- A long-ago lao wai relates the traditional Chinese approach to romance.

I have heard Sir Robert Hart tell an amusing incident which occurred in Peking. He said that the Chinese minister appointed to the court of Saint James came to call on him before setting out upon his journey. After conversing for some time he said:

"I should be glad to see Lady Hart. I believe it is customary in calling on a foreign gentleman to see his lady, is it not?"

"It is," said Sir Robert, "and I should be delighted to have you see her, but Lady Hart is in England with our children, and has not been here for twenty years."

"Ah, indeed, then perhaps I might see your second wife."

"That you might, if I had one. But the customs of our country do not allow us to have a second wife. Indeed they would imprison us if we were to have two wives."

"How singular," said the official with a nod of his head. "You do not appreciate the advantages of this custom of ours."

That there are advantages in this custom from the Chinese point of view, I have no doubt. But from certain things I have heard I fear there are disadvantages as well. One day the head eunuch from the palace of one of the leading princes in Peking came to ask my wife, who was their physician, to go to see some of the women or children who were ill. It was drawing near to the New Year festival and, of course, they had their own absorbing topics of conversation in the servants' courts. I said to him:

"The Prince has a good many children, has he not?"

"Twenty-three," he answered.

"How many concubines has he?" I inquired.

"Three," he replied, "but he expects to take on two more after the holidays."

"Doesn't it cause trouble in a family for a man to have so many women about? I should think they would be jealous of each other."

"Ah," said he, with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head, "that is a topic that is difficult to discuss. Naturally if this woman sees him talking to that woman, this one is going to eat vinegar."

They do "eat vinegar", but perhaps as little of it as any people who live in the way in which they live, for the Chinese have organized their home life as nearly on a governmental basis as any people in the world.

In addition to the wife and concubines, each son when he marries brings his wife home to a parental court, and all these sisters-in-law, or daughters-in-law add so much to the complications of living, for each must have her own retinue of servants.

Young people in China are all engaged by their parents without their knowledge or consent. This was very unsatisfactory to the young people of the old regime, and it is being modified in the new. One day one of my students in discussing this matter said to me;

"Our method of getting a wife is very much better than either the old Chinese method or your foreign method."

"How is that?" I asked.

"Well," said he, "according to the old Chinese custom a man could never see his wife until she was brought to his house. But we can see the girls in public meetings, we have sisters in the girls' school, they have brothers in the college, and when we go home during vacation we can learn all about each other."

"But how do you consider it better than our method?" I persisted.

"Why, you see, when you have found the girl you want, you have to go and get her yourself, while we can send a middleman to do it for us."

I still argued that by our method we could become better acquainted with the young lady.

"Yes," he said, "that is true; but doesn't it make you awfully mad if you ask a lady to marry you and she refuses?" and it must be confessed that this was a difficult question to answer without compromising one's self.

Isaac Taylor Headland - Court Life in China