p. 13 | GIRL-LIFE IN CHINA by Sel.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 7, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 19.

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GIRL-LIFE IN CHINA.

By Sel.

“How is your baby getting on?”

“Puh tsai lias,” which means “no more,” a very common Chinese expression for the word “death.”

“What!” we exclaimed, “your baby dead?”

“Yes,” she answered; “there was no one to take care of the child, so it was the best thing to do.”

“You don’t mean to say you killed your baby?” we asked.

“Yes,” was the answer, with her eyes on the ground.

“How did you kill your baby?” The answer was that she had just put it in a bucket of water.

We felt like fainting, and could not speak to her for a few minutes. There we stood face to face with a murderer of her own child, with no seeming shame or condemnation over what she had done. We felt inexpressibly sad, as she is a woman who has heard a great deal of the truth. So we asked her to tell us openly the reason for staining her hands with the blood of her own baby. Her argument is that of thousands of unhappy heathen mothers in China. When a girl is born, the husband is displeased, and thus this girl, who should be the center of home happiness and joy, is an object of dislike and derision. When the girl is three or four years old, the poor mother must begin to bind the child’s feet. This is a most painful process, but the feet must be very small, or there is danger that they will not get the girls married to well-to-do people.

Then comes the time for her marriage. If they are not well off, nearly all they have will go with the girl for her outfit when she leaves her father’s home to go and spend her lifetime with an individual whom she has never seen before the day she is married; then, in very many cases, begins a most unhappy and cruel life, which generally ends in the wife shortening her life with opium poison.

Thus, from the very commencement of a Chinese girl’s life is the danger of being an object of unhappiness and pain to her last moment. This is the way a poor mother argues at the birth of a girl. It is really awful to think how many dear little baby girls “not wanted” are murdered in this land.—Sel.