LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND IMPRISONMENT.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 74, 26 August 1874, Page 3

LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND IMPRISONMENT.

The Shanghai correspondent of the Times writes : —There has recently been acting in Shanghai a celebrated tragedian named Yang Ych-lin. Young, handsome, and clever, this man is reputed to have worked havoc in the hearts of his female auditors. At length he created a grande passion which has resulted in his ruin. A young Cantonese lady, the daughter of a well-to-do Chinaman living in Shanghai, saw and admired him, pined, grew sick, and refused to be comforted. The father washed his hands of the affair and went south, with the knowledge, it is alleged by the damsel, of what would follow, However this may be, the girl's mother at once opened negotiations for matrimony, went through all formalities prescribed by Chinese custom, and eventually handed over her daughter to the actor as his wife. One would have thought this ended the affair, and that social ostracism was the worst the lady and her husband had to encounter. But that would be to calculate without China and Chinese Mandarins. It chances that the Che-Hsien, or magistrate, of Shanghai is a Cantonese, and therefore, of course, sympathises with that class of the Shanghai population. No sooner was the news abroad than Cantonese society here flew,' metaphorically, to arms, accused Yang Yeh-lin of abduction, procured his arrest and torture, and the punishment and imprisonment of his wife, who persisted that there was no abduction at all, that the marriage was formal and proper, and that she liked and meant to stick to her husband. Scandal says the Canton Guild went so far as to offer 20.000 taels to the magistrate to decapitate a man who had brought disgrace upon a family with which many of them were connected. So far, however, the CheIlsein dared not go, but what he might—and the might for evil of a Chinese Mandarin is great he did. He ordered the wretched Yang 100 blows with the heavy bamboo on the ankle bone—the torture of which may be conceived by tapping one's own ankle lightly with one's cane —had him strung up for twelve hours by the thumbs with the arms reversed and drawn up behind the back, the effect being, of course, to strain and partly dislocate the shoulders, and he allowed to be fixed round his neck an ingenious collar which presses upon the apple of the throat and produces a constant sense of choking and irritation aggravated continually by the inevitable cough. Scandal further says that Van; 1 ; was able In bribe his gaolers with £2OO to free him From the last encumbrance ; but your readers will

admit that the first two punishments were enough for marrying a handsome girl on her own proposal. The girl herself got 100 blowon the face with a leather strap, the effect of which is, of course, to reduce the features temporarily to pulp.