Sold as a Child Under Now-Outlawed Custom : Chinese Woman Recalls Life of Servitude

“I was sold when I was about 4 years old, and when I was 20, a man bought me as his wife for $200,” the old woman said. “He treated me badly. . . . He smoked opium. . . . I’ve had a hard life.”

Chan, 73, was a mooi jai, a domestic servant girl, for a moderately wealthy merchant family in Hong Kong from 1920 to 1936.

A mooi jai-- Cantonese for “little sister”--became the property of the family that bought her and ranked as a second-class daughter assigned to household chores. Often she was sexually abused by her master and might even have to bear children for families with no male heirs.

Ashamed to Talk About Past

Mooi jai are usually too ashamed to talk about their past. Chan agreed to be interviewed on condition that she would not be photographed and her real name not used.

“My mother died, and my father, who was a drug addict, sold me, probably so he could get money for his opium,” Chan said through an interpreter. “I never saw him again.

“I had to cook and clean for my master’s family. My mistress, the woman who bought me, was one of the master’s concubines. I had to work from dawn until late at night every day. Often I had to massage my mistress, but I was so tired I would fall asleep during the massage.

“I used to cry at the hardship sometimes, but really it wasn’t so bad. I ate at the same table as they, and sometimes they gave me their old clothes.”

Chan came to the interview from the shantytown dwelling she shares with her husband. She was barefoot and wore a faded cotton blouse and trousers.

Although outlawed by the British colony’s government, the Chinese custom of buying girls from poor families continued in Hong Kong until the mid-1950s. According to Maria Jaschok, author of a recent book on mooi jai, it still exists in remote and poor parts of China.

“You can be sure the parents of a lot of today’s larger and richer Hong Kong families bought and sold mooi jai, “ Jaschok said. “Some of those mooi jai are still living with the families that bought them, but now they appear to the outside world under the guise of adopted daughters or distant relatives.”

Usually Remained Illiterate

Mooi jai, who were unpaid and lucky if they had enough to eat and wear, usually remained illiterate. If a husband was not found for them or they were not sold off to brothels, they often stayed with their owners.

The more beguiling might win promotion to concubine status and inherit fortunes when their masters died.

Chan was not forced into concubinage or the brothel. Her master and mistress died, and she was sold by one of the merchant’s daughters to a tailor. She never saw the family of her former owners again.

Marriage was seen as a charitable reward for the years a mooi jai had worked for no wages.

Legislation, introduced in the 1920s but poorly enforced until after World War II, required all domestic servants to be paid a wage and be officially registered.

Chan said she had not known mooi jai labor was illegal and never saw one of the three inspectors responsible for monitoring the treatment of mooi jai in the colony.

“I could not choose my husband,” she said. “One day he just came. He never gave me an allowance. and I had to work as a coolie and carry heavy loads to get money.

“Now I get $510 (about $65 U.S.) from the government every month, and I get some money from selling empty beer cans I find in the garbage.

“I have always had a hard life, but now I’m better off.”