China is the land of suicides. I suppose more people die from suicide in China in proportion to the population than in any other country. Where the struggle for existence is so keen, it is hardly to be wondered at that men are so willing to abandon the struggle. But poverty and misery are not the only causes. For the most trivial reason the Chinaman will take his own life. Suicide with a Chinaman is an act that is recorded in his honour rather than to his opprobrium.
Thus a widow, as we have seen, may obtain much merit by sacrificing herself on the death of her husband. But in a large proportion of cases the motive is revenge, for the spirit of the dead is believed to "haunt and injure the living person who has been the cause of the suicide." In China to ruin your adversary you injure or kill yourself. To vow to commit suicide is the most awful threat with which you can drive terror into the heart of your adversary. If your enemy do you wrong, there is no way in which you can cause him more bitterly to repent his misdeed than by slaying yourself at his doorstep. He will be charged with your murder, and may be executed for the crime; he will be utterly ruined in establishing, if he can establish, his innocence; and he will be haunted ever after by your avenging spirit.
Occasionally two men who have quarrelled will take poison together, and their spirits will fight it out in heaven. Opium is very cheap in Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration being detected by the craving being unsatisfied. Mohammedans have a holy loathing of the pig, and look with contempt on their countrymen whose chief meat-food is pork. But each one in his turn. It is, on the other hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his opium-pipe.
On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful screams were issuing. It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a heavy stick--she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick with both hands. A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram him with delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did so--till we were round the corner.