Evening Star Newspaper, March 30, 1930, Page 96

PUE SUNDAY: \STAR, WASHINGTON, \D. €, MARCH- 30, 1930. - China Wages New War on Modern Girls Bobbed-haired flappers posed on the stage in Chinese versions of Paris styles. BY DOROTHY GOULD. PEIPING. EXT to wars and famines China's greatest problem today is her mod- ern girls—and some Chinese seem to believe that these flappers are even more worry than all the militarists and plagues put together. Epidemics of hair-bobbing, beauty centests, fashion shows, wedding reform, militant pa- rades and student uprisings have followed each other in startling succession in China during the past year, while the critical populace waits nervously for tomorrow’s newest feminine out- Beauty contests, when first introduced to China a year or two ago, were frowned upon as being distinctly improper, but only a few months ‘ago the -title of “Miss Tientsin” was wom by Miss Madeleine Chang, daughter of China’s new consul generdl at San Francisco. And Miss Elsie Kwok, daughter of the di- - yector- of .the government mint, was named “Miss Shanghai.” Hundreds of girls of all nationalities com- peted in these two beauty contests which were conducted by night clubs in the port cities and the victory of daughters of such well known and respected families gave the stamp of approyal to such enterprises. They- are spreading throughout China. The Shanghai contest was taken so seriously, in fact, that it was followed by a lawsuit in which eight other beautiful candidates com- piained that the balloting had not been con- ducted legally, but recent settlement of the case leaves Miss Kwok undisputed belle of Shanghai. T the same time fashion shows have also become popular, following the success of one staged in Peiping about two years ago, in which leading debutantes acted as mannequins. The purpose was to display Chinese cos- tumes through the ages. Pretty maidens wore the gowns of royal eras and contrasted these - robes with modern frocks. ‘It happened that the time of this fashion show coincided with the vogue for short skirts, and this public parade of young girls, shocking as it was to conservative Chinese, was not so - shocking as the dresses they wore. Bobbed- haired flappers posed on the stage wearing the latest Chinese versions of Paris styles—and old China gasped. Nation-wide criticism of these styles soon fol- lowed and the dress reformers were encouraged by native silk dealers whose business slumped, due. to the popularity of foreign materials. An association of dress reformers, consisting chiefly of young man students, was organized in Shanghai, and they urged the return to native fashions as a patriotic duty. The sheer " silk hose from the United States, the brilliant dress fabrics from the looms of Europe, the dainty footwear from England, and the im- ported millinery from France were all taboo. C« AWAY with the dress of the foreigner; let us dress in home-grown material,” cried the reformers, who placarded billboards with this slogan. Chinese girls who persisted in wearing alien -styles did so at their peril, for in Shanghai they were stopped on the streets and branded with a big rubber stamp attached to a long stick. “I am not a decent girl, because I wear for- eign goods,” said the rubber stamp, pressed directly on the backs of the offending costumes. New fashion shows were organized to exhibit the Chinese modes which are now in yogue, and recently the silk merchants of Huchow joined in the crusade by staging a bazaar to advertise Chinese fabrics. Effigies were dressed in gowns of native silks and satins, to show the approved styles, while other dummies, clad in the despised velvets and tweeds, were given pigs' heads. Finally even the government took cognizance of the situation by issuing a mandate ordering _the arrest of all who wore “queer dress.” “People with a bent for the novel and queer have gone so far as-to adopt strange styles and don curious-looking costumes,” said the mandate. “Their example was immediately copied, with the result that the entire nation is erazy over novel clothes.” . ol ; Porbidion o patrenive svots: burber shope; Paiglng givle vv their own. To Suppress Beauty Contests and Western Fashions, Young Men of Shanghai Have Organized a Dress-Reform League. Selected as Miss Tientsin, this victory of Miss Madeleine Chang, daughter of the Chinese consul general at San Francisco, helped establish the respectability of Beauty contests. THE ministry of the interior, which issued the mandate, pointed out that regulations gov- erning dress were issued once before, but that the young ladies seemed to regard them as a joke. It has therefore become necessary, the order added, to do something drastic, and courts have been empowered to impose fines and jail sentences on offenders. In the matter of bobbed hair, however, Chi- nese officlals have not been so conservative, and all the subtle significance of hair dressing, evolved through 40 centuries of precedent, has been swept away in China by the present vogue for short locks. From time immemorial a maiden has been recognized in this country by the straight black bangs which hung over her forehead, bangs which were cut off on her wedding night. BUT now maids and matrons alike cut off their hair short all around; there is noth- ing to distinguish a girl from her mother. Mrs, Chiang Kai-shek still retains her girlish bangs after two years of marriage to the President of China, because she believes bangs are become- ing to her, and many other brides now follow her example. On the other hand, many fashionable young women are adopting alien coiffures, though wavy locks heretofore have always been de- spised in the Orient. To meet this sudden demand, hundreds of fancy barber shops have been opened through- out the country, while in other places the wome en sit side by side with men in the old-fash- ioned barber chairs. In Hankow this daring invasion of masculine haunts resulted in a municipal order prohibiting women from patronizing men's shops, but the girls and the barbers joined forces in presenting a 50,000~ word petition to the authorities, and the order was revoked. In Peiping the subdebs have opened a barber shop of their own where they cut each other’s hair, and though the results are sometimes rather fantastic, the method is economical. The models for the new trend in beauty, fashions and hairdressing are the Chinese and foreign movie stars. mem actresses are an innovation in & country where men always have taken fee male roles in the drama. But Chinese movie queens are becoming very popular here, and the young girls are patterning themselves aftex them. One unexpected result of this is that there is a growing tendency among young Chinese women to retain their maiden names after mar- riage. In so doing, many of them are under the misapprehension that they are introducing prope? foreign customs in China, for the foreign women they know most about are the Holly- wood motion picture actresses. They note that Mary Pickford is not called Mrs. Fairbanks and that Gloria Swanson is seldom referred to by her French title. “Equality of the sexes,” which is being en= couraged in many ways by the Nationalist gove ernment, has something to do with the new mode in China. Why should the wife follow the name of her husband, ask the maidens of today? BUT the government is giving no official supe port to this feminist movement, for its documents refer to Mrs. Sun Yat-sen, Mrs, Chiang Kai-shek and other woman leaders in the orthodox Chinese way, not as Soong Ching- ling and Coong Mei-lin, as they are called by some of their young admirers. In general there is now a feeling in China that during the present days of reform some things are being a bit overdone, and that the emancipation of women is one of them. The Chinese flappers are being criticized on all hands. Papers and magazines, as well as M- ernment officials, have begun to “view with alarm.” “While girls they are a curse to their parents, and when married they are burdens to their husbands,” lamented Paul K. Whang, an eligi ble bachelor of Shanghai, who recently started something when he declared that young men cannot any longer afford to marry Chinese brides of the 1930 model. “The modern Chinese girl is too much under the influence of Western civilization and blindly worships everything imported from America,” asserted Mr. Whang in an article in the Chins Weekly Review, “She is afraid of no man, stays out late at night and enjoys as much freedom as her brothers. 2 ““ffln.l in pursuit of pleasure and excite- ment, she looks upon home life as dreary and domestic affairs as trivial. She defies the orders of her parents and laughs at the teache ings of female virtue. We find these modern Chinese girls everywhere now, and the young man who has not yet married looks upon them with suspicion and terror.” Mr. Whang blames the present condition of these flappers on new-fangled education, and his criticism corroborates the findings of Dr. Yamei Kim, one of China’s first “modern women,” who graduated from a Quaker medical college in New York City in 1885 and who for 45 years has been an inspiration to ambitious women of her country. “Schooling for Chinese girls at present is hignly impractical,” said Dr. Kim recently in an interview in her home in Peiping. “It has been a mistake to plunge students into courses of liberal arts for which they are not prepared. The result has been to make our women’s cole leges more fashionable finishing schools and has given Western education, as such, a bad name. “In the old days, when girls seldom went out= side their cloistered courtyards, they were trained first by their mothers and then by their mothers-in-law to be good housekeepers, and 30 they were fitted for their places in life. “Now, after 12 or 14 years of expensive edue cation, a girl is fit only to be an ornament in society circles.” EVEN more severe in his condemnation is Mr. Whang, for he insists that Chinese girls today do not even learn liberal arts. “At school their curriculum consists of new dancing steps and imported love songs,” he declares. “They do not attend school for am education, but for bettering their chance for selecting & husband.” ' (Copyright, 1930.) i