The present-day theory of the matter held by the people of eastern Shantung, including Weihaiwei, appears to be this. A woman undoubtedly performs a meritorious act in following her husband to the spirit-world, but her relations are fully justified in preventing her, and indeed are obliged to prevent her, from throwing away her life if they know of or guess her intention. If her husband has died leaving to her the care of his aged parents who have no other daughters-in-law to look after them, or if she has young children who require her care, she does wrong to commit suicide, though the children are sometimes ignored. The highest praise is reserved for a woman who temporarily refrains from destroying herself in order that she may devote herself to her husband's parents and her own offspring, but who, when they are dead or independent of her care, then fulfils her original desire and sacrifices herself to the spirit of her dead husband. The fact that in any case the woman's relatives are considered bound to prevent, if possible, the act of suicide from taking place, shows the beginning of a realisation that self-destruction is in itself an evil. Time was when they would not only make no attempt to save the woman's life, but, as in India, would incite her and even compel her to die. Of the stories of widows' suicides which have taken place during the past few centuries in Weihaiwei and its neighbourhood, and which were considered meritorious enough to deserve public honours and special mention in the official Annals, a few examples may be found of interest. The cases quoted are in no way unique or unusual, and there is no reason to doubt their absolute authenticity. Tsou Chao-tuan being sick of a mortal disease, his wife Ts'ung Shih and his concubine Sun Shih made an agreement with one another that they would follow him to death. As soon as he was dead the two women hanged themselves. Members of the family quickly came to the rescue and cut the ropes by which the women were suspended. Sun Shih the concubine was already dead, but Ts'ung Shih the wife revived. A few days later she again hanged herself, this time successfully. The wife was thirty years of age, the concubine nineteen. The district-magistrate took official notice of the matter, and caused a carved memorial to be set up testifying to the two women's exemplary virtue. "They had performed an act," he said, "which would cause their fragrant names to be remembered for ever."