of aged parents, but a supply of rice to uncles, brothers, and cousins
of remote degrees of relationship, during such time as these may be
out of work. Of course such a system cuts both ways, as the time may
come when the said relatives supply, in their turn, the daily meal;
and the support of parents in a land where poor-rates are unknown, has
tended to place the present high premium on male offspring. Thus,
though there is a great deal of poverty in China, there is very little
absolute destitution, and the few wretched outcasts one does see in
every Chinese town, are almost invariably the once opulent victims of
the opium-pipe or the gaming-table. The relative number of human
beings who suffer from cold and hunger in China is far smaller than in
England, and in this all-important respect, the women of the working
classes are far better off than their European sisters. Wife-beating
is unknown, though power of life and death is, under certain
circumstances, vested in the husband (Penal Code, S. 293); while, on
the other hand, a wife may be punished with a hundred blows for merely
striking her husband, who is also entitled to a divorce (Penal Code,
S. 315). The truth is, that these poor women are, on the whole, very
well treated by their husbands, whom they not unfrequently rule with
as harsh a tongue as that of any western shrew.

In the fanciful houses of the rich, the Chinese woman is regarded with
even more sympathy by foreigners generally than is accorded to her
humbler fellow-countrywoman. She is represented as a mere ornament, or
a soulless, listless machine--something on which the sensual eye of
her opium-smoking lord may rest with pleasure while she prepares the
fumes which will waft him to another hour or so of tipsy
forgetfulness. She knows nothing, she is taught nothing, never leaves
the house, never sees friends, or hears the news; she is,
consequently, devoid of the slightest intellectual effort, and no more