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 Grace Thompson Seton). The Misses DanYing Hsuh, Tao' Ling and Ruth Yong were three of them. Their outlook is broad, and they arc eager to help toward better times for women and for their country generally. A fourth impressed mc especially, Miss Edith Pang (Pang Vun H'siang). a cleancut, brilliant, efficient product of education. Miss Pang is Dean of the Mary Porter Gamewell School in Peking, where she studied before going to the Union Woman's College and preparatory to attending the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, 0., where she rcceivd her B.A. Her parents. Dr. and Mrs. H. Chang Pang, are from Hai-eh'eng, in Manchuria. Miss Pang's concise and comprehensive answers to rapid-fire questionn were a delight. Indeed, as I review the human scroll of intelligent, often erudite, young women 1 met in China, their kindly qualities, their sane and steadfast attitude toward life, their vision of the sorrows and needs ol the oncoming generation expressing itself in so many activities, I feel a respect ant admiration amounting almost to rever ence for this valiant advance guard oi the women marching forward to certain victory in the battle with the degrading or intolerable, conditions rendered snerocanct by tho centuries. Miss Alice M Chou, president of the Equal RightWoman's Association of Peking, told mi 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 th. 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 Mrs. Wong Chong Kuo was actually elected to the Hunan Provincial Legislature. In fact, "votes for women"' arrived ten years ago with the other Republican slogans. There waa 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 student* who gathered in a mass meeting, and demanded equal rights for voting, foi education, and for holding office. Of tin many progressives in Shanghai should b< noted Mrs. George C. Hsu. president oi the Woman's Rights Society and foundei of a law school for women, and Mrs. T C. Chu, the principal organiser of thi Chinese Woman's Club. Happily mar ried, with charming children, their gra cious, wise personalities hold no trace o1 the militant. Yet their contribution tt the forward-looking interests of the community are effective and far-reaching. As one reads the articles in whicl: sociological subjects are freely discussed by the young women writers of China one realises to what an extent the gaj is being bridged, between the East an. the West. The thinking young womar has 1 ecomc articulate and rebellious.