The Wishes of Lin Sen

There is no marrying in Chungking this month and no becoming engaged. Open enjoyment of amusements is taboo and flags are at half-mast. Black arm bands mark all members of the Government, the Army and the Kuomintang. For 30 days the war-racked capital mourns the passing (TIME, Aug. 9) of gentle Lin Sen, President of China.

A time of continence in feverish, polygamy-ridden Chungking is a fitting tribute to Lin Sen. His wife died 50 years ago. He never remarried, never took a concubine. Lin Sen stands as a symbol of the new monogamy which is eclipsing the practice of polygamy* and leading the nation toward yet another Western custom.

At wooded Ruling, where the Generalissimo used to hold his open-air summer conferences in the years before the Japs came, it was Lin Sen's pleasure to place stone seats beside the pleasant walks among the rustling bamboo groves and within sound of the waterfalls. He had a warning carved on the seats: "He who keeps a concubine, keep off."

Confucianism places filial piety high among the cardinal virtues. Failure to produce a male descendant is the gravest of filial omissions. For 2,300 years men have avoided impiety by taking a concubine when a wife remains-childless or bears only daughters. If a man puts off the choosing of a "Little Star," friends may urge him delicately. Until the 1930s it was even thought a charming virtue in a wife to press a "Little Star" upon a husband who, at 40, had no sons.

Tea for too Many. When Chungking became the war capital of Free China, thousands of officers and officials streamed to the bleak new headquarters, leaving their wives behind. Quietly at first, later quite openly, concubines moved in to ease the loneliness. Men without sons told one another that home life was a hedge against insanity in the turmoil of Chungking.

Trouble came when husbands well supplied with male descendants followed the lead of their less favored brothers. News of the taking of concubines filtered home, prompted many a modern monogamous wife to make the difficult trek.

The trip was costly: large sums were needed to buy a passage through Jap lines and past bandit hordes. Many an ex' hausted wife reached Chungking penniless and almost naked to find a concubine in her rightful place. Too often the concubine was herself a "modern girl," unwilling to retire and dead against accepting the traditional role of handmaiden. For some there were successful compromises, but for most court seemed the only answer. ("Two spoons in the same bowl will knock against each other.") Then courts became so clogged that a "duration" moratorium on all such cases was proclaimed.

Now many an emancipated Chinese woman, aware of the law against polygamy but forced by war to share a roof with another, waits patiently for the time to resume the fight for monogamy. To these wives the death of Lin Sen was the loss of a great friend, the month-long ban on courtship a welcome breather.

*Polygamy, though sanctioned in Confucianism, was prohibited in 1931, made a criminal offense (five years maximum sentence) in 1935.

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