THE CHINESE PIGTAIL.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1002, 17 December 1910, Page 5

THE CHINESE PIGTAIL.

. • MOVEMENT FOB ITS ABOLITION. Br Telegraph—Press Association-Copyright.. (Rec. December 16, 9.50 p.m.) l Poking, December 16. The Imperial Assembly has memorialised the Throne, requesting that all diplomatists, offioers, students, soldiers, and sailors shall remove their queues, which were stigmatised pigtails in commemoration of the nation's subjection by the Manchus.

Ten days ago 11,000 Chinese discarded their queues in Hong-Kong in three days, bix elders, whose ages aggregated 449 years, set the example publicly on the platform of a Chinese club. At the beginning of the year a memorial was presented to tho Throne (writes the "North China Herald"), by wu-tmg-fang, as the result of his journey to Central and South America, in favour of tho abolition of the queue, and of changing, the national costume. ■ He -found that eight or nine-tenths of tho Chinese, in that part of the world had removed their queues, and that the remainder, while retaining, them, were at pains to . conceal an appeudago which they found at once inconvenient and derogatory. On general grounds, moreover;: the memorialist urged tho abolition of the ■ queue, which ho contended had nothing to.jdo with loyalty ..and. patriotism. ..The question, wa's discussed 1 by'tho Peking Government, but, on the plea that the removal or retention of tho queue did_ not belong to tho realm of reform,, having no hearing on the strength or we'akriess of the country, .the memorial was shelved.