Chapter 24 chapter 24
My Jesus to know, and feel His Blood flow Tis life everlasting, tis heaven below"
her young female teachers belonging to the sunday school and her
"Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable class-leader" _what a dissimilarity. In the ground of the two lives, a likeness; in all their circumstances, what unlikeness! An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which is non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential,_ yes; indifferent,_no. The signal want of grace and charm _ in the English Protestantisms setting of its religious life is not an indifferent matter; it is a real weakness. and not to have left the other undone.
Last of all I wish to point out to you here the most important quality of all, in the Chinese feminine ideal, the quality which preeminently distinguishes her from the feminine ideal of all other people or nations ancient or modern. China, it is true, is common to the feminine ideal of every people or nation with any pretension to civilization, but this quality, I want to say here, developed in the Chinese feminine ideal to such a degree of perfection as you will find it nowhere else in the world. This quality of which I speak, is described by the two Chinese words yu hsien which, in the quotation I gave above from the "Lessons for Women, " by Lady Tsao, _I translated as modesty and cheerfulness. The Chinese word yu literally means retired, secluded, occult and the word hsien ( ?) literally means " at ease or leisure. " For the Chinese word yu, _the English "modesty, bashfulness" only gives you an idea of its meaning. The German word Sittsamkeit comes nearerto it. But perhaps the French pudeur comes nearest to it of all. This pudeur, I may say here, this bashfulness, the quality expressed by the Chinese word yu is the essence of all womanly qualities. The more a woman has this quality of pudeur developed in her, the more she has of womanliness, _of femininity, in fact, the more she is a perfect or ideal woman. When on the contrary a woman loses this quality expressed by the Chinese word yu, loses this bashfulness, this pudeur , she then loses altogether her womanliness, her femininity,
and with that, her perfume, her fragrance and becomes a mere piece of human meat or flesh. Thus, it is this pudeur, this quality expressed by the Chinese word yu in the Chinese feminine ideal which makes or ought to make every true Chinese woman intuitively feel and know that it is wrong to show herself in public; that it is indecent , according to the Chinese idea, to go on a platform and sing before a crowd in the hall even of the Confucian Association. In fine, it is this yu hsien, this love of seclusion, this sensitivity a-gainst the "garish eye of day;" this pudeur in the Chinese feminine ideal, which gives to the true Chinese woman in China as to no other woman in the world, _a perfume, A perfume sweeter than the perfume of violets, the ineffable fragrance of orchids.
In the oldest love song, I believe, of the world, which I translated for the Peking Daily News two years ago_the first piece in the Shih Ching or Book of Poetry, the Chinese feminine ideal is thus described,
The birds are calling in the air, _ An islet by the river-side;
The maid is meek and debonair, Oh! Fit to be our Prince s bride .
The words yao t iao have the same signification as the words yu sien meaning literally yao) secluded, meek, shy, and tiao attractive, debonair, and the words shu nu mean a pure, chaste girl or woman. Thus here in the oldest love song in China, you have the three essential qualities in the Chinese feminine ideal, viz. love of seclusion, bashfulness or pudeur, ineffable grace and charm expressed by the word debonair and last of all, purity or chastity. In short, the real or true Chinese woman is chaste; she is bashful, has pudeur; and she is attractive and debonair. This then is the Chinese feminine ideal, _the "Chinese Woman."
In the Confucian Catechism which I have translated as
The Couduct of Life, the first part of the book containing the practical teaching of Confucius on the conduct of life concludes with the description of a Happy Home thus:
" When wife and children dwell in unison,
Tis like to harp and lute well-played in tune,
When brothers live in concord and in peace,
The strain of harmony shall never cease.
Make then your Home thus always gay and bright.
Your wife and dear ones shall be your delight.
This Home in China is the miniature Heaven, _as the State with its civic order, the Chinese Empire, _is the real Heaven, the Kingdom of God come upon this earth, to the Chinese people. Thus, as the gentleman in China with his honor , his Religion of Loyalty is the guardian of the State the Civic Order, in China, so the Chinese woman, the Chinese gentlewoman or lady, with her debonair charm and grace, her purity, her pudeur, and above all, her Religion of Self -lessness, _is the Guardian Angel of the miniature Heaven, the Home in China.