"Ning Lao T’ai-T’ai"

When our children left the house exploring their career paths, they left many of their books at home.

"The Norton Book of Women's Lives" is one of the books left behind by our younger daughter.

In this anthology, there are substantial selections from the twentieth-century literature of women's lives: autobiographies, journals, and memoirs.

"Ning Lao T’ai-T’ai" is one of them written by Ida Pruitt, an American living in Peking before the Second World War.

She wanted to learn more about the old customs of Chinese families and was put in touch with the mother of a man who worked for her husband. The old woman came at breakfast three days a week for two years and talked to Pruitt, telling tales to illustrate various customs, using her own life as an example.

Pruitt published Ning’s story in "A Daughter of Han" in 1948.

The following is an excerpt from "Ning Lao T’ai-T’ai" (literally "old lady Ning"):

"...... . The life of the beggar is not the hardest one. There is freedom. Today, perhaps, there is not enough to eat, but tomorrow there will be more. There is no face to keep up. Each day is eaten what has been begged that day. The sights of the city are free for beggars. The temple fairs with their merrymaking crowds, the candy sticks with their fluttering pennants, the whirligigs spreading noise and the colors of the rainbow in the air, women dressed in gay colors, the incense burning before the shrines and piling up in the iron pots, the flames leaping high, are harvest time for beggars. There is drama on the open-air stage. No lady can get as close as a beggar. The ladies have their dignity to maintain and must sit in a closed cart or on the edge of the throng in tea booths. No woman but a beggar woman could see the magistrate in his embroidered ceremonial robes ride to the temples to offer sacrifice at the alters of the city in the times of festival.
At noon the beggars come to the gruel kitchen where all the other beggars have gathered and find human companionship. There is warm food, pleasantry, and the close feel of people around. There is no future, but there is no worry. An old proverb says, 'Two years of begging and one will not change places with the district magistrate.' All this if a beggar is not sick........ ."


Yeh Tze