CHAPTER XX - PART II.—TO MACAO, SWATOW, AMOY, FOOCHOW, HANGCHOW AND SOOCHOW

Summary

IT is a little sad to have to own that anti-footbinding seems much farther advanced in languid, sunshiny Macao than in bustling Hong- Kong. Of course the Portuguese have been established there for centuries, and they mix with the people and inter-marry as we do not. It may be that which makes the difference. But some say a doctor, a leading member of the reform party, has made the change at Macao. There on the Pray a, a miniature Bay of Naples, with the exceptionally romantic public gardens at one end and the Governor's palace at the other, the Portuguese band making music in the evenings, the waves lapping on the shore, mothers walking out with their children round them, as we never seem to see English mothers in the East, and young girls with their duennas, there in Macao several of the best European houses are occupied by Chinese, and in one, conspicuous with heavily-gilded railings, I was delighted to find that all the children were growing up unbound. Mr Ho Sui Tin, the leading Chinese of Macao, and a Portuguese subject, not only arranged a Chinese meeting for me to address, but took me home to his house afterwards and assured me one of his little girls was about shortly to be unbound. But though they had every luxury in the way of costly and artistic furnishing, even to a billiard table, on which they said they played, it was sad to see the elder daughters with their bound feet. He had not however been a member of the Reform Doctor's Society.