Routledge Revivals
Home Life in China
Originally published in 1914, this text describes I.T. Headland and his wifes experience in China in the early twentieth century. With a focus on home life this study explores issues such as children, marriage and education as well as food, religion and concubinage as well as presenting anecdotes and personal stories from the families Headland interacted with. This title will be of interest to students of Asian Studies and Anthropology.
Home Life in China
Isaac Taylor Headland
First published in 1914
by Methuen & Co. Ltd
This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
1914 Isaac Taylor Headland
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 14003022
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-19308-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-63956-7 (ebk)
A CHINESE SINGING GIRI.
HOME LIFE IN CHINA
BY
ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND
PH.D., PROFESSOR IN PEKING UNIVERSITY
WITH FOUR PLATES IN COLOUR AND TWELVE
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
First Published in 1914
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
T HE home life of a people is too sacred to be touched except by the hand of friendship. The doors of our homes all open inward, and our latch should not be lifted except by those who love us. Enter if you will as brother, sister, friend; but once you have entered, go not away to scoff or ridicule. Our enemies may enter our yamens, our factories, our business, but they come not into our homes. Our doors are closed to strangers, locked to enemies, and opened only to those of our own race who are in harmony and sympathy with us.
In this study of Chinese Home Life I have not sought things to criticize; I have not hunted for comparisons with our own which might appear often as odious to us as to them; I have not tried to find things to commend; I have simply tried to find them and tell them as they are. But I have always done it in a kindly spirit.
My readers will find many things omitted that they will wish had been told; they may find some things which might well have been omitted; they may wish that it had been a woman who had written the book instead of a man, for only a woman, we are often told, can appreciate the things of women, children, and home. Be it sobut still the largest womens journals are edited by men.
I. T. H.
CONTENTS
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A CHINESE SINGING GIRL
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a photograph by H. S. ELLIOTT.
From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi.
From a photograph by DR. MARCUS L. TAFT.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a photograph by DR. MARCUS L. TAFT.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi.
From a drawing by VERA WADDINGTON.
From a painting on silk by Yang Chu-hsi.
HOME LIFE IN CHINA
I WISH to say in the beginning that it will not be my design to give a dark picture of the Chinese home, neither will I try to paint any pictures in high colours. There will be bright as well as dark pictures in poor as in rich homes. There are many people who suppose that because a child is poor it leads a dull life.
Now it was my fortuneas it was yoursto be born a barefoot child. But it was my good fortuneas it may not have been yoursto have grown up a barefoot boy, for no one who has been raised in affluence and ease can appreciate the joys and sorrows of the poor. A farmers boy, compelled to struggle from morn till night, to help to pay rent and make a living, can have more fun on a single fourth of July or Christmas holiday, with twenty-five cents to spend, than a son of wealth, with three hundred and sixty-five days of idleness and an unlimited bank account, can have in a year. We will therefore not take it for granted that a child is not happy because it is poor, nor will we suppose that a child is happy because it is rich. It is a great thing to have been born poor and to have grown up through all grades of society. It helps you to understand children. It helps you to understand men. It helps you to see the occasions for smiles as well as for tears in the homes of all grades of society. It is hard to judge properly what you have not yourself lived through.
Let us now take a peep at a Chinese home,or the house that makes the home. It may be of any grade, from a mud hut or a bamboo shack in a little country village, to a brick house with black ebony carvings and green glazed tile roof in the capital of the empire or republic. The little folks will be the same. The general structure of the buildings will be the same. The plan and architecture will be the same. The customs will be the same. The furniture will be in general the same, though withal common and coarse or rich and fine. They will eat their food with the same kind of utensils, in the same general way, and it will be in a measure the same kind of food. Their clothes will be of the same pattern, made in the same style. They will dress their hair in the same way, paint and powder their faces in the same way, and make their shoes and stockings with the same kind of needle and thread. And they will have done this for so many centuries that they will think the same kind of thoughts in the same way, until they sit, and walk, and talk, and get angry and revile, or be happy and sing, in the same way, and it will all be different from the same things when done in any other country in the world.
