Foreign News: Gold-Digging Justified

China’s deposed Emperor, weak-eyed, spidery-limbed Mr. Henry Pu Yi, was not compelled last week to recognize famed Concubine Shu Fei as his “wife” or to answer her suit for “divorce” (TIME, Oct. 12).

A quick settlement out of court ended what Chinese feminists had hoped would be a lengthy, thrilling and most educational cause celebre, opening the eyes of humble Chinese concubines to their wife-rights under China’s new Legal Code (TIME, July 27). The settlement:

Concubine Shu Fei drops the question of her status, abates her demand for consummation (of her marriage or concubinage, whichever it is).

Mr. Henry Pit. Yi agrees to provide her permanently with separate maintenance in her own house—an unprecedented concession from a Manchu. electrifying to all Chinese husbands. Deeply shocked, one conservative Peiping paper branded “this renegade concubine” as “no better than what is called in the United States ‘gold-digger.’ ”

Though she had won so much, Concubine Shu Fei still smarted last week under the rebukes of her brother. He, a confirmed bootlicker of Manchus, had reminded her by letter that the duty of an Imperial concubine is, of course, to commit suicide rather than displease her lord. Conscious of this moral duty, Shu Fei cried last week, “But I had planned to kill myself, I swear it!”

In a letter to her sister (who has kept Shu Fei at a good Peiping hotel and paid her lawyers), China’s Imperial Gold Digger justified herself thus:

“Dearest Sister:

“I was terrified when the Emperor sent a eunuch to me, saying that I had spit and cursed in his presence, and must acknowledge my guilt in writing. I sent back word apologizing and begging imperial forgiveness.

“But the Emperor would not forgive me and my position was impossible. I would be more than ever at the mercy of eunuchs, who had abused me for nine years. So I decided to commit suicide.

“But you, my beloved sister, came to see me just in time to save me from self-destruction. You pointed out the way out of my difficulties. I owe to you my life.

“Shu Fei”

Japanese may place Mr. Henry Pu Yi on the Throne of Manchuria, if the Japanese succeed in inducing Manchuria to secede from China. But the Japanese Government will have no official part in doings so highhanded. In Tokyo last week a Government spokesman told Japanese reporters that Imperial Henry is “in danger of being kidnapped [from his home in the Japanese concession at Tientsin] by Chinese who are resolved to make him Emperor of Manchuria.”

Next day the number of Japanese guarding China’s ex-Emperor was ostentatiously doubled. Thus the Japanese Government, whatever happens, had established its alibi.