a fire sufficient for simple cooking is obtained.

Except for a few hours of the day the house is as cold as the yard
outside, but the natives mind it not at all. Men and women alike
dress in sheepskin coats and padded cotton trousers. They do not
expect to remove their clothing when they come indoors, and warmth,
except at night, is a nonessential in their scheme of life. A system
of flues draws the heat from the cooking fires underneath the
_kang_, and the clay bricks retain their temperature for several
hours.

At best the north China natives lead a cheerless existence in
winter. The house is not a home. Dark, cold, dirty, it is merely a
place in which to eat and sleep. There is no home-making instinct in
the Chinese wife, for a centuries' old social system, based on the
Confucian ethics, has smothered every thought of the privileges of
womanhood. Her place is to cook, sew, and bear children; to reflect
only the thoughts of her lord and master--to have none of her own.

Wu-tai-hai was typical of villages of its class in all north China;
mud huts, each with a tiny courtyard, built end to end in a corner
of the hillside. A few acres of ground in the valley bottom and on
the mountain side capable of cultivation yield enough wheat, corn,
turnips, cabbages, and potatoes to give the natives food. Their life
is one of work with few pleasures, and yet they are content because
they know nothing else.

Imagine, then, what it meant when we suddenly injected ourselves
into their midst. We had come from a world beyond the mountains--a
world of which they had sometimes heard, but which was as unreal to
them as that of another planet. Europe and America were merely
names. A few had learned from passing soldiers that these strange
men in that dim, far land had been fighting among themselves and
that China, too, was in some vague way connected with the struggle.

But it had not affected them in their tiny rock-bound village. Their
world was encompassed within the valley walls or, in its uttermost
limits, extended to Kwei-hua-cheng, forty miles away. They knew,
even, that a "fire carriage" running on two rails of steel came
regularly to Feng-chen, four days' travel to the east, but few of
them had ever seen it. So it was almost as unreal as stories of the
war and aeroplanes and automobiles.

All the village gathered at the "American Legation" while we
unpacked our carts. They gazed in silent awe at our guns and cameras
and sle