Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/226

 CHINA

the imperial order for the quantity required to such an extravagant amount that several pages of the C/ian- hsi tung-chth, which gives the statistics of the province, are filled with remonstrances of censors on the sub- ject. According to one of these, in the fifth year, 1571, of Lung-ching no less than 805,870 pairs of things were ordered, including bowls, tea-cups, wine- cups, and vases of bright red colour inside and out, large and small dragon-painted bowls for fish and boxes of rectangular form. It was ordered to be sent to the capital in batches, the first lot of 10,597 pairs by the ninth month of the same year, the second of 10,750 before the twelfth month, the remainder in eight successive lots. He explains the difficult pro- duction of the large dragon fish-bowls, which were to be decorated with ornaments in relief and to have broad bases and bulging bodies ; the great expense of the large fish-bowls to be painted in enamel colours and the fear of their being broken in the kiln; the too elaborate designs for the square boxes in three tiers, which would require almost a life-time to turn out. ... In the next reign, Wan-/, in the eleventh year, A.D. 1583, there is on record another imperial order for over 96,000 pieces, and more remonstrances are made by censors on the quantity of pricket candle- sticks, wind screens, and paint-brush vases, on the use- lessness of such things as chessmen, jars to put them in, and chessboards, on the trifling importance of the screens, paint-brush barrels, flower-vases, covered jars, and boxes. One censor ventures to ask whether 20,000 covered boxes of different form and decora- tion, 4,000 vases for flowers of varied shape, and 5,000 jars with covers, is not too large a number ; and whether dragons and phcenixes, flowering plants 198