chaste girl or woman. Thus here in the oldest love song in China, you have the three essential qualities in the Chinese feminine ideal, viz. love of seclusion, bashfulness or pudeur, ineffable grace and charm expressed by the word debonair and last of all, purity or chastity. In short, the real or true Chinese woman is chaste; she is bashful, has pudeur; and she is attractive and debonair. This then is the Chinese feminine ideal,—the "Chinese Woman."
In the Confucian Catechism (中庸) which I have translated as the Conduct of Life, the first part of the book containing the practical teaching of Confucius on the conduct of life concludes with the description of a Happy Home thus:
"When wife and children dwell in unison,
'Tis like to harp and lute-well played in tune,
When brothers live in concord and in peace,
The strain of harmony shall never cease.
Make then your Home thus always gay and bright.
Your wife and dear ones shall be your delight."
This Home in China is the minature Heaven,—as the State with its civic order, the Chinese Empire,—is the real Heaven, the Kingdom of God come upon this earth, to the Chinese people. Thus, as the gentleman in China with his honour, his Religion of Loyalty is the guardian of the State, the Civic Order, in China, so the Chinese woman, the Chinese gentlewoman or lady, with her debonair charm and grace, her purity, her pudeur, and above all, her Religion of Selflessness,—is the the Guardian Angel of the minature Heaven, the Home in China.
