Illegitimate children, the source of so much baby-farming and infanticide elsewhere, are practically unknown in China; and the same may be said of divorce.

A woman cannot legally divorce her husband.

In rare cases she will leave him, and return to her family, in spite of the fact that he can legally insist upon her return; for she knows well that if her case is good, the husband will not dare to risk the scandal of an exposure, not to mention the almost certain vengeance of her affronted kinsmen.

It is also the fear of such vengeance that prevents mothers-in-law from ill-treating the girls who pass into their new homes rather as servants than daughters to the husband's mother.

Every woman, as indeed every man, has one final appeal by which to punish an oppressor.