YOUR HONOURABLE NAME

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 September 1927, Page 4

YOUR HONOURABLE NAME

MRS. AH SING ENTERTAINS. “What is your honourable name?” “And how old are you?” “Thirty! I should have thought you were easily forty!” “Where do you come from?” “Where are you going?” These are the questions you are asked and the kind of remarks.which are made by your hostess when you pay a call in China. You do not flounce out of the house and say you will never call on that cat of a Mrs Ah Sing again, because she is merely being polite. Nobody in China would like to appear ten years younger than they really are; that would be an insult to their intelligence. Personal questions only show how important you are and how interesting you are to your friends. Miss Violet Pennington, who lately returned to Australia, from Pekin after ten years’ service in the Salvation ■ Army, tells of the queer ways of the Chinese among whom she worked. When calling on a family in the poorer parts, to be asked into the bedroom and there served with tea, minus milk or sugar, is considered to be treatment of great courtesy. Brick is chosen in the slum areas as a. suitable material for the building of beds; people sleep on them, using a. mat instead of a mattress. Yet the Chinese are not notable as a race , of insomnia patients. A portable stove is used, in the liv-ing-room, after the style of an oild drum. Home-made macaroni is the favourite food in the north, with a very little meat. Breakfast takes place at 10 or 11 a.m., and the second and last meal of the day when the •work is finished. Few people bother about educating their girls, but the boys are sent to school. The schools are financed by the Government, or sometimes by important generals. “Though, of course, everyone knew that there was fighting in the south,” said Miss Pennington, “there was no disturbance in our district. Later there would have been danger when the armies approached Pekin. There is a curious apathy among the people about who wins; men join the army chiefly to earn the daily bread, and their choice of sides depends solely on which general they believe the most likely to be prompt and cash down With their soldiers 1 pay. One family I knew had two sons, one fighting for the North, the other a sergeant in the Southern army. Just before I sailed there was a happy family reunion, when the two soldier boys returned home at the same time and were able to buy all kinds of new things with their ’ pay for their • impoverished home.”

The career of a Chinese flapper is

a minus quality. She never even sees her future husband until the wedding day, when, if she belongs to an old-fashioned family, she is carried on a chair to his home—or if more up-to-date, drives In a carriage. The British bridegroom standing

nervously by the altar-rail many think ho is undergoing an ordeal—but let him consider what his feelings would be if his very first glimpse of his future wife was taken as she walked up the aisle! “Women in China are gaining more freedom each year. They are taking up nursing, teaching and some are even studying with the men as fellow scholars. The first sign of fashion is commencing to creep into their lives as they wear their sleeves a little shorter, or cut their jumpers a little differently. Those who have taken on our Salvation Army work wear our uniform.” With all the troubles that modern people endure in the daily whirl of life in a European or Australian city, the danger of trams, the menace of motors, income taxes, charity meetings and wet week-ends, they have not the worry of departed spirits which haunt every Chinese.” When a Celestial dies without a son to inherit his spirit there is nothing left for that spirit to do but wander about and make a thorough nuisance of itself. The bother these disembodied folk cause the ordinary citizen is more than enough. Fortunately, a spirit cannot turn a corner; this is why Chinese streets bend at sharp angles at unexpected places. At the angles, on the wall, is usually painted a dragon of great ferocity whose business it is to devour the Evil One. Spirits have a nasty habit of getting on roofs; all would be well if they stayed there, but there is always the dangerous possibility of them slipping on to the heads of nassers-by, with Heaven knows what awful results. The obvious thing to do is to make the roofs safe for such pranks, so that even if they do «lip they will not fall —this is the reason why Chinese roofs are shaped so unusually. “The people believe,” said Miss Pennuigton, “that a spirit bent on mischief wil always attack the weaker man, or family, or house. They frequently place a mirror by their gate at such , an angle that a larger neighbouring house will be reflected in it. The result is that the spirit approaching a house and looking into the mirror sees the large house in it, and decides that discretion is the better part of valour.” It would seem that, in spite of the annoyance he is caused, John Chinaman must enjoy many a Brer Rabbit chuckle when, by some clever ruse, he has just succeeded in outwitting his unintelligent tormentors.