Page:A Residence Among the Chinese.djvu/22

xiv — Chinese play and audience — How I perform my part ! — Leave the city — Charming scenes in the country — Thrown silk — Silk villages and their inhabitants — Temple of Wan- shew-si and its priests — Taou-chang-shan pagoda — Glorious views from the pagoda hill | Page 350

CHAPTER XVIII.

Ascend the Lun-ke river — A musical Buddhist high priest — Hoo-shan monastery — Its silk-worms — Mode of feeding them — General treatment — Their aversion to noise and bright light — The country embanked in all directions — A farmer's explanation of this — Town of Mei-che — Silk-worms begin to spin — Method of putting them on straw — Artificial heat employed — Reeling process — Machine described — Work-people — Silk scenes in a monastery — Industrious Buddhist priests — Novel mode of catching fish — End of silk season — Price of raw silk where it is produced | 365

CHAPTER XIX.

Leave the silk country — Adventure at Nanziang — A visit from thieves — I am robbed of everything — Unsuccessful efforts to trace the robbers — Astonished by another visit from them — Its objects — My clothes and papers returned — Their motives for this — A visit to the Nanziang mandarin — Means taken to catch the robbers — Two are caught and bambooed — My visit to the mandarin returned — Arrive at Shanghae — Report the robbery to Her Majesty's Consul — A portion of the money recovered — The remainder supposed to be kept by the mandarins | 379

CHAPTER XX.

Tea-makers from Fokien and Kiangse engaged for India — Ning-chow tea country — Formerly produced green teas — Now produces black — How this change took place — Difficulty in getting the men off — One of them arrested for debt — All on board at last and sent on to Calcutta — Coast infested with pirates — Ningpo missionaries robbed — Politeness of the pirates — Their