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 CHAPTER IV

WALL LITERATURE JOURNALISM WIT AND HUMOUR PROVERBS AND MAXIMS

THE death of Yiian Yuan in 1849 brings us down to the period when China began to find herself for the first time face to face with the foreigner. The opening of five ports in 1842 to comparatively unrestricted trade, followed by more ports and right of residence in Peking from 1860, created points of contact and brought about foreign complications to which the governors of China had hitherto been unused. A Chinese Horace might well complain that the audacious brood of England have by wicked fraud introduced journalism into the Empire, and that evils worse than consumption and fevers have followed in its train.

From time immemorial wall-literature has been a feature in the life of a Chinese city surpassing in extent and variety that of any other nation, and often playing a part fraught with much danger to the community at large. Generally speaking, the literature of the walls covers pretty much the same ground as an ordinary English newspaper, from the "agony" column down- wards. For, mixed up with notices of lost property, consisting sometimes of human beings, and advertise- ments of all kinds of articles of trade, such as one would naturally look for in the handbill literature of any city,

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