From this we can see that women are harmful, evil things. Most Chinese men are potential sages but for the corruption of women. The Shang Dynasty perished because of Ta Chi; the Chou Dynasty because of Pao Ssu; the Ch'in Dynasty—although history is silent on this point, we cannot be far wrong if we assume that a woman was also the cause of its fall; and there is no question at all that Tung Cho died because of his passion for Tiao Ch'an.
Ah Q was a moral and upright man; he had always maintained a strict vigilance against contamination by woman, though he had never had any formal instruction in morals. Moreover, he showed a righteous wrath against all heterodoxy—such as that represented by nuns and fake foreigners. It was his firm belief that all nuns have illicit relations with monks, that a woman who is seen on the street must have come out for the express purpose of tempting and corrupting men; that when a man and woman are seen together they must be conspiring to commit adultery. To punish these people, he would glare at them wrathfully, make insinuating remarks, or throw pebbles at them—if he could do so safely.
Who would have thought that at the "age of moral independence"[1] he should succumb to the evil spell of a little nun? His state of mind was far from moral. Women are indeed evil things! If the nun's face had not been so smooth, or if it had been covered with a piece of cloth. Ah Q would not have been bewitched. Five or six years previously he had, standing in the crowd before the country stage, pinched a woman's thigh, but that was through a layer of cloth and the experience did not cause him a sleepless night. This was another proof that nuns and their kind were evil things.
- ↑ That is, thirty, at which Confucius was said to have achieved this state.
