only their loose cotton trousers on, were sitting at round tables
having a meal--not their ordinary diet, I should think, for they had
seventeen different sorts of soups and stews, some of them abominations
to our thinking.

We visited the little joss-house, very gaudily decorated, the main
feature of the decorations being two enormous red silk umbrellas,
exquisitely embroidered in gold and silks. The crowds in this village
remind me of Canton, but the Chinese look anything but picturesque
here, for none of them--or at all events, only their "Capitans"--wear
the black satin skull cap; and their shaven heads, with the small patch
of hair which goes into the composition of the pigtail, look very ugly.
The pig-tail certainly begins with this lock of hair, but the greater
part of it is made up of silk or cotton thread plaited in with the
hair, and blue or red strands of silk in a pigtail indicate mourning or
rejoicing. None of the Chinese here wear the beautiful long robes used
by their compatriots in China and Japan. The rich wear a white,
shirt-like garment of embroidered silk crepe over their trousers and
petticoat, and the poorer only loose blue or brown cotton trousers, so
that one is always being reminded of the excessive leanness of their
forms. Some of the rich merchants invited us to go in and drink
champagne, but we declined everything but tea, which is ready all day
long in tea-pots kept hot in covered baskets very thickly padded, such
as are known with us as "Norwegian Kitchens."

In the middle of the village there is a large, covered, but open-sided
building like a market, which is crowded all day--and all night too--by
hundreds of these poor, half-naked creatures standing round the gaming
tables, silent, eager, excited, staking every cent they earn on the
turn of the dice, living on the excitement of their gains--a truly sad