woman's  life	137
to excuse in her such professional ethics, whether with con-
cubines or not. Our scholar, Yti Chenghsieh, discovered as
early as 1833 that "jealousy is no vice in women." Women who
lose their husbands* favour have about the same feeling as a
professional clerk who loses the good favour of his employer,
and unmarried girls have about the same feeling as a man out
of employment. Man's professional jealousy in commercial
competition is just as merciless as woman's in the field of love,
and a small trader has just as much liking for being put out of
business as a shopkeeper's wife has in seeing her husband take
to another woman. Such is the logic of the economic depend-
ence of women. The failure to see this is responsible for the
jokes about gold-diggers, for gold-diggers are merely the female
counterpart of successful business men: they are more clear-
minded than their sisters, sell their goods to the highest bidders
in a professional spirit, and get what they want. Successful
business men and gold-diggers want the same thing, money,
and they ought to respect each other for his or her clear-
mindedness.
II. home and marriage
Anything is possible in China, however. I have been carried
in a sedan chair by women up the mountains in the outskirts
of Soochow, The women sedan-bearers insisted on carrying
me, a man, up those hills. Somewhat shamefacedly, I let them,
for, I thought, these are the descendants of the ancient Chinese
matriarchs, and sisters of the women in southern FuHen, with
glorious breasts and an erect bearing, who carry coal and till
the field, who rise early in the morning, dress and wash and do
their hair neatly and go to work and come back to nurse their
children with their own milk. They are the sisters, too, of those
women in rich families who rule the household and their hus-
bands as well.
Have women really been suppressed in China, I often
wonder? The powerful figure of the Empress Dowager
immediately comes to my mind. Chinese women are not the
type to be easily suppressed. Women have suffered many