A CHINESE ELOPEMENT.

Waikato Times, Volume 459, Issue VIII, 27 April 1875, Page 3

A CHINESE ELOPEMENT.

Fashionable circles at Shanghai have recently found abundant food for gossip in an " exciting incident" of which a Chinese general is the hero. This warrior, after having reaped his laurels by defending the Mahommedans in Yunan, happened to be struck with one of the Celestial beauties whom he saw while passing through Shanghai on his vray to Peking. Unfortunately this young lady was the daughter of a distinguished personage, and was affianced to a wealthy Chinese. This only inflamed the passitn of the aged warrior, who, By a liberal distribution of presents, gained the confidence of several persons, belonging to the young lady's household, a^od^hat was still better, of her , mother. It only wS^aed for him, in order to ensure the success of the elopement, to secure the passive co-operation of the police, and this he was enabled to do by judicious arrangements with a tapao, once a member of the municipal police, who undertook to " make it right " with his former colleagues. So, at the appointed time, the general was enabled to carry the young lady off from her house, and "the happy couple," embarking in a richly decorated sampan which was lying in the river, got off safely to Soochow. The marriage does not appear, however, to have been a happy one, for the general has written to the finance 1 , offering to return him his wife, and to pay a good round sum to get rid of her. The general's in fluence will be sufficiently strong to protect him from punishment, but the tapao who "made it rjght" will probably suffer for his share in the offence of separating two affianced persons — which is visited with severe penalties in China and most Eastern countries.