School-Days in China

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 47.

School-Days in China.

CHAN PONG, a young Chinaman, in a descriptive letter to the Baltimore Sun, gives the customs of school life and marriage in a manner that does credit to his command of the English language:—

"I will tell you about our school, that you may see the difference from yours. You have a very easy time at school, and have only a few hours in every day, and besides you have recess to enjoy yourselves. The Chinese school is not so. All the children in China must go to school when they are between eight and nine years of age. We have as many letters in the alphabet in our language as the hairs of a cow, but only use from 3,000 to 3,500.

"We do not commence to learn the alphabet first, but learn it as we go along in our reading. The first thing we study is to read Confucius, our religion. The children who first start to school take very few lessons from Confucius. They are instructed by their teachers how to behave, what they ought to do for their parents, and how to pay good respect to strangers. After the first six months they begin to study Confucius, and they study until they get through the Four Kings. Perhaps the children can get through Confucius and the Four Kings in three or four years. Then they go to college if they can afford it.

"The Four Kings was written by the disciples of Confucius. He had seventy-two disciples where Christ had twelve. You can never get through college until you become an officer. If you do not want to become an officer, you have to leave college. After breakfast we practice writing two hours. We all study out loud at the same time and on different lessons. You will notice the Chinese when they pass along the street; they go quietly and mind their own business. It is because they were brought up in that way.

"We have no way to become an officer except

through school. We have no voting business or buying votes at all.

"The girls are not allowed to go to school since our Emperor Lee-Si-Man's reign, about 1,200 or 1,300 years ago—because they associate with men and write to each other secretly. They would not have a drunkard for a husband, but they would drink a glass of wine with a fast young man. They would not be irreligious, but they smile upon the most irreligious and even immoral men, and show that they love to be wooed by them. This is the virtue of too many women—a virtue scarcely worth the name—really no virtue at all; a hypocritical, hollow pretension to virtue as unwomanly as it is disgraceful.

"Now, only the daughters of the officers receive private instructions in their own home, and would not have the old custom any more for young ladies and young gentlemen to associate together before marriage, as in this country. The wives and husbands are selected by their parents. We do not marry to any one that belongs to the same descendants or the same town. It may seem strange to you that we have no choice in the selection of our wives. Yet we have confidence in our parents that they will choose those who are pure and good for us. The Chinese are happy in their married life, and divorces are not known."