WIVES OF CHINESE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XL, Issue XL, 1 March 1912, Page 1

WIVES OF CHINESE.

PITIABLE CASES IN CANTON. "Yon can't put it too strong. Some of the cases I have seen would make your heart.bleed. ,- ■ ■, :.,•■•• Mr P. R. F. Carter, who has been living in 'Canton for six years, and -,is, passing;through Sydney on his way to the Old Country, made these remarks in referring, in an interview with a Sydney MormngJSerald reporter, to the.. increasing number" of of Chinese with European women. "And this," he added, "is a hiatterrbf special interest to you,, b.ecause./mosi} of those women are i'idi^?^'^"-' v - White woirieh, he saidj wgre ho doubtl treated husbands so pong as they remained' in I Australasia any other country j occupied by ,'EuropeaHsi but td ; igo s ;to r live in China, with their, husbands was '■ a very different thing,' "Far better'fortherii''to commit suicide than totundergo the awful, suffer--, ings that awa.it them there,-'if ■they, are { - not absolutely dead, to all- the finer feel- ' ings-." This was how he put it. "'"Not I only are they ostracised, by 'all Euro-I peans, but they are looked down upon even by. the Chinese themselves;;;and are made the subject of the coarsest. sort of jests by the meanest of the coolies; These European women are taken to the Chinese quarters-e-they ; -, ; are not allowed to, livip. in the 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 • fittihg expression T can think of, though it is not a very elegant one, to describe the lot of these, poor creatures.. ;■>.

'l'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 thefn. And they are not all the lower .classijof women, either. There is one young ffcoman—an Australian, well connected, well educated, and very good-looking, too, who,was living for a long time".;in the Chinese quarters in Canton under such conditions that I wonder she didn't go crazy. A German doctor found her through, her seeking his help to save her little baby. She told him that she married her husband: in Sydney, and he had taken her to and she had to live in the midst of the Chinese quarters since. She seemed to have a fondness for her husband though, nnd wouldn't be separated from him. Some of the ladies in the European settlement interested themselves in her case, and special permission has been given her to live in the foreign settlement with her husband, and there she is okeing out an existence—an outcast p.s concerned, and regarded with It is a very pitiable case, indeed, for this woman, I have been informed, was very well brought up, and she has certainly all the manners of a ladv, 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. She is also a young woman, a little over thirty, but her case is rather different from that of the other, who. is a_ superior type of girl. There are others there, too, but these happen to have come under my own, notice. - "There ought to be a law prohibiting marriages between white women and Chinese. The woman who marries a 'Chinese loses her nationality, of course by law, and takes the nationality, of her husband. Thesf\ marriages are wrong in any circumstances. It is. not so bad of course, while the parties remain in Australia, but for heaven's sake don't let any more of these poor women go to Gnma. It's a crime." ' .■. /