Page:Ningpo to Shanghai.djvu/73

Rh most ingenious. A hollow bamboo, four or five feet long, is suspended from the ceiling, and a rod with a crooked end, on which hang the kettles, is placed within it, and kept up or down by a small bamboo spoon shaped stopper attached to the upper bamboo by a string; the angling of this stopper, through which the crook stick runs, having the effect of keeping it at whatever altitude the cook wishes.

Chinese say that good tea can only be made with the purest hill spring water; and here, at this little cot, the purity of the water, which is led through a hollow bamboo direct from the rill to the kitchen, certainly produces a beverage such as connoisseurs would pronounce exquisite. Some of the tea obtained at the way side dings is as different from the tea Europeen-ne as can well be imagined. If an Englishman's mode of giving it a similitude can be realized,&mdash;it is the flavour, imaginary of course, of "buttered cowslips." So proud are the Chinese of their hill water tea, that throughout the country it is not uncommon to see sign boards announcing the fact that good "san suey" hill water, can be had within;&mdash;in the same way that Tavern keepers at home advertise their Burton ale, Devonshire cider, and Dublin stout.

It takes upwards of 20 minutes to walk from the Tea Ding, or Temple as it should be called, there being a small idol within it, to the point where the road branches off to the S. W.; and if, instead of going on, the traveller sends on his chair to wait for him at the top, and then himself proceeds along this sou' western path, he reaches, in about seven minutes, the very celebrated mausoleum of a priest whose remains were interred beneath it so many centuries ago that tradition is faulty with the record. Here reside two priests, their cot or 