EASTERN
[Printed for the use of the Colonial Office.]
No. 137.
HONG KONG.
THE MUI TSAI SYSTEM.
MEMORANDUM BY MR. E. R. HALLIFAX, O.B.E.
This system may be considered to have become the means by which the demand for domestic servants is supplied. The circumstances of the country (for reasons given below) have made board and lodging in a family which can afford it something to be fervently desired for their female children by very many parents. The girls' maintenance and training become the wages of the work done, whilst a single payment to the parents represents the support a child in other circumstances might be expected voluntarily to afford. The age at which children must work if they are to live is so low that any iclea of trusting the average mui tsai with wages to be disposed of at her own will is out of the question at the beginning, and the Chinese of the class which would supply mui taai cannot afford to look far ahead, Some idea of the ultimate money value of the girl on marriage may even be considered in the payment made; though the exact ideas underlying the "deeds of gift "the formal documents of transfer of mui tsai--are left to be inferred from a comparison of the inany varying conditions they contain. The deeds take many shapes, down to the most illiterate, and have little in common beyond the use of the word "Sung" (present) and the avoidance of "mai" (sell).
They generally contain conditions as to treatment, and perhaps as to marriage; they may go further and enter the details of the control which the parents may continue to exercise; but all this is as a rule omitted and has to be regulated by the customs applicable to the facts.
For in theory still parents do not lose all control over the destinies of their daughter who goes out to work as a mui tsai- unless (and the custom is not common among girls) she is formally and fully adopted.
(B 3/60) Wt. 18950–760 100 22 8, Ltd. GS
265
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