CHINESE WHITE WIVES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1360, 10 February 1912, Page 6

CHINESE WHITE WIVES.

MOSTLY AUSTRALIAN WOMEN. PITIABLE CASES IN CANTON. "You can't put it too strong. Some of tho cases I have seen would make your heart bleed." Mr. P. K. F. Carter, who has been Jiving in Canton for six years, and is passing tliTouyh Sydney on his way to the Old Country, made these remnrss in referring in a repent interview with a "Sydney .Morning Herald" reporter, to tho increasing number of marriages of Chinese with European women. "Ami this," he added, "is a matter of special interest to you, becauso most of those women are Australians." White women, he said, were no doubt treated well enough by their Chinese hu stands so long as they remained in Australasia or in any other country occupied by Europeans, but to go to live in China with their husbands was a very different thing. "Far better for them to commit suicide than lo undergo tho awful sufferings that await them there, if they aro not absolutely dead to all the finer feelings." This was how he put it. "Not only aro they ostracised by all Europeans, but they are looked down upon even by the Chinese themselves, and are made "tho subject of the coarsest .sort of jests by the meanest of the coolies. These European women iire not allowed to live in tho foreign settlement—and the average Chinese house is dirty, ill-ventilated, full of vermin, and without any sanitary or any sort of conveniences. A living hell is the most -fitting expression 1 can think of, though it is not a very elegant ojjp, to describe tho lot of theso poor creatures. "I'm not a soft-hearted man, but I have seen young Australian women up there living in the Chinese quarters amid such conditions as would make you. cry if you saw them. And they are' not ail the lower class of women, either. There is one young woman—an Australian, well connected, well educated, and very good looking, too—who was living for a long time in tho Chinese quarters in Canton under suck conditions that I wonder she didn't go crazy. A German doctor found her through her seeking his help to save her little baby. Sho told him that she had married her husband in Sydney, and he had taken her to Canton, and she had to live iu the midst of tho Chinese quarters ever since. She seemed to have a fondness for her husband though, and wouldn't be separated from him. Some of tho ladies in the European settlement interested themselves in her case, and special permission has been given to her to live in the foreign settlement with her husband, and there sho is eking out an existence —an outcast as far as Europeans are concerned, and regarded with contempt by the Chinese. It is a very pitiable case indeed, for this woman, I have been informed, was very well brought- Mp, and sho has certainly all tho manners of a lady, and is well educated; and why she made this marriage is a puzzle to me. "There is another Australian woman there, who married her Chinese husband in South Africa. She has got hardened to her lot now, and wears Chinese clothes. Sho is also a young woman, a little over 30, but her case is rather different from that of the other, who is a superior typo of girl. There are others thx-rc, too, but those happen to have come under my own notice. "There ought to bo a law prohibiting marriages between white women and Chinese. Tho woman who marries a Chinese loses her nationality, of course, by lair, and takes tho nationality of her husband. These marriages aro wrong in any circumstances. It is not so bad, of course, -while tho parties remain in Australia, but for heaven's sake don't let any more of these poor women go to Ch'ina. Ifs a crime!"