[111] Sale of children by starving parents is a painful feature of famines in some parts of China.
[112] This criticism from a Chinese writer is interesting, when we remember that the practice is much the same throughout the greater part of the Empire.
[113] This is exceptionally rare at the present time. The overwhelming majority of women are married before the age of twenty-five.
[114] Mercenary views are held all the same.
[115] In proportion to the population there are very few concubines in Weihaiwei, and most of them are imported from Peking and other places.
[116] It is a curious fact, and one never yet satisfactorily explained, that people of non-European races all seem to lose their native grace of manner after a period of contact with Europeans. This does not apply to Asiatic peoples (Indian and Chinese) only: it is apparently equally true with regard to certain African races. Miss Bleek, in a recent work published by the Clarendon Press under the auspices of the Royal Anthropological Institute, remarks that the Bushmen are by nature truthful, clean, honest and courteous. "Once another Bushman visited ours for a few days. He was so much rougher than the other that our man was asked why his friend was different. He said, 'Missis must excuse: this man lost his parents early and was brought up by white people.'"
[117] _The United States and China_, by Wei-ching W. Yen (American Association for International Conciliation: New York).
[119] See illustration. The _T'ien Kou_ is the Japanese _Tengu_. See _Trans. As. Soc. Jap._ Pt. ii (1908).
[120] For the magic uses of peach-wood see De Groot's _Religious System of China_, vol. iv. pp. 304 _seq._
[121] "I see no race of men, however polished and educated, however brutal and barbarous, which does not believe that warnings of future events are given, and may be understood and announced by certain persons." Cicero's words, after the lapse of a couple of thousand years, are still true. (See Cic. _de Divinatione_, i. 1.)
[122] A very similar method of divining is practised in the Malay States. See Swettenham's _Malay Sketches_, pp. 201-7, and Skeat's _Malay Magic_, p. 542.
[123] The following remarks in Dennys's _Folk-lore of China_ (pp. 56 _seq._) will be of interest to those who are wise enough to regard this subject with unorthodox seriousness: "Divination is in China as popular as, and probably more respectable than, it was amongst the Israelites in the days of the witch of Endor, and it is not perhaps going too far to say that there is not a single means resorted to in the West by way of lifting the impenetrable veil which hides the future from curious mankind which is not known to and practised by the Chinese. From 'Pinking the Bible' to using the Planchette, from tossing for odd and even to invoking spirits to actually speak through crafty media, the whole range of Western superstition in this regard is as familiar to the average Chinaman as to the most enthusiastic spiritualist at home. The coincidences of practice and belief are indeed so startling that many will doubtless see in them a sort of evidence either for their truthfulness, or for a common origin of evil.... It is when we come to the consulting of media, the use of a forked stick, writing on sand, and similar matters that the Chinese practice becomes singular in its resemblance to superstitions openly avowed at home. I would here remark that I am no spiritualist. But how, without any apparent connection with each other, such beliefs should at once be found in full force in the farthest East and the extreme West is puzzling. Is our Western spiritualism derived from China?" It may be added that Japanese "occultism"--to use a disagreeable but useful word--is very similar to Chinese, and offers equally striking analogies with that of Europe. (See Percival Lowell's _Occult Japan_.)