"Joan of Are" of China To the Editor of the "Nonrit-Cinxa Dany News"
Sm—It over scorns a mistake to drive wrong impressions into the heads of our foreign. readers when we are tolling them things of China that are not authentically true. It the subject be a historical one, one should use discretion all. the more.
In the last Sunday issue of the "North-China Daily News." under the above heading, Tsai Chin Hwa Is immortalized as' our national heroine, who has her prototype in the person of the French Joan of Are. Now we certainly do not wish to wrench that. romantic page of history from the French nation and graft it on to urs; to them. that would be defamatory; 10 us, ridiculous. We do have many commendable heroines all through our history who could rival the patriotic, glamorous, and mystical Joan of Are, if not surpass her in the couniry's salvation: but T fail to seo any incident in the life of Tsai Chin Hwa that would entitle her to so high an estimation. Tt would have been much more appropriate to com~ pare Chin Tzin, the heroine who shed her patriotic blood dedicated to our first Revolution, and who is now buried with state pomp in Hangchow, with the French heroic saint. than have put a wayward adventures and a religious devotee on the same level.
I am by no means inclined to dis parage, our popular, venuy simely because she was a sing-song girl; th point is she did nothing. extraordin. ary in those turbulent days of the Slego of Peking for which the nation could have thanked her and claimed her as our national heroine. Hud thes let us suppose, prevailed upon the Dowager-Empress to nip the Boxer movement in the bud. oF had she made a strong impression on the Allied generals so that they fully understood that the disastrous calamity was the outcome of a moment's madness on the part of the decaying Manchu Court, and not the will of peace-loving nation, she would have accomplished something tobe cherish= ed by posterity, What she really did Way to have saved a few hhocent lives; she found General von Waldersee an old acquaintance, and 40 she pleaded for human sympathy; from the General, it was a matter Of friendly courtesy, and from sal Chin Itwa, that of using her, enchantment to curtail bloodstied, 'There the mercy stopped; and I do not blame hor, since her' sphere of action was limited, and she could only hold sway Where hor charms prevailed. Tu those dark days when 0 man's life hung by a thread, sai Chin, Twa's intervention meant god-send. 'You could credit her with a humane heart. and say that she did her very Dost to save peoples' lives; but that's all; every woman has a tender, heart it she knows what human suffering {s, and Tyal Chin was given the rai opportunity to show It in the public eye. What that has to do with the country's salvation, 1 cannot under~ stand.
Furthermore, (o drag Tsai Chin Hwa Into the Peace Treaty. is too much of a poetic licence. The late Marquis Li Hung-chang never met! the sing-song girl in his life. a high: ly-principled and austere man as he was. When he left the two Kwang. provinces. where he was then the Governor, he was already a (ottering seplugenarian overburdened with she nation's grief, and after his arrival Poking. whither the Imperial Court summoned him for the peace negotiations, he soon died. Though preliminary pourparlers were partly conducted by him. the Treaty Was finally signed by Wen Wen Shao. who was the Emperor's Grand Chancellor a well as the Head of the Foreign Office, Foreign Powers ull knew the Into Marquts, and it was! with their concurrence that the Grand Old Man was summoned to Poking. I should think his per~ sonality was enough, without a word of favour from Tsai Chin Hwa, and General von Waldersee might have agreed with the woman that not many people should be killed, but T doubt if he would have consented if she pressed that the amount of the Indemnity be a little deducted, "The reason why Tsai Chin Hwa is so well-known to our people through newspaper publicity, coupled with a very good novel entitied "Nich Hal Hwa" (A Flower in the Sea of Sin; and just as everyone knows the Tegendary Madame aux Camelias created by Alexander Dumas, everyone knows Tsai Chin Hwa, the scarlet flower in the sea of sin.
Tu her early life, she followed the usual vicissitudes that fall to the lot of sing-song girls, Her marriage with Hung Wen Chin and her consequential tour abroad enhanced her social status and personal prestige, because the husband presented her everywhere as his diplomatic consort, and foreign Courts implicitly believed. When the husband died, she returned to her gay pursuits, and only retired when she found her power of charm was gone, Like all these romantic figures of hor class, she was chosen by Fate to play an important part in social life; and so she was widely known, and so che formed a charming theme for the novelist and the poet; more the} novelist than the poet, as she could not be claimed as China's beauty, unless an Imaginary poet makes her} However, she certainly could not be picked up as a fitting theme for a historian, and I shall regret most pathetically if after a hundred years someone turns over a page in Chinese history and. exclaims. to his friend: "Well, I never! I did not know Chins vias also a Joan of Are."
Teal Chin Hwa is just an interest ing character in the pagcantary tableau of those far-off days wher Poking still held a glamour of the past. Mad not a clever novelist, immoralized her she would long have been forgotten; just as Teen Liang of Soochow' and Soo Shiao Shiao. of Hangchow, who are literary remem bronces, so shall Tsai Chin Hwa be remembered as the adventurous, en~ chanting. and Nally pathetic heroine of one of China's carly renaissance novels, Shanghai, Dee. 6.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.