Marriages in Weiheiwei--in spite of the optimistic dictum of the Chinese chronicler already quoted--are very often, like marriages elsewhere, negotiated in a mercenary spirit and with a keen eye to "business." The Roman _coemptio_ was undoubtedly in origin a system of marriage by purchase; and perhaps the practice if not the theory is in many Western countries the same to-day. In rural China the average father wants to procure for his son the best possible wife at the lowest possible cost; the girl's father wants to give his daughter to the family that will allow him the largest compensation for his own outlay. The financial part of the arrangements is so prominent in the minds of the plain-speaking peasants of Weihaiwei that they will talk of buying and selling their wives and daughters in much the same way as they would talk of dealing in farm produce at the neighbouring market. The local practice (as apart from the law of China) in matters concerning marriage is in some respects curious. "My wife has run away from me," stated a petitioner. "She lived with me nearly three years. I know where she is, but I cannot make her come back to me because I originally got her for nothing. She left me because I was too poor. She took away with her nothing that was not her own. I have no complaint to make against her."
The people of Weihaiwei know nothing of regular divorce proceedings. The man whose wife deserts him or runs away with another man may proceed to take unto himself a second wife without the least fear of a Crown prosecution for bigamy. Under Chinese law a man may, indeed, regularly divorce his wife for a variety of offences--including rudeness to his parents and talkativeness--but in Weihaiwei few husbands avail themselves of their rights in this respect; in the first place the husband is reluctant--especially if he is still childless--to lose the lady for whom he or his parents paid a good round sum in cash, and, secondly, he is afraid of getting into trouble with her family, who will quite probably drag him before the magistrate on a charge of brutal treatment of a gentle and long-suffering wife--their object being to "save face" and to extract from the husband substantial pecuniary compensation. If his wife's family is numerous and wealthy, the unhappy man who is wedded to an untamable shrew is often driven to desperate expedients to break his chains. He may, indeed, emigrate to Peking or Manchuria--the usual resorts of persons who find life unbearable in Weihaiwei--but this will only result in shifting the trouble from his own shoulders to those of his parents or brothers.