Daily Kennebec journal., 1914-02-24
CAPITAL GRANGE, NO. 24s, p. OF
II. Meetings I'd and 4th Saturday even
ings of each month at G. A. r. hall.
EDWARD RIPLEY. w. NJ.
MRS. G. L. T0OTHAKEk. See.
aug22. tu-th sat,1yr.
PIRAT SIS.
Miss Ching of China a Real Militant

Writers have made quite a to-do
about the feminist movement in the
Republic of China. Chinese women, in
the last few years, it is inferred, have
emancipated themselves. They wear
No. shoes, tight skirts instead of
pajamas, attend teas. have culture
clubs, want the vote and every now
and then smash a window just like
their sisters in more civilized-if not
so polite-nations; and all this quite
recently.
But that is all wrong-that Is, the
recent part. The militant feminist
movement in China began when Mrs.
Pankhurst's grandmother was
baby. To be exact, the first Chinese
campaign to verify Mr.. kipling's
much-quoted philosophy became no.
ticeable in 1906, and one Mistress
Ching, a piratess of gentle mien and
some repute, was it's most active
champion.
In the beginning Mistress Ching was
an uncommonly good-looking daugh-
ter of a man in Hupeh Province who
operated something akin to the modern
spindle game. She attracted the fancy
one day of a business friend or her
father, one Ching-yih, a promising and
ambitious pirate of the south coast
Ching-yih paid the father the equiv
alent of s40 the value of Chinese girls
in those days, and the daughter al
ready in love with the handsome
Young pirate, went gladly to his pi-
ratical ship.
And they lived long and prospered
and were happy and two little pirates
came to bless them. Ching-yih even
declared himself Emperor of the South.
And his chief wife no doubt added
Empress to her title of Presidentress
of the Ladies' Piratical Auxiliary.
But alas for \the best laid plots of
men and mice, as Bobby Burns. has IT.
Ching -yih fell, was showed overheard
one night and some 10000 pirates
awoke the next morning chieftain-
less.
Each captain Immediately offered
himself as a successor for the high
Admiral, and each one cleared his
decks and prepared to fight Tor the
honor. It looked as if the pirates
would start a bloody family quarrel
when Mistress Chingyih, with the po-
litical experience of the LADIES aux
iliary behind her, calmly took COM
maud. She appointed one Paou, an
orphan boy her husband had reared,
as chief lieutenant and Prime Minis
ter. Then she summoned all the cap
tains and called upon them for loyal
support. Like the Hungarian mobiles
did when Maria Theresa appealed to
them. the Chinese piratieal mobiles
yanked out their swords and swore to
murder for her, and her only, as long
as she lived.
Thus the first feminist movement
of a militant character-in China
launched.
Mistress Ching (she dropped the yin
part) had wonderful success. Her
force rapidly grew to 10000. the Pi-
rates, Own Book says. and there
wasn't a seacoast city in China but
what could boast Of a visit or two
from her. AS one Chinese writer par
adoxically puts 1t: 'The blackened
ruins Of burned cities sprang up like
loathsome flowers in her wake
In many ways Mistress-or, rather,
Admiraless now--Ching was quite an
Improvement on the piratical chiefs
Of that day AS Napoleon was doing
about the same thing in Europe, she