As to income and expenditure, the earnings of the various members go into a common purse, out of which expenses are paid.  Every one has a right to food and shelter; and so it is that if some are out of work, the strain is not individually felt; they take their rations as usual.  On the death of the father, it is not at all uncommon for the mother to take up the reins, though it is more usual for the eldest son to take his place.  Sometimes, after the death of the mother—­and then it is accounted a bad day for the family fortunes—­the brothers cannot agree; the property is divided, and each son sets up for himself, a proceeding which is forbidden by the Penal Code during the parents’ lifetime.  Meanwhile, any member of the family who should disgrace himself in any way, as by becoming an inveterate gambler and permanently neglecting his work, or by developing the opium vice to great excess, would be formally cast out, his name being struck off the ancestral register.  Men of this stamp generally sink lower and lower, until they swell the ranks of professional beggars, to die perhaps in a ditch; but such cases are happily of rare occurrence.

In the ordinary peaceful family, regulated according to Confucian principles of filial piety, fraternal love, and loyalty to the sovereign, we find love of home exalted to a passion; and bitter is the day of leave-taking for a long absence, as when a successful son starts to take up his official appointment at a distant post.  The latter, not being able to hold office in his native province, may have a long and sometimes dangerous journey to make, possibly to the other end of the empire.  In any case, years must elapse before he can revisit “the mulberry and the elm”—­the garden he leaves behind.  He may take his “old woman” and family with him, or they may follow later on; as another alternative, the “old woman” with the children may remain permanently in the ancestral home, while the husband carries on his official career alone.  Under such circumstances as the last-mentioned, no one, including his own wife, is shocked if he consoles himself with a “small old woman,” whom he picks up at his new place of abode.  The “small old woman” is indeed often introduced into families where the “principal old woman” fails to contribute the first of “the three blessings of which every one desires to have plenty,” namely, sons, money, and life.  Instances are not uncommon of the wife herself urging this course upon her husband; and but for this system the family line would often come to an end, failing recourse to another system, namely, adoption, which is also brought into play when all hope of a lineal descendant is abandoned.

Whether she has children or not, the principal wife—­the only wife, in fact—­never loses her supremacy as the head of the household.  The late Empress Dowager was originally a concubine; by virtue of motherhood she was raised to the rank of Western Empress, but never legitimately took precedence of the wife, whose superiority was indicated by her title of Eastern Empress, the east being more honourable than the west.  The emperor always sits with his face towards the south.