their vision of the sorrows and needs of the oncoming generation expressing itself in so many activities. I feel a respect and admiration amounting almost to reverence for this valiant advance guard of the women marching forward to certain victory in the battle with the degrading, or intolerable, conditions rendered sucrocanct by the centuries. Miss Alice M. Chou, president of the Equal Rights Woman's Association of Peking, told mc with satisfaction that a feminine league for equal rights had been formed by an enterprising group in Chekiang Province, nnd that they had already obtained the vote and the right to hold office in the Government of Chekiang Province. Again the Changsha Women's Union, contending for better legal status, sent a delegate to defend women's rights to the Committee for Revision of the Hunan Provincial Constitution and eloquently fought several issues to so favourable a conclusion in face of the opposing party, that Mr 3. Wong Chong Kuo w-as actually elected to the Hunan Provincial Legislature. In fact, "votes for women" arrived ten years ago with the other Republican slogans. There wa3 even a woman legislator in Peking, and Mrs. Lav Sum Chi was the first of two women elected to sit in the House of Representatives at Canton. This was the result of a parade of several hundred students who gathered in a mass meeting, and demanded equal rights for voting, for education, and for holding office. Of the many progressives in Shanghai should be noted Mrs. George C. Hsu, president of the Woman's Rights Society md founder of a law school for women, and Mrs. T. C. Chu, the principal organiser of the Chinese Woman's Club. Happily married, with charming children, their gracious, wise personalities hold no trace of the militant. Vet their contribution to the forward-looking interests of the community are effective and far-reaching. As one reads the articles in which sociological subjects are freely discussed by the young women writers of China, one realises to what an extent the gap is being bridged, between the East and the West. The thinking young woman has 1 ccome articulate and rebellious.