When a young man in my husband's business was taking to dissipated courses, it was his mother who came off in her sedan-chair into the country to interview my husband. And very definitely she knew what she wanted,--that her son should be given employment at a distance, and thus separated from the many undesirable acquaintances he had formed. She begged my husband also to give him a talking to, and told him exactly what she thought he had better say; then, having laid her point of view very clearly before him, begged that her visit might be kept a secret from her son, and so departed. I must add that, for all her being a lady, she went on her knees to my husband on arrival, and tried to do so again on going. But in conversation with him she was anything but on her knees.
Except among the poorest of the poor, who do field-work or carry water, the women of China do little beyond suckling children and making shoes, except in the treaty ports, where now large numbers of them are employed in the factories lately started. They smoke and gossip, give and go to dinner parties, and one of their great delights is to go on pilgrimages to distant shrines. It is sometimes stipulated before marriage that a woman shall go on so many pilgrimages during the year. Even when nuns invite ladies to come and enjoy themselves with them, it means drinking wine, smoking, and playing cards; and not uncommonly, in the west of China at all events, smoking includes opium-smoking. The ladies who are regular opium-smokers sit up late at night, and do not get up till five or six in the evening. They mostly have bad health, and generally say they have taken to opium-smoking because of it. Whatever effect opium may have upon men, the various ladies I have seen at ladies' dinners generally return from the opium-couch with their eyes very bright, their cheeks very red, and talking a great deal of nonsense very excitedly. But afterwards they look yellow and unhealthy, mostly with sunken cheeks. They seem no more ashamed of it than ladies are of taking wine in England. But those who do not smoke seem to think it a rather disgraceful proceeding. A lady will draw herself up, and say, "None of the members of my family smoke opium--not one." But at a good many dinner parties the opium-couch is prepared with all its elegant accessories. And at the only Chinese country house, at which I have stayed, the ladies' one idea was to ask me into their bedrooms to smoke opium. Naturally, my acquaintance is rather with Szechuan ladies. Cantonese seem altogether different. And I gather that there must be a much more cultured set in some parts of China, judging from the ladies engaged in starting the High School for Girls in Shanghai. Of those I know in the west, only one young girl could read and write. She was talked of with admiration by young men, who asked if I knew her, and if she were not awfully clever.