Evening Star Newspaper, April 6, 1930, Page 91

Fiction he Sundiy Star Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 1930. PART SEVEN. Daughters of China’s Revolution The Modern Spirited Young Woman Has Given to Old Cathay “More Than the Modern Boy Deserves, and, Thanks to Her Native Intelligence, the Wit to Defend Herself Against All Who Would Question Her Principles and Actions.” I by chance you are ever in Shang- hii on a Sunday take no heed of what any one asks you to do—unless it is to go to that rambling old baronial edifice which was once the mansion of a Scottish taipan, but which for longer than people remember has been the Majestic Hotel. For years nonsense and sentiment have been whispered down its thickly carpeted corridors. In the cool paths of Ms lush gardens, that in Summer are drenched with the scent of olean- ders, romance has walked, while under a yel- low China moon love, for a fortunate few, has been something very real and tender. But the truth of the matter appears to be that the Majestic is one of the few fine things that ever happened in this city of ugly sin and sinful ugliness—and of the two evils people say the dearth of beauty is much more difficult to brar. And so that is perhaps why every one admircs the mellow loveliness of the Majestic. That—2nd its Sunday tea dances, which aie really th> cnly reward worth traveling to this end of thio carth to enjoy. Here. while you sip saffron-colored bubbles that are ca'led Singapore gin sling for a reason which no one can state, you can be part of a living, exotic pageant; the fysion of alien civili- zations; the confluence of antipodal streams of culture; the wonder of contrasting beauty in human beings. Here the slender, silken, slant- eyed East dances in the arms of thg robust West . . . Ilere, in the Majestic, the Occident mingles with the Orient and nobody raises his eyebrows. And ou! there on the waxy expanses of the ball ronm floor, weaving artless patterns between artfully arranged intervals of light and shadow, dancing to Western music played on Western reed and brass string, New Lady China glides The old China—Its changing aspect is typified by the new freedom of its women. By Edgar Snow. with the superb grace of a tranquil swan on rippleless water. New Lady China who has learned to use her feet. New Lady China who has ceased to envy her Western sister and has begun to emulate her. ANCING, of course, is but one of the mani- festations of this interesting new creature. But there is nothing which offers surer, more tangible evidence that the Chinese woman of today has emancipated herself from the strict code of conduct that fettered her honorable ancestors. 3 When one sees this modern Chinese girl un- ashamedly and publicly embraced by a partner who is frequently a foreigner, following with ease the astonishing steps of the latest imported fox trot. one begins to realize the distance that separates her from her mother. Consider the widely different circumstances under whicix these two women grew out of adolescence. . . . When the mother was born her father’s friends probably offered him condolence by as- suring him that it was a calamity likely to oc- cur in any gods-fearing Chinese family. Weep- ing at the misfortune, his wife humbly begged her husband’s forgiveness, while with joss and paper prayers she supplicated heaven that the next arrival might be a boy child. She was betrothed when she was very young. She had nothing to say about it; neither had her husband. The marriage was arranged quietly by their parents—what could children know of such matters? And love? Ah, but love was sorpething for the poets to think about —the worthless fellows. And if, when she went to the bridal chamber, she had any schooling beyond the mere marital and household affairs, she was the exception, even among daughters of the rich. The mother has bound feet. So that all men might know her in later life for a Chinese and not a barbarian or a Manchu, they were broken when she was a baby, the toes turned back and bandaged against the arches. Nevertheless, wilh surprising agility she totters today on the funny stumps; with beauty, some say, for the tiny, mincing step of lily feet was the ideal toward which every gentle lady once aspired. ] Her hair she wears in the old style, stretched back tightly so that no wrinkles appear in her forehead, smoothed down with the bark of slip- pery elm and caught in a little whorl at the nape of her neck, where a jade hairpin finally concludes the simple masterpiece. But, alas, as a result of this stern coiffure the years have left her with little hair. Baldness among Chinese women is as common as obesity among the bishops of Anatole, France. She wears the modern skirt, but peeping from beneath it one sees the ends of wide silken trousers modestly covering her ankles, as olden custom decreed. She is still as siender as a girl, and because exercise in her life has never meant much more than the lifting of a porce- lain tea pot, her shoulders are only a little less narrow than her chest. Certainly here is & fragile, utterly feminine bit of femininity. Yet she is no fool, this woman. She has Features Books 24 PAGES. —Drawn by Cyrus L. Baldridge. reared a family, given sons as well as her mod- ern daughter to her husband, and she knows how to keep their loyalty despite conflicting opinions on many matters. That the old order is doomed she understands, and she resents it— but is that not ever the privilege of age? She has to be clever to keep harmony in her home, which nowadays is forever the scene of compro- mise between senility and youth. By her chil- dren her ‘ideas are regarded as archaic. But they remember the virtue of filial piety and are gentle to her, and kind. NOW obsreve this mother’s dancing daughter, What a different era has opened up tor this eager young lady! Since her birth, 20 years or more ago, she has had almost every opportunity that her mother was denied. She has freedom of speech and—perhaps more important—freedom of feet. Exercising the first privilege, she talks with authority on subjects of which her mother knows nothing, dismissing art, science, religion, birth control or what you care to discuss with an epigram and a sigh. In all probability she is a graduate of a mod- ern finishing school, of which there are a great number in Shanghai and other urban centers, She may speak English—understandable Enge lish—with the natural linguistic gift of her race, And at present she may be either planning & trip abroad or contemplating entering a Weste ern university to prepare for a “career. Ale though she is of marriageble age—may be ene gaged, indeed, to a man qf her choice—the .fact that the marriage has not yet taken place does not disturb her in the least. She is full of self« confidence. : i As for the emancipation of her feet: Wha¢ mew conquests this has made estainablel She