LETTER FROM CHINA by Ella Johnson Kinnear

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 57.

LETTER FROM CHINA.

By Ella Johnson Kinnear

NEAR the writer’s home in Foo-Choo, China, and in the midst of one of the graveyards with which all the hills near by are covered, is a tower about eight feet high. It is built something like a little pagoda, has a square opening near the top, and at one side there is a shrine in which incense and paper money may be burned. It is one of several such structures that may be found about the city, and is built to facilitate the disposal of babies’ bodies. They are wrapped in old pieces of matting or cloth and thrown into the opening at the top, some incense and paper money, perhaps, being burned in the shrine to prevent the spirits of the little ones from coming back to torment those who so unceremoniously dispose of them.

When the tower is so full that no more babies can be put in, some “philanthropist,” who wishes to “lay up merit” by “doing good works,” has the tower cleaned out, and its contents buried, while the tower is prepared for another filling. A place in the side which is imperfectly filled with bricks proves that this tower has been cleaned at least once, while it is so nearly full again that the wrappings of little bodies can be seen at the opening.

It is said that babies are sometimes thrown into this place before they are quite dead, but probably they are either drowned or smothered before such disposal is made of them. Boy babies are seldom, if ever, killed, but girl babies are frequently gotten rid of by drowning or smothering them, and then, in some cases, they are thrown into the “Baby Tower.” To be sure, there is a law against infanticide, but it is never enforced, for, no matter what may be written, custom is law in China.

Older children of the poorer classes, even up to the age of ten or twelve years, are often buried with as little ceremony as attends the disposition of the newborn babes. The coffins are made of the roughest boards, put together in the most careless way, and sold for a few cents each. Sometimes the covers are only tied on, and the coffin buried in a very shallow grave. The writer remembers seeing a little coffin that had been buried in a grave so shallow that the dogs and rain had uncovered it, and the lid, which was only laid on, was misplaced, exposing the partially decomposed body of a child five or six years old.

A missionary recently met two men carrying a box which he found was a coffin containing the body of a child. Instead of using the bamboo pole so common here, they

had thrust their hoes under a rope tied around the box, and were carrying it by their hoe handles. The men said they had no time for any kind of a funeral service, and that they were going to their work in the field, taking the coffin along to bury it, and thus save another trip.

These things seem harsh to us, but they are the legitimate outcome of the religions which have been called "good enough for the Chinese," and when the light regard for human life which is engendered in the Chinese by this sort of thing shows itself in the causeless murder of a missionary or other foreigner, people wonder at the small value placed upon human life in this land. Is it not more truly wonderful that human life is so safe as it is here?

Surely the children who live in America are highly favored by the heavenly Father, and have much reason to thank him for the love that cares for them, and to pray and labor to hasten the time when, even in China, death may be robbed of "its sting" by the knowledge of the brighter life beyond this one.—Ella Johnson Kinnear, in Union Gospel News.