friends were served at inns or restaurants, accompanied or followed
by musical or theatrical performances. The place of honour is stated
in Western books on China to be on the left, but the fact is that the
place of honour is the one which shows the utmost solicitude for the
safety of the guest. It is therefore not necessarily one fixed place,
but would usually be the one facing the door, so that the guest might
be in a position to see an enemy enter, and take measures accordingly.

Lap-dogs and cage-birds were kept as pets; 'wonks,' the _huang kou_,
or 'yellow dog,' were guards of houses and street scavengers. Aquaria
with goldfish were often to be seen in the houses of the upper and
middle classes, the gardens and courtyards of which usually contained
rockeries and artistic shrubs and flowers.

Whiskers were never worn, and moustaches and beards only after forty,
before which age the hair grew, if at all, very scantily. Full,
thick beards, as in the West, were practically never seen, even on
the aged. Snuff-bottles, tobacco-pipes, and fans were carried by both
sexes. Nails were worn long by members of the literary and leisured
classes. Non-Manchu women and girls had cramped feet, and both Manchu
and Chinese women used cosmetics freely.


Industrial Institutions

While the men attended to farm-work, women took care of the
mulberry-orchards and silkworms, and did spinning, weaving, and
embroidery. This, the primitive division of labour, held throughout,
though added to on both sides, so that eventually the men did most
of the agriculture, arts, production, distribution, fighting, etc.,