Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/224

162 night, and did not know for how many more days and nights he might have to go on doing so. He was fed by the gaoler, since his hands and arms were inside the cage and his head outside, and communication between the two consequently out of the question. I left appreciating, to some extent, the cheapness of life in China.

An entertainment of a very different sort was provided by the first annual "sports" of the newly established Sui Fu College. From eight in the morning until four in the afternoon a crowd of at least 10,000 onlookers watched and applauded a full programme of keenly contested races. The victors in feats of bodily prowess were the heroes of the day, and this in the heart of a country in which but yesterday the ideal scholar was a literary fossil, with claws on his hands several inches in length, incapable of doing any one thing (except to teach at school) by which he could keep soul and body together. Truly here was a new China with a vengeance.