Over the course of her life, Ning Lao worked as a maid for a wide variety of masters, including members of the Chinese political and economic elite. In this excerpt, Ning Lao described her time in the household of Ch’ien Lao-yeh, a wealthy civil official from an ancient and powerful clan. The clan home in which she worked had over two hundred rooms and was inhabited by two to three hundred family members, servants, and slaves. As you read, focus on Ning Lao’s opinion of her employers. How did she view her master and mistress? What did she think of their wealth and power?

My new master Ch’ien Lao-yeh had passed his examinations and was qualified to be a district magistrate himself. He had the rank, but as yet had never been given an official seal of his own. He was called a “Waiting to Re-place District Magistrate.” Meantime he worked as assistant to the district magistrate of P’englai. He worked up most of the lawsuits. He had no salary but got his share of what is paid by those who go to law. His father had been a prefect. They came from an old family of famous lawyers. No court in China was considered complete without a Ch’ien of Hsiao Hsing.

The clan family had not divided the property for seventeen generations. There were over two hundred rooms in the house in Hsiao Hsing. When the family went to meals there were between two and three hundred people fed at every meal. A gong was beaten and all went. The house was open to any member of the family at any time, and he could stay as long as he wished. When a girl of the family was married she was given ten dollars, and when a man was married he was given twenty dollars. This was done no matter what the private wealth of the person or how poor he was.

The master himself was a man of rectitude and breeding. For a long time he did not know that my face was covered with pockmarks. He had never looked at me. When he walked it was with head lowered. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. One day when I had been there a year and a half he happened to look up as I was setting the tea in front of him. I saw him start. He waited until I was out of the room. He did not have the face to say it while I was there. He said, “Has Lao Ning pockmarks?” How we all laughed.

The mistress was also woman of uprightness and breeding. Her father had been a Tao T’ai, and Intendant of Circuit. She was a good mistress. When she saw that the meat provided for us by the cook was not sufficient she would slip a few extra cash to me and say, “Here, go and buy yourself something to eat.” Or she would take a preserved egg from the table and say, “Here, cook this and eat it.”

My mistress told me that there were three things that I must not do.

“You must not act as a matchmaker for a girl to be a concubine. You must not act as matchmaker for a woman to marry a second husband. You must not become a Christian.

“A hall is not a room. A concubine is not a person. You must not sin in so destroying a life. To be a concubine is also to suffer too much. She is at the mercy of the first wife.

“A good horse does not carry two saddles. A good woman does not marry two husbands. To marry a second time, for a woman, is to mix the stream of life, and so it is a sin.

“The Christians teach loyalty to Heaven but they also teach people to dishonor the graves of their ancestors. And that for us is a great sin. For us, our highest loyalty is to our ancestors.”

And truly my mistress was right, at least in the matter of concubines. I have never seen it work unless the first wife was dead.

Source: Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), pp. 115–116. Copyright 1945, Yale University Press. Used by permission of Yale University Press.

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