Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. II.pdf/24

 they do everything by hand with the help of one or two small trowels, the thumb and fingers coming in for the most delicate touches of the design.

The fan-painters of Swatow enjoy a wide-spread reputation. There are, however, only two or three shops where the highest class of fan-painting is practised. The pictures on the fans of this sort are remarkable for the delicacy and beauty of their colouring, as well as for the variety of their designs, and for the grace and accuracy with which the drawings have been executed. I found the artists who engage in this work seated in small apartments, each one on his opium couch, and it is while under the exhilarating influence of the drug that the finest pictures are produced. The Swatow fans are not only greatly sought after by foreigners, but find a good and ready market in all parts of the empire.

The annual value of the trade of Swatow has been nearly tripled since i860. In this part of the Kwangtung province sugar and rice are extensively grown. The cultivation of sugar-cane and the manufacture of sugar are industries modest in their aspect, and making but little outward show, as indeed is the case with most of those other pursuits which produce such great results in China. The total area of land under cane cultivation is great, but the farms are small. Each small owner tends his fields for himself, and has a small sugar-mill of his own in the midst of his farm. The crushing-stones of this mill are set in motion by buffaloes, and about one picul of raw sugar per day is the average yield of each mill. Thus, it requires many mills and many owners to furnish an annual supply of something like 800,000 piculs of sugar to the market.

Paper, china ware, pottery, grass-cloth and sugar, these form the chief articles of exportation from Swatow, while opium and piece goods are the principal merchandize imported. In 1870 the total value of the imports and exports at this town was about two and a-half millions sterling.

Every year sees an increase in the number of emigrants who leave this part of the province to work on the plantations of Cochin China, Siam, and the Straits of Malacca. More than 20,000 such persons are computed to have left the port in 1870, and we may be sure that the price of labour in China is at a very low ebb when we find that wages from two to three dollars a month are all the inducement held out to emigrants, and that such a sum as this is esteemed by the toiling poor sufficient to enable them to save money to invest in farming on their return to their own country. Chinese labour is much esteemed in the Straits, and I know from personal observation that coolies from China work much better on a plantation than do natives of India or Malays.