STRANGE REVENGE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7914, 25 September 1911, Page 8

STRANGE REVENGE

SUICIDE ON AN ENEMY'S DOORSTEP. - That a Chinese having a quarrel with another and despairing of other revenge, will deliberately commit suicide on his adversary's doorstep in order that the latter may ‘‘lose face” (i.e., prestige-cum-personaJ-dignity), is a well-known fact of this peculiar people. The following story suggests an even more ingenious form of vengeance. Three nights .ago a bonze, or native priest, attempted to enter the French Concession from the Tungkadoo country beyond, in a riesha ih which ho was carrying a monstrous basket. Something about the basket aroused the suspicions of the French policeman doing duty on the boundary of the Concession, and the bonze was made to open his basket. It was found to contain the body of another bonze, with his throat out. Now the story told by the owner or purveyor, or whatever ho is to ho oaHed, of this ghastly burden, is that ho and the dead man had been in the habit of going to a.wealthy Chinese in the French concession for alms. The latter had at last wearied of their importunities, and had driven them from his house, slapping the face of the man now dead. The latter retired to his temple, and then and ‘ there cut his throat, having previously instructed his companion to lay his body on his assailant’s doorstep, in the hope of getting him arrested for murder. The surviving bonze was on his way to complete this commission when ho was arrested dn the French boundary. The French authorities handed over the bonze to the magistrate of , the Chinese native city, and under the persuasive influence of the bamboo the prisoner confessed that the wound had partially been inflicted by himself in a quarrel with man. r But even under . the bamboo, and though now chained by the ankles in a noisome Chinese prison, he stoutly maintains that the dead priest himself completed the wound that caused his death, and that revenge upon the former almsgiver became secondarily, if hot primarily, the object of the tragedy. So much for ‘‘face," the dearest possession of the Chinese, to lose which i» worse than death itself.