a girl will be saved for a year
or two, and then sold for a wife or slave. Many instances have come to
the notice of missionaries where large families of girls have been
destroyed. There is one woman now employed as a nurse in a missionary's
family at Fuh-Chow, who says that her mother had eight girls and three
boys, and that she was the only girl permitted by her father to live. We
never heard of an instance of a boy's being destroyed at birth. There is
a village about fifteen miles from Fuh-Chow, which is swarming with
boys, but where girls are very scarce. The people account for it
themselves by alleging the common practice of killing the girls at
birth, a practice which is indulged in by the rich as well as by the
poor.[2]

But to enter into all the particularities of Chinese life which attract
the attention at Shanghai as in other cities, would be to compile an
account of China and her customs.

The points of real importance to be considered in connection with
Shanghai, which is fast becoming the commercial centre of Chinese
exports, are the extent to which foreigners have an influence on the
people in modifying their habits, increasing their knowledge, and
dispelling their prejudices. The growth of European influence and the
complete opening of the Chinese empire, in which immense advances have
been made in the last three years, will, in time, it is to be hoped,
lead to the diffusion of the Christian religion, a work attended with
such gigantic difficulties, at the present day, that one cannot
sufficiently admire the courage, patience, and faith which actuate
missionaries to this empire. No representations of these difficulties
which reach the Christian world have done justice to them, for it is
necessary to observe the heartlessness, self-conceit, and prodigious
prejudices of the Chinese to appreciate the noble zeal of the
missionaries. The course of trade and much more correct notions of the
power and objects of the Western nations, and the firmness with which
they use the former to secure the latter, are unquestionably breaking up
with rudeness the ridiculous ideas of the Chinese concerning their own
importance and superior wisdom. If once they can be made learners in
good earnest, the battle is half won, for none doubt their intelligence.
European influence, alone, has effected great changes in five years, and
European and Chinese combined may, in the five years to come, work out
still greater reforms.

FO