The Chinese Baby Traffic.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 907, 19 July 1889, Page 9

The Chinese Baby Traffic.

(Frank G. Carpenter’s Canton Letter.) I took a ride on the river this afternoon. Canton has about three hundred thousand people who live on the water, and tHere is no busier city in the world than this city of boats. Crafts of all kinds, from ths small steamer, the great Chinese junk and the river cargo-boats to the sampans and little tubs rowed by spoon-like paddles, move here and there or dart in and out through forests of masts. Whole families live on boats about twenty feet long and no wider than the average city vestibule. Here children are born, grow up and die. Marriages take place, and the whole business and actions of life go on. Little children swarm over them, and tots two years old, with queues hanging down their backs, play about their decks. The boys have little round barrels, or drums, about a foot long and six inches in diameter tied by strings to their backs, and many girls of the same size have nothing. If the girl fails overboard it would be good fortune to the poor family to get rid ot the expense of raising her, but the boy must have his life preserver. Poor girls are of no account in China, and infanticide is still common. You can buy a girl baby from one cent up to a dollar, and at tbe Jesuit children’s asylum near Shanghai one of the sisters told me that they bought hundreds of girls every year for less than a dollar apiece. At Foo Chow Mr Wingate, our Consul, told me of a poor woman who strangled her own baby girl in order that she might adopt the baby of a neighbour to raise as a wife for her little son, and a missionary there told me of a man who went around peddling children. There is a foundling asylum here, which, upon the payment of 20 cents by the mother, will take a girl baby to raise, but these girls are sold as soon as they" grow much past the weaning age, and they are bought in large numbers by brothel-keepers. The selling of girls for wives and concubines is common, and full-grown maidens bring from $25 upward. I spent a day sitting beside the Chinese judge in the mixed court in Shanghai, and among the cases tried was that of an old woman who wanted to prosecute a mandarin for breaking his contract in the buying of her daughter. The girl was sold

for S3O, and the mandarin took her with hi'h to Formosa, but did not pay the mother. Babies are often bought here, their eyes put out, and they are raised as blind beggarß.