Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/34

26 the machinery needed for unloading, measuring, and removing this mountain of rice and millet is simply an army of coolies, a supply of boxes made like a truiicated cone, which are the "bushel" measures, and an indefinite number of reed mats. Only this and nothing more. The mats are spread on the ground, the grain is emptied, remeasured, sacked, and sent off, and the mats being taken up, the Emperor's Com Exchange is once more a mere mud-bank!

On an American tobacco plantation one of the heaviest expenses is the building of the long and carefully constructed sheds for drying. In Chinese tobacco farms there is for this object no expense at all. The sheds are made of thatch, and when they are worn out the old material is just as good for fuel as the new. When the tobacco is picked, the stout, stiff stalks are left standing. Straw ropes are stretched along these stalks, and upon the ropes are hung the tobacco leaves, which are taken in at night with the ropes attached, like clothes hung to a line. For simplicity and effectiveness this device could hardly be excelled.

Every observant resident in China would be able to add to these illustrations of a Chinese social fact, but perhaps no more characteristic instance could be cited than the case of an old Chinese woman, who was found hobbling along in a painfully slow way, and on inquiry of whom it was ascertained that she was going to the home of a relative, so as to die in a place convenient to the family graveyard, and thus avoid the expense of coffin-bearers for so long a distance!