Chinese Sketches by Herbert A. Giles — Read

A great deal of trash has been committed to writing by various / foreigners on the subject of female children in China. The prevailing / belief in Europe seems to be that the birth of a daughter is looked / upon as a mournful event in the annals of a Chinese family, and that a / large percentage of the girls born are victims of a wide-spread system / of infanticide, a sufficient number, however, being spared to prevent / the speedy depopulation of the Empire. It became our duty only the / other day to correct a mistake, on the part of a reverend gentleman / who has been some twelve years a missionary in China, bearing on this / very subject. He observed that "the Chinese are always profuse in / their congratulations on the birth of a _son_; but if a girl is born, / the most hearty word they can afford to utter is, 'girls too are / necessary. " Such a statement is very misleading, and cannot, in these / days of enlightenment on Chinese topics, be allowed to pass / unchallenged.

"I hear you have obtained one thousand ounces of gold," / is perhaps the commonest of those flowery metaphors which the Chinese / delight to bandy on such an auspicious occasion; another being, "You / have a bright pearl in your hand," &c., &c. The truth is that parents / in China are just as fond of all their children as people in other and / more civilised countries, where male children are also eagerly desired / to preserve the family from extinction. The excess in value of the / male over the female is perhaps more strongly marked among the / Chinese, owing of course to the peculiarity of certain national / customs, and not to any want of parental feeling; but, on the other / hand, a very fair share both of care and affection is lavished upon / the daughters either of rich or poor. They are not usually taught to / read as the boys are, because they cannot enter any condition of / public life, and education for mere education's sake would be / considered as waste of time and money by all except very wealthy / parents. Besides, when a daughter is married, not only is it necessary / to provide her with a suitable dowry and trousseau, but she passes / over to the house of her husband, there to adopt his family name in / preference to her own, and contract new obligations to a father- and / mother-in-law she may only have seen once or twice in her life, more / binding in their stringency than those to the father and mother she / has left behind.