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bad treatment.
He said he could instance his own family.
His mother had five mui tsais. He had one. They were
treated much as house-maids are treated in respectable
English households. His mother, like most Chinese ladies,
had however arranged marriages for her mui tsai, to very
respectable men who were able to keep them. There was no
question of selling them in marriage, nor of arranging
marriages such as arranged for daughters of the house.
They were marriages prompted by custom and kindness. He
did not think for an instant that owners of mui ts'ai who
were respectable would be troubled by the Police about
these regulations, although it was possible that at first
some might be constrained to register them. In fact he
thought the regulations were a mere face saving device to
show how civilized the modern Chinese are.
He stated that in the great majority of cases the
mui tsai would prefer to remain with their masters and
mistresses; in most cases their own parents could not afford
to keep them or to receive them back. Their parents
generally were poor but respectable people who wanted to
see their daughters received into good homes, but who
disliked selling them. Undoubtedly there was a certain
amount of selling, and it would be precisely in glaring
cases of that kind that the new regulations might prove
useful. He thought however that there was no intention to
enforce the regulations intensively.
As these remarks were made to me in the course of a
private conversation on the train, I pass them on to you in
a private letter; I do not feel justified in embodying them
in a despatch. It is inconceivable that a responsible
Chinese official would talk as Mr. Lai talked to me in the
course of an official interview.
I have no doubt that if I
were to call on Dr. Yu Po Liang and challenge him officially
on the subject he would assert that the Provincial Government