It is not possible to walk through Chinese streets without making the acquaintance of their gods. By the front door, in a little shrine, sits the door god, with a legend over him, “The god of the doorway requests the god of good luck to enter this shop;” and on the walls of the shops are images of the great character for God, with incense burning beneath. In 1884 this proclamation was issued by some of the Cantonese: “All dealings with foreigners are detestable. These men have no father or mother. Our country has a sound religion; our country has powerful gods. Why should we imitate foreign devils?”
The charities of Canton are characteristic of all China. There is a society which provides coffins for the indigent dead. The sick suffer unrelieved. There is a foundling asylum where I wandered about in damp, dark rooms, on green, foul courts, and found dead bodies lying under palm leaf fans, poor, tiny, black-eyed things. The asylum in the daytime is almost deserted, save for the dead babies. At night it is not so empty. Some of the “farmed out” babies come back then. Of the 1,500 received in a year, one-half die soon. Of the rest, about four-fifths are sold to the “devil grannies,” as they are called, for immoral purposes. Babies can be bought here for twenty cents. But everywhere in China one sees the proof of the pitilessness of the people, in the turning out of old people to die in the streets, in the neglect of suffering, in the torture of their punishment, in infanticide. In Central China the baby towers give splendid opportunities for the last. There is one not far from the South Gate of the native city of Shanghai. It is a small, hexagonal building, with an opening high up on the side for the admission of dead babies. When the tower is full, the bones are taken out and buried in rows. It is the easiest thing in the world to wrap a girl baby up in a wisp of straw and drop her in the tower at night. But drowning is a commoner method.—Robert E. Speer.
Rows of Cells Occupied by Chinese Students During Examination.
