No attempt was made to coerce Chinese women, who dress their hair in styles totally different from that of the Manchu women; there are, too, some tolerated differences between the dress of the Manchu and Chinese men, but these are such as readily escape notice.
Neither was any attempt made in the opening years of the conquest to interfere with foot-binding by Chinese women; but in 1664 an edict was issued forbidding the practice.

Readers may draw their own conclusions, when it is added that four years after the edict was withdrawn.

Hopes are now widely and earnestly entertained that with the dawn of the new era, this cruel custom will become a thing of the past; it is, however, to be feared that those who have been urging on this desirable reform may be, like all reformers, a little too sanguine of immediate success, and that a comparatively long period will have to go by before the last traces of foot-binding disappear altogether.

Meanwhile, it seems that the Government has taken the important step of refusing admission to the public schools of all girls whose feet are bound.
The disappearance of the queue is another thing altogether.

It is not a native Chinese institution; there would be no violation of any cherished tradition of antiquity if it were once and for ever discarded.