Page:A Pocket Guide to China (1943).pdf/34

 by wasting nothing that can be used as fertilizer. They use human dung for this purpose, as some other old countries do, and which explains the common odors night and morning over the fields. It also explains why you must not eat vegetables raw.

You will often come upon temples in the cities and in the mountains. They are interesting places and you will find quiet priests living there. If you behave in a temple, as you would do in a church at home, though you may walk about as you like, your behavior will be in order.

Sometimes you will see marble arches across the streets or roads. These are memorials to great men and women. Oftentimes a faithful widow will be so commemorated by the community. You will see pagodas, and these are usually parts of a temple. They have much the same meaning as our church steeples. You will see tiny little temples to earth gods in the fields. These are worshipped for good crops and good weather, although the Chinese do not believe these images are the actual gods. They are merely symbols.

You will see funerals sometimes, and you will know what they are by the white clad figures. The poor have a small funeral procession, only the family following the casket, but the rich may spend thousands of dollars on a funeral. Priests and mourners, furniture and cars and even air- 29